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1776 | Arthritis | Arthritis is a term often used to mean any disorder that affects joints. Symptoms generally include joint pain and stiffness. Other symptoms may include redness, warmth, swelling, and decreased range of motion of the affected joints. In some types of arthritis, other organs are also affected. Onset can be gradual or sudden.
There are over 100 types of arthritis. The most common forms are osteoarthritis (degenerative joint disease) and rheumatoid arthritis. Osteoarthritis usually occurs with age and affects the fingers, knees, and hips. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that often affects the hands and feet. Other types include gout, lupus, fibromyalgia, and septic arthritis. They are all types of rheumatic disease.
Treatment may include resting the joint and alternating between applying ice and heat. Weight loss and exercise may also be useful. Recommended medications may depend on the form of arthritis. These may include pain medications such as ibuprofen and paracetamol (acetaminophen). In some circumstances, a joint replacement may be useful.
Osteoarthritis affects more than 3.8% of people, while rheumatoid arthritis affects about 0.24% of people. Gout affects about 1–2% of the Western population at some point in their lives. In Australia about 15% of people are affected by arthritis, while in the United States more than 20% have a type of arthritis. Overall the disease becomes more common with age. Arthritis is a common reason that people miss work and can result in a decreased quality of life. The term is derived from "arthr-" (meaning 'joint') and "-itis" (meaning 'inflammation').
Classification.
There are several diseases where joint pain is primary, and is considered the main feature. Generally when a person has "arthritis" it means that they have one of these diseases, which include:
Joint pain can also be a symptom of other diseases. In this case, the arthritis is considered to be secondary to the main disease; these include:
An "undifferentiated arthritis" is an arthritis that does not fit into well-known clinical disease categories, possibly being an early stage of a definite rheumatic disease.
Signs and symptoms.
Pain, which can vary in severity, is a common symptom in virtually all types of arthritis. Other symptoms include swelling, joint stiffness, redness, and aching around the joint(s). Arthritic disorders like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis can affect other organs in the body, leading to a variety of symptoms. Symptoms may include:
It is common in advanced arthritis for significant secondary changes to occur. For example, arthritic symptoms might make it difficult for a person to move around and/or exercise, which can lead to secondary effects, such as:
These changes, in addition to the primary symptoms, can have a huge impact on quality of life.
Disability.
Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in the United States. More than 20 million individuals with arthritis have severe limitations in function on a daily basis. Absenteeism and frequent visits to the physician are common in individuals who have arthritis. Arthritis can make it difficult for individuals to be physically active and some become home bound.
It is estimated that the total cost of arthritis cases is close to $100 billion of which almost 50% is from lost earnings. Each year, arthritis results in nearly 1 million hospitalizations and close to 45 million outpatient visits to health care centers.
Decreased mobility, in combination with the above symptoms, can make it difficult for an individual to remain physically active, contributing to an increased risk of obesity, high cholesterol or vulnerability to heart disease. People with arthritis are also at increased risk of depression, which may be a response to numerous factors, including fear of worsening symptoms.
Risk factors.
There are common risk factors that increase a person's chance of developing arthritis later in adulthood. Some of these are modifiable while others are not. Smoking has been linked to an increased susceptibility of developing arthritis, particularly rheumatoid arthritis.
Diagnosis.
Diagnosis is made by clinical examination from an appropriate health professional, and may be supported by other tests such as radiology and blood tests, depending on the type of suspected arthritis. All arthritides potentially feature pain. Pain patterns may differ depending on the arthritides and the location. Rheumatoid arthritis is generally worse in the morning and associated with stiffness lasting over 30 minutes. However, in the early stages, patients may have no symptoms after a warm shower. Osteoarthritis, on the other hand, tends to be associated with morning stiffness which eases relatively quickly with movement and exercise. In the aged and children, pain might not be the main presenting feature; the aged patient simply moves less, the infantile patient refuses to use the affected limb.
Elements of the history of the disorder guide diagnosis. Important features are speed and time of onset, pattern of joint involvement, symmetry of symptoms, early morning stiffness, tenderness, gelling or locking with inactivity, aggravating and relieving factors, and other systemic symptoms. Physical examination may confirm the diagnosis or may indicate systemic disease. Radiographs are often used to follow progression or help assess severity.
Blood tests and X-rays of the affected joints often are performed to make the diagnosis. Screening blood tests are indicated if certain arthritides are suspected. These might include: rheumatoid factor, antinuclear factor (ANF), extractable nuclear antigen, and specific antibodies.
Osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis. It affects humans and other animals, notably dogs, but also occurs in cats and horses. It can affect both the larger and the smaller joints of the body. In humans, this includes the hands, wrists, feet, back, hip, and knee. In dogs, this includes the elbow, hip, stifle (knee), shoulder, and back. The disease is essentially one acquired from daily wear and tear of the joint; however, osteoarthritis can also occur as a result of injury. Osteoarthritis begins in the cartilage and eventually causes the two opposing bones to erode into each other. The condition starts with minor pain during physical activity, but soon the pain can be continuous and even occur while in a state of rest. The pain can be debilitating and prevent one from doing some activities. In dogs, this pain can significantly affect quality of life and may include difficulty going up and down stairs, struggling to get up after lying down, trouble walking on slick floors, being unable to hop in and out of vehicles, difficulty jumping on and off furniture, and behavioral changes (e.g., aggression, difficulty squatting to toilet). Osteoarthritis typically affects the weight-bearing joints, such as the back, knee and hip. Unlike rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis is most commonly a disease of the elderly. The strongest predictor of osteoarthritis is increased age, likely due to the declining ability of chondrocytes to maintain the structural integrity of cartilage. More than 30 percent of women have some degree of osteoarthritis by age 65. Other risk factors for osteoarthritis include prior joint trauma, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle.
Rheumatoid arthritis.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disorder in which the body's own immune system starts to attack body tissues. The attack is not only directed at the joint but to many other parts of the body. In rheumatoid arthritis, most damage occurs to the joint lining and cartilage which eventually results in erosion of two opposing bones. RA often affects joints in the fingers, wrists, knees and elbows, is symmetrical (appears on both sides of the body), and can lead to severe deformity in a few years if not treated. RA occurs mostly in people aged 20 and above. In children, the disorder can present with a skin rash, fever, pain, disability, and limitations in daily activities. With earlier diagnosis and aggressive treatment, many individuals can lead a better quality of life than if going undiagnosed for long after RA's onset. The risk factors with the strongest association for developing rheumatoid arthritis are the female sex, a family history of rheumatoid arthritis, age, obesity, previous joint damage from an injury, and exposure to tobacco smoke.
Bone erosion is a central feature of rheumatoid arthritis. Bone continuously undergoes remodeling by actions of bone resorbing osteoclasts and bone forming osteoblasts. One of the main triggers of bone erosion in the joints in rheumatoid arthritis is inflammation of the synovium, caused in part by the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL), a cell surface protein present in Th17 cells and osteoblasts. Osteoclast activity can be directly induced by osteoblasts through the RANK/RANKL mechanism.
Lupus.
Lupus is a common collagen vascular disorder that can be present with severe arthritis. Other features of lupus include a skin rash, extreme photosensitivity, hair loss, kidney problems, lung fibrosis and constant joint pain.
Gout.
Gout is caused by deposition of uric acid crystals in the joints, causing inflammation. There is also an uncommon form of gouty arthritis caused by the formation of rhomboid crystals of calcium pyrophosphate known as pseudogout. In the early stages, the gouty arthritis usually occurs in one joint, but with time, it can occur in many joints and be quite crippling. The joints in gout can often become swollen and lose function. Gouty arthritis can become particularly painful and potentially debilitating when gout cannot successfully be treated. When uric acid levels and gout symptoms cannot be controlled with standard gout medicines that decrease the production of uric acid (e.g., allopurinol) or increase uric acid elimination from the body through the kidneys (e.g., probenecid), this can be referred to as refractory chronic gout.
Other.
Infectious arthritis is another severe form of arthritis. It presents with sudden onset of chills, fever and joint pain. The condition is caused by bacteria elsewhere in the body. Infectious arthritis must be rapidly diagnosed and treated promptly to prevent irreversible joint damage.
Psoriasis can develop into psoriatic arthritis. With psoriatic arthritis, most individuals develop the skin problem first and then the arthritis. The typical features are continuous joint pains, stiffness and swelling. The disease does recur with periods of remission but there is no cure for the disorder. A small percentage develop a severely painful and destructive form of arthritis which destroys the small joints in the hands and can lead to permanent disability and loss of hand function.
Treatment.
There is no known cure for arthritis and rheumatic diseases. Treatment options vary depending on the type of arthritis and include physical therapy, exercise and diet, orthopedic bracing, and oral and topical medications. Joint replacement surgery may be required to repair damage, restore function, or relieve pain.
Physical therapy.
In general, studies have shown that physical exercise of the affected joint can noticeably improve long-term pain relief. Furthermore, exercise of the arthritic joint is encouraged to maintain the health of the particular joint and the overall body of the person.
Individuals with arthritis can benefit from both physical and occupational therapy. In arthritis the joints become stiff and the range of movement can be limited. Physical therapy has been shown to significantly improve function, decrease pain, and delay the need for surgical intervention in advanced cases. Exercise prescribed by a physical therapist has been shown to be more effective than medications in treating osteoarthritis of the knee. Exercise often focuses on improving muscle strength, endurance and flexibility. In some cases, exercises may be designed to train balance. Occupational therapy can provide assistance with activities. Assistive technology is a tool used to aid a person's disability by reducing their physical barriers by improving the use of their damaged body part, typically after an amputation. Assistive technology devices can be customized to the patient or bought commercially.
Medications.
There are several types of medications that are used for the treatment of arthritis. Treatment typically begins with medications that have the fewest side effects with further medications being added if insufficiently effective.
Depending on the type of arthritis, the medications that are given may be different. For example, the first-line treatment for osteoarthritis is acetaminophen (paracetamol) while for inflammatory arthritis it involves non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen. Opioids and NSAIDs may be less well tolerated. However, topical NSAIDs may have better safety profiles than oral NSAIDs. For more severe cases of osteoarthritis, intra-articular corticosteroid injections may also be considered.
The drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) range from corticosteroids to monoclonal antibodies given intravenously. Due to the autoimmune nature of RA, treatments may include not only pain medications and anti-inflammatory drugs, but also another category of drugs called disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). csDMARDs, TNF biologics and tsDMARDs are specific kinds of DMARDs that are recommended for treatment. Treatment with DMARDs is designed to slow down the progression of RA by initiating an adaptive immune response, in part by CD4+ T helper (Th) cells, specifically Th17 cells. Th17 cells are present in higher quantities at the site of bone destruction in joints and produce inflammatory cytokines associated with inflammation, such as interleukin-17 (IL-17).
Surgery.
A number of rheumasurgical interventions have been incorporated in the treatment of arthritis since the 1950s. Arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee provides no additional benefit to optimized physical and medical therapy.
Adaptive aids.
People with hand arthritis can have trouble with simple activities of daily living tasks (ADLs), such as turning a key in a lock or opening jars, as these activities can be cumbersome and painful. There are adaptive aids or assistive devices (ADs) available to help with these tasks, but they are generally more costly than conventional products with the same function. It is now possible to 3-D print adaptive aids, which have been released as open source hardware to reduce patient costs. Adaptive aids can significantly help arthritis patients and the vast majority of those with arthritis need and use them.
Alternative medicine.
Further research is required to determine if transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for knee osteoarthritis is effective for controlling pain.
Low level laser therapy may be considered for relief of pain and stiffness associated with arthritis. Evidence of benefit is tentative.
Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMFT) has tentative evidence supporting improved functioning but no evidence of improved pain in osteoarthritis. The FDA has not approved PEMFT for the treatment of arthritis. In Canada, PEMF devices are legally licensed by Health Canada for the treatment of pain associated with arthritic conditions.
Epidemiology.
Arthritis is predominantly a disease of the elderly, but children can also be affected by the disease. Arthritis is more common in women than men at all ages and affects all races, ethnic groups and cultures. In the United States a CDC survey based on data from 2013 to 2015 showed 54.4 million (22.7%) adults had self-reported doctor-diagnosed arthritis, and 23.7 million (43.5% of those with arthritis) had arthritis-attributable activity limitation (AAAL). With an aging population, this number is expected to increase. Adults with co-morbid conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, were seen to have a higher than average prevalence of doctor-diagnosed arthritis (49.3%, 47.1%, and 30.6% respectively).
Disability due to musculoskeletal disorders increased by 45% from 1990 to 2010. Of these, osteoarthritis is the fastest increasing major health condition. Among the many reports on the increased prevalence of musculoskeletal conditions, data from Africa are lacking and underestimated. A systematic review assessed the prevalence of arthritis in Africa and included twenty population-based and seven hospital-based studies. The majority of studies, twelve, were from South Africa. Nine studies were well-conducted, eleven studies were of moderate quality, and seven studies were conducted poorly. The results of the systematic review were as follows:
History.
Evidence of osteoarthritis and potentially inflammatory arthritis has been discovered in dinosaurs. The first known traces of human arthritis date back as far as 4500 BC. In early reports, arthritis was frequently referred to as the most common ailment of prehistoric peoples. It was noted in skeletal remains of Native Americans found in Tennessee and parts of what is now Olathe, Kansas. Evidence of arthritis has been found throughout history, from Ötzi, a mummy () found along the border of modern Italy and Austria, to the Egyptian mummies .
In 1715, William Musgrave published the second edition of his most important medical work, "De arthritide symptomatica", which concerned arthritis and its effects. Augustin Jacob Landré-Beauvais, a 28-year-old resident physician at Salpêtrière Asylum in France was the first person to describe the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Though Landré-Beauvais' classification of rheumatoid arthritis as a relative of gout was inaccurate, his dissertation encouraged others to further study the disease.
Terminology.
The term is derived from "arthr-" (from ) and "-itis" (from , , ), the latter suffix having come to be associated with inflammation.
The word "arthritides" is the plural form of arthritis, and denotes the collective group of arthritis-like conditions.
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1778 | Acetylene | Acetylene (systematic name: ethyne) is the chemical compound with the formula and structure . It is a hydrocarbon and the simplest alkyne. This colorless gas is widely used as a fuel and a chemical building block. It is unstable in its pure form and thus is usually handled as a solution. Pure acetylene is odorless, but commercial grades usually have a marked odor due to impurities such as divinyl sulfide and phosphine.
As an alkyne, acetylene is unsaturated because its two carbon atoms are bonded together in a triple bond. The carbon–carbon triple bond places all four atoms in the same straight line, with CCH bond angles of 180°.
Discovery.
Acetylene was discovered in 1836 by Edmund Davy, who identified it as a "new carburet of hydrogen". It was an accidental discovery while attempting to isolate potassium metal. By heating potassium carbonate with carbon at very high temperatures, he produced a residue of what is now known as potassium carbide, (K2C2), which reacted with water to release the new gas. It was rediscovered in 1860 by French chemist Marcellin Berthelot, who coined the name "acétylène". Berthelot's empirical formula for acetylene (C4H2), as well as the alternative name "quadricarbure d'hydrogène" (hydrogen quadricarbide), were incorrect because many chemists at that time used the wrong atomic mass for carbon (6 instead of 12). Berthelot was able to prepare this gas by passing vapours of organic compounds (methanol, ethanol, etc.) through a red hot tube and collecting the effluent. He also found that acetylene was formed by sparking electricity through mixed cyanogen and hydrogen gases. Berthelot later obtained acetylene directly by passing hydrogen between the poles of a carbon arc.
Preparation.
Since the 1950s, acetylene has mainly been manufactured by the partial combustion of methane. It is a recovered side product in production of ethylene by cracking of hydrocarbons. Approximately 400,000 tonnes were produced by this method in 1983. Its presence in ethylene is usually undesirable because of its explosive character and its ability to poison Ziegler–Natta catalysts. It is selectively hydrogenated into ethylene, usually using Pd–Ag catalysts.
Until the 1950s, when oil supplanted coal as the chief source of reduced carbon, acetylene (and the aromatic fraction from coal tar) was the main source of organic chemicals in the chemical industry. It was prepared by the hydrolysis of calcium carbide, a reaction discovered by Friedrich Wöhler in 1862 and still familiar to students:
Calcium carbide production requires extremely high temperatures, ~2000 °C, necessitating the use of an electric arc furnace. In the US, this process was an important part of the late-19th century revolution in chemistry enabled by the massive hydroelectric power project at Niagara Falls.
Bonding.
In terms of valence bond theory, in each carbon atom the 2s orbital hybridizes with one 2p orbital thus forming an sp hybrid. The other two 2p orbitals remain unhybridized. The two ends of the two sp hybrid orbital overlap to form a strong σ valence bond between the carbons, while on each of the other two ends hydrogen atoms attach also by σ bonds. The two unchanged 2p orbitals form a pair of weaker π bonds.
Since acetylene is a linear symmetrical molecule, it possesses the D∞h point group.
Physical properties.
Changes of state.
At atmospheric pressure, acetylene cannot exist as a liquid and does not have a melting point. The triple point on the phase diagram corresponds to the melting point (−80.8 °C) at the minimal pressure at which liquid acetylene can exist (1.27 atm). At temperatures below the triple point, solid acetylene can change directly to the vapour (gas) by sublimation. The sublimation point at atmospheric pressure is −84.0 °C.
Other.
At room temperature, the solubility of acetylene in acetone is 27.9 g per kg. For the same amount of dimethylformamide (DMF), the solubility is 51 g. At
20.26 bar, the solubility increases to 689.0 and 628.0 g for acetone and DMF, respectively. These solvents are used in pressurized gas cylinders.
Applications.
Welding.
Approximately 20% of acetylene is supplied by the industrial gases industry for oxyacetylene gas welding and cutting due to the high temperature of the flame. Combustion of acetylene with oxygen produces a flame of over , releasing 11.8 kJ/g. Oxyacetylene is the hottest burning common fuel gas. Acetylene is the third-hottest natural chemical flame after dicyanoacetylene's and cyanogen at . Oxy-acetylene welding was a popular welding process in previous decades. The development and advantages of arc-based welding processes have made oxy-fuel welding nearly extinct for many applications. Acetylene usage for welding has dropped significantly. On the other hand, oxy-acetylene welding "equipment" is quite versatile – not only because the torch is preferred for some sorts of iron or steel welding (as in certain artistic applications), but also because it lends itself easily to brazing, braze-welding, metal heating (for annealing or tempering, bending or forming), the loosening of corroded nuts and bolts, and other applications. Bell Canada cable-repair technicians still use portable acetylene-fuelled torch kits as a soldering tool for sealing lead sleeve splices in manholes and in some aerial locations. Oxyacetylene welding may also be used in areas where electricity is not readily accessible. Oxyacetylene cutting is used in many metal fabrication shops. For use in welding and cutting, the working pressures must be controlled by a regulator, since above , if subjected to a shockwave (caused, for example, by a flashback), acetylene decomposes explosively into hydrogen and carbon.
Portable lighting.
Acetylene combustion produces a strong, bright light and the ubiquity of carbide lamps drove much acetylene commercialization in the early 20th century. Common applications included coastal lighthouses, street lights, and automobile and mining headlamps. In most of these applications, direct combustion is a fire hazard, and so acetylene has been replaced, first by incandescent lighting and many years later by low-power/high-lumen LEDs. Nevertheless, acetylene lamps remain in limited use in remote or otherwise inaccessible areas and in countries with a weak or unreliable central electric grid.
Plastics and acrylic acid derivatives.
Acetylene can be semihydrogenated to ethylene, providing a feedstock for a variety of polyethylene plastics. Another major application of acetylene, especially in China is its conversion to acrylic acid derivatives. These derivatives form products such as acrylic fibers, glasses, paints, resins, and polymers.
Except in China, use of acetylene as a chemical feedstock has declined by 70% from 1965 to 2007 owing to cost and environmental considerations.
Niche applications.
In 1881, the Russian chemist Mikhail Kucherov described the hydration of acetylene to acetaldehyde using catalysts such as mercury(II) bromide. Before the advent of the Wacker process, this reaction was conducted on an industrial scale.
The polymerization of acetylene with Ziegler–Natta catalysts produces polyacetylene films. Polyacetylene, a chain of CH centres with alternating single and double bonds, was one of the first discovered organic semiconductors. Its reaction with iodine produces a highly electrically conducting material. Although such materials are not useful, these discoveries led to the developments of organic semiconductors, as recognized by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 to Alan J. Heeger, Alan G MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa.
In the 1920s, pure acetylene was experimentally used as an inhalation anesthetic.
Acetylene is sometimes used for carburization (that is, hardening) of steel when the object is too large to fit into a furnace.
Acetylene is used to volatilize carbon in radiocarbon dating. The carbonaceous material in an archeological sample is treated with lithium metal in a small specialized research furnace to form lithium carbide (also known as lithium acetylide). The carbide can then be reacted with water, as usual, to form acetylene gas to feed into a mass spectrometer to measure the isotopic ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12.
Natural occurrence.
The energy richness of the C≡C triple bond and the rather high solubility of acetylene in water make it a suitable substrate for bacteria, provided an adequate source is available. A number of bacteria living on acetylene have been identified. The enzyme acetylene hydratase catalyzes the hydration of acetylene to give acetaldehyde:
Acetylene is a moderately common chemical in the universe, often associated with the atmospheres of gas giants. One curious discovery of acetylene is on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Natural acetylene is believed to form from catalytic decomposition of long-chain hydrocarbons at temperatures of and above. Since such temperatures are highly unlikely on such a small distant body, this discovery is potentially suggestive of catalytic reactions within that moon, making it a promising site to search for prebiotic chemistry.
Reactions.
Vinylation reactions.
In vinylation reactions, H−X compounds add across the triple bond. Alcohols and phenols add to acetylene to give vinyl ethers. Thiols give vinyl thioethers. Similarly, vinylpyrrolidone and vinylcarbazole are produced industrially by vinylation of 2-pyrrolidone and carbazole.
The hydration of acetylene is a vinylation reaction, but the resulting vinyl alcohol isomerizes to acetaldehyde. The reaction is catalyzed by mercury salts. This reaction once was the dominant technology for acetaldehyde production, but it has been displaced by the Wacker process, which affords acetaldehyde by oxidation of ethylene, a cheaper feedstock. A similar situation applies to the conversion of acetylene to the valuable vinyl chloride by hydrochlorination vs the oxychlorination of ethylene.
Vinyl acetate is used instead of acetylene for some vinylations, which are more accurately described as transvinylations. Higher esters of vinyl acetate have been used in the synthesis of vinyl formate.
Ethynylation.
Acetylene adds to aldehydes and ketones to form α-ethynyl alcohols:
The reaction with formaldehyde is used industrially in the production of butynediol, forming propargyl alcohol as the by-product. Copper acetylide is used as the catalyst.
Because halogens add across the triple bond, the substituted acetylenes difluoroacetylene, dichloroacetylene, dibromoacetylene, and diiodoacetylene cannot be made directly from acetylene. A common workaround is to dehydrate vinyl dihaloethenols.
Carbonylation.
Walter Reppe discovered that in the presence of catalysts, acetylene reacts to give a wide range of industrially significant chemicals.
With carbon monoxide, acetylene reacts to give acrylic acid, or acrylic esters, which can be used to produce acrylic glass.
Organometallic chemistry.
Acetylene and its derivatives (2-butyne, diphenylacetylene, etc.) form complexes with transition metals. Its bonding to the metal is somewhat similar to that of ethylene complexes. These complexes are intermediates in many catalytic reactions such as alkyne trimerisation to benzene, tetramerization to cyclooctatetraene, and carbonylation to hydroquinone:
In the presence of certain transition metals, alkynes undergo alkyne metathesis.
Metal acetylides, species of the formula , are also common. Copper(I) acetylide and silver acetylide can be formed in aqueous solutions with ease due to a poor solubility equilibrium.
Acid-base reactions.
Acetylene has a p"K"a of 25, acetylene can be deprotonated by a superbase to form an acetylide:
Various organometallic and inorganic reagents are effective.
Safety and handling.
Acetylene is not especially toxic, but when generated from calcium carbide, it can contain toxic impurities such as traces of phosphine and arsine, which give it a distinct garlic-like smell. It is also highly flammable, as are most light hydrocarbons, hence its use in welding. Its most singular hazard is associated with its intrinsic instability, especially when it is pressurized: under certain conditions acetylene can react in an exothermic addition-type reaction to form a number of products, typically benzene and/or vinylacetylene, possibly in addition to carbon and hydrogen. Consequently, acetylene, if initiated by intense heat or a shockwave, can decompose explosively if the absolute pressure of the gas exceeds about . Most regulators and pressure gauges on equipment report gauge pressure, and the safe limit for acetylene therefore is 101 kPagage, or 15 psig. It is therefore supplied and stored dissolved in acetone or dimethylformamide (DMF), contained in a gas cylinder with a porous filling (Agamassan), which renders it safe to transport and use, given proper handling. Acetylene cylinders should be used in the upright position to avoid withdrawing acetone during use.
Information on safe storage of acetylene in upright cylinders is provided by the OSHA, Compressed Gas Association, United States Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), EIGA, and other agencies.
Copper catalyses the decomposition of acetylene, and as a result acetylene should not be transported in copper pipes.
Cylinders should be stored in an area segregated from oxidizers to avoid exacerbated reaction in case of fire/leakage. Acetylene cylinders should not be stored in confined spaces, enclosed vehicles, garages, and buildings, to avoid unintended leakage leading to explosive atmosphere. In the US, National Electric Code (NEC) requires consideration for hazardous areas including those where acetylene may be released during accidents or leaks. Consideration may include electrical classification and use of listed Group A electrical components in US. Further information on determining the areas requiring special consideration is in NFPA 497. In Europe, ATEX also requires consideration for hazardous areas where flammable gases may be released during accidents or leaks.
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1779 | Alfred | Alfred may refer to:
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1786 | Arabic numerals | Arabic numerals are the ten symbols most commonly used to write decimal numbers: , , , , , , , , and . They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as computer symbols, trademarks, or license plates. The term often implies a decimal number, in particular when contrasted with Roman numerals.
They are also called Western Arabic numerals, Ghubār numerals, Hindu-Arabic numerals, Western digits, Latin digits, or European digits. The "Oxford English Dictionary" differentiates them with the fully capitalized "Arabic Numerals" to refer to the Eastern digits. The term numbers or numerals or digits often implies only these symbols, however this can only be inferred from context.
Europeans learned of Arabic numerals about the 10th century, though their spread was a gradual process. Two centuries later, in the Algerian city of Béjaïa, the Italian scholar Fibonacci first encountered the numerals; his work was crucial in making them known throughout Europe. European trade, books, and colonialism helped popularize the adoption of Arabic numerals around the world. The numerals have found worldwide use significantly beyond the contemporary spread of the Latin alphabet, and have become common in the writing systems where other numeral systems existed previously, such as Chinese and Japanese numerals.
History.
Decimal notation was developed in India, with expansion to non-integers in Arabia. However this was done with different symbols.
Origin.
The reason the digits are more commonly known as "Arabic numerals" in Europe and the Americas is that they were introduced to Europe in the 10th century by Arabic speakers of Spain and North Africa, who were then using the digits from Libya to Morocco. In the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs were using the Eastern Arabic numerals or "Mashriki" numerals: ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩
Al-Nasawi wrote in the early 11th century that mathematicians had not agreed on the form of the numerals, but most of them had agreed to train themselves with the forms now known as Eastern Arabic numerals. The oldest specimens of the written numerals available are from Egypt and date to 873–874 CE. They show three forms of the numeral "2" and two forms of the numeral "3", and these variations indicate the divergence between what later became known as the Eastern Arabic numerals and the Western Arabic numerals. The Western Arabic numerals came to be used in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus from the 10th century onward. Some amount of consistency in the Western Arabic numeral forms endured from the 10th century, found in a Latin manuscript of Isidore of Seville's "Etymologiae" from 976 and the Gerbertian abacus, into the 12th and 13th centuries, in early manuscripts of translations from the city of Toledo.
Calculations were originally performed using a dust board ("takht", Latin: "tabula"), which involved writing symbols with a stylus and erasing them. The use of the dust board appears to have introduced a divergence in terminology as well: whereas the Hindu reckoning was called "ḥisāb al-hindī" in the east, it was called "ḥisāb al-ghubār" in the west (literally, "calculation with dust"). The numerals themselves were referred to in the west as "ashkāl al‐ghubār" ("dust figures") or "qalam al-ghubår" ("dust letters"). Al-Uqlidisi later invented a system of calculations with ink and paper "without board and erasing" ("bi-ghayr takht wa-lā maḥw bal bi-dawāt wa-qirṭās").
A popular myth claims that the symbols were designed to indicate their numeric value through the number of angles they contained, but no evidence exists of this, and the myth is difficult to reconcile with any digits past 4.
Adoption and spread.
The first mentions of the numerals from 1 to 9 in the West are found in the "Codex Vigilanus" of 976, an illuminated collection of various historical documents covering a period from antiquity to the 10th century in Hispania. Other texts show that numbers from 1 to 9 were occasionally supplemented by a placeholder known as "sipos", represented as a circle or wheel, reminiscent of the eventual symbol for zero. The Arabic term for zero is "sifr" (), transliterated into Latin as "cifra", and the origin of the English word "cipher".
From the 980s, Gerbert of Aurillac (later, Pope Sylvester II) used his position to spread knowledge of the numerals in Europe. Gerbert studied in Barcelona in his youth. He was known to have requested mathematical treatises concerning the astrolabe from Lupitus of Barcelona after he had returned to France.
The reception of Arabic numerals in the West was gradual and lukewarm, as other numeral systems circulated in addition to the older Roman numbers. As a discipline, the first to adopt Arabic numerals as part of their own writings were astronomers and astrologists, evidenced from manuscripts surviving from mid-12th-century Bavaria. Reinher of Paderborn (1140–1190) used the numerals in his calendrical tables to calculate the dates of Easter more easily in his text "Compotus emendatus".
Italy.
Fibonacci, a mathematician from the Republic of Pisa who had studied in Béjaïa (Bugia), Algeria, promoted the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Europe with his 1202 book "Liber Abaci:"
When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it.
The "Liber Abaci" introduced the huge advantages of a positional numeric system, and was widely influential. As Fibonacci used the symbols from Béjaïa for the digits, these symbols were also introduced in the same instruction, ultimately leading to their widespread adoption.
Fibonacci's introduction coincided with Europe's commercial revolution of the 12th and 13th centuries, centered in Italy. Positional notation could be used for quicker and more complex mathematical operations (such as currency conversion) than Roman and other numeric systems could. They could also handle larger numbers, did not require a separate reckoning tool, and allowed the user to check a calculation without repeating the entire procedure. Although positional notation opened possibilities that were hampered by previous systems, late medieval Italian merchants did not stop using Roman numerals (or other reckoning tools). Rather, Arabic numerals became an additional tool that could be used alongside others.
Europe.
In the late 14th century only a few texts using Arabic numerals appeared outside of Italy. This suggests that the use of Arabic numerals in commercial practice, and the significant advantage they conferred, remained a virtual Italian monopoly until the late 15th century. This may in part have been due to language – although Fibonacci's "Liber Abaci" was written in Latin, the Italian abacus traditions was predominantly written in Italian vernaculars that circulated in the private collections of abacus schools or individuals. It was likely difficult for non-Italian merchant bankers to access comprehensive information.
The European acceptance of the numerals was accelerated by the invention of the printing press, and they became widely known during the 15th century. Their use grew steadily in other centers of finance and trade such as Lyon. Early evidence of their use in Britain includes: an equal hour horary quadrant from 1396, in England, a 1445 inscription on the tower of Heathfield Church, Sussex; a 1448 inscription on a wooden lych-gate of Bray Church, Berkshire; and a 1487 inscription on the belfry door at Piddletrenthide church, Dorset; and in Scotland a 1470 inscription on the tomb of the first Earl of Huntly in Elgin Cathedral. In central Europe, the King of Hungary Ladislaus the Posthumous, started the use of Arabic numerals, which appear for the first time in a royal document of 1456.
By the mid-16th century, they were in common use in most of Europe. Roman numerals remained in use mostly for the notation of Anno Domini (“A.D.”) years, and for numbers on clock faces. Other digits (such as Eastern Arabic) were virtually unknown.
Russia.
Prior to the introduction of Arabic numerals, Cyrillic numerals, derived from the Cyrillic alphabet, were used by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the early 18th century, although it was formally replaced in official use by Peter the Great in 1699. Reasons for Peter's switch from the alphanumerical system are believed to go beyond his desire to imitate the West. Historian Peter Brown makes arguments for sociological, militaristic, and pedagogical reasons for the change. At a broad, societal level, Russian merchants, soldiers, and officials increasingly came into contact with counterparts from the West and became familiar with the communal use of Arabic numerals. Peter the Great also travelled incognito throughout Northern Europe from 1697 to 1698 during his Grand Embassy and was likely exposed to Western mathematics, if informally, during this time. The Cyrillic numeric system was also inferior in terms of calculating properties of objects in motions, such as the trajectories and parabolic flight patterns of artillery. It was unable to keep pace with Arabic numerals in the growing science of ballistics, whereas Western mathematicians such as John Napier had been publishing on the topic since 1614.
China.
Chinese numeral systems that used positional notation (such as the counting rod system and Suzhou numerals) were in use in China prior to the introduction of Arabic numerals, and some were introduced to medieval China by the Muslim Hui people. In the early 17th century, European-style Arabic numerals were introduced by Spanish and Portuguese Jesuits.
Encoding.
The ten Arabic numerals are encoded in virtually every character set designed for electric, radio, and digital communication, such as Morse code.
They are encoded in ASCII at positions 0x30 to 0x39. Masking to the lower four binary bits (or taking the last hexadecimal digit) gives the value of the digit, a great help in converting text to numbers on early computers. These positions were inherited in Unicode. EBCDIC used different values, but also had the lower 4 bits equal to the digit value.
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1788 | ABM | ABM or Abm may refer to:
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1789 | Apuleius | Apuleius (; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – after 170) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He was born in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day M'Daourouch, Algeria. He studied Platonism in Athens, travelled to Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the attentions (and fortune) of a wealthy widow. He declaimed and then distributed his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near Oea (modern Tripoli, Libya). This is known as the "Apologia".
His most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel the "Metamorphoses", otherwise known as "The Golden Ass". It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It relates the adventures of its protagonist, Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into a donkey. Lucius goes through various adventures before he is turned back into a human being by the goddess Isis.
Life.
Apuleius was born in Madauros, a "colonia" in Numidia on the North African coast bordering Gaetulia, and he described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian." Madaurus was the same "colonia" where Augustine of Hippo later received part of his early education, and, though located well away from the Romanized coast, is today the site of some pristine Roman ruins. As to his first name, no "praenomen" is given in any ancient source; late-medieval manuscripts began the tradition of calling him "Lucius" from the name of the hero of his novel. Details regarding his life come mostly from his defense speech ("Apology") and his work "Florida", which consists of snippets taken from some of his best speeches.
His father was a municipal magistrate ("duumvir") who bequeathed at his death the sum of nearly two million sesterces to his two sons. Apuleius studied with a master at Carthage (where he later settled) and later at Athens, where he studied Platonist philosophy among other subjects. He subsequently went to Rome to study Latin rhetoric and, most likely, to speak in the law courts for a time before returning to his native North Africa. He also travelled extensively in Asia Minor and Egypt, studying philosophy and religion, burning up his inheritance while doing so.
Apuleius was an initiate in several Greco-Roman mysteries, including the Dionysian Mysteries. He was a priest of Asclepius and, according to Augustine, "sacerdos provinciae Africae" (i.e., priest of the province of Carthage).
Not long after his return home he set out upon a new journey to Alexandria. On his way there he was taken ill at the town of Oea (modern-day Tripoli) and was hospitably received into the house of Sicinius Pontianus, with whom he had been friends when he had studied in Athens. The mother of Pontianus, Pudentilla, was a very rich widow. With her son's consent – indeed encouragement – Apuleius agreed to marry her. Meanwhile, Pontianus himself married the daughter of one Herennius Rufinus; he, indignant that Pudentilla's wealth should pass out of the family, instigated his son-in-law, together with a younger brother, Sicinius Pudens, a mere boy, and their paternal uncle, Sicinius Aemilianus, to join him in impeaching Apuleius upon the charge that he had gained the affections of Pudentilla by charms and magic spells. The case was heard at Sabratha, near Tripoli, c. 158 AD, before Claudius Maximus, proconsul of Africa. The accusation itself seems to have been ridiculous, and the spirited and triumphant defence spoken by Apuleius is still extant. This is known as the "Apologia (A Discourse on Magic)".
Apuleius accused an extravagant personal enemy of turning his house into a brothel and prostituting his own wife.
Of his subsequent career, we know little. Judging from the many works of which he was author, he must have devoted himself diligently to literature. He occasionally gave speeches in public to great reception; he had the charge of exhibiting gladiatorial shows and wild beast events in the province, and statues were erected in his honour by the senate of Carthage and of other senates.
The date, place and circumstances of Apuleius' death are not known. There is no record of his activities after 170, a fact which has led some people to believe that he must have died about then (say in 171), although other scholars feel that he may still have been alive in 180 or even 190.
Works.
"The Golden Ass".
"The Golden Ass" ("Asinus Aureus") or "Metamorphoses" is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It is an imaginative, irreverent, and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who introduces himself as related to the famous philosophers Plutarch and Sextus of Chaeronea. Lucius experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into an ass. In this guise, he hears and sees many unusual things, until escaping from his predicament in a rather unexpected way. Within this frame story are found many digressions, the longest among them being the well-known tale of Cupid and Psyche. This story is a rare instance of a fairy tale preserved in an ancient literary text.
The "Metamorphoses" ends with the (once again human) hero, Lucius, eager to be initiated into the mystery cult of Isis; he abstains from forbidden foods, bathes, and purifies himself. He is introduced to the "Navigium Isidis". Then the secrets of the cult's books are explained to him, and further secrets are revealed before he goes through the process of initiation, which involves a trial by the elements on a journey to the underworld. Lucius is then asked to seek initiation into the cult of Osiris in Rome, and eventually is initiated into the "pastophoroi" – a group of priests that serves Isis and Osiris.
The Apologia.
Apologia ("Apulei Platonici pro Se de Magia") is the version of the defence presented in Sabratha, in 158–159, before the proconsul Claudius Maximus, by Apuleius accused of the crime of magic. Between the traditional exordium and peroratio, the argumentation is divided into three sections:
The main interest of the Apology is historical, as it offers substantial information about its author, magic and life in Africa in the second century.
Other works.
His other works are:
Apuleius wrote many other works which have not survived. He wrote works of poetry and fiction, as well as technical treatises on politics, dendrology, agriculture, medicine, natural history, astronomy, music, and arithmetic, and he translated Plato's "Phaedo".
Spurious works.
The extant works wrongly attributed to Apuleius are:
Apuleian Sphere.
The Apuleian Sphere described in "Petosiris to Nechepso", also known as "Columcille's Circle" or "Petosiris' Circle", is a magical prognosticating device for predicting the survival of a patient.
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1790 | Alexander Selkirk | Alexander Selkirk (167613 December 1721) was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean. He survived that ordeal but died from tropical illness years later while serving as a Lieutenant aboard off West Africa.
Selkirk was an unruly youth and joined buccaneering voyages to the South Pacific during the War of the Spanish Succession. One such expedition was on "Cinque Ports", captained by Thomas Stradling under the overall command of William Dampier. Stradling's ship stopped to resupply at the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands, west of South America, and Selkirk judged correctly that the craft was unseaworthy and asked to be left there. Selkirk's suspicions were soon justified, as "Cinque Ports" foundered near Malpelo Island 400 km (250 mi) from the coast of what is now Colombia.
By the time he was eventually rescued by English privateer Woodes Rogers, who was accompanied by Dampier, Selkirk had become adept at hunting and making use of the resources that he found on the island. His story of survival was widely publicized after his return, becoming one of the sources of inspiration for the writer Daniel Defoe's fictional character Robinson Crusoe.
Early life and privateering.
Alexander Selkirk was the son of a shoemaker and tanner in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland, born in 1676. In his youth he displayed a quarrelsome and unruly disposition. He was summoned before the Kirk Session in August 1693 for his "indecent conduct in church", but he "did not appear, being gone to sea". He was back at Largo in 1701 when he again came to the attention of church authorities for assaulting his brothers.
Early on, he was engaged in buccaneering. In 1703, he joined an expedition of English privateer and explorer William Dampier to the South Pacific Ocean, setting sail from Kinsale in Ireland on 11 September. They carried letters of marque from the Lord High Admiral authorizing their armed merchant ships to attack foreign enemies as the War of the Spanish Succession was then going on between England and Spain. Dampier was captain of "St George" and Selkirk served on "Cinque Ports", "St George"s companionship, as sailing master under Captain Thomas Stradling. By this time, Selkirk must have had considerable experience at sea.
In February 1704, following a stormy passage around Cape Horn, the privateers fought a long battle with a well-armed French vessel, "St Joseph", only to have it escape to warn its Spanish allies of their arrival in the Pacific. A raid on the Panamanian gold mining town of Santa María failed when their landing party was ambushed. The easy capture of "Asunción", a heavily laden merchantman, revived the men's hopes of plunder, and Selkirk was put in charge of the prize ship. Dampier took off some much-needed provisions of wine, brandy, sugar, and flour, then abruptly set the ship free, arguing that the gain was not worth the effort. In May 1704, Stradling decided to abandon Dampier and strike out on his own.
Castaway.
In September 1704, after parting ways with Dampier, Captain Stradling brought "Cinque Ports" to an island known to the Spanish as Más a Tierra located in the uninhabited Juan Fernández archipelago off the coast of Chile for a mid-expedition restocking of fresh water and supplies.
Selkirk had grave concerns about the seaworthiness of their vessel and wanted to make the necessary repairs before going any further. He declared that he would rather stay on Juan Fernández than continue in a dangerously leaky ship. Stradling took him up on the offer and landed Selkirk on the island with a musket, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, a Bible, bedding and some clothes. Selkirk immediately regretted his rashness, but Stradling refused to let him back on board.
"Cinque Ports" did indeed later founder off the coast of what is now Colombia. Stradling and some of his crew survived the loss of their ship but were forced to surrender to the Spanish. The survivors were taken to Lima, Peru, where they endured a harsh imprisonment.
Life on the island.
At first, Selkirk remained along the shoreline of Más a Tierra. During this time he ate spiny lobsters and scanned the ocean daily for rescue, suffering all the while from loneliness, misery, and remorse. Hordes of raucous sea lions, gathered on the beach for the mating season, eventually drove him to the island's interior. Once inland, his way of life took a turn for the better. More foods were available there: feral goats—introduced by earlier sailors—provided him with meat and milk, while wild turnips, the leaves of the indigenous cabbage tree and dried "Schinus" fruits (pink peppercorns) offered him variety and spice. Rats would attack him at night, but he was able to sleep soundly and in safety by domesticating and living near feral cats.
Selkirk proved resourceful in using materials that he found on the island: he forged a new knife out of barrel hoops left on the beach, he built two huts out of pepper trees, one of which he used for cooking and the other for sleeping, and he employed his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses. As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot. During one such chase, he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying helpless and unable to move for about a day. His prey had cushioned his fall, probably sparing him a broken back.
Childhood lessons learned from his father, a tanner, now served him well. For example, when his clothes wore out, he made new ones from hair-covered goatskins using a nail for sewing. As his shoes became unusable, he did not need to replace them, since his toughened, calloused feet made protection unnecessary. He sang psalms and read from the Bible, finding it a comfort in his situation and a prop for his English.
During his sojourn on the island, two vessels came to anchor. Unfortunately for Selkirk, both were Spanish. As a Scotsman and a privateer, he would have faced a grim fate if captured and therefore did his best to hide. Once, he was spotted and chased by a group of Spanish sailors from one of the ships. His pursuers urinated beneath the tree in which he was hiding but failed to notice him. The would-be captors then gave up and sailed away.
Rescue.
Selkirk's long-awaited deliverance came on 2 February 1709 by way of "Duke", a privateering ship piloted by William Dampier, and its sailing companion "Duchess". Thomas Dover led the landing party that met Selkirk. After four years and four months without human company, Selkirk was almost incoherent with joy. The "Duke" captain and leader of the expedition was Woodes Rogers, who wryly referred to Selkirk as the governor of the island. The agile castaway caught two or three goats a day and helped restore the health of Rogers' men, who had developed scurvy.
Captain Rogers was impressed by Selkirk's physical vigor, but also by the peace of mind that he had attained while living on the island, observing: "One may see that solitude and retirement from the world is not such an insufferable state of life as most men imagine, especially when people are fairly called or thrown into it unavoidably, as this man was." He made Selkirk "Duke"s second mate, later giving him command of one of their prize ships, "Increase", before it was ransomed by the Spanish.
Selkirk returned to privateering with a vengeance. At Guayaquil in present-day Ecuador, he led a boat crew up the Guayas River where several wealthy Spanish ladies had fled and looted the gold and jewels they had hidden inside their clothing. His part in the hunt for treasure galleons along the coast of Mexico resulted in the capture of "Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación y Desengaño", renamed "Bachelor", on which he served as sailing master under Captain Dover to the Dutch East Indies. Selkirk completed the around-the-world voyage by the Cape of Good Hope as the sailing master of "Duke", arriving at the Downs off the English coast on 1 October 1711. He had been away for eight years.
Later life and influence.
Selkirk's experience as a castaway aroused a great deal of attention in England. Fellow crewman Edward Cooke mentioned Selkirk's ordeal in a book chronicling their privateering expedition, "A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World" (1712). A more detailed recounting was published by the expedition's leader, Rogers, within months. The following year, prominent essayist Richard Steele wrote an article about him for "The Englishman" newspaper. Selkirk appeared set to enjoy a life of ease and celebrity, claiming his share of "Duke" plundered wealth—about £800 (equivalent to £ today). However, legal disputes made the amount of any payment uncertain.
After a few months in London, he began to seem more like his former self again. But he still missed his secluded and solitary moments, "I am now worth eight hundred pounds, but shall never be as "happy" as when I was not worth a farthing." In September 1713, he was charged with assaulting a shipwright in Bristol and may have been kept in confinement for two years. He returned to Lower Largo, where he met Sophia Bruce, a young dairymaid. They eloped to London early and married on 4 March 1717. He was soon off to sea again, having enlisted in the Royal Navy. While on a visit to Plymouth in 1720, he married a widowed innkeeper named Frances Candis. He was serving as an officer on board , engaged in an anti-piracy patrol off the west coast of Africa. The ship lingered near the mouth of the River Gambia to resupply. However, the natives took several of their number hostages and ransomed them off for food. As the ship sailed down the coast of West Africa, men began to contract yellow fever from the swarms of mosquitoes that followed them. Selkirk became sick with the disease in early December. He died on 13 December 1721, along with shipmate William King. Both were buried at sea.
When Daniel Defoe published "The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719), few readers could have missed the resemblance to Selkirk. An illustration on the first page of the novel shows "a rather melancholy-looking man standing on the shore of an island, gazing inland", in the words of modern explorer Tim Severin. He is dressed in the familiar hirsute goatskins, his feet and shins bare. Yet Crusoe's island is located not in the mid-latitudes of the South Pacific but away in the Caribbean, where the furry attire would hardly be comfortable in the tropical heat. This incongruity supports the popular belief that Selkirk was a model for the fictional character, though most literary scholars now accept that he was "just one of many survival narratives that Defoe knew about".
In film.
"Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe" is a stop motion film by Walter Tournier based on Selkirk's life. It premièred simultaneously in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on 2 February 2012, distributed by The Walt Disney Company. It was the first full-length animated feature to be produced in Uruguay.
Commemoration.
Selkirk has been memorialized in his Scottish birthplace. Lord Aberdeen delivered a speech on 11 December 1885, after which his wife, Lady Aberdeen, unveiled a bronze statue and plaque in memory of Selkirk outside a house on the site of his original home on the Main Street of Lower Largo. David Gillies of Cardy House, Lower Largo, a descendant of the Selkirks, donated the statue created by Thomas Stuart Burnett.
The Scotsman is also remembered in his former island home. In 1869 the crew of placed a bronze tablet at a spot called Selkirk's Lookout on a mountain of Más a Tierra, Juan Fernández Islands, to mark his stay. On 1 January 1966 Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva renamed Más a Tierra Robinson Crusoe Island after Defoe's fictional character to attract tourists. The largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, known as Más Afuera, became Alejandro Selkirk Island, although Selkirk probably never saw that island since it is located to the west.
Archaeological findings.
An archaeological expedition to the Juan Fernández Islands in February 2005 found part of a nautical instrument that likely belonged to Selkirk. It was "a fragment of copper alloy identified as being from a pair of navigational dividers" dating from the early 18th (or late 17th) century. Selkirk is the only person known to have been on the island at that time who is likely to have had dividers and was even said by Rogers to have had such instruments in his possession. The artifact was discovered while excavating a site not far from Selkirk's Lookout where the famous castaway is believed to have lived.
In 1825, during John Howell's research of Alexander Selkirk's biography, his "flip-can" was in the possession of his great-grand-nephew John Selkirk, and Alexander's musket was "in the possession of Major Lumsden of Lathallan."
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1791 | Anti-ballistic missile | An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles (missile defense). Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional warheads in a ballistic flight trajectory. The term "anti-ballistic missile" is a generic term conveying a system designed to intercept and destroy any type of ballistic threat; however, it is commonly used for systems specifically designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Current counter-ICBM systems.
There are a limited number of systems worldwide that can intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles:
American plans for Central European site.
During 1993, a symposium was held by western European nations to discuss potential future ballistic missile defence programs. In the end, the council recommended deployment of early warning and surveillance systems as well as regionally controlled defence systems.
During spring 2006 reports about negotiations between the United States and Poland as well as the Czech Republic were published.
The plans propose the installation of a latest generation ABM system with a radar site in the Czech Republic and the launch site in Poland. The system was announced to be aimed against ICBMs from Iran and North Korea. This caused harsh comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) security conference during spring 2007 in Munich. Other European ministers commented that any change of strategic weapons should be negotiated on NATO level and not 'unilaterally' [sic, actually bilaterally] between the U.S. and other states (although most strategic arms reduction treaties were between the Soviet Union and U.S., not NATO). The German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, expressed severe concerns about the way in which the U.S. had conveyed its plans to its European partners and criticised the U.S. administration for not having consulted Russia prior to announcing its endeavours to deploy a new missile defence system in Central Europe. According to a July 2007 survey, a majority of Poles were opposed to hosting a component of the system in Poland.
By 28 July 2016 Missile Defense Agency planning and agreements had clarified enough to give more details about the Aegis Ashore sites in Romania (2014) and Poland (2018).
Current tactical systems.
People's Republic of China.
Historical Project 640.
Project 640 had been the PRC's indigenous effort to develop ABM capability. The Academy of Anti-Ballistic Missile & Anti-Satellite was established from 1969 for the purpose of developing Project 640. The project was to involve at least three elements, including the necessary sensors and guidance/command systems, the Fan Ji (FJ) missile interceptor, and the XianFeng missile-intercepting cannon. The FJ-1 had completed two successful flight tests during 1979, while the low-altitude interceptor FJ-2 completed some successful flight tests using scaled prototypes. A high altitude FJ-3 interceptor was also proposed. Despite the development of missiles, the programme was slowed down due to financial and political reasons. It was finally closed down during 1980 under a new leadership of Deng Xiaoping as it was seemingly deemed unnecessary after the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States and the closure of the US Safeguard ABM system.
Operational Chinese system.
In March 2006, China tested an interceptor system comparable to the U.S. Patriot missiles.
China has acquired and is license-producing the S-300PMU-2/S-300PMU-1 series of terminal ABM-capable SAMs. China-produced HQ-9 SAM system may possess terminal ABM capabilities. PRC Navy's operating modern air-defense destroyers known as the Type 052C Destroyer and Type 051C Destroyer are armed with naval HQ-9 missiles.
The HQ-19, similar to the THAAD, was first tested in 2003, and subsequently a few more times, including in November 2015. The HQ-29, a counterpart to the MIM-104F PAC-3, was first tested in 2011.
Surface-to-air missiles that supposedly have some terminal ABM capability (as opposed to midcourse capability):
Development of midcourse ABM in China.
The technology and experience from the successful anti-satellite test using a ground-launched interceptor during January 2007 was immediately applied to current ABM efforts and development.
China carried out a land-based anti-ballistic missile test on 11 January 2010. The test was exoatmospheric and done in midcourse phase and with a kinetic kill vehicle. China is the second country after US that demonstrated intercepting ballistic missile with a kinetic kill vehicle, the interceptor missile was a SC-19. The sources suggest the system is not operationally deployed as of 2010.
On 27 January 2013, China did another anti ballistic missile test. According to the Chinese Defence Ministry, the missile launch is defensive in character and is not aimed against any countries. Experts hailed China's technological breakthrough because it is difficult to intercept ballistic missiles that have reached the highest point and speed in the middle of their course. Only two countries, including the US, have successfully conducted such a test in the past decade.
On 4 February 2021, China successfully conducted mid-course intercept anti-ballistic missile test. Military analysts indicates that the test and dozens done before reflects China's improvement in the area.
Rumored midcourse missiles:
France and Italy.
The Aster is a family of missiles jointly developed by France and Italy. The Aster 30 variants are capable of ballistic missile defense. An export customer, the United Kingdom also operates the Aster 30 Block 0.
On 18 October 2010, France announced a successful tactical ABM test of the Aster 30 missile and on 1 December 2011 a successful interception of a Black Sparrow ballistic target missile. The s in French and Italian service, the Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyers, and the French and Italian FREMM-class frigates are all armed with PAAMS (or variants of it) integrating Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles. France and Italy are developing a new variant, the Aster 30 Block II, which can destroy ballistic missiles up to a maximum range of . It will incorporate a kill vehicle warhead.
India.
India has an active ABM development effort using indigenously developed and integrated radars, and indigenous missiles. In November 2006, India successfully conducted the PADE (Prithvi Air Defence Exercise) in which an anti-ballistic missile, called the Prithvi Air Defence (PAD), an "exo-atmospheric" (outside the atmosphere) interceptor system, intercepted a Prithvi-II ballistic missile. The PAD missile has the secondary stage of the Prithvi missile and can reach altitude of . During the test, the target missile was intercepted at a altitude. India became the fourth nation in the world after United States, Russia, and Israel to acquire such a capability and the third nation to acquire it using in-house research and development. On 6 December 2007, the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile system was tested successfully. This missile is an endo-atmospheric interceptor with an altitude of . First reported in 2009, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is developing a new Prithvi interceptor missile code-named PDV. The PDV is designed to take out the target missile at altitudes above . The first PDV was successfully test fired on 27 April 2014. According to scientist V K Saraswat of the DRDO, the missiles will work in tandem to ensure a hit probability of 99.8 percent. On 15 May 2016, India successfully launched AAD renamed Ashwin from Abdul Kalam Island off the coast of Odisha.
As of 8 January 2020, the BMD programme has been completed and the Indian Air Force and the DRDO are awaiting government's final approval before the system is deployed to protect New Delhi and then Mumbai. After these two cities, it will be deployed in other major cities and regions. India has structured a five-layer missile shield for Delhi as of 9 June 2019:
PAD and PDV are designed for mid-course interception, while AAD is for terminal phase interception.
The current Phase-1 of the Indian ABM system can intercept ballistic missiles of range up to 2,000 km and the Phase-2 will increase it up to 5,000 km.
Israel.
Arrow 2.
The Arrow project was begun after the U.S. and Israel agreed to co-fund it on 6 May 1986.
The Arrow ABM system was designed and constructed in Israel with financial support by the United States by a multibillion-dollar development program called "Minhelet Homa" (Wall Administration) with the participation of companies like Israel Military Industries, Tadiran and Israel Aerospace Industries.
During 1998 the Israeli military conducted a successful test of their Arrow missile. Designed to intercept incoming missiles travelling at up to 2-mile/s (3 km/s), the Arrow is expected to perform much better than the Patriot did in the Gulf War. On 29 July 2004 Israel and the United States carried out a joint experiment in the US, in which the Arrow was launched against a real Scud missile. The experiment was a success, as the Arrow destroyed the Scud with a direct hit. During December 2005 the system was deployed successfully in a test against a replicated Shahab-3 missile. This feat was repeated on 11 February 2007.
Arrow 3.
The Arrow 3 system is capable of exo-atmosphere interception of ballistic missiles, including of ICBMs. It also acts as an anti-satellite weapon.
Lieutenant General Patrick J. O'Reilly, Director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said: "The design of Arrow 3 promises to be an extremely capable system, more advanced than what we have ever attempted in the U.S. with our programs."
On 10 December 2015 Arrow 3 scored its first intercept in a complex test designed to validate how the system can detect, identify, track and then discriminate real from decoy targets delivered into space by an improved Silver Sparrow target missile. According to officials, the milestone test paves the way toward low-rate initial production of the Arrow 3.
David’s sling.
David's Sling (Hebrew: קלע דוד), also sometimes called Magic Wand (Hebrew: שרביט קסמים), is an Israel Defense Forces military system being jointly developed by the Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the American defense contractor Raytheon, designed to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, as well as medium- to long-range rockets and slower-flying cruise missiles, such as those possessed by Hezbollah, fired at ranges from 40 km to 300 km. It is designed with the aim of intercepting the newest generation of tactical ballistic missiles, such as Iskander.
Japan.
Since 1998, when North Korea launched a Taepodong-1 missile over northern Japan, the Japanese have been jointly developing a new surface-to-air interceptor known as the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) with the US. Tests have been successful, and there are 11 locations that are planned for the PAC-3 to be installed. The approximate locations are near major air bases, like Kadena Air Base, and ammunition storage centers of the Japanese military. The exact location are not known to the public. A military spokesman said that tests had been done on two sites, one of them a business park in central Tokyo, and Ichigaya – a site not far from the Imperial Palace.
Along with the PAC-3, Japan has installed a US-developed ship-based anti-ballistic missile system, which was tested successfully on 18 December 2007. Japan has 4 destroyers of this type capable of carrying RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 and equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Japan is currently modifying another 4 destroyers so that they can take part of their defense force against ballistic missiles, bringing the total number to 8 ships.
Soviet Union/Russian Federation.
The Moscow ABM defense system was designed with the aim of being able to intercept the ICBM warheads aimed at Moscow and other important industrial regions, and is based on:
Apart from the main Moscow deployment, Russia has striven actively for intrinsic ABM capabilities of its SAM systems.
United States.
In several tests, the U.S. military have demonstrated the feasibility of destroying long and short range ballistic missiles. Combat effectiveness of newer systems against 1950s tactical ballistic missiles seems very high, as the MIM-104 Patriot (PAC-1 and PAC-2) had a 100% success rate in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The U.S. Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (Aegis BMD) uses RIM-161 Standard Missile 3, which hit a target going faster than ICBM warheads. On 16 November 2020 an SM-3 Block IIA interceptor successfully destroyed an ICBM in mid-course, under Link-16 Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC).
The U.S. Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system began production in 2008. Its stated range as a short to intermediate ballistic missile interceptor means that it is not designed to hit midcourse ICBMs, which can reach terminal phase speeds of mach 8 or greater. The THAAD interceptor has a reported maximum speed of mach 8, and THAAD has repeatedly proven it can intercept descending exoatmospheric missiles in a ballistic trajectory.
The U.S. Army Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system was developed by the Missile Defense Agency. It combines ground-based AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar installations and mobile AN/TPY-2 X-band radars with 44 exoatmospheric interceptors stationed in underground silos around California and Alaska, to protect against low-count ICBM attacks from rogue states. Each Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) rocket carries an Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) kinetic kill interceptor, with 97% probability of intercept when four interceptors are launched at the target.
Since 2004, the United States Army plans to replace Raytheon's Patriot missile (SAM) engagement control station (ECS), along with seven other forms of ABM defense command systems, with Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase by intercepting with a hit-to-kill approach.
Northrop Grumman was selected as the prime contractor in 2010; the Army spent $2.7 billion on the program between 2009 and 2020. IBCS engagement stations will support identification and tracking of targets using sensor fusion from disparate data streams, and selection of appropriate kill vehicles from available launcher systems.
In February 2022 THAAD radar and TFCC (THAAD Fire Control & Communication) demonstrated their interoperability with Patriot PAC-3 MSE missile launchers, engaging targets using both THAAD and Patriot interceptors.
Kestrel eye is a cubesat swarm designed to produce a picture of a designated ground target, and to relay the picture to the ground Warfighter every 10 minutes.
Republic of China.
Procurement of MIM-104 Patriot and indigenous Tien-Kung anti-ballistic missile systems. With the tense situations with China, Taiwan developed the Sky Bow (or Tien-Kung), this surface-to-air missile can intercept and destroy enemy aircraft and ballistic missiles. These system was created in partnership with Raytheon Technologies, using Lockheed Martin ADAR-HP as inspiration to create the Chang Bai S-band radar system. The missiles have a range of 200 km and was designed to take on fast moving vehicles with low radar cross-section. The latest variant of this system is the Sky Bow III (TK-3).
South Korea.
Since North Korea started developing its nuclear weapon program, South Korea has been under imminent danger. South Korea started its BDM program by acquiring 8 batteries of the MIM-104 Patriot (PAC-2) missiles from the United States. The PAC-2 was developed to destroy incoming aircraft and is now unreliable in defending a ballistic missile attack from North Korea, as they have developed further their nuclear program. As of 2018, South Korea decided to improve its defense system by upgrading to the PAC-3, which has a hit-to-kill capability against incoming missiles. The main reason that the South Korean anti-ballistic defense system is not very developed is because they have tried to developed their own, without help from other countries, since the beginning of the 1990's. The South Korean Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has confirmed that it has test launched the L-SAM system on February 2022. This particular missile has been in development since 2019 and is South Korea's next anti-ballistic missile generation. It is expected to have a range of 150 km and be able to intercept targets between 40 km and 100 km of altitude, and it can also be used as an aircraft interceptor. The L-SAM system is expected to be complete and ready to use in 2024.
History.
1940s and 1950s.
The idea of destroying rockets before they can hit their target dates from the first use of modern missiles in warfare, the German V-1 and V-2 program of World War II.
British fighters destroyed some V-1 "buzz bombs" in flight, although concentrated barrages of heavy anti-aircraft artillery had greater success. Under the lend-lease program, 200 US 90 mm AA guns with SCR-584 radars and Western Electric/Bell Labs computers were sent to the UK. These demonstrated a 95% success rate against V-1s that flew into their range.
The V-2, the first true ballistic missile, has no known record of being destroyed in the air. SCR-584's could be used to plot the trajectories of the missiles and provide some warning, but were more useful in backtracking their ballistic trajectory and determining the rough launch locations. The Allies launched Operation Crossbow to find and destroy V-2s before launch, but these operations were largely ineffective. In one instance a Spitfire happened upon a V-2 rising through the trees, and fired on it with no effect. This led to allied efforts to capture launching sites in Belgium and the Netherlands.
A wartime study by Bell Labs into the task of shooting down ballistic missiles in flight concluded it was not possible. In order to intercept a missile, one needs to be able to steer the attack onto the missile before it hits. A V-2's speed would require guns of effectively instantaneous reaction time, or some sort of weapon with ranges on the order of dozens of miles, neither of which appeared possible. This was, however, just before the emergence of high-speed computing systems. By the mid-1950s, things had changed considerably, and many forces worldwide were considering ABM systems.
The American armed forces began experimenting with anti-missile missiles soon after World War II, as the extent of German research into rocketry became clear. Project Wizard began in 1946, with the aim of creating a missile capable of intercepting the V-2.
But defences against Soviet long-range bombers took priority until 1957, when the Soviet Union demonstrated its advances in ICBM technology with the launch of Sputnik, the Earth's first artificial satellite. The US Army accelerated development of their LIM-49 Nike Zeus system in response. Zeus was criticized throughout its development program, especially from those within the US Air Force and nuclear weapons establishments who suggested it would be much simpler to build more nuclear warheads and guarantee mutually assured destruction. Zeus was eventually cancelled in 1963.
In 1958, the U.S. sought to explore whether airbursting nuclear weapons might be used to ward off ICBMs. It conducted several test explosions of low-yield nuclear weapons – 1.7kt boosted fission W25 warheads – launched from ships to very high altitudes over the southern Atlantic Ocean. Such an explosion releases a burst of X-rays in the Earth's atmosphere, causing secondary showers of charged particles over an area hundreds of miles across. These can become trapped in the Earth' magnetic field, creating an artificial radiation belt. It was believed that this might be strong enough to damage warheads traveling through the layer. This proved not to be the case, but Argus returned key data about a related effect, the nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP).
Canada.
Other countries were also involved in early ABM research. A more advanced project was at CARDE in Canada, which researched the main problems of ABM systems. A key problem with any radar system is that the signal is in the form of a cone, which spreads with distance from the transmitter. For long-distance interceptions like ABM systems, the inherent inaccuracy of the radar makes an interception difficult. CARDE considered using a terminal guidance system to address the accuracy concerns, and developed several advanced infrared detectors for this role. They also studied a number of missile airframe designs, a new and much more powerful solid rocket fuel, and numerous systems for testing it all. After a series of drastic budget reductions during the late 1950s the research ended. One offshoot of the project was Gerald Bull's system for inexpensive high-speed testing, consisting of missile airframes shot from a sabot round, which would later be the basis of Project HARP. Another was the CRV7 and Black Brant rockets, which used the new solid rocket fuel.
Soviet Union.
The Soviet military had requested funding for ABM research as early as 1953, but were only given the go-ahead to begin deployment of such a system on 17 August 1956. Their test system, known simply as System A, was based on the V-1000 missile, which was similar to the early US efforts. The first successful test interception was carried out on 24 November 1960, and the first with a live warhead on 4 March 1961. In this test, a dummy warhead was released by a R-12 ballistic missile launched from the Kapustin Yar, and intercepted by a V-1000 launched from Sary-Shagan. The dummy warhead was destroyed by the impact of 16,000 tungsten-carbide spherical impactors 140 seconds after launch, at an altitude of .
The V-1000 missile system was nonetheless considered not reliable enough and abandoned in favour of nuclear-armed ABMs. A much larger missile, the Fakel 5V61 (known in the west as Galosh), was developed to carry the larger warhead and carry it much further from the launch site. Further development continued, and the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system, designed to protect Moscow, became operational in 1971. A-35 was designed for exoatmospheric interceptions, and would have been highly susceptible to a well-arranged attack using multiple warheads and radar black-out techniques.
A-35 was upgraded during the 1980s to a two-layer system, the A-135. The Gorgon (SH-11/ABM-4) long-range missile was designed to handle intercepts outside the atmosphere, and the Gazelle (SH-08/ABM-3) short-range missile endoatmospheric intercepts that eluded Gorgon. The A-135 system is considered to be technologically equivalent to the United States Safeguard system of 1975.
American Nike-X and Sentinel.
Nike Zeus failed to be a credible defence in an era of rapidly increasing ICBM counts due to its ability to attack only one target at a time. Additionally, significant concerns about its ability to successfully intercept warheads in the presence of high-altitude nuclear explosions, including its own, lead to the conclusion that the system would simply be too costly for the very low amount of protection it could provide.
By the time it was cancelled in 1963, potential upgrades had been explored for some time. Among these were radars capable of scanning much greater volumes of space and able to track many warheads and launch several missiles at once. These, however, did not address the problems identified with radar blackouts caused by high-altitude explosions. To address this need, a new missile with extreme performance was designed to attack incoming warheads at much lower altitudes, as low as 20 km. The new project encompassing all of these upgrades was launched as Nike-X.
The main missile was LIM-49 Spartan—a Nike Zeus upgraded for longer range and a much larger 5 megaton warhead intended to destroy enemy's warheads with a burst of x-rays outside the atmosphere. A second shorter-range missile called Sprint with very high acceleration was added to handle warheads that evaded longer-ranged Spartan. Sprint was a very fast missile (some sources claimed it accelerated to 8,000 mph (13 000 km/h) within 4 seconds of flight—an average acceleration of "90 g") and had a smaller W66 enhanced radiation warhead in the 1–3 kiloton range for in-atmosphere interceptions.
The experimental success of Nike X persuaded the Lyndon B. Johnson administration to propose a thin ABM defense, that could provide almost complete coverage of the United States. In a September 1967 speech, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara referred to it as "Sentinel". McNamara, a private ABM opponent because of cost and feasibility (see cost-exchange ratio), claimed that Sentinel would be directed not against the Soviet Union's missiles (since the USSR had more than enough missiles to overwhelm any American defense), but rather against the potential nuclear threat of the People's Republic of China.
In the meantime, a public debate over the merit of ABMs began. Difficulties that had already made an ABM system questionable for defending against an all-out attack. One problem was the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would give little warning to the defense. Another problem was high altitude EMP (whether from offensive or defensive nuclear warheads) which could degrade defensive radar systems.
When this proved infeasible for economic reasons, a much smaller deployment using the same systems was proposed, namely Safeguard (described later).
Defense against MIRVs.
ABM systems were developed initially to counter single warheads launched from large intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The economics seemed simple enough; since rocket costs increase rapidly with size, the price of the ICBM launching a large warhead should always be greater than the much smaller interceptor missile needed to destroy it. In an arms race the defense would always win.
In addition to the blast effect, the detonation of nuclear devices against attacking intercontinental ballistic missiles produces a neutron kill effect from the strong radiation emitted, and this neutralizes the warhead, or warheads, of the attacking missile. Most A.B.M. devices depend on neutron kill for their effectiveness.
In practice, the price of the interceptor missile was considerable, due to its sophistication. The system had to be guided all the way to an interception, which demanded guidance and control systems that worked within and outside the atmosphere. Due to their relatively short ranges, an ABM missile would be needed to counter an ICBM wherever it might be aimed. That implies that dozens of interceptors are needed for every ICBM since warhead's targets couldn't be known in advance. This led to intense debates about the "cost-exchange ratio" between interceptors and warheads.
Conditions changed dramatically in 1970 with the introduction of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads. Suddenly, each launcher was throwing not one warhead, but several. These would spread out in space, ensuring that a single interceptor would be needed for each warhead. This simply added to the need to have several interceptors for each warhead in order to provide geographical coverage. Now it was clear that an ABM system would always be many times more expensive than the ICBMs they defended against.
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
Technical, economic and political problems described resulted in the ABM treaty of 1972, which restricted the deployment of strategic (not tactical) anti-ballistic missiles.
By the ABM treaty and a 1974 revision, each country was allowed to deploy a mere 100 ABMs to protect a single, small area. The Soviets retained their Moscow defences. The U.S. designated their ICBM sites near Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, where Safeguard was already under advanced development. The radar systems and anti-ballistic missiles were approximately 90 miles north/northwest of Grand Forks AFB, near Concrete, North Dakota. The missiles were deactivated in 1975. The main radar site (PARCS) is still used as an early warning ICBM radar, facing relative north. It is located at Cavalier Air Force Station, North Dakota.
Brief use of Safeguard in 1975/1976.
The U.S. Safeguard system, which utilized the nuclear-tipped LIM-49A Spartan and Sprint missiles, in the short operational period of 1975/1976, was the second counter-ICBMs system in the world. Safeguard protected only the main fields of US ICBMs from attack, theoretically ensuring that an attack could be responded to with a US launch, enforcing the mutually assured destruction principle.
SDI experiments in the 1980s.
The Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (often referred to as "Star Wars"), along with research into various energy-beam weaponry, brought new interest in the area of ABM technologies.
SDI was an extremely ambitious program to provide a total shield against a massive Soviet ICBM attack. The initial concept envisioned large sophisticated orbiting laser battle stations, space-based relay mirrors, and nuclear-pumped X-ray laser satellites. Later research indicated that some planned technologies such as X-ray lasers were not feasible with then-current technology. As research continued, SDI evolved through various concepts as designers struggled with the difficulty of such a large complex defense system. SDI remained a research program and was never deployed. Several post-SDI technologies are used by the present Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Lasers originally developed for the SDI plan are in use for astronomical observations. Used to ionize gas in the upper atmosphere, they provide telescope operators with a target to calibrate their instruments.
Tactical ABMs deployed in 1990s.
The Israeli Arrow missile system was tested initially during 1990, before the first Gulf War. The Arrow was supported by the United States throughout the 1990s.
The Patriot was the first deployed tactical ABM system, although it was not designed from the outset for that task and consequently had limitations. It was used during the 1991 Gulf War to attempt to intercept Iraqi Scud missiles. Post-war analyses show that the Patriot was much less effective than initially thought because of its radar and control system's inability to discriminate warheads from other objects when the Scud missiles broke up during reentry.
Testing ABM technology continued during the 1990s with mixed success. After the Gulf War, improvements were made to several U.S. air defense systems. A new Patriot, PAC-3, was developed and tested—a complete redesign of the PAC-2 deployed during the war, including a totally new missile. The improved guidance, radar and missile performance improves the probability of kill over the earlier PAC-2. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Patriot batteries engaged 100% of enemy TBM's within their engagement territory. Of these engagements, 8 of them were verified as kills by multiple independent sensors; the remaining was listed as a probable kill due to lack of independent verification. Patriot was involved in three friendly fire incidents: two incidents of Patriot shootings at coalition aircraft and one of U.S. aircraft shooting at a Patriot battery.
A new version of the Hawk missile was tested during the early to mid-1990s and by the end of 1998 the majority of US Marine Corps Hawk systems were modified to support basic theater anti-ballistic missile capabilities. The MIM-23 Hawk missile is not operational in U.S. service since 2002, but is used by many other countries.
Soon after the Gulf War, the Aegis Combat System was expanded to include ABM capabilities. The Standard missile system was also enhanced and tested for ballistic missile interception. During the late 1990s, SM-2 block IVA missiles were tested in a theater ballistic missile defense function. Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) systems have also been tested for an ABM role. In 2008, an SM-3 missile launched from the , successfully intercepted a non-functioning satellite.
Brilliant Pebbles concept.
Approved for acquisition by the Pentagon during 1991 but never realized, Brilliant Pebbles was a proposed space-based anti-ballistic system that was meant to avoid some of the problems of the earlier SDI concepts. Rather than use sophisticated large laser battle stations and nuclear-pumped X-ray laser satellites, Brilliant Pebbles consisted of a thousand very small, intelligent orbiting satellites with kinetic warheads. The system relied on improvements of computer technology, avoided problems with overly centralized command and control and risky, expensive development of large, complicated space defense satellites.
It promised to be much less expensive to develop and have less technical development risk.
The name Brilliant Pebbles comes from the small size of the satellite interceptors and great computational power enabling more autonomous targeting. Rather than rely exclusively on ground-based control, the many small interceptors would cooperatively communicate among themselves and target a large swarm of ICBM warheads in space or in the late boost phase. Development was discontinued later in favor of a limited ground-based defense.
Transformation of SDI into MDA, development of NMD/GMD.
While the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative was intended to shield against a massive Soviet attack, during the early 1990s, President George H. W. Bush called for a more limited version using rocket-launched interceptors based on the ground at a single site. Such system was developed since 1992, was expected to become operational in 2010 and capable of intercepting small number of incoming ICBMs. First called the National Missile Defense (NMD), since 2002 it was renamed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD). It was planned to protect all 50 states from a rogue missile attack. The Alaska site provides more protection against North Korean missiles or accidental launches from Russia or China, but is likely less effective against missiles launched from the Middle East. The Alaska interceptors may be augmented later by the naval Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System or by ground-based missiles in other locations.
During 1998, Defense Secretary William Cohen proposed spending an additional $6.6 billion on intercontinental ballistic missile defense programs to build a system to protect against attacks from North Korea or accidental launches from Russia or China.
In terms of organization, during 1993 SDI was reorganized as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. In 2002, it was renamed to Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
21st century.
On 13 June 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and recommenced developing missile defense systems that would have formerly been prohibited by the bilateral treaty. The action was stated as needed to defend against the possibility of a missile attack conducted by a rogue state. The next day, the Russian Federation dropped the START II agreement, intended to completely ban MIRVs.
The Lisbon Summit of 2010 saw the adoption of a NATO program that was formed in response to the threat of a rapid increase of ballistic missiles from potentially unfriendly regimes, though no specific region, state, or country was formally mentioned. This adoption came from the recognition of territorial missile defense as a core alliance objective. At this time, Iran was seen as the likely aggressor that eventually led to the adoption of this ABM system, as Iran has the largest missile arsenal of the Middle East, as well as a space program. From this summit, NATO's ABM system was potentially seen as a threat by Russia, who felt that their ability to retaliate any perceived nuclear threats would be degraded. To combat this, Russia proposed that any ABM system enacted by NATO must be universal to operate, cover the entirety of the European continent, and not upset any nuclear parity. The United States actively sought NATO involvement in the creation of an ABM system, and saw an Iranian threat as a sufficient reason to warrant its creation. The United States also had plans to create missile defense facilities, but NATO officials feared that it would have provided protection to Europe, it would have detracted from the responsibility of NATO for collective defense. The officials also argued the potential prospect of U.S-commanded operation system that would work in conjunction with the Article 5 defense of NATO.
On 15 December 2016, the US Army SMDC had a successful test of a U.S. Army Zombie Pathfinder rocket, to be used as a target for exercising various anti-ballistic missile scenarios. The rocket was launched as part of NASA's sounding rocket program, at White Sands Missile Range.
In November 2020, the US successfully destroyed a dummy ICBM. The ICBM was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the general direction of Hawaii, triggering a satellite warning to a Colorado Air Force base, which then contacted the . The ship launched a SM-3 Block IIA missile to destroy the US dummy, still outside the atmosphere.
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1797 | Acre | The acre ( ) is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet, and approximately 4,047 m2, or about 40% of a hectare. Based upon the international yard and pound agreement of 1959, an acre may be declared as exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. The acre is sometimes abbreviated ac but is usually spelled out as the word "acre".
Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed by one man using a team of 8 oxen in one day.
The acre is still a statutory measure in the United States. Both the international acre and the US survey acre are in use, but they differ by only four parts per million (see below). The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.
The acre is commonly used in a number of current and former British Commonwealth countries by custom only. In a few, it continues as a statute measure, although since 2010 not in the UK itself, and not since decades ago in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In many of those where it is not a statute measure, it is still lawful to "use for trade" if given as supplementary information and is not used for land registration.
Description.
One acre equals (0.0015625) square mile, 4,840 square yards, 43,560 square feet, or about (see below). While all modern variants of the acre contain 4,840 square yards, there are alternative definitions of a yard, so the exact size of an acre depends upon the particular yard on which it is based. Originally, an acre was understood as a selion of land sized at forty perches (660 ft, or 1 furlong) long and four perches (66 ft) wide; this may have also been understood as an approximation of the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plough in one day (a furlong being "a furrow long"). A square enclosing one acre is approximately 69.57 yards, or 208 feet 9 inches (), on a side. As a unit of measure, an acre has no prescribed shape; any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre.
US survey acres.
In the international yard and pound agreement of 1959, the United States and five countries of the Commonwealth of Nations defined the international yard to be exactly 0.9144 metre. The US authorities decided that, while the refined definition would apply nationally in all other respects, the US survey foot (and thus the survey acre) would continue 'until such a time as it becomes desirable and expedient to readjust [it]'. By inference, an "international acre" may be calculated as exactly square metres but it does not have a basis in any international agreement.
Both the international acre and the US survey acre contain of a square mile or 4,840 square yards, but alternative definitions of a yard are used (see survey foot and survey yard), so the exact size of an acre depends upon the yard upon which it is based. The US survey acre is about 4,046.872 square metres; its exact value ( m2) is based on an inch defined by 1 metre = 39.37 inches exactly, as established by the Mendenhall Order of 1893. Surveyors in the United States use both international and survey feet, and consequently, both varieties of acre.
Since the difference between the US survey acre and international acre (0.016 square metres, 160 square centimetres or 24.8 square inches), is only about a quarter of the size of an A4 sheet or US letter, it is usually not important which one is being discussed. Areas are seldom measured with sufficient accuracy for the different definitions to be detectable.
In October 2019, US National Geodetic Survey and National Institute of Standards and Technology announced their joint intent to end the "temporary" continuance of the US survey foot, mile and acre units (as permitted by their 1959 decision, above), with effect from the end of 2022.
Spanish acre.
The Puerto Rican "cuerda" () is sometimes called the "Spanish acre" in the continental United States.
Use.
The acre is commonly used in a number of current and former Commonwealth countries by custom, and in a few it continues as a statute measure. These include Antigua and Barbuda, American Samoa, The Bahamas, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Grenada, Ghana, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Jamaica, Montserrat, Samoa, Saint Lucia, St. Helena, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos, the United Kingdom, the United States and the US Virgin Islands.
Republic of Ireland.
In the Republic of Ireland, the hectare is legally used under European units of measurement directives; however, the acre is still widely used, especially in agriculture. (This is the standard statute acre, the same as used in the UK, not the old Irish acre which was of a different size.)
Indian subcontinent.
In the Republic of India, residential plots are measured in square feet, while agricultural land is measured in acres. In Sri Lanka, the division of an acre into 160 perches or 4 roods is common.
In Pakistan, residential plots is measured in (20 = 1 = 500 sq yards) and open/agriculture land measurement is in acres (8 = 1 acre or 4 = 1 acre) and (25 acres = 1 = 200 ), and .
United Kingdom.
Its use as a primary unit for trade in the United Kingdom ceased to be permitted from 1 October 1995, due to the 1994 amendment of the Weights and Measures Act, where it was replaced by the hectare though its use as a supplementary unit continues to be permitted indefinitely. This was with exemption of Land registration, which records the sale and possession of land, in 2010 HM Land Registry ended its exemption. The measure is still used to communicate with the public, and informally (non-contract) by the farming and property industries.
Equivalence to other units of area.
1 international acre is equal to the following metric units:
1 United States survey acre is equal to:
1 acre (both variants) is equal to the following customary units:
Perhaps the easiest way for US residents to envision an acre is as a rectangle measuring 88 yards by 55 yards ( of 880 yards by of 880 yards), about the size of a standard American football field. To be more exact, one acre is 90.75% of a 100-yd-long by 53.33-yd-wide American football field (without the end zone). The full field, including the end zones, covers about .
For residents of other countries, the acre might be envisioned as rather more than half of a football pitch.
It may also be remembered as 1% short of 44,000 square feet.
Historical origin.
The word "acre" is derived from Old English originally meaning "open field", cognate with west coast Norwegian , Icelandic , Swedish , German , Dutch , Latin , Sanskrit , and Greek (). In English, an obsolete variant spelling was "aker".
According to the Act on the Composition of Yards and Perches, dating from around 1300, an acre is "40 perches [rods] in length and four in breadth", meaning 220 yards by 22 yards. As detailed in the box on the right, an acre was roughly the amount of land tillable by a yoke of oxen in one day.
Before the enactment of the metric system, many countries in Europe used their own official acres. In France, the traditional unit of area was the "arpent carre", a measure based on the Roman system of land measurement.
The was used only in Normandy (and neighbouring places outside its traditional borders), but its value varied greatly across Normandy, ranging from 3,632 to 9,725 square metres, with 8,172 square metres being the most frequent value. But inside the same of Normandy, for instance in pays de Caux, the farmers (still in the 20th century) made the difference between the (68 ares, 66 centiares) and the (56 to 65 ca). The Normandy was usually divided in 4 (roods) and 160 square , like the English acre.
The Normandy was equal to 1.6 , the unit of area more commonly used in Northern France outside of Normandy. In Canada, the Paris used in Quebec before the metric system was adopted is sometimes called "French acre" in English, even though the Paris and the Normandy were two very different units of area in ancient France (the Paris became the unit of area of French Canada, whereas the Normandy was never used in French Canada).
In Germany, the Netherlands and eastern Europe the traditional unit of area was . Like the acre, the "morgen" was a unit of ploughland, representing a strip that could be ploughed by one man and an ox or horse in a morning. There were many variants of the "morgen", differing between the different German territories, ranging from . It was also used in Old Prussia, in the Balkans, Norway and Denmark, where it was equal to about .
Statutory values for the acre were enacted in England, and subsequently the United Kingdom, by acts of:
Historically, the size of farms and landed estates in the United Kingdom was usually expressed in acres (or acres, roods, and perches), even if the number of acres was so large that it might conveniently have been expressed in square miles. For example, a certain landowner might have been said to own 32,000 acres of land, not 50 square miles of land.
The acre is related to the square mile, with 640 acres making up one square mile. One mile is 5280 feet (1760 yards). In western Canada and the western United States, divisions of land area were typically based on the square mile, and fractions thereof. If the square mile is divided into quarters, each quarter has a side length of mile (880 yards) and is square mile in area, or 160 acres. These subunits would typically then again be divided into quarters, with each side being mile long, and being of a square mile in area, or 40 acres. In the United States, farmland was typically divided as such, and the phrase "the back 40" would refer to the 40-acre parcel to the back of the farm. Most of the Canadian Prairie Provinces and the US Midwest are on square-mile grids for surveying purposes.
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1799 | ATP | ATP may refer to:
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1800 | Adenosine triphosphate | Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is an organic compound that provides energy to drive and support many processes in living cells, such as muscle contraction, nerve impulse propagation, condensate dissolution, and chemical synthesis. Found in all known forms of life, ATP is often referred to as the "molecular unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer. When consumed in metabolic processes, it converts either to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) or to adenosine monophosphate (AMP). Other processes regenerate ATP. The human body recycles its own body weight equivalent in ATP each day. It is also a precursor to DNA and RNA, and is used as a coenzyme.
From the perspective of biochemistry, ATP is classified as a nucleoside triphosphate, which indicates that it consists of three components: a nitrogenous base (adenine), the sugar ribose, and the triphosphate.
Structure.
ATP consists of an adenine attached by the 9-nitrogen atom to the 1′ carbon atom of a sugar (ribose), which in turn is attached at the 5' carbon atom of the sugar to a triphosphate group. In its many reactions related to metabolism, the adenine and sugar groups remain unchanged, but the triphosphate is converted to di- and monophosphate, giving respectively the derivatives ADP and AMP. The three phosphoryl groups are labeled as alpha (α), beta (β), and, for the terminal phosphate, gamma (γ).
In neutral solution, ionized ATP exists mostly as ATP4−, with a small proportion of ATP3−.
Binding of metal cations to ATP.
Being polyanionic and featuring a potentially chelating polyphosphate group, ATP binds metal cations with high affinity. The binding constant for is (). The binding of a divalent cation, almost always magnesium, strongly affects the interaction of ATP with various proteins. Due to the strength of the ATP-Mg2+ interaction, ATP exists in the cell mostly as a complex with bonded to the phosphate oxygen centers.
A second magnesium ion is critical for ATP binding in the kinase domain. The presence of Mg2+ regulates kinase activity.
Chemical properties.
Salts of ATP can be isolated as colorless solids.
ATP is stable in aqueous solutions between pH 6.8 and 7.4, in the absence of catalysts. At more extreme pHs, it rapidly hydrolyses to ADP and phosphate. Living cells maintain the ratio of ATP to ADP at a point ten orders of magnitude from equilibrium, with ATP concentrations fivefold higher than the concentration of ADP. In the context of biochemical reactions, the P-O-P bonds are frequently referred to as "high-energy bonds".
Reactive aspects.
The hydrolysis of ATP into ADP and inorganic phosphate releases 20.5 kJ/mol of enthalpy. The values of the free energy released by cleaving either a phosphate (Pi) or a pyrophosphate (PPi) unit from ATP at standard state concentrations of 1 mol/L at pH 7 are:
These abbreviated equations at a pH near 7 can be written more explicitly (R = adenosyl):
At cytoplasmic conditions, where the ADP/ATP ratio is 10 orders of magnitude from equilibrium, the Δ"G" is around −57 kJ/mol.
Production from AMP and ADP.
Production, aerobic conditions.
A typical intracellular concentration of ATP is hard to pin down, however, reports have shown there to be 1–10 μmol per gram of tissue in a variety of eukaryotes. The dephosphorylation of ATP and rephosphorylation of ADP and AMP occur repeatedly in the course of aerobic metabolism.
ATP can be produced by a number of distinct cellular processes; the three main pathways in eukaryotes are (1) glycolysis, (2) the citric acid cycle/oxidative phosphorylation, and (3) beta-oxidation. The overall process of oxidizing glucose to carbon dioxide, the combination of pathways 1 and 2, known as cellular respiration, produces about 30 equivalents of ATP from each molecule of glucose.
ATP production by a non-photosynthetic aerobic eukaryote occurs mainly in the mitochondria, which comprise nearly 25% of the volume of a typical cell.
Glycolysis.
In glycolysis, glucose and glycerol are metabolized to pyruvate. Glycolysis generates two equivalents of ATP through substrate phosphorylation catalyzed by two enzymes, phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) and pyruvate kinase. Two equivalents of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) are also produced, which can be oxidized via the electron transport chain and result in the generation of additional ATP by ATP synthase. The pyruvate generated as an end-product of glycolysis is a substrate for the Krebs Cycle.
Glycolysis is viewed as consisting of two phases with five steps each. In phase 1, "the preparatory phase", glucose is converted to 2 d-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (g3p). One ATP is invested in Step 1, and another ATP is invested in Step 3. Steps 1 and 3 of glycolysis are referred to as "Priming Steps". In Phase 2, two equivalents of g3p are converted to two pyruvates. In Step 7, two ATP are produced. Also, in Step 10, two further equivalents of ATP are produced. In Steps 7 and 10, ATP is generated from ADP. A net of two ATPs is formed in the glycolysis cycle. The glycolysis pathway is later associated with the Citric Acid Cycle which produces additional equivalents of ATP.
Regulation.
In glycolysis, hexokinase is directly inhibited by its product, glucose-6-phosphate, and pyruvate kinase is inhibited by ATP itself. The main control point for the glycolytic pathway is phosphofructokinase (PFK), which is allosterically inhibited by high concentrations of ATP and activated by high concentrations of AMP. The inhibition of PFK by ATP is unusual since ATP is also a substrate in the reaction catalyzed by PFK; the active form of the enzyme is a tetramer that exists in two conformations, only one of which binds the second substrate fructose-6-phosphate (F6P). The protein has two binding sites for ATP – the active site is accessible in either protein conformation, but ATP binding to the inhibitor site stabilizes the conformation that binds F6P poorly. A number of other small molecules can compensate for the ATP-induced shift in equilibrium conformation and reactivate PFK, including cyclic AMP, ammonium ions, inorganic phosphate, and fructose-1,6- and -2,6-biphosphate.
Citric acid cycle.
In the mitochondrion, pyruvate is oxidized by the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex to the acetyl group, which is fully oxidized to carbon dioxide by the citric acid cycle (also known as the Krebs cycle). Every "turn" of the citric acid cycle produces two molecules of carbon dioxide, one equivalent of ATP guanosine triphosphate (GTP) through substrate-level phosphorylation catalyzed by succinyl-CoA synthetase, as succinyl-CoA is converted to succinate, three equivalents of NADH, and one equivalent of FADH2. NADH and FADH2 are recycled (to NAD+ and FAD, respectively) by oxidative phosphorylation, generating additional ATP. The oxidation of NADH results in the synthesis of 2–3 equivalents of ATP, and the oxidation of one FADH2 yields between 1–2 equivalents of ATP. The majority of cellular ATP is generated by this process. Although the citric acid cycle itself does not involve molecular oxygen, it is an obligately aerobic process because O2 is used to recycle the NADH and FADH2. In the absence of oxygen, the citric acid cycle ceases.
The generation of ATP by the mitochondrion from cytosolic NADH relies on the malate-aspartate shuttle (and to a lesser extent, the glycerol-phosphate shuttle) because the inner mitochondrial membrane is impermeable to NADH and NAD+. Instead of transferring the generated NADH, a malate dehydrogenase enzyme converts oxaloacetate to malate, which is translocated to the mitochondrial matrix. Another malate dehydrogenase-catalyzed reaction occurs in the opposite direction, producing oxaloacetate and NADH from the newly transported malate and the mitochondrion's interior store of NAD+. A transaminase converts the oxaloacetate to aspartate for transport back across the membrane and into the intermembrane space.
In oxidative phosphorylation, the passage of electrons from NADH and FADH2 through the electron transport chain releases the energy to pump protons out of the mitochondrial matrix and into the intermembrane space. This pumping generates a proton motive force that is the net effect of a pH gradient and an electric potential gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane. Flow of protons down this potential gradient – that is, from the intermembrane space to the matrix – yields ATP by ATP synthase. Three ATP are produced per turn.
Although oxygen consumption appears fundamental for the maintenance of the proton motive force, in the event of oxygen shortage (hypoxia), intracellular acidosis (mediated by enhanced glycolytic rates and ATP hydrolysis), contributes to mitochondrial membrane potential and directly drives ATP synthesis.
Most of the ATP synthesized in the mitochondria will be used for cellular processes in the cytosol; thus it must be exported from its site of synthesis in the mitochondrial matrix. ATP outward movement is favored by the membrane's electrochemical potential because the cytosol has a relatively positive charge compared to the relatively negative matrix. For every ATP transported out, it costs 1 H+. Producing one ATP costs about 3 H+. Therefore, making and exporting one ATP requires 4H+. The inner membrane contains an antiporter, the ADP/ATP translocase, which is an integral membrane protein used to exchange newly synthesized ATP in the matrix for ADP in the intermembrane space. This translocase is driven by the membrane potential, as it results in the movement of about 4 negative charges out across the mitochondrial membrane in exchange for 3 negative charges moved inside. However, it is also necessary to transport phosphate into the mitochondrion; the phosphate carrier moves a proton in with each phosphate, partially dissipating the proton gradient. After completing glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, the electron transport chain, and oxidative phosphorylation, approximately 30–38 ATP molecules are produced per glucose.
Regulation.
The citric acid cycle is regulated mainly by the availability of key substrates, particularly the ratio of NAD+ to NADH and the concentrations of calcium, inorganic phosphate, ATP, ADP, and AMP. Citrate – the ion that gives its name to the cycle – is a feedback inhibitor of citrate synthase and also inhibits PFK, providing a direct link between the regulation of the citric acid cycle and glycolysis.
Beta oxidation.
In the presence of air and various cofactors and enzymes, fatty acids are converted to acetyl-CoA. The pathway is called beta-oxidation. Each cycle of beta-oxidation shortens the fatty acid chain by two carbon atoms and produces one equivalent each of acetyl-CoA, NADH, and FADH2. The acetyl-CoA is metabolized by the citric acid cycle to generate ATP, while the NADH and FADH2 are used by oxidative phosphorylation to generate ATP. Dozens of ATP equivalents are generated by the beta-oxidation of a single long acyl chain.
Regulation.
In oxidative phosphorylation, the key control point is the reaction catalyzed by cytochrome c oxidase, which is regulated by the availability of its substrate – the reduced form of cytochrome c. The amount of reduced cytochrome c available is directly related to the amounts of other substrates:
which directly implies this equation:
Thus, a high ratio of [NADH] to [NAD+] or a high ratio of [ADP] [Pi] to [ATP] imply a high amount of reduced cytochrome c and a high level of cytochrome c oxidase activity. An additional level of regulation is introduced by the transport rates of ATP and NADH between the mitochondrial matrix and the cytoplasm.
Ketosis.
Ketone bodies can be used as fuels, yielding 22 ATP and 2 GTP molecules per acetoacetate molecule when oxidized in the mitochondria. Ketone bodies are transported from the liver to other tissues, where acetoacetate and "beta"-hydroxybutyrate can be reconverted to acetyl-CoA to produce reducing equivalents (NADH and FADH2), via the citric acid cycle. Ketone bodies cannot be used as fuel by the liver, because the liver lacks the enzyme β-ketoacyl-CoA transferase, also called thiolase. Acetoacetate in low concentrations is taken up by the liver and undergoes detoxification through the methylglyoxal pathway which ends with lactate. Acetoacetate in high concentrations is absorbed by cells other than those in the liver and enters a different pathway via 1,2-propanediol. Though the pathway follows a different series of steps requiring ATP, 1,2-propanediol can be turned into pyruvate.
Production, anaerobic conditions.
Fermentation is the metabolism of organic compounds in the absence of air. It involves substrate-level phosphorylation in the absence of a respiratory electron transport chain. The equation for the reaction of glucose to form lactic acid is:
Anaerobic respiration is respiration in the absence of . Prokaryotes can utilize a variety of electron acceptors. These include nitrate, sulfate, and carbon dioxide.
ATP replenishment by nucleoside diphosphate kinases.
ATP can also be synthesized through several so-called "replenishment" reactions catalyzed by the enzyme families of nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDKs), which use other nucleoside triphosphates as a high-energy phosphate donor, and the family.
ATP production during photosynthesis.
In plants, ATP is synthesized in the thylakoid membrane of the chloroplast. The process is called photophosphorylation. The "machinery" is similar to that in mitochondria except that light energy is used to pump protons across a membrane to produce a proton-motive force. ATP synthase then ensues exactly as in oxidative phosphorylation. Some of the ATP produced in the chloroplasts is consumed in the Calvin cycle, which produces triose sugars.
ATP recycling.
The total quantity of ATP in the human body is about 0.1 mol/L. The majority of ATP is recycled from ADP by the aforementioned processes. Thus, at any given time, the total amount of ATP + ADP remains fairly constant.
The energy used by human cells in an adult requires the hydrolysis of 100 to 150 mol/L of ATP daily, which means a human will typically use their body weight worth of ATP over the course of the day. Each equivalent of ATP is recycled 1000–1500 times during a single day (), at approximately 9×1020 molecules/s.
Biochemical functions.
Intracellular signaling.
ATP is involved in signal transduction by serving as substrate for kinases, enzymes that transfer phosphate groups. Kinases are the most common ATP-binding proteins. They share a small number of common folds. Phosphorylation of a protein by a kinase can activate a cascade such as the mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade.
ATP is also a substrate of adenylate cyclase, most commonly in G protein-coupled receptor signal transduction pathways and is transformed to second messenger, cyclic AMP, which is involved in triggering calcium signals by the release of calcium from intracellular stores. This form of signal transduction is particularly important in brain function, although it is involved in the regulation of a multitude of other cellular processes.
DNA and RNA synthesis.
ATP is one of four monomers required in the synthesis of RNA. The process is promoted by RNA polymerases. A similar process occurs in the formation of DNA, except that ATP is first converted to the deoxyribonucleotide dATP. Like many condensation reactions in nature, DNA replication and DNA transcription also consume ATP.
Amino acid activation in protein synthesis.
Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes consume ATP in the attachment tRNA to amino acids, forming aminoacyl-tRNA complexes. Aminoacyl transferase binds AMP-amino acid to tRNA. The coupling reaction proceeds in two steps:
The amino acid is coupled to the penultimate nucleotide at the 3′-end of the tRNA (the A in the sequence CCA) via an ester bond (roll over in illustration).
ATP binding cassette transporter.
Transporting chemicals out of a cell against a gradient is often associated with ATP hydrolysis. Transport is mediated by ATP binding cassette transporters. The human genome encodes 48 ABC transporters, that are used for exporting drugs, lipids, and other compounds.
Extracellular signalling and neurotransmission.
Cells secrete ATP to communicate with other cells in a process called purinergic signalling. ATP serves as a neurotransmitter in many parts of the nervous system, modulates ciliary beating, affects vascular oxygen supply etc. ATP is either secreted directly across the cell membrane through channel proteins or is pumped into vesicles which then fuse with the membrane. Cells detect ATP using the purinergic receptor proteins P2X and P2Y.
Protein solubility.
ATP has recently been proposed to act as a biological hydrotrope and has been shown to affect proteome-wide solubility.
ATP analogues.
Biochemistry laboratories often use "in vitro" studies to explore ATP-dependent molecular processes. ATP analogs are also used in X-ray crystallography to determine a protein structure in complex with ATP, often together with other substrates.
Enzyme inhibitors of ATP-dependent enzymes such as kinases are needed to examine the binding sites and transition states involved in ATP-dependent reactions.
Most useful ATP analogs cannot be hydrolyzed as ATP would be; instead, they trap the enzyme in a structure closely related to the ATP-bound state. Adenosine 5′-(γ-thiotriphosphate) is an extremely common ATP analog in which one of the gamma-phosphate oxygens is replaced by a sulfur atom; this anion is hydrolyzed at a dramatically slower rate than ATP itself and functions as an inhibitor of ATP-dependent processes. In crystallographic studies, hydrolysis transition states are modeled by the bound vanadate ion.
Caution is warranted in interpreting the results of experiments using ATP analogs, since some enzymes can hydrolyze them at appreciable rates at high concentration.
Medical use.
ATP is used intravenously for some heart related conditions.
History.
ATP was discovered in 1929 by Karl Lohmann and Jendrassik and, independently, by Cyrus Fiske and Yellapragada Subba Rao of Harvard Medical School, both teams competing against each other to find an assay for phosphorus.
It was proposed to be the intermediary between energy-yielding and energy-requiring reactions in cells by Fritz Albert Lipmann in 1941.
It was first synthesized in the laboratory by Alexander Todd in 1948, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1957 partly for this work.
The 1978 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Peter Dennis Mitchell for the discovery of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis.
The 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was divided, one half jointly to Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker "for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" and the other half to Jens C. Skou "for the first discovery of an ion-transporting enzyme, Na+, K+ -ATPase."
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1802 | Ægir | Ægir (anglicised as Aegir; Old Norse 'sea'), Hlér (Old Norse 'sea'), or Gymir (Old Norse less clearly 'sea, engulfer'), is a jötunn and a personification of the sea in Norse mythology. In the Old Norse record, Ægir hosts the gods in his halls and is associated with brewing ale. Ægir is attested as married to a goddess, Rán, who also personifies the sea, and together the two produced daughters who personify waves, the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán, and Ægir's son is Snær, personified snow. Ægir may also be the father of the beautiful jötunn Gerðr, wife of the god Freyr, or these may be two separate figures who share the same name (see below and Gymir (father of Gerðr)).
One of Ægir's names, "Hlér", is the namesake of the island Læsø (Old Norse "Hléysey" 'Hlér's island') and perhaps also Lejre in Denmark. Scholars have long analyzed Ægir's role in the Old Norse corpus, and the concept of the figure has had some influence in modern popular culture.
Names.
The Old Norse name "Ægir" ('sea') may stem from a Proto-Germanic form "*āgwi-jaz" ('that of the river/water'), itself a derivative of the stem "*ahwō-" ('river'; cf. Gothic "" 'body of water, river', Old English "ēa" 'stream', Old High German "aha" 'river'). Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon saw his name as deriving from an ancient Indo-European root. Linguist Guus Kroonen argues that the Germanic stem "*ahwō-" is probably of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origin, as it may be cognate with Latin "aqua" (via a common form "*h₂ekʷ-eh₂-"), and ultimately descend from the PIE root "*h₂ep"- ('water'; cf. Sanskrit "áp-" 'water', Tocharian "āp-" 'water, river'). Linguist Michiel de Vaan notes that the connection between Proto-Germanic *"ahwō"- and Old Norse "Ægir" remains uncertain, and that *"ahwō-" and "aqua", if cognates, may also be loanwords from a non-Indo-European language.
The name "Ægir" is identical to a noun for 'sea' in skaldic poetry, itself a base word in many kennings. For instance, a ship is described as "Ægir's horse" and the waves as the "daughters of Ægir".
Poetic kennings in both "Hversu Noregr byggðist" (How Norway Was Settled) and "Skáldskaparmál" (The Language of Poetry) treat Ægir and the sea-jötunn Hlér, who lives on the Hlésey ('Hlér island', modern Læsø), as the same figure.
The meaning of the Old Norse name "Gymir" is unclear. Proposed translations include 'the earthly' (from Old Norse "gumi"), 'the wintry one' (from "gemla"), or 'the protector', the 'engulfer' (from "geyma"). (For more on this topic, see discussion below)
Attestations.
Ægir is attested in a variety of Old Norse sources.
"Sonatorrek".
Ægir and Rán receive mention in the poem "Sonatorrek" attributed to 10th century Icelandic skald Egill Skallagrímsson. In the poem, Egill laments the death of his son Böðvar, who drowned at sea during a storm. In one difficult stanza, the skald expresses the pain of losing his son by invoking the image of slaying the personified sea, personified as Ægir (Old Norse "ǫlsmið[r]" 'ale-smith') and Rán ("Ægis man" 'Ægir's wife'):
The skald later references Ægir by way of the kenning 'Hlér's fire' ("Hlés viti"), meaning gold.
"Poetic Edda".
In the "Poetic Edda", Ægir receives mention in the eddic poems "Grímnismál", "Hymiskviða", "Lokasenna", and in the prose section of "Helgakviða Hundingsbana I". In "Grímnismál", the disguised god Odin references Ægir's status as a renowned host among the gods:
In "Hymiskviða", Ægir plays a major role. In the poem, the gods have become thirsty after a successful hunt, and are keen to celebrate with drink. They "shook the twigs and looked at the augury" and "found that at Ægir's was an ample choice of cauldrons". Odin goes to Ægir, who he finds sitting in good cheer, and tells him he shall "often prepare a feast for the Æsir". Referring to Ægir as a jötunn, the poem describes how, now annoyed, Ægir hatches a plan: He asks Thor to fetch a particular cauldron, and that with it he could brew ale for them all. The gods are unable to find a cauldron of a size big enough to meet Ægir's request until the god Týr recommends one he knows of far away, setting the stage for the events of the rest of the poem.
According to the prose introduction to "Lokasenna", "Ægir, who is also called Gymir", was hosting a feast "with the great cauldron which has just been told about", which many of the gods and elves attended. The prose introduction describes the feast as featuring gold that shimmers like fire light and ale that serves itself, and that "it was a great place of peace". In attendance also were Ægir's servers, Fimafeng and Eldir. The gods praise the excellence of their service and, hearing this, Loki murders Fimafeng, enraging the gods, who chase them out to the woods before returning to drink.
In the poem that follows the prose introduction (and in accompanying prose), Loki returns to the hall and greets Eldir: He says that before Eldir steps forward, he should first tell him what the gods are discussing in the hall. Eldir says that they're discussing weaponry and war, and having nothing good to say about Loki. Loki says that he will enter Ægir's halls and have a look at the feast, and with him bring quarrel and strife. Eldir notifies Loki that if he enters and causes trouble, he can expect them to return it to him. Loki enters the hall and the gods see him and become silent.
In "Helgakviða Hundingsbana I", a great wave is referred to as "Ægir's terrible daughter".
"Prose Edda".
Ægir receives numerous mentions in the "Prose Edda" book "Skáldskaparmál", where he sits at a banquet and asks the skaldic god Bragi many questions, and Bragi responds with narratives about the gods. The section begins as follows:
Beyond this section of "Skáldskaparmál", Ægir receives several other mentions in kennings. Section 25 provides examples for 'sea', including 'visitor of the gods', 'husband of Rán', 'father of Ægir's daughters', 'land of Rán and Ægir's daughters'. Kennings cited to skalds in this section include 'the storm-happy daughters of Ægir' meaning 'waves' (Svein) and a kenning in a fragment of a work by the 11th century Icelandic skald Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, where Rán is referred to as 'Gymir's ... völva':
The section's author comments that the stanza "[implies] that they are all the same, Ægir and Hler and Gymir.
Chapter 33b of "Skáldskaparmál" discusses why skalds may refer to gold as "Ægir's fire". The section traces the kenning to a narrative surrounding Ægir, in which the jötunn employs "glowing gold" in the center of his hall to light it "like fire" (which the narrator compares to flaming swords in Valhalla). The section explains that "Ran is the name of Ægir's wife, and the names of their nine daughters are as was written above ... Then the Æsir discovered that Ran had a net in which she caught everyone that went to sea ... so this is the story of the origin of gold being called fire or light or brightness of Ægir, Ran or Ægir's daughters, and from such kennings the practice has now developed of calling gold fire of the sea and of all terms for it, since Ægir and Ran's names are also terms for the sea, and hence gold is now called fire of lakes or rivers and of all river-names."
In chapter 61 provides yet more kennings. Among them the author notes that "Ran, who, it is said, was Ægir's wife" and that "the daughters of Ægir and Ran are nine". In chapter 75, Ægir occurs in a list of jötnar.
Saga corpus.
In what appears to be a Norwegian genealogical tradition, Ægir is portrayed as one of the three elements among the sea, the fire and the wind. The beginning of the "Orkneyinga saga" ('Saga of the Orkney Islanders') and "Hversu Noregr byggdisk" ('How Norway Was Settled') tell that the jötunn king Fornjót had three sons: Hlér ('sea'), whom he called Ægir, a second named Logi ('fire'), and a third called Kári ('wind').
Scholarly reception and interpretation.
Banquets.
Carolyne Larrington says that Ægir's role in "Hymiskviða" "may reflect Scandinavian royal practices in which the king enforces his authority on his subordinates by visiting their homes and demanding to be feasted". According to Andy Orchard, Ægir's role in "Skáldskaparmál", where he attends a banquet rather than hosting it, could be a deliberate inversion of the traditional motif of Ægir as host.
Gymir.
The name "Gymir" may indicate that Ægir was understood as the father of the beautiful jötunn Gerðr; they may also have been two different figures sharing the same name (see Gymir, father of Gerðr). Both the prose introduction to "Lokasenna" and "Skáldskaparmál" state that Ægir is also known as "Gymir", the father of the jötunn Gerðr. Rudolf Simek argues that, if understood to be two different entities, this may stem from an erroneous interpretation of kennings in which different jötunn-names are used interchangeably.
Hlér, Læsø, Lejre, and Snow.
As highlighted above in "Skáldskaparmál", the name of the island Læsø in Denmark references Hlér (Old Norse "Hléysey" 'Hlér's Island'). Simek speculates that Hlér may therefore have been seen as something of an ancestor of the island.
Two sources list the personified snow, Snær (Old Norse 'snow'), as Hlér's son. Book nine of Saxo Grammaticus's 12th century history of Denmark "Gesta Danorum" contains mention of a figure by the name of "Lerus" (from Old Norse "Hlér") whose son is "Snio" (from Old Norse "Snær" 'Snow'). The Danish chronicle of Lejre, "Chronicon Lethrense" also connects the two, and the name "Lejre" may, like "Læsø", derive from the jötunn.
Jötunn.
Scholars have often discussed Ægir's role as host to the gods and his description as a jötunn. Anthony Faulkes observes that Ægir is "often described by modern writers as god of the sea" yet that he is nowhere described as a god in the "Prose Edda" and appears in a list of jötnar in "Skáldskaparmál". According to John Lindow, since his wife Rán is listed among the Ásynjur (goddesses) in the same part of the "Prose Edda", and since he had a close and friendly relationship with the Æsir (gods), Ægir's description as a jötunn appears questionable. Andy Orchard argues on the contrary that Ægir's inclusion among the Æsir is probably a late development since his daughters are described as jötnar and some sources mention him as the descendant of the jötunn Fornjót. According to Rudolf Simek, while attested as a jötunn, Ægir "has characteristics" of a sea god.
Modern influence.
Ægir has been the subject of a variety of art pieces. These include Nils Blommér's painting "Näcken och Ägirs döttrar" (1850), Johan Peter Molin's (d. 1874) fountain relief "Ægir", and Emil Doepler's "Ægir" (1901).
Ægir is referenced in a variety of others ways in modern popular culture. For example, he is the namesake of a Norwegian corvette produced in 1967 ("Ægir"), a coastal defense ship in the Imperial German Navy, and of an exoplanet, Epsilon Eridani b.
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1805 | Antibiotic | An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of such infections. They may either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria. A limited number of antibiotics also possess antiprotozoal activity. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses such as the common cold or influenza; drugs which inhibit growth of viruses are termed antiviral drugs or antivirals rather than antibiotics. They are also not effective against fungi; drugs which inhibit growth of fungi are called antifungal drugs.
Sometimes, the term "antibiotic"—literally "opposing life", from the Greek roots ἀντι "anti", "against" and βίος "bios", "life"—is broadly used to refer to any substance used against microbes, but in the usual medical usage, antibiotics (such as penicillin) are those produced naturally (by one microorganism fighting another), whereas non-antibiotic antibacterials (such as sulfonamides and antiseptics) are fully synthetic. However, both classes have the same goal of killing or preventing the growth of microorganisms, and both are included in antimicrobial chemotherapy. "Antibacterials" include antiseptic drugs, antibacterial soaps, and chemical disinfectants, whereas antibiotics are an important class of antibacterials used more specifically in medicine and sometimes in livestock feed.
Antibiotics have been used since ancient times. Many civilizations used topical application of moldy bread, with many references to its beneficial effects arising from ancient Egypt, Nubia, China, Serbia, Greece, and Rome. The first person to directly document the use of molds to treat infections was John Parkinson (1567–1650). Antibiotics revolutionized medicine in the 20th century. Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) discovered modern day penicillin in 1928, the widespread use of which proved significantly beneficial during wartime. However, the effectiveness and easy access to antibiotics have also led to their overuse and some bacteria have evolved resistance to them. The World Health Organization has classified antimicrobial resistance as a widespread "serious threat [that] is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country". Global deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance numbered 1.27 million in 2019.
Etymology.
The term 'antibiosis', meaning "against life", was introduced by the French bacteriologist Jean Paul Vuillemin as a descriptive name of the phenomenon exhibited by these early antibacterial drugs. Antibiosis was first described in 1877 in bacteria when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch observed that an airborne bacillus could inhibit the growth of "Bacillus anthracis". These drugs were later renamed antibiotics by Selman Waksman, an American microbiologist, in 1947.
The term "antibiotic" was first used in 1942 by Selman Waksman and his collaborators in journal articles to describe any substance produced by a microorganism that is antagonistic to the growth of other microorganisms in high dilution. This definition excluded substances that kill bacteria but that are not produced by microorganisms (such as gastric juices and hydrogen peroxide). It also excluded synthetic antibacterial compounds such as the sulfonamides. In current usage, the term "antibiotic" is applied to any medication that kills bacteria or inhibits their growth, regardless of whether that medication is produced by a microorganism or not.
The term "antibiotic" derives from "anti" + βιωτικός ("biōtikos"), "fit for life, lively", which comes from βίωσις ("biōsis"), "way of life", and that from βίος ("bios"), "life". The term "antibacterial" derives from Greek ἀντί ("anti"), "against" + βακτήριον ("baktērion"), diminutive of βακτηρία ("baktēria"), "staff, cane", because the first bacteria to be discovered were rod-shaped.
Usage.
Medical uses.
Antibiotics are used to treat or prevent bacterial infections, and sometimes protozoan infections. (Metronidazole is effective against a number of parasitic diseases). When an infection is suspected of being responsible for an illness but the responsible pathogen has not been identified, an empiric therapy is adopted. This involves the administration of a broad-spectrum antibiotic based on the signs and symptoms presented and is initiated pending laboratory results that can take several days.
When the responsible pathogenic microorganism is already known or has been identified, definitive therapy can be started. This will usually involve the use of a narrow-spectrum antibiotic. The choice of antibiotic given will also be based on its cost. Identification is critically important as it can reduce the cost and toxicity of the antibiotic therapy and also reduce the possibility of the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. To avoid surgery, antibiotics may be given for non-complicated acute appendicitis.
Antibiotics may be given as a preventive measure and this is usually limited to at-risk populations such as those with a weakened immune system (particularly in HIV cases to prevent pneumonia), those taking immunosuppressive drugs, cancer patients, and those having surgery. Their use in surgical procedures is to help prevent infection of incisions. They have an important role in dental antibiotic prophylaxis where their use may prevent bacteremia and consequent infective endocarditis. Antibiotics are also used to prevent infection in cases of neutropenia particularly cancer-related.
The use of antibiotics for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease is not supported by current scientific evidence, and may actually increase cardiovascular mortality, all-cause mortality and the occurrence of stroke.
Routes of administration.
There are many different routes of administration for antibiotic treatment. Antibiotics are usually taken by mouth. In more severe cases, particularly deep-seated systemic infections, antibiotics can be given intravenously or by injection. Where the site of infection is easily accessed, antibiotics may be given topically in the form of eye drops onto the conjunctiva for conjunctivitis or ear drops for ear infections and acute cases of swimmer's ear. Topical use is also one of the treatment options for some skin conditions including acne and cellulitis. Advantages of topical application include achieving high and sustained concentration of antibiotic at the site of infection; reducing the potential for systemic absorption and toxicity, and total volumes of antibiotic required are reduced, thereby also reducing the risk of antibiotic misuse. Topical antibiotics applied over certain types of surgical wounds have been reported to reduce the risk of surgical site infections. However, there are certain general causes for concern with topical administration of antibiotics. Some systemic absorption of the antibiotic may occur; the quantity of antibiotic applied is difficult to accurately dose, and there is also the possibility of local hypersensitivity reactions or contact dermatitis occurring. It is recommended to administer antibiotics as soon as possible, especially in life-threatening infections. Many emergency departments stock antibiotics for this purpose.
Global consumption.
Antibiotic consumption varies widely between countries. The WHO report on surveillance of antibiotic consumption published in 2018 analysed 2015 data from 65 countries. As measured in defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants per day. Mongolia had the highest consumption with a rate of 64.4. Burundi had the lowest at 4.4. Amoxicillin and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid were the most frequently consumed.
Side effects.
Antibiotics are screened for any negative effects before their approval for clinical use, and are usually considered safe and well tolerated. However, some antibiotics have been associated with a wide extent of adverse side effects ranging from mild to very severe depending on the type of antibiotic used, the microbes targeted, and the individual patient. Side effects may reflect the pharmacological or toxicological properties of the antibiotic or may involve hypersensitivity or allergic reactions. Adverse effects range from fever and nausea to major allergic reactions, including photodermatitis and anaphylaxis.
Common side effects of oral antibiotics include diarrhea, resulting from disruption of the species composition in the intestinal flora, resulting, for example, in overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria, such as "Clostridium difficile". Taking probiotics during the course of antibiotic treatment can help prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Antibacterials can also affect the vaginal flora, and may lead to overgrowth of yeast species of the genus "Candida" in the vulvo-vaginal area. Additional side effects can result from interaction with other drugs, such as the possibility of tendon damage from the administration of a quinolone antibiotic with a systemic corticosteroid.
Some antibiotics may also damage the mitochondrion, a bacteria-derived organelle found in eukaryotic, including human, cells. Mitochondrial damage cause oxidative stress in cells and has been suggested as a mechanism for side effects from fluoroquinolones. They are also known to affect chloroplasts.
Interactions.
Birth control pills.
There are few well-controlled studies on whether antibiotic use increases the risk of oral contraceptive failure. The majority of studies indicate antibiotics do not interfere with birth control pills, such as clinical studies that suggest the failure rate of contraceptive pills caused by antibiotics is very low (about 1%). Situations that may increase the risk of oral contraceptive failure include non-compliance (missing taking the pill), vomiting, or diarrhea. Gastrointestinal disorders or interpatient variability in oral contraceptive absorption affecting ethinylestradiol serum levels in the blood. Women with menstrual irregularities may be at higher risk of failure and should be advised to use backup contraception during antibiotic treatment and for one week after its completion. If patient-specific risk factors for reduced oral contraceptive efficacy are suspected, backup contraception is recommended.
In cases where antibiotics have been suggested to affect the efficiency of birth control pills, such as for the broad-spectrum antibiotic rifampicin, these cases may be due to an increase in the activities of hepatic liver enzymes' causing increased breakdown of the pill's active ingredients. Effects on the intestinal flora, which might result in reduced absorption of estrogens in the colon, have also been suggested, but such suggestions have been inconclusive and controversial. Clinicians have recommended that extra contraceptive measures be applied during therapies using antibiotics that are suspected to interact with oral contraceptives. More studies on the possible interactions between antibiotics and birth control pills (oral contraceptives) are required as well as careful assessment of patient-specific risk factors for potential oral contractive pill failure prior to dismissing the need for backup contraception.
Alcohol.
Interactions between alcohol and certain antibiotics may occur and may cause side effects and decreased effectiveness of antibiotic therapy. While moderate alcohol consumption is unlikely to interfere with many common antibiotics, there are specific types of antibiotics with which alcohol consumption may cause serious side effects. Therefore, potential risks of side effects and effectiveness depend on the type of antibiotic administered.
Antibiotics such as metronidazole, tinidazole, cephamandole, latamoxef, cefoperazone, cefmenoxime, and furazolidone, cause a disulfiram-like chemical reaction with alcohol by inhibiting its breakdown by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, which may result in vomiting, nausea, and shortness of breath. In addition, the efficacy of doxycycline and erythromycin succinate may be reduced by alcohol consumption. Other effects of alcohol on antibiotic activity include altered activity of the liver enzymes that break down the antibiotic compound.
Pharmacodynamics.
The successful outcome of antimicrobial therapy with antibacterial compounds depends on several factors. These include host defense mechanisms, the location of infection, and the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of the antibacterial. The bactericidal activity of antibacterials may depend on the bacterial growth phase, and it often requires ongoing metabolic activity and division of bacterial cells. These findings are based on laboratory studies, and in clinical settings have also been shown to eliminate bacterial infection. Since the activity of antibacterials depends frequently on its concentration, "in vitro" characterization of antibacterial activity commonly includes the determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration of an antibacterial.
To predict clinical outcome, the antimicrobial activity of an antibacterial is usually combined with its pharmacokinetic profile, and several pharmacological parameters are used as markers of drug efficacy.
Combination therapy.
In important infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, combination therapy (i.e., the concurrent application of two or more antibiotics) has been used to delay or prevent the emergence of resistance. In acute bacterial infections, antibiotics as part of combination therapy are prescribed for their synergistic effects to improve treatment outcome as the combined effect of both antibiotics is better than their individual effect. Methicillin-resistant "Staphylococcus aureus" infections may be treated with a combination therapy of fusidic acid and rifampicin. Antibiotics used in combination may also be antagonistic and the combined effects of the two antibiotics may be less than if one of the antibiotics was given as a monotherapy. For example, chloramphenicol and tetracyclines are antagonists to penicillins. However, this can vary depending on the species of bacteria. In general, combinations of a bacteriostatic antibiotic and bactericidal antibiotic are antagonistic.
In addition to combining one antibiotic with another, antibiotics are sometimes co-administered with resistance-modifying agents. For example, β-lactam antibiotics may be used in combination with β-lactamase inhibitors, such as clavulanic acid or sulbactam, when a patient is infected with a β-lactamase-producing strain of bacteria.
Classes.
Antibiotics are commonly classified based on their mechanism of action, chemical structure, or spectrum of activity. Most target bacterial functions or growth processes. Those that target the bacterial cell wall (penicillins and cephalosporins) or the cell membrane (polymyxins), or interfere with essential bacterial enzymes (rifamycins, lipiarmycins, quinolones, and sulfonamides) have bactericidal activities, killing the bacteria. Protein synthesis inhibitors (macrolides, lincosamides, and tetracyclines) are usually bacteriostatic, inhibiting further growth (with the exception of bactericidal aminoglycosides). Further categorization is based on their target specificity. "Narrow-spectrum" antibiotics target specific types of bacteria, such as gram-negative or gram-positive, whereas broad-spectrum antibiotics affect a wide range of bacteria. Following a 40-year break in discovering classes of antibacterial compounds, four new classes of antibiotics were introduced to clinical use in the late 2000s and early 2010s: cyclic lipopeptides (such as daptomycin), glycylcyclines (such as tigecycline), oxazolidinones (such as linezolid), and lipiarmycins (such as fidaxomicin).
Production.
With advances in medicinal chemistry, most modern antibacterials are semisynthetic modifications of various natural compounds. These include, for example, the beta-lactam antibiotics, which include the penicillins (produced by fungi in the genus "Penicillium"), the cephalosporins, and the carbapenems. Compounds that are still isolated from living organisms are the aminoglycosides, whereas other antibacterials—for example, the sulfonamides, the quinolones, and the oxazolidinones—are produced solely by chemical synthesis. Many antibacterial compounds are relatively small molecules with a molecular weight of less than 1000 daltons.
Since the first pioneering efforts of Howard Florey and Chain in 1939, the importance of antibiotics, including antibacterials, to medicine has led to intense research into producing antibacterials at large scales. Following screening of antibacterials against a wide range of bacteria, production of the active compounds is carried out using fermentation, usually in strongly aerobic conditions.
Resistance.
The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a common phenomenon mainly caused by the overuse/misuse. It represents a threat to health globally.
Emergence of resistance often reflects evolutionary processes that take place during antibiotic therapy. The antibiotic treatment may select for bacterial strains with physiologically or genetically enhanced capacity to survive high doses of antibiotics. Under certain conditions, it may result in preferential growth of resistant bacteria, while growth of susceptible bacteria is inhibited by the drug. For example, antibacterial selection for strains having previously acquired antibacterial-resistance genes was demonstrated in 1943 by the Luria–Delbrück experiment. Antibiotics such as penicillin and erythromycin, which used to have a high efficacy against many bacterial species and strains, have become less effective, due to the increased resistance of many bacterial strains.
Resistance may take the form of biodegradation of pharmaceuticals, such as sulfamethazine-degrading soil bacteria introduced to sulfamethazine through medicated pig feces.
The survival of bacteria often results from an inheritable resistance, but the growth of resistance to antibacterials also occurs through horizontal gene transfer. Horizontal transfer is more likely to happen in locations of frequent antibiotic use.
Antibacterial resistance may impose a biological cost, thereby reducing fitness of resistant strains, which can limit the spread of antibacterial-resistant bacteria, for example, in the absence of antibacterial compounds. Additional mutations, however, may compensate for this fitness cost and can aid the survival of these bacteria.
Paleontological data show that both antibiotics and antibiotic resistance are ancient compounds and mechanisms. Useful antibiotic targets are those for which mutations negatively impact bacterial reproduction or viability.
Several molecular mechanisms of antibacterial resistance exist. Intrinsic antibacterial resistance may be part of the genetic makeup of bacterial strains. For example, an antibiotic target may be absent from the bacterial genome. Acquired resistance results from a mutation in the bacterial chromosome or the acquisition of extra-chromosomal DNA. Antibacterial-producing bacteria have evolved resistance mechanisms that have been shown to be similar to, and may have been transferred to, antibacterial-resistant strains. The spread of antibacterial resistance often occurs through vertical transmission of mutations during growth and by genetic recombination of DNA by horizontal genetic exchange. For instance, antibacterial resistance genes can be exchanged between different bacterial strains or species via plasmids that carry these resistance genes. Plasmids that carry several different resistance genes can confer resistance to multiple antibacterials. Cross-resistance to several antibacterials may also occur when a resistance mechanism encoded by a single gene conveys resistance to more than one antibacterial compound.
Antibacterial-resistant strains and species, sometimes referred to as "superbugs", now contribute to the emergence of diseases that were, for a while, well controlled. For example, emergent bacterial strains causing tuberculosis that are resistant to previously effective antibacterial treatments pose many therapeutic challenges. Every year, nearly half a million new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are estimated to occur worldwide. For example, NDM-1 is a newly identified enzyme conveying bacterial resistance to a broad range of beta-lactam antibacterials. The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency has stated that "most isolates with NDM-1 enzyme are resistant to all standard intravenous antibiotics for treatment of severe infections." On 26 May 2016, an "E. coli" "superbug" was identified in the United States resistant to colistin, "the last line of defence" antibiotic.
Misuse.
Per "The ICU Book" "The first rule of antibiotics is to try not to use them, and the second rule is try not to use too many of them." Inappropriate antibiotic treatment and overuse of antibiotics have contributed to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, potential harm from antibiotics extends beyond selection of antimicrobial resistance and their overuse is associated with adverse effects for patients themselves, seen most clearly in critically ill patients in Intensive care units. Self-prescribing of antibiotics is an example of misuse. Many antibiotics are frequently prescribed to treat symptoms or diseases that do not respond to antibiotics or that are likely to resolve without treatment. Also, incorrect or suboptimal antibiotics are prescribed for certain bacterial infections. The overuse of antibiotics, like penicillin and erythromycin, has been associated with emerging antibiotic resistance since the 1950s. Widespread usage of antibiotics in hospitals has also been associated with increases in bacterial strains and species that no longer respond to treatment with the most common antibiotics.
Common forms of antibiotic misuse include excessive use of prophylactic antibiotics in travelers and failure of medical professionals to prescribe the correct dosage of antibiotics on the basis of the patient's weight and history of prior use. Other forms of misuse include failure to take the entire prescribed course of the antibiotic, incorrect dosage and administration, or failure to rest for sufficient recovery. Inappropriate antibiotic treatment, for example, is their prescription to treat viral infections such as the common cold. One study on respiratory tract infections found "physicians were more likely to prescribe antibiotics to patients who appeared to expect them". Multifactorial interventions aimed at both physicians and patients can reduce inappropriate prescription of antibiotics. The lack of rapid point of care diagnostic tests, particularly in resource-limited settings is considered one of the drivers of antibiotic misuse.
Several organizations concerned with antimicrobial resistance are lobbying to eliminate the unnecessary use of antibiotics. The issues of misuse and overuse of antibiotics have been addressed by the formation of the US Interagency Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance. This task force aims to actively address antimicrobial resistance, and is coordinated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health, as well as other US agencies. A non-governmental organization campaign group is "Keep Antibiotics Working". In France, an "Antibiotics are not automatic" government campaign started in 2002 and led to a marked reduction of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, especially in children.
The emergence of antibiotic resistance has prompted restrictions on their use in the UK in 1970 (Swann report 1969), and the European Union has banned the use of antibiotics as growth-promotional agents since 2003. Moreover, several organizations (including the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) have advocated restricting the amount of antibiotic use in food animal production. However, commonly there are delays in regulatory and legislative actions to limit the use of antibiotics, attributable partly to resistance against such regulation by industries using or selling antibiotics, and to the time required for research to test causal links between their use and resistance to them. Two federal bills (S.742 and H.R. 2562) aimed at phasing out nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in US food animals were proposed, but have not passed. These bills were endorsed by public health and medical organizations, including the American Holistic Nurses' Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association.
Despite pledges by food companies and restaurants to reduce or eliminate meat that comes from animals treated with antibiotics, the purchase of antibiotics for use on farm animals has been increasing every year.
There has been extensive use of antibiotics in animal husbandry. In the United States, the question of emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains due to use of antibiotics in livestock was raised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1977. In March 2012, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruling in an action brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council and others, ordered the FDA to revoke approvals for the use of antibiotics in livestock, which violated FDA regulations.
Studies have shown that common misconceptions about the effectiveness and necessity of antibiotics to treat common mild illnesses contribute to their overuse.
Other forms of antibiotic associated harm include anaphylaxis, drug toxicity most notably kidney and liver damage, and super-infections with resistant organisms. Antibiotics are also known to affect mitochondrial function, and this may contribute to the bioenergetic failure of immune cells seen in sepsis. They also alter the microbiome of the gut, lungs and skin, which may be associated with adverse effects such as Clostridium difficile associated diarrhoea. Whilst antibiotics can clearly be lifesaving in patients with bacterial infections, their overuse, especially in patients where infections are hard to diagnose, can lead to harm via multiple mechanisms.
History.
Before the early 20th century, treatments for infections were based primarily on medicinal folklore. Mixtures with antimicrobial properties that were used in treatments of infections were described over 2,000 years ago. Many ancient cultures, including the ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks, used specially selected mold and plant materials to treat infections. Nubian mummies studied in the 1990s were found to contain significant levels of tetracycline. The beer brewed at that time was conjectured to have been the source.
The use of antibiotics in modern medicine began with the discovery of synthetic antibiotics derived from dyes.
Synthetic antibiotics derived from dyes.
Synthetic antibiotic chemotherapy as a science and development of antibacterials began in Germany with Paul Ehrlich in the late 1880s. Ehrlich noted certain dyes would colour human, animal, or bacterial cells, whereas others did not. He then proposed the idea that it might be possible to create chemicals that would act as a selective drug that would bind to and kill bacteria without harming the human host. After screening hundreds of dyes against various organisms, in 1907, he discovered a medicinally useful drug, the first synthetic antibacterial organoarsenic compound salvarsan, now called arsphenamine.
This heralded the era of antibacterial treatment that was begun with the discovery of a series of arsenic-derived synthetic antibiotics by both Alfred Bertheim and Ehrlich in 1907. Ehrlich and Bertheim had experimented with various chemicals derived from dyes to treat trypanosomiasis in mice and spirochaeta infection in rabbits. While their early compounds were too toxic, Ehrlich and Sahachiro Hata, a Japanese bacteriologist working with Erlich in the quest for a drug to treat syphilis, achieved success with the 606th compound in their series of experiments. In 1910, Ehrlich and Hata announced their discovery, which they called drug "606", at the Congress for Internal Medicine at Wiesbaden. The Hoechst company began to market the compound toward the end of 1910 under the name Salvarsan, now known as arsphenamine. The drug was used to treat syphilis in the first half of the 20th century. In 1908, Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to immunology. Hata was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 and for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 and 1913.
The first sulfonamide and the first systemically active antibacterial drug, Prontosil, was developed by a research team led by Gerhard Domagk in 1932 or 1933 at the Bayer Laboratories of the IG Farben conglomerate in Germany, for which Domagk received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Sulfanilamide, the active drug of Prontosil, was not patentable as it had already been in use in the dye industry for some years. Prontosil had a relatively broad effect against Gram-positive cocci, but not against enterobacteria. Research was stimulated apace by its success. The discovery and development of this sulfonamide drug opened the era of antibacterials.
Penicillin and other natural antibiotics.
Observations about the growth of some microorganisms inhibiting the growth of other microorganisms have been reported since the late 19th century. These observations of antibiosis between microorganisms led to the discovery of natural antibacterials. Louis Pasteur observed, "if we could intervene in the antagonism observed between some bacteria, it would offer perhaps the greatest hopes for therapeutics".
In 1874, physician Sir William Roberts noted that cultures of the mould "Penicillium glaucum" that is used in the making of some types of blue cheese did not display bacterial contamination. In 1876, physicist John Tyndall also contributed to this field.
In 1895 Vincenzo Tiberio, Italian physician, published a paper on the antibacterial power of some extracts of mold.
In 1897, doctoral student Ernest Duchesne submitted a dissertation, "" (Contribution to the study of vital competition in micro-organisms: antagonism between moulds and microbes), the first known scholarly work to consider the therapeutic capabilities of moulds resulting from their anti-microbial activity. In his thesis, Duchesne proposed that bacteria and moulds engage in a perpetual battle for survival. Duchesne observed that "E. coli" was eliminated by "Penicillium glaucum" when they were both grown in the same culture. He also observed that when he inoculated laboratory animals with lethal doses of typhoid bacilli together with "Penicillium glaucum", the animals did not contract typhoid. Duchesne's army service after getting his degree prevented him from doing any further research. Duchesne died of tuberculosis, a disease now treated by antibiotics.
In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming postulated the existence of penicillin, a molecule produced by certain moulds that kills or stops the growth of certain kinds of bacteria. Fleming was working on a culture of disease-causing bacteria when he noticed the spores of a green mold, "Penicillium rubens", in one of his culture plates. He observed that the presence of the mould killed or prevented the growth of the bacteria. Fleming postulated that the mould must secrete an antibacterial substance, which he named penicillin in 1928. Fleming believed that its antibacterial properties could be exploited for chemotherapy. He initially characterised some of its biological properties, and attempted to use a crude preparation to treat some infections, but he was unable to pursue its further development without the aid of trained chemists.
Ernst Chain, Howard Florey and Edward Abraham succeeded in purifying the first penicillin, penicillin G, in 1942, but it did not become widely available outside the Allied military before 1945. Later, Norman Heatley developed the back extraction technique for efficiently purifying penicillin in bulk. The chemical structure of penicillin was first proposed by Abraham in 1942 and then later confirmed by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1945. Purified penicillin displayed potent antibacterial activity against a wide range of bacteria and had low toxicity in humans. Furthermore, its activity was not inhibited by biological constituents such as pus, unlike the synthetic sulfonamides. (see below) The development of penicillin led to renewed interest in the search for antibiotic compounds with similar efficacy and safety. For their successful development of penicillin, which Fleming had accidentally discovered but could not develop himself, as a therapeutic drug, Chain and Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Fleming.
Florey credited René Dubos with pioneering the approach of deliberately and systematically searching for antibacterial compounds, which had led to the discovery of gramicidin and had revived Florey's research in penicillin. In 1939, coinciding with the start of World War II, Dubos had reported the discovery of the first naturally derived antibiotic, tyrothricin, a compound of 20% gramicidin and 80% tyrocidine, from "Bacillus brevis". It was one of the first commercially manufactured antibiotics and was very effective in treating wounds and ulcers during World War II. Gramicidin, however, could not be used systemically because of toxicity. Tyrocidine also proved too toxic for systemic usage. Research results obtained during that period were not shared between the Axis and the Allied powers during World War II and limited access during the Cold War.
Late 20th century.
During the mid-20th century, the number of new antibiotic substances introduced for medical use increased significantly. From 1935 to 1968, 12 new classes were launched. However, after this, the number of new classes dropped markedly, with only two new classes introduced between 1969 and 2003.
Antibiotic pipeline.
Both the WHO and the Infectious Disease Society of America report that the weak antibiotic pipeline does not match bacteria's increasing ability to develop resistance. The Infectious Disease Society of America report noted that the number of new antibiotics approved for marketing per year had been declining and identified seven antibiotics against the Gram-negative bacilli currently in phase 2 or phase 3 clinical trials. However, these drugs did not address the entire spectrum of resistance of Gram-negative bacilli. According to the WHO fifty one new therapeutic entities - antibiotics (including combinations), are in phase 1-3 clinical trials as of May 2017. Antibiotics targeting multidrug-resistant Gram-positive pathogens remains a high priority.
A few antibiotics have received marketing authorization in the last seven years. The cephalosporin ceftaroline and the lipoglycopeptides oritavancin and telavancin for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infection and community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. The lipoglycopeptide dalbavancin and the oxazolidinone tedizolid has also been approved for use for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infection. The first in a new class of narrow spectrum macrocyclic antibiotics, fidaxomicin, has been approved for the treatment of "C. difficile" colitis. New cephalosporin-lactamase inhibitor combinations also approved include ceftazidime-avibactam and ceftolozane-avibactam for complicated urinary tract infection and intra-abdominal infection.
Possible improvements include clarification of clinical trial regulations by FDA. Furthermore, appropriate economic incentives could persuade pharmaceutical companies to invest in this endeavor. In the US, the Antibiotic Development to Advance Patient Treatment (ADAPT) Act was introduced with the aim of fast tracking the drug development of antibiotics to combat the growing threat of 'superbugs'. Under this Act, FDA can approve antibiotics and antifungals treating life-threatening infections based on smaller clinical trials. The CDC will monitor the use of antibiotics and the emerging resistance, and publish the data. The FDA antibiotics labeling process, 'Susceptibility Test Interpretive Criteria for Microbial Organisms' or 'breakpoints', will provide accurate data to healthcare professionals. According to Allan Coukell, senior director for health programs at The Pew Charitable Trusts, "By allowing drug developers to rely on smaller datasets, and clarifying FDA's authority to tolerate a higher level of uncertainty for these drugs when making a risk/benefit calculation, ADAPT would make the clinical trials more feasible."
Replenishing the antibiotic pipeline and developing other new therapies.
Because antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains continue to emerge and spread, there is a constant need to develop new antibacterial treatments. Current strategies include traditional chemistry-based approaches such as natural product-based drug discovery, newer chemistry-based approaches such as drug design, traditional biology-based approaches such as immunoglobulin therapy, and experimental biology-based approaches such as phage therapy, fecal microbiota transplants, antisense RNA-based treatments, and CRISPR-Cas9-based treatments.
Natural product-based antibiotic discovery.
Most of the antibiotics in current use are natural products or natural product derivatives, and bacterial, fungal, plant and animal extracts are being screened in the search for new antibiotics. Organisms may be selected for testing based on ecological, ethnomedical, genomic, or historical rationales. Medicinal plants, for example, are screened on the basis that they are used by traditional healers to prevent or cure infection and may therefore contain antibacterial compounds. Also, soil bacteria are screened on the basis that, historically, they have been a very rich source of antibiotics (with 70 to 80% of antibiotics in current use derived from the actinomycetes).
In addition to screening natural products for direct antibacterial activity, they are sometimes screened for the ability to suppress antibiotic resistance and antibiotic tolerance. For example, some secondary metabolites inhibit drug efflux pumps, thereby increasing the concentration of antibiotic able to reach its cellular target and decreasing bacterial resistance to the antibiotic. Natural products known to inhibit bacterial efflux pumps include the alkaloid lysergol, the carotenoids capsanthin and capsorubin, and the flavonoids rotenone and chrysin. Other natural products, this time primary metabolites rather than secondary metabolites, have been shown to eradicate antibiotic tolerance. For example, glucose, mannitol, and fructose reduce antibiotic tolerance in "Escherichia coli" and "Staphylococcus aureus", rendering them more susceptible to killing by aminoglycoside antibiotics.
Natural products may be screened for the ability to suppress bacterial virulence factors too. Virulence factors are molecules, cellular structures and regulatory systems that enable bacteria to evade the body's immune defenses (e.g. urease, staphyloxanthin), move towards, attach to, and/or invade human cells (e.g. type IV pili, adhesins, internalins), coordinate the activation of virulence genes (e.g. quorum sensing), and cause disease (e.g. exotoxins). Examples of natural products with antivirulence activity include the flavonoid epigallocatechin gallate (which inhibits listeriolysin O), the quinone tetrangomycin (which inhibits staphyloxanthin), and the sesquiterpene zerumbone (which inhibits "Acinetobacter baumannii" motility).
Immunoglobulin therapy.
Antibodies (anti-tetanus immunoglobulin) have been used in the treatment and prevention of tetanus since the 1910s, and this approach continues to be a useful way of controlling bacterial diseases. The monoclonal antibody bezlotoxumab, for example, has been approved by the US FDA and EMA for recurrent "Clostridium difficile" infection, and other monoclonal antibodies are in development (e.g. AR-301 for the adjunctive treatment of "S. aureus" ventilator-associated pneumonia). Antibody treatments act by binding to and neutralizing bacterial exotoxins and other virulence factors.
Phage therapy.
Phage therapy is under investigation as a method of treating antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Phage therapy involves infecting bacterial pathogens with viruses. Bacteriophages and their host ranges are extremely specific for certain bacteria, thus, unlike antibiotics, they do not disturb the host organism's intestinal microbiota. Bacteriophages, also known as phages, infect and kill bacteria primarily during lytic cycles. Phages insert their DNA into the bacterium, where it is transcribed and used to make new phages, after which the cell will lyse, releasing new phage that are able to infect and destroy further bacteria of the same strain. The high specificity of phage protects "good" bacteria from destruction.
Some disadvantages to the use of bacteriophages also exist, however. Bacteriophages may harbour virulence factors or toxic genes in their genomes and, prior to use, it may be prudent to identify genes with similarity to known virulence factors or toxins by genomic sequencing. In addition, the oral and IV administration of phages for the eradication of bacterial infections poses a much higher safety risk than topical application. Also, there is the additional concern of uncertain immune responses to these large antigenic cocktails.
There are considerable regulatory hurdles that must be cleared for such therapies. Despite numerous challenges, the use of bacteriophages as a replacement for antimicrobial agents against MDR pathogens that no longer respond to conventional antibiotics, remains an attractive option.
Fecal microbiota transplants.
Fecal microbiota transplants involve transferring the full intestinal microbiota from a healthy human donor (in the form of stool) to patients with "C. difficile" infection. Although this procedure has not been officially approved by the US FDA, its use is permitted under some conditions in patients with antibiotic-resistant "C. difficile" infection. Cure rates are around 90%, and work is underway to develop stool banks, standardized products, and methods of oral delivery.
Antisense RNA-based treatments.
Antisense RNA-based treatment (also known as gene silencing therapy) involves (a) identifying bacterial genes that encode essential proteins (e.g. the "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" genes "acpP", "lpxC", and "rpsJ"), (b) synthesizing single stranded RNA that is complementary to the mRNA encoding these essential proteins, and (c) delivering the single stranded RNA to the infection site using cell-penetrating peptides or liposomes. The antisense RNA then hybridizes with the bacterial mRNA and blocks its translation into the essential protein. Antisense RNA-based treatment has been shown to be effective in "in vivo" models of "P. aeruginosa" pneumonia.
In addition to silencing essential bacterial genes, antisense RNA can be used to silence bacterial genes responsible for antibiotic resistance. For example, antisense RNA has been developed that silences the "S. aureus" "mecA" gene (the gene that encodes modified penicillin-binding protein 2a and renders "S. aureus" strains methicillin-resistant). Antisense RNA targeting "mecA" mRNA has been shown to restore the susceptibility of methicillin-resistant staphylococci to oxacillin in both "in vitro" and "in vivo" studies.
CRISPR-Cas9-based treatments.
In the early 2000s, a system was discovered that enables bacteria to defend themselves against invading viruses. The system, known as CRISPR-Cas9, consists of (a) an enzyme that destroys DNA (the nuclease Cas9) and (b) the DNA sequences of previously encountered viral invaders (CRISPR). These viral DNA sequences enable the nuclease to target foreign (viral) rather than self (bacterial) DNA.
Although the function of CRISPR-Cas9 in nature is to protect bacteria, the DNA sequences in the CRISPR component of the system can be modified so that the Cas9 nuclease targets bacterial resistance genes or bacterial virulence genes instead of viral genes. The modified CRISPR-Cas9 system can then be administered to bacterial pathogens using plasmids or bacteriophages. This approach has successfully been used to silence antibiotic resistance and reduce the virulence of enterohemorrhagic "E. coli" in an "in vivo" model of infection.
Reducing the selection pressure for antibiotic resistance.
In addition to developing new antibacterial treatments, it is important to reduce the selection pressure for the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance. Strategies to accomplish this include well-established infection control measures such as infrastructure improvement (e.g. less crowded housing), better sanitation (e.g. safe drinking water and food) and vaccine development, other approaches such as antibiotic stewardship, and experimental approaches such as the use of prebiotics and probiotics to prevent infection. Antibiotic cycling, where antibiotics are alternated by clinicians to treat microbial diseases, is proposed, but recent studies revealed such strategies are ineffective against antibiotic resistance.
Vaccines.
Vaccines rely on immune modulation or augmentation. Vaccination either excites or reinforces the immune competence of a host to ward off infection, leading to the activation of macrophages, the production of antibodies, inflammation, and other classic immune reactions. Antibacterial vaccines have been responsible for a drastic reduction in global bacterial diseases. Vaccines made from attenuated whole cells or lysates have been replaced largely by less reactogenic, cell-free vaccines consisting of purified components, including capsular polysaccharides and their conjugates, to protein carriers, as well as inactivated toxins (toxoids) and proteins.
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1806 | Arnold Schwarzenegger | Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, businessman, filmmaker, politician, and retired professional bodybuilder best known for his roles in high-profile action movies. He served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011 and was among "Time" magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and 2007.
Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at age 15 and won the Mr. Universe title aged 20, and subsequently the Mr. Olympia title seven times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, and has written many books and articles about it. The Arnold Sports Festival, considered the second-most important bodybuilding event after Mr. Olympia, is named after him. He appeared in the bodybuilding documentary "Pumping Iron" (1977). He retired from bodybuilding and gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action star, with his breakthrough in the sword and sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian" (1982), a box-office hit with a sequel in 1984. After playing the title character in the science fiction film "The Terminator" (1984), he starred in "" (1991) and three other sequels. His other successful action films included "Commando" (1985), "The Running Man" (1987), "Predator" (1987), "Total Recall" (1990), and "True Lies" (1994), in addition to comedy films such as "Twins" (1988), "Kindergarten Cop" (1990) and "Jingle All the Way" (1996). He is the founder of the film production company Oak Productions.
As a registered Republican, Schwarzenegger chaired the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports during most of the George H. W. Bush administration. On October 7, 2003, he was elected Governor of California in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis. He received 48.6% of the vote, 17 points ahead of Democrat runner-up Cruz Bustamante. He was sworn in on November 17 to serve the remainder of Davis' term, and was reelected in the 2006 California gubernatorial election with an increased vote share of 55.9% to serve a full term. In 2011 he reached his term limit as governor and returned to acting.
Schwarzenegger was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his acting career, and "the Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career. He married Maria Shriver, a niece of President John F. Kennedy, in 1986. They separated in 2011 after he admitted to having fathered a child with their housemaid in 1997; their divorce was finalized in 2021.
Early life and education.
Schwarzenegger was born in Thal, the second son of Gustav Schwarzenegger and his wife Aurelia (née Jadrny). Gustav was the local chief of police, and after the Anschluss in 1938, joined the Nazi Party and, in 1939 the Sturmabteilung (SA). In World War II, Gustav served as a military policeman in the invasions of Poland, France and the Soviet Union, including the siege of Leningrad, rising to the title of "Hauptfeldwebel". He was wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad, and was discharged in 1943 following a bout of malaria. According to Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, Gustav Schwarzenegger served "in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role." Gustav's background received wide press attention during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election in which Schwarzenegger was elected.
Gustav married Aurelia on October 20, 1945; he was 38 and she was 23. According to Schwarzenegger, his parents were very strict: "Back then in Austria it was a very different world [...] if we did something bad or we disobeyed our parents, the rod was not spared." He grew up in a Catholic family. Gustav preferred his elder son, Meinhard, over Arnold. His favoritism was "strong and blatant", which stemmed from unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his biological child. Schwarzenegger has said that his father had "no patience for listening or understanding your problems". He had a good relationship with his mother, with whom he kept in touch until her death.
At school, Schwarzenegger was reportedly academically average but stood out for his "cheerful, good-humored, and exuberant" character. Money was a problem in their household; Schwarzenegger recalled that one of the highlights of his youth was when the family bought a refrigerator. His father Gustav was an athlete, and wished for his sons to become champions in Bavarian curling. Influenced by his father, Schwarzenegger played several sports as a boy.
Schwarzenegger began weight training in 1960 when his football coach took his team to a local gym. At age 14, he chose bodybuilding over football as a career. He later said, "I actually started weight training when I was 15, but I'd been participating in sports, like soccer, for years, so I felt that although I was slim, I was well-developed, at least enough so that I could start going to the gym and start Olympic lifting." However, his official website biography claims that "at 14, he started an intensive training program with Dan Farmer, studied psychology at 15 (to learn more about the power of mind over body) and at 17, officially started his competitive career." During a speech in 2001, he said, "My own plan formed when I was 14 years old. My father had wanted me to be a police officer like he was. My mother wanted me to go to trade school."
Schwarzenegger took to visiting a gym in Graz, where he also frequented the local movie theaters to see films with bodybuilding idols such as Reg Park, Steve Reeves and Johnny Weissmuller. When Reeves died in 2000, Schwarzenegger fondly remembered him: "As a teenager, I grew up with Steve Reeves. His remarkable accomplishments allowed me a sense of what was possible when others around me didn't always understand my dreams. Steve Reeves has been part of everything I've ever been fortunate enough to achieve." In 1961, Schwarzenegger met former Mr. Austria Kurt Marnul, who invited him to train at the gym in Graz. He was so dedicated as a youngster that he broke into the local gym on weekends to train even when it was closed. "It would make me sick to miss a workout... I knew I couldn't look at myself in the mirror the next morning if I didn't do it." When asked about his first cinema experience as a boy, he replied: "I was very young, but I remember my father taking me to the Austrian theaters and seeing some newsreels. The first real movie I saw, that I distinctly remember, was a John Wayne movie." In Graz, he was mentored by Alfred Gerstl, who had Jewish ancestry and later became president of the Federal Council, and befriended his son Karl.
Schwarzenegger's brother, Meinhard, died in a car crash on May 20, 1971. He was driving drunk and died instantly. Schwarzenegger did not attend his funeral. Meinhard was engaged to Erika Knapp, and they had a three-year-old son named Patrick. Schwarzenegger paid for Patrick's education and helped him to move to the U.S. Schwarzenegger's father, Gustav, died of a stroke on December 13, 1972. In "Pumping Iron", Schwarzenegger claimed that he did not attend his father's funeral because he was training for a bodybuilding contest. Later, he and the film's producer said this story was taken from another bodybuilder to show the extremes some would go to for their sport and to make Schwarzenegger's image colder to create controversy for the film. However, Barbara Baker, his first serious girlfriend, recalled that he informed her of his father's death without emotion and that he never spoke of his brother. Over time, he has given at least three versions of why he was absent from his father's funeral.
In an interview with "Fortune" in 2004, Schwarzenegger told how he suffered what "would now be called child abuse" at the hands of his father: "My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door. It was just the way it was. Many of the children I've seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality. They didn't want to create an individual. It was all about conforming. I was one who did not conform, and whose will could not be broken. Therefore, I became a rebel. Every time I got hit, and every time someone said, 'You can't do this,' I said, 'This is not going to be for much longer because I'm going to move out of here. I want to be rich. I want to be somebody.
Schwarzenegger served in the Austrian Army in 1965 to fulfill the one year of service required at the time of all 18-year-old Austrian males. During his army service, he won the Junior Mr. Europe contest. He went AWOL during basic training so he could take part in the competition and then spent a week in military prison: "Participating in the competition meant so much to me that I didn't carefully think through the consequences." He entered another bodybuilding contest in Graz, at Steirerhof Hotel, where he placed second. He was voted "best-built man of Europe", which made him famous in bodybuilding circles. "The Mr. Universe title was my ticket to America—the land of opportunity, where I could become a star and get rich." Schwarzenegger made his first plane trip in 1966, attending the NABBA Mr. Universe competition in London. He placed second in the Mr. Universe competition, not having the muscle definition of American winner Chester Yorton.
Charles "Wag" Bennett, one of the judges at the 1966 competition, was impressed with Schwarzenegger and offered to coach him. As Schwarzenegger had little money, Bennett invited him to stay in his crowded family home above one of his two gyms in Forest Gate, London. Yorton's leg definition had been judged superior, and Schwarzenegger, under a training program devised by Bennett, concentrated on improving his. Staying in the East End of London helped Schwarzenegger improve his rudimentary English. Living with the Bennetts also changed him as a person: "Being with them made me so much more sophisticated. When you're the age I was then, you're always looking for approval, for love, for attention and also for guidance. At the time, I wasn't really aware of that. But now, looking back, I see that the Bennett family fulfilled all those needs. Especially my need to be the best in the world. To be recognized and to feel unique and special. They saw that I needed that care and attention and love."
Also in 1966, at Bennett's home, Schwarzenegger had the opportunity to meet childhood idol Reg Park, who became his friend and mentor. The training paid off and, in 1967, Schwarzenegger won the title for the first time, becoming the youngest ever Mr. Universe at age 20. He would go on to win the title another three times. He then returned to Munich, where he attended business school and worked at Rolf Putziger's gym, where he worked and trained from 1966 to 1968 before returning to London in 1968 to win his next Mr. Universe title. He frequently told Roger C. Field, his English coach and friend in Munich at the time, "I'm going to become the greatest actor!"
Schwarzenegger, who dreamed of moving to the US since age ten, and saw bodybuilding as his avenue of opportunity, realized his dream by moving to the US in October 1968 at age 21, speaking little English. There he trained at Gold's Gym in Venice, Los Angeles, California, under Joe Weider's supervision. From 1970 to 1974, one of Schwarzenegger's weight training partners was Ric Drasin, a professional wrestler who designed the original Gold's Gym logo in 1973. Schwarzenegger also became good friends with professional wrestler Superstar Billy Graham. In 1970, at age 23, Schwarzenegger captured his first Mr. Olympia title in New York, and would go on to win the title seven times.
The immigration law firm Siskind & Susser has stated that Schwarzenegger may have been an illegal immigrant at some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s because of violations in the terms of his visa. "LA Weekly" said in 2002 that Schwarzenegger was "the most famous US immigrant", who "overcame a thick Austrian accent and transcended the unlikely background of bodybuilding to become the biggest movie star in the world in the 1990s".
In 1977, Schwarzenegger's autobiography and weight-training guide, "Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder," was a huge success. In 1977, he posed for the gay magazine "After Dark". After taking an assortment of courses at Santa Monica College in California (including English classes), as well as further upper division classes at the University of California, Los Angeles as part of UCLA's extension program, he accumulated enough credits to be "within striking distance" of graduation. In 1979, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin–Superior as a distance education student, completing most of his coursework by correspondence and flying out to Superior to meet professors and take final exams. In May 1980, he formally graduated and received his bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing. He received his United States citizenship in 1983.
He later received an Honorary Degree from Stockton University in 2023.
Bodybuilding career.
Schwarzenegger is considered among the most important figures in the history of bodybuilding, and his legacy is commemorated in the Arnold Classic annual bodybuilding competition. He has remained a prominent face in bodybuilding long after his retirement, in part because of his ownership of gyms and fitness magazines. He has presided over numerous contests and awards shows.
For many years, he wrote a monthly column for the bodybuilding magazines "Muscle & Fitness" and "Flex". Shortly after being elected governor, he was appointed the executive editor of both magazines, in a largely symbolic capacity. The magazines agreed to donate $250,000 a year to the Governor's various physical fitness initiatives. When the deal, including the contract that gave Schwarzenegger at least $1 million a year, was made public in 2005, many criticized it as being a conflict of interest since the governor's office made decisions concerning regulation of dietary supplements in California. Consequently, Schwarzenegger relinquished the executive editor role in 2005. American Media Inc., which owns "Muscle & Fitness" and "Flex", announced in March 2013 that Schwarzenegger had accepted their renewed offer to be executive editor of the magazines.
One of the first competitions he won was the Junior Mr. Europe contest in 1965. He won Mr. Europe the following year, at age 19. He would go on to compete in many bodybuilding contests, and win most of them. His bodybuilding victories included five Mr. Universe wins (4 – NABBA [England], 1 – IFBB [USA]), and seven Mr. Olympia wins, a record which would stand until Lee Haney won his eighth consecutive Mr. Olympia title in 1991.
Schwarzenegger continues to work out. When asked about his personal training during the 2011 Arnold Classic he said that he was still working out a half an hour with weights every day.
Powerlifting/weightlifting.
During Schwarzenegger's early years in bodybuilding, he also competed in several Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting contests. Schwarzenegger's first professional competition was in 1963 and he won two weightlifting contests in 1964 and 1965, as well as two powerlifting contests in 1966 and 1968.
In 1967, Schwarzenegger won the Munich stone-lifting contest, in which a stone weighing 508 German pounds (254 kg / 560 lb) is lifted between the legs while standing on two footrests.
Mr. Olympia.
Schwarzenegger's goal was to become the greatest bodybuilder in the world, which meant becoming Mr. Olympia. His first attempt was in 1969, when he lost to three-time champion Sergio Oliva. However, Schwarzenegger came back in 1970 and won the competition, making him the youngest ever Mr. Olympia at the age of 23, a record he still holds to this day.
He continued his winning streak in the 1971–1974 competitions. He also toured different countries selling vitamins, as in Helsinki, Finland in 1972, when he lived at the YMCA Hotel Hospiz (nowadays Hotel Arthur) on Vuorikatu and presented vitamin pills at the Stockmann shopping center. In 1975, Schwarzenegger was once again in top form, and won the title for the sixth consecutive time, beating Franco Columbu. After the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest, Schwarzenegger announced his retirement from professional bodybuilding.
Months before the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest, filmmakers George Butler and Robert Fiore persuaded Schwarzenegger to compete and film his training in the bodybuilding documentary called "Pumping Iron". Schwarzenegger had only three months to prepare for the competition, after losing significant weight to appear in the film "Stay Hungry" with Jeff Bridges. Although significantly taller and heavier, Lou Ferrigno proved not to be a threat, and a lighter-than-usual Schwarzenegger convincingly won the 1975 Mr. Olympia.
Schwarzenegger came out of retirement, however, to compete in the 1980 Mr. Olympia. Schwarzenegger was training for his role in "Conan", and he got into such good shape because of the running, horseback riding and sword training, that he decided he wanted to win the Mr. Olympia contest one last time. He kept this plan a secret in the event that a training accident would prevent his entry and cause him to lose face. Schwarzenegger had been hired to provide color commentary for network television when he announced at the eleventh hour that, while he was there, "Why not compete?" Schwarzenegger ended up winning the event with only seven weeks of preparation. Having been declared Mr. Olympia for a seventh time, Schwarzenegger then officially retired from competition. This victory (subject of the documentary "The Comeback") was highly controversial, though, as fellow competitors and many observers felt that his lack of muscle mass (especially in his thighs) and subpar conditioning should have precluded him from winning against a very competitive lineup that year. Mike Mentzer, in particular, felt cheated and withdrew from competitive bodybuilding after that contest.
Steroid use.
Schwarzenegger has acknowledged using performance-enhancing anabolic steroids while they were legal, writing in 1977 that "steroids were helpful to me in maintaining muscle size while on a strict diet in preparation for a contest. I did not use them for muscle growth, but rather for muscle maintenance when cutting up." He has called the drugs "tissue building".
In 1999, Schwarzenegger sued Willi Heepe, a German doctor who publicly predicted his early death on the basis of a link between his steroid use and later heart problems. Since the doctor never examined him personally, Schwarzenegger collected a US$10,000 libel judgment against him in a German court. In 1999, Schwarzenegger also sued and settled with "Globe", a U.S. tabloid which had made similar predictions about the bodybuilder's future health.
Acting career.
Early roles.
Schwarzenegger wanted to move from bodybuilding into acting, finally achieving it when he was chosen to play the title role in "Hercules in New York" (1970). Credited under the stage name "Arnold Strong", his accent in the film was so thick that his lines were dubbed after production. His second film appearance was as a mob hitman in "The Long Goodbye" (1973), which was followed by a much more significant part in the film "Stay Hungry" (1976), for which he won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor. Schwarzenegger has discussed his early struggles in developing his acting career: "It was very difficult for me in the beginning – I was told by agents and casting people that my body was 'too weird', that I had a funny accent, and that my name was too long. You name it, and they told me I had to change it. Basically, everywhere I turned, I was told that I had no chance."
Schwarzenegger drew attention and boosted his profile in the bodybuilding film "Pumping Iron" (1977), elements of which were dramatized. In 1991, he purchased the rights to the film, its outtakes, and associated still photography. In 1977, he made guest appearances in single episodes of the ABC sitcom "The San Pedro Beach Bums" and the ABC police procedural "The Streets of San Francisco". Schwarzenegger auditioned for the title role of "The Incredible Hulk", but did not win the role because of his height. Later, Lou Ferrigno got the part of Dr. David Banner's alter ego. Schwarzenegger appeared with Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margret in the 1979 comedy "The Villain". In 1980, he starred in a biographical film of the 1950s actress Jayne Mansfield as Mansfield's husband, Mickey Hargitay.
Action superstar.
Schwarzenegger's breakthrough film was the sword and sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian" in 1982, which was a box-office hit. This was followed by a sequel, "Conan the Destroyer", in 1984, although it was not as successful as its predecessor. In 1983, Schwarzenegger starred in the promotional video "Carnival in Rio". In 1984, he made his first appearance as the eponymous character in James Cameron's science fiction action film "The Terminator". It has been called his acting career's signature role. Following this, Schwarzenegger made another sword and sorcery film, "Red Sonja", in 1985. During the 1980s, audiences had an appetite for action films, with both Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone becoming international stars. During the Schwarzenegger-Stallone rivalry they attacked each other in the press, and tried to surpass the other with more on-screen killings and larger weapons. Schwarzenegger's roles reflected his sense of humor, separating him from more serious action hero films. He made a number of successful action films in the 1980s, such as "Commando" (1985), "Raw Deal" (1986), "The Running Man" (1987), "Predator" (1987), and "Red Heat" (1988).
"Twins" (1988), a comedy with Danny DeVito, also proved successful. "Total Recall" (1990) netted Schwarzenegger $10 million (equivalent to $ million today) and 15% of the film's gross. A science fiction script, the film was based on the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". "Kindergarten Cop" (1990) reunited him with director Ivan Reitman, who directed him in "Twins". Schwarzenegger had a brief foray into directing, first with a 1990 episode of the TV series "Tales from the Crypt", entitled "The Switch", and then with the 1992 telemovie "Christmas in Connecticut". He has not directed since.
Schwarzenegger's commercial peak was his return as the title character in "" (1991), which was the highest-grossing film of the year. Film critic Roger Ebert commented that "Schwarzenegger's genius as a movie star is to find roles that build on, rather than undermine, his physical and vocal characteristics." In 1993, the National Association of Theatre Owners named him the "International Star of the Decade". His next film project, the 1993 self-aware action comedy spoof "Last Action Hero", was released opposite "Jurassic Park", and did not do well at the box office. His next film, the comedy drama "True Lies" (1994), was a popular spy film and saw Schwarzenegger reunited with James Cameron.
That same year, the comedy "Junior" was released, the last of Schwarzenegger's three collaborations with Ivan Reitman and again co-starring Danny DeVito. This film brought him his second Golden Globe nomination, this time for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. It was followed by the action thriller "Eraser" (1996), the Christmas comedy "Jingle All The Way" (1996), and the comic book-based "Batman & Robin" (1997), in which he played the villain Mr. Freeze. This was his final film before taking time to recuperate from a back injury. Following the critical failure of "Batman & Robin", his film career and box office prominence went into decline. He returned with the supernatural thriller "End of Days" (1999), later followed by the action films "The 6th Day" (2000) and "Collateral Damage" (2002), both of which failed to do well at the box office. In 2003, he made his third appearance as the title character in "", which went on to earn over $150 million domestically (equivalent to $ million today).
In tribute to Schwarzenegger in 2002, Forum Stadtpark, a local cultural association, proposed plans to build a "Terminator" statue in a park in central Graz. Schwarzenegger reportedly said he was flattered, but thought the money would be better spent on social projects and the Special Olympics.
Retirement.
His film appearances after becoming Governor of California included a three-second cameo appearance in "The Rundown" and the 2004 remake of "Around the World in 80 Days". In 2005, he appeared as himself in the film "The Kid & I". He voiced Baron von Steuben in the "Liberty's Kids" episode "Valley Forge". He had been rumored to be appearing in "Terminator Salvation" as the original T-800; he denied his involvement, but he ultimately did appear briefly via his image being inserted into the movie from stock footage of the first "Terminator" movie. Schwarzenegger appeared in Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables", where he made a cameo appearance.
Return to acting.
In January 2011, just weeks after leaving office in California, Schwarzenegger announced that he was reading several new scripts for future films, one of them being the World War II action drama "With Wings as Eagles", written by Randall Wallace, based on a true story.
On March 6, 2011, at the Arnold Seminar of the Arnold Classic, Schwarzenegger revealed that he was being considered for several films, including sequels to "The Terminator" and remakes of "Predator" and "The Running Man", and that he was "packaging" a comic book character. The character was later revealed to be the Governator, star of the comic book and animated series of the same name. Schwarzenegger inspired the character and co-developed it with Stan Lee, who would have produced the series. Schwarzenegger would have voiced the Governator.
On May 20, 2011, Schwarzenegger's entertainment counsel announced that all film projects currently in development were being halted: "Schwarzenegger is focusing on personal matters and is not willing to commit to any production schedules or timelines." On July 11, 2011, it was announced that Schwarzenegger was considering a comeback film, despite legal problems related to his divorce. He starred in "The Expendables 2" (2012) as Trench Mauser, and starred in "The Last Stand" (2013), his first leading role in 10 years, and "Escape Plan" (2013), his first co-starring role alongside Sylvester Stallone. He starred in "Sabotage", released in March 2014, and returned as Trench Mauser in "The Expendables 3", released in August 2014. He starred in the fifth Terminator film "Terminator Genisys" in 2015, and would reprise his role as Conan the Barbarian in "The Legend of Conan", later renamed "Conan the Conqueror." However, in April 2017, producer Chris Morgan stated that Universal had dropped the project, although there was a possibility of a TV show. The story of the film was supposed to be set 30 years after the first, with some inspiration from Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven".
In August 2016, his filming of action-comedy "Killing Gunther" was temporarily interrupted by bank robbers near the filming location in Surrey, British Columbia. The film was released in September 2017. He was announced to star and produce in a film about the ruins of Sanxingdui called "The Guest of Sanxingdui" as an ambassador.
On February 6, 2018, Amazon Studios announced they were working with Schwarzenegger to develop a new series entitled "Outrider" in which he will star and executive produce. The western-drama set in the Oklahoma Indian Territory in the late 19th century will follow a deputy (portrayed by Schwarzenegger) who is tasked with apprehending a legendary outlaw in the wilderness, but is forced to partner with a ruthless Federal Marshal to make sure justice is properly served. The series will also mark as Schwarzenegger's first major scripted TV role.
Schwarzenegger returned to the "Terminator" franchise with "", which was released on November 1, 2019. It was produced by the series' co-creator James Cameron, who directed him previously in the first two films in the series and in "True Lies". It was shot in Almería, Hungary and the US.
"The Celebrity Apprentice".
In September 2015, the media announced that Schwarzenegger was to replace Donald Trump as host of "The New Celebrity Apprentice". This show, the 15th season of "The Apprentice", aired during the 2016–2017 TV season. In the show, he used the phrases "you're terminated" and "get to the choppa", which are quotes from some of his famous roles ("The Terminator" and "Predator", respectively), when firing the contestants.
In March 2017, following repeated criticisms from Trump, Schwarzenegger announced that he would not return for another season on the show. He also reacted to Trump's remarks in January 2017 via Instagram: "Hey, Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs? You take over TV because you're such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job, and then people can finally sleep comfortably again."
Political career.
Early politics.
Schwarzenegger has been a registered Republican for many years. When he was an actor, his political views were always well known as they contrasted with those of many other prominent Hollywood stars, who are generally considered to be a left-wing and Democratic-leaning community. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Schwarzenegger gave a speech and explained that he was a Republican because he believed the Democrats of the 1960s sounded too much like Austrian socialists.
In 1985, Schwarzenegger appeared in "Stop the Madness", an anti-drug music video sponsored by the Reagan administration. He first came to wide public notice as a Republican during the 1988 presidential election, accompanying then–Vice President George H. W. Bush at a campaign rally.
Schwarzenegger famously introduced the first episode of the 1990 Milton Friedman hosted PBS series "Free to Choose" stating: Schwarzenegger goes on to tell of how he and his then wife Maria Shriver were in Palm Springs preparing to play a game of mixed doubles when Milton Friedman's famous show came on the television. Schwarzenegger recalls that while watching Friedman's "Free to Choose", Schwarzenegger, "...recognized Friedman from the study of my own degree in economics, but I didn't know I was watching Free to Choose... it knocked me out. Dr. Friedman expressed, validated and explained everything I ever thought or experienced or observed about the way the economy works, and I guess I was really ready to hear it." Numerous critics state that Schwarzenegger strayed from much of Friedman's economic ways of thinking in later years, especially upon being elected Governor of California from 2003 through 2011.
Schwarzenegger's first political appointment was as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, on which he served from 1990 to 1993. He was nominated by the then-President Bush, who dubbed him "Conan the Republican". He later served as chairman for the California Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under Governor Pete Wilson.
Between 1993 and 1994, Schwarzenegger was a Red Cross ambassador (a ceremonial role fulfilled by celebrities), recording several television and radio public service announcements to donate blood.
In an interview with "Talk" magazine in late 1999, Schwarzenegger was asked if he thought of running for office. He replied, "I think about it many times. The possibility is there because I feel it inside." "The Hollywood Reporter" claimed shortly after that Schwarzenegger sought to end speculation that he might run for governor of California. Following his initial comments, Schwarzenegger said, "I'm in show business – I am in the middle of my career. Why would I go away from that and jump into something else?"
Governor of California.
Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy in the 2003 California recall election for Governor of California on the August 6, 2003, episode of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". Schwarzenegger had the most name recognition in a crowded field of candidates, but he had never held public office and his political views were unknown to most Californians. His candidacy immediately became national and international news, with media outlets dubbing him the "Governator" (referring to "The Terminator" movies, see above) and "The Running Man" (the name of another one of his films), and calling the recall election "Total Recall" (yet another movie starring Schwarzenegger). Schwarzenegger declined to participate in several debates with other recall replacement candidates, and appeared in only one debate on September 24, 2003.
On October 7, 2003, the recall election resulted in Governor Gray Davis being removed from office with 55.4% of the "Yes" vote in favor of a recall. Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California under the second question on the ballot with 48.6% of the vote to choose a successor to Davis. Schwarzenegger defeated Democrat Cruz Bustamante, fellow Republican Tom McClintock, and others. His nearest rival, Bustamante, received 31% of the vote. In total, Schwarzenegger won the election by about 1.3 million votes. Under the regulations of the California Constitution, no runoff election was required. Schwarzenegger was the second foreign-born governor of California after Irish-born Governor John G. Downey in 1862.
Schwarzenegger is a moderate Republican. He says he is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. On the issue of abortion, he describes himself as pro-choice, but supports parental notification for minors and a ban on partial-birth abortion. He has supported gay rights, such as domestic partnerships, and he performed a same-sex marriage as governor. However, Schwarzenegger vetoed bills that would have legalized same-sex marriage in California in 2005 and 2007. He additionally vetoed two bills that would have implemented a single-payer health care system in California in 2006 and 2008, respectively.
Schwarzenegger was entrenched in what he considered to be his mandate in cleaning up political gridlock. Building on a catchphrase from the sketch "Hans and Franz" from "Saturday Night Live" (which partly parodied his bodybuilding career), Schwarzenegger called the Democratic State politicians "girlie men".
Schwarzenegger's early victories included repealing an unpopular increase in the vehicle registration fee as well as preventing driver's licenses from being given out to illegal immigrants, but later he began to feel the backlash when powerful state unions began to oppose his various initiatives. Key among his reckoning with political realities was a special election he called in November 2005, in which four ballot measures he sponsored were defeated. Schwarzenegger accepted personal responsibility for the defeats and vowed to continue to seek consensus for the people of California. He would later comment that "no one could win if the opposition raised 160 million dollars to defeat you". The U.S. Supreme Court later found the public employee unions' use of compulsory fundraising during the campaign had been illegal in "Knox v. Service Employees International Union, Local 1000".
Schwarzenegger, against the advice of fellow Republican strategists, appointed a Democrat, Susan Kennedy, as his Chief of Staff. He gradually moved towards a more politically moderate position, determined to build a winning legacy with only a short time to go until the next gubernatorial election.
Schwarzenegger ran for re-election against Democrat Phil Angelides, the California State Treasurer, in the 2006 elections, held on November 7, 2006. Despite a poor year nationally for the Republican party, Schwarzenegger won re-election with 56.0% of the vote compared with 38.9% for Angelides, a margin of well over 1 million votes. Around this time, many commentators saw Schwarzenegger as moving away from the right and towards the center of the political spectrum. After hearing a speech by Schwarzenegger at the 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast, in which Schwarzenegger said, in part "How wrong I was when I said everyone has an equal opportunity to make it in America [...] the state of California does not provide (equal) education for all of our children", San Francisco mayor & future governor of California Gavin Newsom said that "[H]e's becoming a Democrat [... H]e's running back, not even to the center. I would say center-left".
Some speculated that Schwarzenegger might run for the United States Senate in 2010, as his governorship would be term-limited by that time. Such rumors turned out to be false.
Wendy Leigh, who wrote an unofficial biography on Schwarzenegger, claims he plotted his political rise from an early age using the movie business and bodybuilding as the means to escape a depressing home. Leigh portrays Schwarzenegger as obsessed with power and quotes him as saying, "I wanted to be part of the small percentage of people who were leaders, not the large mass of followers. I think it is because I saw leaders use 100% of their potential – I was always fascinated by people in control of other people." Schwarzenegger has said that it was never his intention to enter politics, but he says, "I married into a political family. You get together with them and you hear about policy, about reaching out to help people. I was exposed to the idea of being a public servant and Eunice and Sargent Shriver became my heroes." Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the sister of John F. Kennedy, and mother-in-law to Schwarzenegger; Sargent Shriver is husband to Eunice and father-in-law to Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger cannot run for U.S. president as he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Schwarzenegger is a dual Austrian and United States citizen. He has held Austrian citizenship since birth and U.S. citizenship since becoming naturalized in 1983. Being Austrian and thus European, he was able to win the 2007 European Voice campaigner of the year award for taking action against climate change with the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme with other US states and possibly with the EU.
Because of his personal wealth from his acting career, Schwarzenegger did not accept his governor's salary of $175,000 per year.
Schwarzenegger's endorsement in the Republican primary of the 2008 U.S. presidential election was highly sought; despite being good friends with candidates Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain, Schwarzenegger remained neutral throughout 2007 and early 2008. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race on January 30, 2008, largely because of a poor showing in Florida, and endorsed McCain. Later that night, Schwarzenegger was in the audience at a Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. The following day, he endorsed McCain, joking, "It's Rudy's fault!" (in reference to his friendships with both candidates and that he could not make up his mind). Schwarzenegger's endorsement was thought to be a boost for Senator McCain's campaign; both spoke about their concerns for the environment and economy.
In its April 2010 report, Progressive ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Schwarzenegger one of 11 "worst governors" in the United States because of various ethics issues throughout Schwarzenegger's term as governor.
Governor Schwarzenegger played a significant role in opposing Proposition 66, a proposed amendment of the Californian Three Strikes Law, in November 2004. This amendment would have required the third felony to be either violent or serious to mandate a 25-years-to-life sentence. In the last week before the ballot, Schwarzenegger launched an intense campaign against Proposition 66. He stated that "it would release 26,000 dangerous criminals and rapists".
Although he began his tenure as governor with record high approval ratings (as high as 65% in May 2004), he left office with a near-record low 23% only one percent higher than that of Gray Davis, when he was recalled in October 2003.
Death of Luis Santos.
In May 2010, Esteban Núñez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the death of Luis Santos. Núñez is the son of Fabian Núñez, then California Assembly Speaker of the House and a close friend and staunch political ally of then governor Schwarzenegger.
As a personal favor to "a friend", just hours before he left office, and as one of his last official acts, Schwarzenegger commuted Núñez's sentence by more than half, to seven years. He believed that Núñez's sentence was "excessive" in comparison with the same prison term imposed on Ryan Jett, the man who fatally stabbed Santos. Against protocol, Schwarzenegger did not inform Santos' family or the San Diego County prosecutors about the commutation. They learned about it in a call from a reporter.
The Santos family, along with the San Diego district attorney, sued to stop the commutation, claiming that it violated Marsy's Law. In September 2012, Sacramento County superior court judge Lloyd Connelly stated, "Based on the evidentiary records before this court involving this case, there was an abuse of discretion...This was a distasteful commutation. It was repugnant to the bulk of the citizenry of this state." However, Connelly ruled that Schwarzenegger remained within his executive powers as governor. Subsequently, as a direct result of the way the commutation was handled, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bipartisan bill that allows offenders' victims and their families to be notified at least 10 days before any commutations. Núñez was released from prison after serving less than six years.
Drug use and allegations of sexual misconduct.
During his initial campaign for governor in 2003, allegations of sexual and personal misconduct were raised against Schwarzenegger. Within the last five days before the election, news reports appeared in the "Los Angeles Times" recounting decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct from six individual women. Schwarzenegger responded to the allegations in 2004 admitting that he has "behaved badly sometimes" and apologized, but also stated that "a lot of [what] you see in the stories is not true". One of the women who came forward was British television personality Anna Richardson, who settled a libel lawsuit in August 2006 against Schwarzenegger; his top aide, Sean Walsh; and his publicist, Sheryl Main. A joint statement read: "The parties are content to put this matter behind them and are pleased that this legal dispute has now been settled." In 2023, Schwarzenegger revisited the issue while promoting his new three-part biographical documentary on Netflix called "Arnold". Schwarzenegger stated that he was "totally wrong".
During this time a 1977 interview in adult magazine "Oui" gained attention, in which Schwarzenegger discussed using substances such as marijuana. Schwarzenegger is shown smoking a marijuana joint after winning Mr. Olympia in 1975 in the documentary film "Pumping Iron" (1977). In an interview with "GQ" magazine in October 2007, Schwarzenegger said, "[Marijuana] is not a drug. It's a leaf. My drug was pumping iron, trust me." His spokesperson later said the comment was meant to be a joke.
Citizenship.
Schwarzenegger became a naturalized U.S. citizen on September 17, 1983. Shortly before he gained his citizenship, he asked the Austrian authorities for the right to keep his Austrian citizenship, as Austria does not usually allow dual citizenship. His request was granted, and he retained his Austrian citizenship. In 2005, Peter Pilz, a member of the Austrian Parliament from the Austrian Green Party, unsuccessfully advocated for Parliament to revoke Schwarzenegger's Austrian citizenship due to his decision not to prevent the executions of Donald Beardslee and Stanley Williams. Pilz argued that Schwarzenegger caused damage to Austria's reputation in the international community because Austria abolished the death penalty in 1968. Pilz based his argument on Article 33 of the Austrian Citizenship Act, which states: "A citizen, who is in the public service of a foreign country, shall be deprived of his citizenship if he heavily damages the reputation or the interests of the Austrian Republic." Pilz claimed that Schwarzenegger's actions in support of the death penalty (prohibited in Austria under Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights) had damaged Austria's reputation. Schwarzenegger explained his actions by pointing out that his only duty as Governor of California with respect to the death penalty was to correct an error by the justice system by pardon or clemency if such an error had occurred.
Environmental record.
On September 27, 2006, Schwarzenegger signed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, creating the nation's first cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The law set new regulations on the amount of emissions utilities, refineries, and manufacturing plants are allowed to release into the atmosphere. Schwarzenegger also signed a second global warming bill that prohibits large utilities and corporations in California from making long-term contracts with suppliers who do not meet the state's greenhouse gas emission standards. The two bills are part of a plan to reduce California's emissions by 25 percent to 1990s levels by 2020. In 2005, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order calling to reduce greenhouse gases to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Schwarzenegger signed another executive order on October 17, 2006, allowing California to work with the Northeast's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. They plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by issuing a limited amount of carbon credits to each power plant in participating states. Any power plants that exceed emissions for the number of carbon credits will have to purchase more credits to cover the difference. The plan took effect in 2009. In addition to using his political power to fight global warming, the governor has taken steps at his home to reduce his personal carbon footprint. Schwarzenegger has adapted one of his Hummers to run on hydrogen and another to run on biofuels. He has also installed solar panels to heat his home.
In respect for his contribution to the direction of the US motor industry, Schwarzenegger was invited to open the 2009 SAE World Congress in Detroit on April 20, 2009.
In 2011, Schwarzenegger founded the R20 Regions of Climate Action to develop a sustainable, low-carbon economy. In 2017, he joined French President Emmanuel Macron in calling for the adoption of a Global Pact for the Environment.
In 2017, Schwarzenegger launched the Austrian World Summit, an international climate conference that is held annually in Vienna, Austria. The Austrian World Summit is organized by the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative and aims is to bring together representatives from politics, civil society and business to create a broad alliance for climate protection and to identify concrete solutions to the climate crisis.
Presidential ambitions.
Presidential aspirations by the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger would be blocked by a constitutional hurdle; Article II, Section I, Clause V prevents individuals who are not natural-born citizens of the United States from assuming the office. The Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment in 2003 was widely accredited as the "Amend for Arnold" bill, which would have added an amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing his run. In 2004, the "Amend for Arnold" campaign was launched, featuring a website and TV advertising promotion.
In June 2007, Schwarzenegger was featured on the cover of "Time" magazine with Michael Bloomberg, and subsequently, the two joked about a presidential ticket together.
Business career.
Schwarzenegger has had enjoyed a highly successful business career. Following his move to the United States, Schwarzenegger became a "prolific goal setter" and would write his objectives at the start of the year on index cards, like starting a mail order business or buying a new car – and succeed in doing so. As a result of his early business and investment success, Schwarzenegger became a millionaire by the age of 25, well before making a name for himself in Hollywood. His path to financial independence came as a result of his success as an entrepreneur and investor with a series of lucrative business ventures and real estate investments.
Early ventures.
In 1968, Schwarzenegger and fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu started a bricklaying business. The business flourished thanks to the pair's marketing savvy and an increased demand following the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. When signs of profitability emerged as business began to pick up, Schwarzenegger and Columbu rolled over the profits from their bricklaying venture to start a mail-order business that sold bodybuilding and fitness-related equipment and instructional tapes.
Investments.
Schwarzenegger transferred profits from the mail-order business and his bodybuilding-competition winnings by rolling the proceeds into his first real estate investment: an apartment building he purchased for $10,000. Capitalizing on the evergreen profits and bountiful experience that he gained in over the years in real estate investing, Schwarzenegger would later go on to invest in a number of real estate holding companies across the United States and ventures around the world.
Schwarzenegger and fellow Hollywood veteran actor and industry adversary Sylvester Stallone brought their long-storied industry rivalry to an end by both investing in the Planet Hollywood chain of international theme restaurants (modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe) along with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. However, Schwarzenegger severed his financial ties with the chain in early 2000. Schwarzenegger remarked that the restaurant did not achieve the success that he had hoped for, claiming he wanted to focus his attention on "new US global business ventures" and his then-burgeoning acting career.
Schwarzenegger also made a private commercial real estate investment in the Easton Town Center, a shopping mall located in Columbus, Ohio. He has talked about some of those who have helped him over the years in business: "I couldn't have learned about business without a parade of teachers guiding me... from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump... and now, Les Wexner and Warren Buffett. I even learned a thing or two from Planet Hollywood, such as when to get out! And I did!" He has significant equity ownership in Dimensional Fund Advisors, an Austin-based investment firm. Schwarzenegger is also the owner of Arnold's Sports Festival, a sports and fitness festival which he started in 1989 and is held annually in Columbus, Ohio. It is a festival that hosts thousands of international health and fitness professionals which has also expanded into a three-day expo. He also owns a film production company called Oak Productions, Inc. and Fitness Publications, a joint publishing venture with Simon & Schuster.
In 2018, Schwarzenegger partnered with basketball player LeBron James to establish Ladder, a company that developed nutritional supplements to help athletes with severe cramps. The pair sold Ladder to Openfit for an undisclosed amount in 2020 after reporting more than $4 million in sales for that year.
Restaurant.
In 1992, Schwarzenegger and his wife opened a restaurant in Santa Monica called Schatzi On Main. "Schatzi" literally means "little treasure," and colloquially "honey" or "darling" in German. In 1998, he sold his restaurant.
Wealth.
Schwarzenegger's net worth had been conservatively estimated at $100 million to $200 million. After separating from his wife, Maria Shriver, in 2011, it was estimated that his net worth had been approximately $400 million, and even as high as $800 million, based on tax returns he filed in 2006. Over the years, he shrewdly invested his bodybuilding and film earnings in an extensive array of stocks, bonds, privately-controlled companies, and investment-grade real estate across the United States and worldwide, making his net worth difficult to accurately calculate, particularly in light of declining real estate values owing to economic recessions in the United States and Europe that occurred during the late 2000s. In June 1997, he spent $38 million of his own money on a private Gulfstream jet. Regarding his private fortune, Schwarzenegger once quipped: "Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million, but I was just as happy when I had $48 million."
Commercial advertisements.
Schwarzenegger has also appeared in a series of commercials for the Machine Zone game "Mobile Strike" as a military commander and spokesman.
Personal life.
Early relationships.
In 1969, Schwarzenegger met Barbara Outland (later Barbara Outland Baker), an English teacher with whom he lived until 1974. Schwarzenegger said of Baker in his 1977 memoir, "Basically it came down to this: she was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man, and hated the very idea of ordinary life." Baker has described Schwarzenegger as a "joyful personality, totally charismatic, adventurous, and athletic" but claims that towards the end of the relationship he became "insufferable—classically conceited—the world revolved around him". Baker published her memoir in 2006, entitled "Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak". Although Baker painted an unflattering portrait of her former lover at times, Schwarzenegger actually contributed to the tell-all book with a foreword, and also met with Baker for three hours.
Baker claims that she only learned of his being unfaithful after they split, and talks of a turbulent and passionate love life. Schwarzenegger has made it clear that their respective recollection of events can differ. The couple first met six to eight months after his arrival in the U.S. Their first date was watching the first Apollo Moon landing on television. They shared an apartment in Santa Monica, California, for three and a half years, and having little money, they would visit the beach all day or have barbecues in the back yard. Although Baker claims that when she first met Schwarzenegger, he had "little understanding of polite society" and she found him a turn-off, she says, "He's as much a self-made man as it's possible to be—he never got encouragement from his parents, his family, his brother. He just had this huge determination to prove himself, and that was very attractive ... I'll go to my grave knowing Arnold loved me."
Schwarzenegger met his next lover, Beverly Hills hairdresser's assistant Sue Moray, on Venice Beach in July 1977. According to Moray, the couple led an open relationship: "We were faithful when we were both in LA... but when he was out of town, we were free to do whatever we wanted." Schwarzenegger met television journalist Maria Shriver, niece of President John F. Kennedy, at the Robert F. Kennedy Tennis Tournament in August 1977. He went on to have a relationship with both Moray and Shriver until August 1978 when Moray (who knew of his relationship with Shriver) issued an ultimatum.
Marriage and family.
On April 26, 1986, Schwarzenegger married Shriver in Hyannis, Massachusetts. They have four children, including Katherine Schwarzenegger and Patrick Schwarzenegger. All of their children were born in Los Angeles. The family lived in an home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, with vacation homes in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. They attended St. Monica's Catholic Church.
Divorce.
On May 9, 2011, Shriver and Schwarzenegger ended their relationship after 25 years of marriage with Shriver moving out of their Brentwood mansion. On May 16, 2011, the "Los Angeles Times" revealed that Schwarzenegger had fathered a son more than 14 years earlier with an employee in their household, Mildred Patricia "Patty" Baena. "After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger said to the "Times". In the statement, Schwarzenegger did not mention that he had confessed to his wife only after she had confronted him with the information, which she had done after confirming with the housekeeper what she had suspected about the child.
Baena is of Guatemalan origin. She was employed by the family for 20 years and retired in January 2011. The pregnant Baena was working in the home while Shriver was pregnant with the youngest of the couple's four children. Baena's son with Schwarzenegger was born days after Shriver gave birth. Schwarzenegger said that it took seven or eight years before he found out that he had fathered a child with his housekeeper. It was not until the boy "started looking like [him] ... that [he] put things together". Schwarzenegger has taken financial responsibility for the child "from the start and continued to provide support". KNX 1070 radio reported that, in 2010, he bought a new four-bedroom house with a pool for Baena and their son in Bakersfield, California. Baena separated from her husband, Rogelio, a few months after Joseph's birth. She filed for divorce in 2008. Rogelio said that the child's birth certificate was falsified and that he planned to sue Schwarzenegger for engaging in conspiracy to falsify a public document, a serious crime in California.
Pursuant to the divorce judgment, Schwarzenegger kept the Brentwood home, while Shriver purchased a new home nearby so that the children could travel between their parents' homes. They shared custody of the two youngest children. Schwarzenegger came under fire after the initial petition did not include spousal support and a reimbursement of attorney's fees. However, he claims this was not intentional and that he signed the initial documents without having properly read them. He filed amended divorce papers remedying this. Schwarzenegger and Shriver finalized their divorce in 2021, ten years after separating.
In June 2022, a jury ruled that Maria Shriver was entitled to half of her ex-husband's post-divorce savings that he earned from 1986 to 2011, including a pension.
After the scandal, Danish-Italian actress Brigitte Nielsen came forward and stated that she too had an affair with Schwarzenegger during the production of "Red Sonja", while he had just started his relationship with Shriver. When asked in January 2014, "Of all the things you are famous for ... which are you least proud of?" Schwarzenegger replied, "I'm least proud of the mistakes I made that caused my family pain and split us up."
Accidents, injuries, and other health problems.
Health problems.
Schwarzenegger was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, an aortic valve with only two leaflets, where a normal aortic valve has three. He opted in 1997 for a replacement heart valve made from his own pulmonic valve, which itself was replaced with a cadaveric pulmonic valve, in a Ross procedure; medical experts predicted he would require pulmonic heart valve replacement surgery within the next two to eight years because his valve would progressively degrade. Schwarzenegger apparently opted against a mechanical valve, the only permanent solution available at the time of his surgery, because it would have sharply limited his physical activity and capacity to exercise.
On March 29, 2018, Schwarzenegger underwent emergency open-heart surgery for replacement of his replacement pulmonic valve. He said about his recovery: "I underwent open-heart surgery this spring, I had to use a walker. I had to do breathing exercises five times a day to retrain my lungs. I was frustrated and angry, and in my worst moments, I couldn't see the way back to my old self."
In 2020, 23 years after his first surgery, Schwarzenegger underwent a surgery for a new aortic valve.
Accidents, injuries.
On December 9, 2001, he broke six ribs and was hospitalized for four days after a motorcycle crash in Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger saved a drowning man in 2004 while on vacation in Hawaii by swimming out and bringing him back to shore.
On January 8, 2006, while Schwarzenegger was riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle in Los Angeles with his son Patrick in the sidecar, another driver backed into the street he was riding on, causing him and his son to collide with the car at a low speed. While his son and the other driver were unharmed, Schwarzenegger sustained an injury to his lip requiring 15 stitches. "No citations were issued," said Officer Jason Lee, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. Schwarzenegger did not obtain his motorcycle license until July 3, 2006.
Schwarzenegger tripped over his ski pole and broke his right femur while skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, with his family on December 23, 2006. On December 26, he underwent a 90-minute operation in which cables and screws were used to wire the broken bone back together. He was released from St. John's Health Center on December 30, 2006.
Schwarzenegger's private jet made an emergency landing at Van Nuys Airport on June 19, 2009, after the pilot reported smoke coming from the cockpit, according to a statement released by his press secretary. No one was harmed in the incident.
On May 18, 2019, while on a visit to South Africa, Schwarzenegger was attacked and dropkicked from behind by an unknown malefactor while giving autographs to his fans at one of the local schools. Despite the surprise and unprovoked nature of the attack, he reportedly suffered no injuries and continued to interact with fans. The attacker was apprehended and Schwarzenegger declined to press charges against him.
Schwarzenegger was involved in a multi-vehicle collision on the afternoon of Friday, January 21, 2022. Schwarzenegger was driving a black GMC Yukon SUV near the intersections of Sunset Blvd and Allenford Ave in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, when his vehicle collided with a red Toyota Prius. The driver of the Prius was transported to the hospital for injuries sustained to her head. Schwarzenegger was uninjured.
Height.
Schwarzenegger's official height of has been brought into question by several articles. During his bodybuilding days in the late 1960s, it was claimed that he measured . However, in 1988, both the "Daily Mail" and "Time Out" magazine mentioned that Schwarzenegger appeared noticeably shorter. Prior to running for governor, Schwarzenegger's height was once again questioned in an article by the "Chicago Reader". As governor, Schwarzenegger engaged in a light-hearted exchange with Assemblyman Herb Wesson over their heights. At one point, Wesson made an unsuccessful attempt to, in his own words, "settle this once and for all and find out how tall he is" by using a tailor's tape measure on the Governor. Schwarzenegger retaliated by placing a pillow stitched with the words "Need a lift?" on the Wesson's chair before a negotiating session in his office. Democrat Bob Mulholland also claimed Schwarzenegger was and that he wore risers in his boots. In 1999, "Men's Health" magazine stated his height was .
Autobiography.
Schwarzenegger's autobiography, "Total Recall", was released in October 2012. He devotes one chapter called "The Secret" to his extramarital affair. The majority of his book is about his successes in the three major chapters in his life: bodybuilder, actor, and Governor of California.
Vehicles.
Growing up during the Allied occupation of Austria, Schwarzenegger commonly saw heavy military vehicles such as tanks as a child. As a result, he paid $20,000 to bring his Austrian Army M47 Patton tank (331) to the United States, which he previously operated during his mandatory service in 1965. However, he later obtained his vehicle in 1991/2, during his tenure as the Chairmen of the President's Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, and now uses it to support his charity. His first car ever was an Opel Kadett in 1969 after serving in the Austrian army, then he rode a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy in 1991.
Moreover, he came to develop an interest in large vehicles and became the first civilian in the U.S. to purchase a Humvee. He was so enamored by the vehicle that he lobbied the Humvee's manufacturer, AM General, to produce a street-legal, civilian version, which they did in 1992; the first two Hummer H1s they sold were also purchased by Schwarzenegger. In 2010, he had one regular and three running on non-fossil power sources; one for hydrogen, one for vegetable oil, and one for biodiesel. Schwarzenegger was in the news in 2014 for buying a rare Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse. He was spotted and filmed in 2015 in his car, painted silver with bright aluminum forged wheels. His Bugatti has its interior adorned in dark brown leather. In 2017, Schwarzenegger acquired a Mercedes G-Class modified for all-electric drive.
The Hummers that Schwarzenegger bought in 1992 are so large—each weighs and is wide—that they are classified as large trucks, and U.S. fuel economy regulations do not apply to them. During the gubernatorial recall campaign, he announced that he would convert one of his Hummers to burn hydrogen. The conversion was reported to have cost about $21,000. After the election, he signed an executive order to jump-start the building of hydrogen refueling plants called the California Hydrogen Highway Network, and gained a U.S. Department of Energy grant to help pay for its projected US$91,000,000 cost. California took delivery of the first H2H (Hydrogen Hummer) in October 2004.
Public image and legacy.
Schwarzenegger has been involved with the Special Olympics for many years after they were founded by his ex-mother-in-law Eunice Kennedy Shriver. In 2007, Schwarzenegger was the official spokesperson for the Special Olympics held in Shanghai, China. Schwarzenegger believes that quality school opportunities should be made available to children who might not normally be able to access them. In 1995, he founded the Inner City Games Foundation (ICG) which provides cultural, educational and community enrichment programming to youth. ICG is active in 15 cities around the country and serves over 250,000 children in over 400 schools countrywide. He has also been involved with After-School All-Stars and founded the Los Angeles branch in 2002. ASAS is an after school program provider, educating youth about health, fitness and nutrition.
On February 12, 2010, Schwarzenegger took part in the Vancouver Olympic Torch relay. He handed off the flame to the next runner, Sebastian Coe.
Schwarzenegger had a collection of Marxist busts, which he requested from Russian friends during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as they were being destroyed. In 2011, he revealed that his wife had requested their removal, but he kept the one of Vladimir Lenin present, since "he was the first". In 2015, he said he kept the Lenin bust to "show losers".
Schwarzenegger is a supporter of Israel, and has participated in a Los Angeles pro-Israel rally among other similar events. In 2004, Schwarzenegger visited Israel to break ground on Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, and to lay a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, he also met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Moshe Katsav. In 2011, at the Independence Day celebration hosted by the Israeli Consulate General in Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger said: "I love Israel. When I became governor, Israel was the first country that I visited. When I had the chance to sign a bill calling on California pension funds to divest their money from companies that do business with Iran, I immediately signed that bill", then he added, "I knew that we could not send money to these crazy dictators who hate us and threaten Israel any time they have a bad day."
Schwarzenegger supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Schwarzenegger also expressed support for the 2011 military intervention in Libya. In 2014, Schwarzenegger released a video message in support of the Euromaidan protests against Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2022, Schwarzenegger released another video message condemning the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Schwarzenegger's Twitter account is one of the 22 accounts that the president of Russia's Twitter account follows.
Schwarzenegger, who played football as a boy, grew up watching Bayern Munich and Sturm Graz. He also expressed his admiration of Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool in October 2019.
Schwarzenegger inspired many actors to become action heroes, including Dwayne Johnson, Matt McColm, Christian Boeving, Vidyut Jamwal, and Daniel Greene. Boeving's character in the 2003 action film "When Eagles Strike" was based on Schwarzenegger's image from the late 1980s: mostly on Major "Dutch" Schaefer from "Predator" (1987) and Colonel John Matrix from "Commando" (1985). In 2022, Schwarzenegger's use of a shotgun in the "Terminator" film series was referenced by actor Vijay in the Indian film "Beast".
Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy.
In 2012, Schwarzenegger helped to found the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, which is a part of the USC Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. The institute's mission is to "[advance] post-partisanship, where leaders put people over political parties and work together to find the best ideas and solutions to benefit the people they serve" and to "seek to influence public policy and public debate in finding solutions to the serious challenges we face". Schwarzenegger serves as chairman of the institute.
Global warming.
At a 2015 security conference, Schwarzenegger called climate change the issue of our time. He also urged politicians to stop treating climate change as a political issue.
2016 presidential election.
For the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, Schwarzenegger endorsed fellow Republican John Kasich. However, he announced in October that he would not vote for the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in that year's United States presidential election, with this being the first time he did not vote for the Republican candidate since becoming a citizen in 1983.
Post-2016.
In recent years, Schwarzenegger has been advocating for eating less meat, and he is an executive producer alongside James Cameron et al. behind the documentary "The Game Changers", that documents the explosive rise of plant-based eating in professional sports, in which he is also featured.
In 2017, Schwarzenegger condemned white supremacists who were seen carrying Nazi and Confederate flags by calling their heroes "losers".
In 2019, while at the "Arnold Classic Africa" sports competition as an official, Schwarzenegger was attacked by an assailant in a flying kick. The assailant was arrested.
Following the January 6 United States Capitol attack by supporters of President Donald Trump, Schwarzenegger posted a video address on social media in which he likened the insurrection to Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht, which he described as "a night of rampage against the Jews carried out [by] the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys". He spoke of his father's alcoholism, domestic violence, and abuse, and how it was typical of other former Nazis and collaborators in the post-war era; and described Trump as "a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever."
In late March 2021, Schwarzenegger was interviewed by "Politico" about the upcoming recall election in California in which he said that "it's pretty much the same atmosphere today as it was then", and when he was asked about Newsom's claim of this being a "Republican recall" he responded that "this recall effort is sparked by ordinary folks", and that this was not a power grab by Republicans.
Schwarzenegger has spoken out about COVID-19, urging Americans to wear masks and practice social distancing. In August 2021, he said: "There is a virus here. It kills people and the only way we prevent it is: get vaccinated, wear masks, do social distancing, washing your hands all the time, and not just to think about, 'Well my freedom is being kind of disturbed here.' No, screw your freedom."
In February 2022, Schwarzenegger said his diet has been mostly vegan for the past five years, saying it was about 80% plant-based food. He has been outspoken about the benefits of a vegan diet for health and said it had helped him feel "healthier and younger overall". He also credited it to helping him lower his cholesterol.
Awards and honors.
Bodybuilding
Entertainment
Halls of Fame
State/local
International
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1807 | ASA | ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to:
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1810 | Actium | Actium or Aktion () was a town on a promontory in ancient Acarnania at the entrance of the Ambraciot Gulf, off which Octavian gained his celebrated victory, the Battle of Actium, over Antony and Cleopatra, on September 2, 31 BCE.
History.
Actium belonged originally to the Corinthian colonists of Anactorium, who probably founded the sanctuary of Apollo Actius. This temple was of great antiquity. In the 3rd century BCE it fell to the Acarnanians, who subsequently held their religious summits there.
There was also an ancient festival named Actia, celebrated here in honour of the god. Augustus after his victory enlarged the temple, and revived the ancient festival, which was henceforth celebrated once in five years (πενταετηρίς, ludi quinquennales), with musical and gymnastic contests, and horse races. We learn from a Greek inscription found on the site of Actium, and which is probably prior to the time of Augustus, that the chief priest of the temple was called Ἱεραπόλος, and that his name was employed in official documents, like that of the first Archon at Athens, to mark the date. Strabo says that the temple was situated on an eminence, and that below was a plain with a grove of trees, and a dock-yard; and in another passage he describes the harbour as situated outside of the gulf. On the opposite coast of Epirus, Augustus founded the city of Nicopolis in honour of his victory. After the foundation of Nicopolis, a few buildings sprang up around the temple, and it served as a kind of suburb to Nicopolis.
Archaeology.
On October 8, 1980, the Greek Ministry of Transport and Communications reported that shipwrecks from the Battle of Actium had been located at Actium near the entrance to the Ambracan Gulf.
In Summer 2009, archaeologists discovered the ruins of the Temple of Apollo and found two statue heads, one of Apollo, one of Artemis (Diana).
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1812 | Amway | Amway (short for "American Way") is an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells health, beauty, and home care products. The company was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos and is based in Ada, Michigan. Amway and its sister companies under Alticor reported sales of $8.9 billion in 2019. It is the largest multi-level marketing company in the world by revenue. It conducts business through a number of affiliated companies in more than a hundred countries and territories.
Amway has been investigated in various countries and by institutions such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged pyramid scheme practices. It has never been found guilty, though it has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle these suits.
History.
Founding.
Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos had been friends since school days and business partners in various endeavors, including a hamburger stand, an air charter service, and a sailing business. In 1949, they were introduced to the Nutrilite Products Corporation by Van Andel's second cousin Neil Maaskant. DeVos and Van Andel signed up to become distributors for Nutrilite food supplements in August. They sold their first box the next day for $19.50, but lost interest for the next two weeks. They traveled to Chicago to attend a Nutrilite seminar soon afterward, at the urging of Maaskant, who had become their sponsor. They watched promotional filmstrips and listened to talks by company representatives and successful distributors, then they decided to pursue the Nutrilite business. They sold their second box of supplements on their return trip to Michigan, and rapidly proceeded to develop the business further.
Earlier in 1949, DeVos and Van Andel had formed the Ja-Ri Corporation (abbreviated from their respective first names) to import wooden goods from South American countries. After the Chicago seminar, they turned Ja-Ri into a Nutrilite distributorship instead. In addition to profits on each product sold, Nutrilite offered commissions on sales made by new distributors introduced to the company by existing distributors—a system known as multi-level marketing or network marketing. By 1958, DeVos and Van Andel had built an organization of more than 5,000 distributors. However, they and some of their top distributors formed the American Way Association, or Amway, in April 1959 in response to concerns about the stability of Nutrilite and in order to represent the distributors and look for additional products to market.
Their first product was called Frisk, an organic cleaner developed by a scientist in Ohio. DeVos and Van Andel bought the rights to manufacture and distribute Frisk, and later changed the name to LOC (Liquid Organic Cleaner). They subsequently formed the Amway Sales Corporation to procure and inventory products and to handle sales and marketing plans, and the Amway Services Corporation to handle insurance and other benefits for distributors. In 1960, they purchased a 50% share in Atco Manufacturing Company in Detroit, the original manufacturers of LOC, and changed its name to Amway Manufacturing Corporation. In 1964, the Amway Sales Corporation, Amway Services Corporation, and Amway Manufacturing Corporation merged to form the Amway Corporation.
Amway bought a controlling interest in Nutrilite in 1972 and full ownership in 1994.
International expansion.
Amway expanded to Australia in 1971, to parts of Europe in 1973, to parts of Asia in 1974, to Japan in 1979, to Latin America in 1985, to Thailand in 1987, to China in 1995, to Africa in 1997, to India and Scandinavia in 1998, to Ukraine in 2003, to Russia in 2005, and to Vietnam in 2008.
In 2014, a Russian loyalty card program called "Alfa-Amway" was created when Amway joined with Alfa-Bank.
Amway was ranked by "Forbes" as the 42nd-largest privately held company in the United States in 2018, and as the number one largest company on the "Direct Selling News" Global 100 list in 2018.
Quixtar.
The founders of the Amway corporation established a new holding company in 1999, named Alticor, and launched three new companies: a sister (and separate) Internet-focused company named Quixtar, Access Business Group, and Pyxis Innovations. Pyxis, later replaced by Fulton Innovation, pursued research and development and Access Business Group handled manufacturing and logistics for Amway, Quixtar, and third-party clients.
The main difference was that all "Independent Business Owners" (IBO) could order directly from Amway on the Internet, rather than from their upline "direct distributor", and have products shipped directly to their home. The Amway name continued being used in the rest of the world. After virtually all Amway distributors in North America switched to Quixtar, Alticor elected to close Amway North America after 2001. In June 2007 it was announced that the Quixtar brand would be phased out over an 18-to-24-month period in favor of a unified Amway brand (Amway Global) worldwide.
In 2006, Quixtar published "The Quixtar Independent Business Owner Compensation Plan", in which the company reported that the average monthly gross income for "Active" IBOs was $115.
Global markets.
According to the Amway website, the company operated in over 100 countries and territories, organized into regional markets: the Americas, Europe, greater China, Japan and Korea, and SE Asia/Australia. Amway's top ten markets are China, Korea, the United States, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, India, Russia, Malaysia and Italy.
In 2008, Alticor announced that two-thirds of the company's 58 markets reported sales increases, including strong growth in the China, Russia, Ukraine and India markets.
Amway China.
Amway China launched in 1995. In 1998, after abuses of illegal pyramid schemes led to riots, the Chinese government enacted a ban on all direct selling companies, including Amway. After the negotiations, some companies like Amway, Avon, and Mary Kay continued to operate through a network of retail stores promoted by an independent sales force. China introduced new direct selling laws in December 2005, and in December 2006, Amway was one of the first companies to receive a license to resume direct sales. However, the law forbids teachers, doctors, and civil servants from becoming direct sales agents for the company and, unlike in the United States, salespeople in China are ineligible to receive commissions from sales made by the distributors they recruit.
In 2006, Amway China had a reported 180,000 sales representatives, 140 stores, and $2 billion in annual sales. In 2007, Amway Greater China and South-east Asia Chief Executive Eva Cheng was ranked no. 88 by "Forbes" magazine in its list of the World's Most Powerful Women. In 2008, China was Amway's largest market, reporting 28% growth and sales of 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion). According to a report in "Bloomberg Businessweek" in April 2010, Amway had 237 retail shops in China, 160,000 direct sales agents, and $3 billion in revenue. Since then, Amway has been continuing to expand in China, even as the government has been imposing greater restrictions on the company, and launched a WeChat mini-program in 2021.
Brands.
Amway's product line grew from LOC, with the laundry detergent SA8 added in 1960, and later the hair care product Satinique (1965) and the cosmetics line Artistry (1968). Today Amway manufactures over 450 products, with manufacturing facilities in China, India and the US, as well as Nutrilite organic farms in Brazil, Mexico and the US (California and Washington state). Amway brands include Artistry, Atmosphere, Body Blends, Bodykey, Body Works, Clear Now, eSpring, Glister, iCook, Legacy of Clean, Nutrilite, Peter Island, Perfect Empowered Drinking Water, Personal Accents, Ribbon, Satinique, Artistry Men and XS.
In 2018, nutrition and wellness products were 52% of total sales, and beauty and personal care products were 26% of total sales.
Household cleaners.
Amway is best known in North America for its original multi-purpose cleaning product LOC, SA8 laundry detergent, and Dish Drops dishwashing liquid. In the January 2007 issue of "Consumer Reports", SA8 with Bioquest was rated the best-performing laundry detergent. "Consumer Reports" did, however, criticize SA8's pricing, a situation which was disputed by Amway. Consumer Reports conducted blind testing of detergents in 2010 and ranked versions of Amway's Legacy of Clean detergents 9th and 18th of 20 detergents tested. "Consumer Reports" program manager Pat Slaven recommended against buying the products because consumers can "go to the grocery store and get something that performs a whole lot better for a whole lot less money".
Health and beauty.
Amway's health and beauty brands include Artistry, Satinique, Hymm, Body Series, Glister, Moiskin (South America), Nutrilite, Nutriway (Scandinavia and Australia/New Zealand), Attitude (India), eSpring, Atmosphere and iCook as well as XL and XS Energy drinks. Other Amway brands that were discontinued or replaced include Tolsom, Eddie Funkhouser New York, or beautycycle (Eastern Europe).
Artistry.
Amway's Artistry products include skin care, cosmetics, and anti-aging creams and serums. In 2011, Artistry brand reached sales of $2.8 billion.
Nutrilite.
Amway's largest-selling brand is the Nutrilite range of health supplements (marketed as Nutriway in some countries), and in 2008 Nutrilite sales exceeded $3 billion globally. In 2001, NSF International issued its first five dietary supplement certifications to Nutrilite.
In 2011, Nutrilite brand of vitamins and dietary supplements led Amway's sales, totaling almost $4.7 billion. According to Euromonitor International, in 2014, Nutrilite was the world's No. 1 selling vitamins and dietary supplements brand. In 2015, it was reported that according to Euromonitor International, Amway was the largest vitamin and dietary supplement vendor in China, with 11% of a market that generated 100 billion yuan ($15.6 billion) in annual sales. In 2015, it was reported that according to China Confidential consumer brands survey, Amway Nutrilite was the most popular vitamin and dietary supplement brand in China.
In January 2009, Amway announced a voluntary recall of Nutrilite and XS Energy Bars after learning that they had possibly been manufactured with Salmonella-contaminated ingredients from Peanut Corporation of America. The company indicated that it had not received any reports of illness in connection with the products.
In 2012, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), accused Amway of making unsubstantiated and illegal claims about Nutrilite Fruits & Vegetables 2GO Twist Tubes and threatened to launch a class action lawsuit against the company unless it took remedial action. Amway responded that the claims made about the products were properly substantiated and that they did not plan to change the product's labeling but nevertheless would review the statements that CSPI has questioned. CSPI later reported that Amway had agreed to changing product labels by the end of 2014.
eSpring.
Amway's eSpring water filter was introduced in 2000. According to Amway, it was the first system to combine a carbon block filter and ultraviolet light with electronic-monitoring technology in the filter cartridge and it became the first home system to achieve certification for ANSI/NSF Standards 42, 53, and 55. According to Amway, eSpring was the first water treatment system to receive certification for all fifteen NSF/ANSI 401 contaminants which include pharmaceuticals, pesticides and herbicides. The company also claims that, in addition to these 15 contaminants, eSpring is certified for more than 145 potential contaminants, including lead and mercury.
eSpring was the first commercial product which employed Fulton Innovation's eCoupled wireless power induction technology. In December 2006, Amway sister company, Fulton Innovations, announced that it would introduce eCoupled technology in other consumer electronic products at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. Companies licensing this technology include Visteon, Herman Miller, Motorola and Mobility Electronics. Fulton was a founding member of the Wireless Power Consortium which developed the Qi (inductive power standard).
In 2007 eSpring was ranked fifth out of 27 brands in a comparison of water filters by "Consumer Reports".
XS.
On January 14, 2015, Amway announced that it had acquired XS Energy, a California-based brand of energy drinks and snacks. The XS Energy brand has been sold as an Amway product since 2003. As of January 2015, it has been distributed in 38 countries, generating annual sales of $150 million.
According to Euromonitor International, the XS Energy was the first exclusively sugar-free energy drink brand sold globally.
Ditto Delivery.
Ditto Delivery is Alticor's automatic, monthly replenishment program that fills orders based on customers' predetermined needs. As of May 2001, Ditto Delivery accounted for 30% of Quixtar's North American sales.
Business model.
Amway combines direct selling with a multi-level marketing strategy. Amway distributors, referred to as "independent business owners" (IBOs), may market products directly to potential customers and may also sponsor and mentor other people to become IBOs. IBOs may earn income both from the retail markup on any products they sell personally, plus a performance bonus based on the sales volume they and their downline (IBOs they have sponsored) have generated. People may also register as IBOs to buy products at discounted prices. Harvard Business School, which described Amway as "one of the most profitable direct selling companies in the world", noted that Amway founders Van Andel and DeVos "accomplished their success through the use of an elaborate pyramid-like distribution system in which independent distributors of Amway products received a percentage of the merchandise they sold and also a percentage of the merchandise sold by recruited distributors".
Sports sponsorships.
In December 2006, Alticor secured the naming rights for the Orlando Magic's home basketball arena in Orlando, Florida. The Orlando Magic are owned by the DeVos family. The arena, formerly known as the TD Waterhouse Centre, was renamed the Amway Arena. Its successor, the Amway Center, was opened in 2010, and the older arena was demolished in 2012.
In 2009, Amway Global signed a three-year deal with the San Jose Earthquakes Major League Soccer team to become the jersey sponsor.
In March 2009, Amway Global signed a multi-year deal to become the presenting partner of the Los Angeles Sol of Women's Professional Soccer. The deal, however, would last only one year, as the Sol folded in 2010.
In 2011, Amway signed a three-year deal to be the presenting sponsor of the National Hockey League's Detroit Red Wings.
Since 2012, Amway has been the title sponsor of the Canadian Championship, an annual soccer tournament.
Politics and culture.
Political contributions.
In the 1990s, the Amway organization was a major contributor to the Republican Party (GOP) and to the election campaigns of various GOP candidates. Amway and its sales force contributed a substantial amount (up to half) of the total funds ($669,525) for the 1994 political campaign of Republican congresswoman and Amway distributor Sue Myrick (N.C.). According to two reports by "Mother Jones" magazine, Amway distributor Dexter Yager "used the company's extensive voice-mail system to rally hundreds of Amway distributors into giving a total of $295,871" to Myrick's campaign. According to a campaign staffer quoted by the magazine, Myrick had appeared regularly on the Amway circuit, speaking at hundreds of rallies and selling $5 and $10 audiotapes. Following the 1994 election, Myrick maintained "close ties to Amway and Yager", and raised $100,000 from Amway sources, "most notably through fundraisers at the homes of big distributors", in the 1997–98 election cycle.
In October 1994, Amway gave the biggest corporate contribution recorded to that date to a political party for a single election, $2.5 million to the Republican National Committee (RNC), and was the number one corporate political donor in the United States. In the 2004 election cycle, the organization contributed a total of $4 million to a conservative 527 group, Progress for America.
In July 1996, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos was honored at a $3 million fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a week later, it was reported that Amway had tried to donate $1.3 million to pay for Republican "infomercials" and televising of the GOP convention on Pat Robertson's Family Channel, but backed off when Democrats criticized the donation as a ploy to avoid campaign-finance restrictions.
In April 1997, Richard DeVos and his wife, Helen, gave $1 million to the RNC, which, at the time, was the second-largest soft-money donation ever, behind Amway's 1994 gift of $2.5 million to the RNC. In July 1997, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich slipped a last-minute provision into a hotly contested compromise tax bill that granted Amway and four other companies a tax break on their Asian branches that totaled $19 million.
In a column published in the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" newspaper in August 1997, reporter Molly Ivins wrote that Amway had "its own caucus in Congress...Five Republican House members are also Amway distributors: Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, Jon Christensen of Nebraska, Dick Chrysler of Michigan, Richard Pombo of California, and John Ensign of Nevada. Their informal caucus meets several times a year with Amway bigwigs to discuss policy matters affecting the company, including China's trade status."
A 1998 analysis of campaign contributions conducted by "Businessweek" found that Amway, along with the founding families and some top distributors, had donated at least $7 million to GOP causes in the preceding decade. Political candidates who received campaign funding from Amway in 1998 included Representatives Bill Redmond (R–N.M.), Heather Wilson (R–N.M.), and Jon Christensen (R–Neb).
According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, in the 2004 election cycle, members of the Van Andel and DeVos families were the second, third and fifth largest donors to the Republican party.
Dick DeVos, son of Amway founder Richard DeVos and past president of the company, served as Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and his wife Betsy DeVos served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and 2003 to 2005.
In May 2005, Dick DeVos ran against incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm in Michigan's 2006 gubernatorial election. DeVos was defeated by Granholm, who won 56% of the popular vote to his 42%.
In August 2012, gay rights activist Fred Karger began a movement to boycott Amway in protest of the contribution from a private foundation of Amway President Doug DeVos to the National Organization for Marriage, a political organization which opposes legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.
On February 7, 2017, Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the Senate as the 11th Secretary of Education.
Religion.
Several sources have commented on the promotion of Christian conservative ideology within the Amway organization. "Mother Jones" magazine described the Amway distributor force as "heavily influenced by the company's dual themes of Christian morality and free enterprise" and operating "like a private political army". In "The Cult of Free Enterprise", Stephen Butterfield, who spent time in the Yager group within Amway, wrote "[Amway] sells a marketing and motivational system, a cause, a way of life, in a fervid emotional atmosphere of rallies and political religious revivalism." "Philadelphia City Paper" correspondent Maryam Henein stated that "The language used in motivational tools for Amway frequently echoes or directly quotes the Bible, with the unstated assumption of a shared Christian perspective."
"Businessweek" correspondents Bill Vlasic and Beth Regan characterized the founding families of Amway as "fervently conservative, fervently Christian, and hugely influential in the Republican Party", noting that "Rich DeVos charged up the troops with a message of Christian beliefs and rock-ribbed conservatism."
High-ranking Amway leaders such as Richard DeVos and Dexter Yager were owners and members of the board of Gospel Films, a producer of movies and books geared toward conservative Christians, as well as co-owners (along with Salem Communications) of a right-wing, Christian nonprofit called Gospel Communications International. Yager, interviewed on "60 Minutes" in 1983, admitted that he promotes Christianity through his Amway group, but stated that this might not be the case in other Amway groups.
"Rolling Stone's" Bob Moser reported that former Amway CEO and co-founder Richard DeVos is connected with the Dominionist political movement in the United States. Moser states that DeVos was a supporter of the late D. James Kennedy, giving more than $5 million to Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. DeVos was also a founding member and two-time president of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing Christian organization.
Sociologist David G. Bromley calls Amway a "quasi-religious corporation" having sectarian characteristics. Bromley and Anson Shupe view Amway as preaching the gospel of prosperity. Patralekha Bhattacharya and Krishna Kumar Mehta, of the consulting firm Thinkalytics, LLC, reasoned that although some critics have referred to organizations such as Amway as "cults" and have speculated that they engage in "mind control", there are other explanations that could account for the behavior of distributors. Namely, continued involvement of distributors despite minimal economic return may result from social satisfaction compensating for diminished economic satisfaction.
Chamber of commerce.
Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel (in 1980), and later his son Steve Van Andel (in 2001), were elected by the board of directors of the United States Chamber of Commerce to be the chairman of the private American lobbying organization.
Accreditation program.
In 2006, Amway (then Quixtar in North America) introduced its "Professional Development Accreditation Program" in response to concerns surrounding business support materials (BSM), including books, tapes and meetings. In 2010 this was superseded by its "Accreditation Plus" program to ensure that all BSM content is consistent with Amway's quality assurance standards, which approved providers of BSM must abide by. The quality assurance standards state that
Pyramid scheme allegations.
Robert Carroll, of the "Skeptic's Dictionary", has described Amway as a "legal pyramid scheme", and has said that the quasi-religious devotion of its affiliates is used by the company to conceal poor performance rates by distributors.
FTC investigation.
In a 1979 ruling, the Federal Trade Commission found that Amway did not fit the definition of a pyramid scheme because (a) distributors were not paid to recruit people, (b) it did not require distributors to buy a large stock of unmoving inventory, (c) distributors were required to maintain retail sales (at least 10 per month), and (d) the company and all distributors were required to accept returns of excess inventory from down-level distributors.
The FTC did, however, find Amway "guilty of price-fixing and making exaggerated income claims"; the company was ordered to stop retail price fixing and allocating customers among distributors and was prohibited from misrepresenting the amount of profit, earnings or sales its distributors are likely to achieve with the business. Amway was ordered to accompany any such statements with the actual averages per distributor, pointing out that more than half of the distributors do not make any money, with the average distributor making less than $100 per month. The order was violated with a 1986 ad campaign, resulting in a $100,000 fine.
Studies of independent consumer watchdog agencies have shown that between 990 and 999 of 1000 participants in MLMs that use Amway-type pay plans in fact lose money. According to The Skeptic's Dictionary, "In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission requires Amway to label its products with the message that 54% of Amway recruits make nothing and the rest earn on average $65 a month."
Amway India.
In September 2006, following a public complaint, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state police (CID) initiated raids and seizures against Amway distributors in the state, and submitted a petition against them, claiming the company violated the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act. They shut down all corporate offices associated with the Amway organization including the offices of some Amway distributors. The enforcement said that the business model of the company is illegal. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had notified the police that Amway in India may be violating certain laws regarding a "money circulation scheme" and the "IB Times" article writes that "some say ... Amway is really more about making money from recruiting people to become distributors, as opposed to selling products". In 2008, the state government of Andhra Pradesh enacted a ban on Amway media advertisements.
On August 6, 2011, Kerala Police sealed the offices of Amway at Kozhikode, Kannur, Kochi, Kottayam, Thrissur, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram following complaints. In November 2012, the Economic Offences Wing of Kerala Police conducted searches at the offices of Amway at Kozhikode, Thrissur and Kannur as part of its crackdown on money chain activities and closed down the firm's warehouses at these centres. Products valued at 21.4 million rupees (about US$400,000 at the time) were also seized. Later, Area manager of Amway, P. M. Rajkumar, who was arrested following searches was remanded in judicial custody for 14 days.
On May 27, 2013, Crime Branch officials of Kerala Police arrested William S. Pinckney, Managing Director & CEO of Amway India Enterprises along with two other directors of the company from Kozhikode. The three were arrested on charges of running a pyramid scheme. They were granted bail the next day and the business was unaffected. On June 8, 2013, Kozhikode Court lifted the freeze on Amway offices in Kerala. On May 26, 2014, Pinckney was arrested by Andhra Pradesh police on the basis of a consumer complaint that alleged unethical circulation of money by Amway. He was subsequently arrested in other criminal cases registered against him in the state on allegations of financial irregularities by the company. Pinckney was jailed for two months until being released on bail.
In 2017, a Chandigarh court framed charges, under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act, against two directors of Amway India, William Scot Pinckney and Prithvai Raj Bijlani. This was based on a cheating case filed by eight complainants in 2002, following which the Economic Offences Wing had filed chargesheet in 2012. A revision plea moved by the two Amway officials against the framed charges was dismissed in 2018.
In April 2022, the Enforcement Directorate attached both movable and immovable assets of Amway India worth including the firm's factory in Dindigul along with bank accounts under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
U.S. class action settlement.
On November 3, 2010, Amway announced that it had agreed to pay $56 million—$34 million in cash and $22 million in products—to settle a class action that had been filed in Federal District Court in California in 2007. The class action, which had been brought against Quixtar and several of its top-level distributors, alleged fraud, racketeering, and that the defendants operated as an illegal pyramid scheme.
Amway, while noting that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing or liability, acknowledged that it had made changes to its business operations as a result of the lawsuit. The settlement is subject to approval by the court, which was expected in early 2011. The economic value of the settlement, including the changes Amway made to its business model, totals $100 million.
Class action in Canada.
A 2009 class action case lodged in Canada was rejected by the Federal Court and confirmed on appeal by the Federal Court of Appeal, with costs awarded to Amway and the plaintiffs directed to arbitration.
Lobbying for deregulation.
The DeVoses supported an amendment to the US House of Representatives' omnibus Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018 by US Representative John Moolenaar that would have limited the ability of the FTC to investigate whether MLMs are pyramid schemes. The amendment would have barred the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the Small Business Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FTC, or any other agencies from using any monies to take enforcement actions against pyramid operations for the fiscal year. It also adopted provisions from H.R. 3409, the so-called "Anti-Pyramid Scheme Promotion Act of 2016", which would blur the lines between legitimate MLM activity and pyramid schemes established under the original 1979 FTC case by deeming sales made to people inside the company as sales to an "ultimate user," thus erasing the key distinction made in the ruling between sales to actual consumers of a product and sales made to members of the MLM network as part of recruitment of members or to qualify for commissions. The amendment was opposed by a coalition of consumer interest groups including Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union (the publisher of "Consumer Reports" magazine), Consumer Watchdog, the National Consumers League, and the United States Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), as well as Truth in Advertising (TINA.org) in its original incarnation.
Other legal actions.
Canadian tax fraud case.
In 1982, Amway co-founders, Richard M. DeVos and Jay Van Andel, along with Amway's executive vice president for corporate services, William J. Discher Jr., were indicted in Canada on several criminal charges, including allegations that they underreported the value of goods brought into the country and had defrauded the Canadian government of more than $28 million from 1965 to 1980. The charges were dropped in 1983 after Amway and its Canadian subsidiary pleaded guilty to criminal customs fraud charges. The companies paid a fine of $25 million CAD, the largest fine ever imposed in Canada at the time. In 1989 the company settled the outstanding customs duties for $45 million CAD. In a 1994 article authored by DeVos, he stated that the guilty plea was entered for technical reasons, despite believing they were innocent of the charges, and that he believed that the case had been motivated by "political reasons".
RIAA lawsuit.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as part of its anti-piracy efforts, sued Amway and several distributors in 1996, alleging that copyrighted music was used on "highly profitable" training videotapes. Amway denied wrongdoing, blaming the case on a misunderstanding by distributors, and settled the case out of court for $9 million. In a related lawsuit initiated by the distributors involved, the Court established that Mahaleel Lee Luster, who had been contracted to make the videotapes, had violated copyright without the knowledge of three of the five of those distributors.
Amway UK.
In 2007, Amway's operations were halted in the United Kingdom and Ireland following a yearlong investigation by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, which moved to have Amway banned on the basis that the company had employed deceptive marketing, presented inflated earnings estimates, and lured distributors into buying bogus "motivation and training" tools. In 2008, a UK judge dismissed government claims against Amway's operations, saying major reforms in the prior year (which included banning non-Amway-approved motivational events and materials) had fixed company faults that favoured selling training materials over products and misrepresented earnings. However, the judge also expressed his belief that Amway allowed "misrepresentations" of its business by independent sellers in years past and failed to act decisively against the misrepresentations.
"Welcome to Life" (Poland).
In 1997, Amway Poland and Network TwentyOne separately sued the makers of a Polish film, "Welcome to Life" (), for defamation and copyright violations. Henryk Dederko (the director) and producer were later acquitted on the charge of disseminating false information. The film, banned for 12 years, was one of the highly anticipated movies of 2009's Warsaw Film Festival and was dubbed by the promoters as a "scary movie about brainwashing" It was said to depict hard-sell "pep rallies", and to include statements from distributors that meetings had a similar tone to meetings of the Communist Party before it lost power in Poland. Methods of recruitment that confusingly resembled those of a sect were also described. A bestseller on the local video black market, the film was banned while the suit proceeded.
In 2001 a regional court ruled in favor of Network 21; however, in 2004 the Warsaw Regional Court dismissed Amway's civil lawsuit. On appeal Amway won the case and the producers were ordered to pay a fine to a children's charity and publish a public apology. the film was still banned due to an ongoing case brought by "private individuals" ridiculed in the film.
On December 18, 2012, the court ruled that film can be screened, but the makers have to remove "untrue information", as the screen near the end of the movie stated that 30% of company income is generated by sales of training materials and that the vast majority of its profits are shared only by the tiny fraction of top distributors. This is not the only court case, so the film is still banned on other grounds.
Dr. Phil and Shape Up.
In March 2004, TV personality Phil McGraw (a.k.a. Dr. Phil) pulled his "Shape Up" line of supplements off the market in the face of an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The supplements were manufactured by CSA Nutraceuticals, a subsidiary of Alticor's Access Business Group. The FTC later dropped the probe, but in October 2005 a class-action lawsuit was filed against McGraw by several people who used the products and claimed that the supplements, which cost $120 per month, did not stimulate weight loss. In September 2006, a $10.5 million settlement was reached, in which Alticor agreed to provide $4.5 million in cash and $6 million in Nutrilite products to disgruntled users of Shape Up.
Procter & Gamble.
Some Amway distributors distributed an urban legend that the (old) Procter & Gamble service mark was in fact a Satanic symbol or that the CEO of P&G is himself a practicing Satanist. (In some variants of the story, it is also claimed that the CEO of Procter & Gamble donated "satanic tithes" to the Church of Satan.) Procter & Gamble alleged that several Amway distributors were behind a resurgence of the story in the 1990s and sued several independent Amway distributors and the company for defamation and slander. The distributors had used Amway's Amvox voice messaging service to send the rumor to their downline distributors in April 1995. By 2003, after more than a decade of lawsuits in multiple states, all allegations against Amway and Amway distributors had been dismissed. In October 2005, a Utah appeals court reversed part of the decision dismissing the case against the four Amway distributors, and remanded it to the lower court for further proceedings. In the lawsuit against the four former Amway distributors, Procter & Gamble was awarded $19.25 million by a U.S. District Court jury in Salt Lake City on March 20, 2007. On November 24, 2008, the case was officially settled. "It's hard to imagine they'd pursue it this long, especially after all the retractions we put out," said distributor Randy Haugen, a 53-year-old Ogden, Utah, businessman who maintained P&G was never able to show how it was harmed by the rumors. "We are stunned. All of us."
Regulatory violations in Vietnam.
In January 2017, the Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade determined that Amway Vietnam had violated federal regulations by engaging in unauthorized multi-level marketing.
Other issues.
Cultism.
Some Amway distributor groups have been accused of using "cult-like" tactics to attract new distributors and keep them involved and committed. Allegations include resemblance to a Big Brother organization with a paranoid attitude toward insiders critical of the organization, seminars and rallies resembling religious revival meetings, and enormous involvement of distributors despite minimal incomes. An examination of the 1979–1980 tax records in the state of Wisconsin showed that the Direct Distributors reported a net loss of $918 on average.
"Dateline NBC".
In 2004, "Dateline NBC" featured a critical report based on a yearlong undercover investigation of business practices of Quixtar. The report noted that the average distributor makes only about $1,400 per year and that many of the "high level distributors singing the praises of Quixtar" are actually "making most of their money by selling motivational books, tapes and seminars; not Quixtar's cosmetics, soaps, and electronics".
In fact, about twenty high level distributors are part of an exclusive club; one that those hundreds of thousands of other distributors don't get to join. For years only a privileged few, including Bill Britt, have run hugely profitable businesses selling all those books, tapes and seminars; things the rank and file distributors can't sell themselves but, are told over and over again, they need to buy in order to succeed.
The program said that a Quixtar recruiter featured in the report made misleading and inconsistent statements about Quixtar earnings during a recruitment meeting and had an outstanding arrest warrant for cocaine possession from the mid-90s.
In a response to the "Dateline" report, Quixtar published a "Dateline Quixtar Response" on its official website. In its response, Quixtar stated:
We learned that two Dateline producers had registered as IBOs and for months had been conducting undercover research for the story, which included using a hidden camera to videotape meetings and conversations with IBOs. The producers did not identify themselves as working for "Dateline", instead feigning interest in building a business powered by Quixtar.
The site also stated that:
"Dateline"s story on Quixtar boiled down to the complaints of three former Independent Business Owners (IBOs) – one of whom is a competitor – and ignored the hundreds of thousands of IBOs powered by Quixtar who are achieving their goals.
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1814 | Adam Smith | Adam Smith (baptised 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics" or "The Father of Capitalism", he wrote two classic works, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as "The Wealth of Nations", is considered his "magnum opus" and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God's will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. Among other economic theories, the work introduced Smith's idea of absolute advantage.
Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, teaching moral philosophy and during this time, wrote and published "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day.
As a reaction to the common policy of protecting national markets and merchants, what came to be known as mercantilism—nowadays often referred to as "cronyism" or "crony capitalism"—Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. "The Wealth of Nations" was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers such as Horace Walpole.
Biography.
Early life.
Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland. His father, also Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet (senior solicitor), advocate and prosecutor (judge advocate) and also served as comptroller of the customs in Kirkcaldy. Smith's mother was born Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry, also in Fife; she married Smith's father in 1720. Two months before Smith was born, his father died, leaving his mother a widow. The date of Smith's baptism into the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723 and this has often been treated as if it were also his date of birth, which is unknown.
Although few events in Smith's early childhood are known, the Scottish journalist John Rae, Smith's biographer, recorded that Smith was abducted by Romani at the age of three and released when others went to rescue him. Smith was close to his mother, who probably encouraged him to pursue his scholarly ambitions. He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy—characterised by Rae as "one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period"—from 1729 to 1737, he learned Latin, mathematics, history, and writing.
Formal education.
Smith entered the University of Glasgow at age 14 and studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson. Here he developed his passion for the philosophical concepts of reason, civilian liberties, and free speech. In 1740, he was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under the Snell Exhibition.
Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, which he found intellectually stifling. In Book V, Chapter II of "The Wealth of Nations", he wrote: "In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching."
Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature", and they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it. According to William Robert Scott, "The Oxford of [Smith's] time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework." Nevertheless, he took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library. When Smith was not studying on his own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, according to his letters. Near the end of his time there, he began suffering from shaking fits, probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown. He left Oxford University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.
In Book V of "The Wealth of Nations", Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager intellectual activity at English universities, when compared to their Scottish counterparts. He attributes this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which made the income of professors independent of their ability to attract students, and to the fact that distinguished men of letters could make an even more comfortable living as ministers of the Church of England.
Smith's discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson, who was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents with the fervor and earnestness of his orations (which he sometimes opened to the public). His lectures endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy, but also to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives, appropriately acquiring the epithet, the preacher of philosophy. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder; rather, his magnetic personality and method of lecturing so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson"—a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume and influential mentor Francis Hutcheson.
Teaching career.
Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 at the University of Edinburgh, sponsored by the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames. His lecture topics included rhetoric and "belles-lettres", and later the subject of "the progress of opulence". On this latter topic, he first expounded his economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty". While Smith was not adept at public speaking, his lectures met with success.
In 1750, Smith met the philosopher David Hume, who was his senior by more than a decade. In their writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion, Smith and Hume shared closer intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
In 1751, Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching logic courses, and in 1752, he was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, having been introduced to the society by Lord Kames. When the head of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow died the next year, Smith took over the position. He worked as an academic for the next 13 years, which he characterised as "by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period [of his life]".
Smith published "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work was concerned with how human morality depends on sympathy between agent and spectator, or the individual and other members of society. Smith defined "mutual sympathy" as the basis of moral sentiments. He based his explanation, not on a special "moral sense" as the Third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, nor on utility as Hume did, but on mutual sympathy, a term best captured in modern parlance by the 20th-century concept of empathy, the capacity to recognise feelings that are being experienced by another being.
Following the publication of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", Smith became so popular that many wealthy students left their schools in other countries to enroll at Glasgow to learn under Smith. At this time, Smith began to give more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lectures and less to his theories of morals. For example, Smith lectured that the cause of increase in national wealth is labour, rather than the nation's quantity of gold or silver, which is the basis for mercantilism, the economic theory that dominated Western European economic policies at the time.
In 1762, the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.). At the end of 1763, he obtained an offer from British chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend—who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume—to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch as preparation for a career in international politics. Smith resigned from his professorship in 1764 to take the tutoring position. He subsequently attempted to return the fees he had collected from his students because he had resigned partway through the term, but his students refused.
Tutoring, travels, European intellectuals.
Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, during which time he educated Scott on a variety of subjects. He was paid £300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300 per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher. Smith first travelled as a tutor to Toulouse, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. According to his own account, he found Toulouse to be somewhat boring, having written to Hume that he "had begun to write a book to pass away the time". After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva, where Smith met with the philosopher Voltaire.
From Geneva, the party moved to Paris. Here, Smith met American publisher and diplomat Benjamin Franklin, who a few years later would lead the opposition in the American colonies against four British resolutions from Charles Townshend (in history known as the Townshend Acts), which threatened American colonial self-government and imposed revenue duties on a number of items necessary to the colonies. Smith discovered the Physiocracy school founded by François Quesnay and discussed with their intellectuals. Physiocrats were opposed to mercantilism, the dominating economic theory of the time, illustrated in their motto "Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même!" (Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself!).
The wealth of France had been virtually depleted by Louis XIV and Louis XV in ruinous wars, and was further exhausted in aiding the American insurgents against the British. The excessive consumption of goods and services deemed to have no economic contribution was considered a source of unproductive labour, with France's agriculture the only economic sector maintaining the wealth of the nation. Given that the British economy of the day yielded an income distribution that stood in contrast to that which existed in France, Smith concluded that "with all its imperfections, [the Physiocratic school] is perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy." The distinction between productive versus unproductive labour—the physiocratic "classe steril"—was a predominant issue in the development and understanding of what would become classical economic theory.
Later years.
In 1766, Henry Scott's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter. Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy, and he devoted much of the next decade to writing his "magnum opus". There, he befriended Henry Moyes, a young blind man who showed precocious aptitude. Smith secured the patronage of David Hume and Thomas Reid in the young man's education. In May 1773, Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775. "The Wealth of Nations" was published in 1776 and was an instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.
In 1778, Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother (who died in 1784) in Panmure House in Edinburgh's Canongate. Five years later, as a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter, he automatically became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. From 1787 to 1789, he occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.
Death.
Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness. His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard. On his deathbed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more.
Smith's literary executors were two friends from the Scottish academic world: the physicist and chemist Joseph Black and the pioneering geologist James Hutton. Smith left behind many notes and some unpublished material, but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication. He mentioned an early unpublished "History of Astronomy" as probably suitable, and it duly appeared in 1795, along with other material such as "Essays on Philosophical Subjects".
Smith's library went by his will to David Douglas, Lord Reston (son of his cousin Colonel Robert Douglas of Strathendry, Fife), who lived with Smith. It was eventually divided between his two surviving children, Cecilia Margaret (Mrs. Cunningham) and David Anne (Mrs. Bannerman). On the death in 1878 of her husband, the Reverend W. B. Cunningham of Prestonpans, Mrs. Cunningham sold some of the books. The remainder passed to her son, Professor Robert Oliver Cunningham of Queen's College, Belfast, who presented a part to the library of Queen's College. After his death, the remaining books were sold. On the death of Mrs. Bannerman in 1879, her portion of the library went intact to the New College (of the Free Church) in Edinburgh and the collection was transferred to the University of Edinburgh Main Library in 1972.
Personality and beliefs.
Character.
Not much is known about Smith's personal views beyond what can be deduced from his published articles. His personal papers were destroyed after his death, per his request. He never married, and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before him.
Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of "inexpressible benignity". He was known to talk to himself, a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions. He also had occasional spells of imaginary illness, and he is reported to have had books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study. According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he needed help to escape. He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality.
James Boswell, who was a student of Smith's at Glasgow University, and later knew him at the Literary Club, says that Smith thought that speaking about his ideas in conversation might reduce the sale of his books, so his conversation was unimpressive. According to Boswell, he once told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "he made it a rule when in company never to talk of what he understood".
Smith has been alternatively described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment" and one whose "countenance was manly and agreeable". Smith is said to have acknowledged his looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books." Smith rarely sat for portraits, so almost all depictions of him created during his lifetime were drawn from memory. The best-known portraits of Smith are the profile by James Tassie and two etchings by John Kay. The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th-century reprints of "The Wealth of Nations" were based largely on Tassie's medallion.
Religious views.
Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Smith's religious views. His father had shown a strong interest in Christianity and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland, and the fact he received the Snell Exhibition suggests that he may have gone to Oxford with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church of England.
Anglo-American economist Ronald Coase has challenged the view that Smith was a deist, based on the fact that Smith's writings never explicitly invoke God as an explanation of the harmonies of the natural or the human worlds. According to Coase, though Smith does sometimes refer to the "Great Architect of the Universe", later scholars such as Jacob Viner have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God", a belief for which Coase finds little evidence in passages such as the one in the "Wealth of Nations" in which Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the "great phenomena of nature", such as "the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals", has led men to "enquire into their causes", and that "superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them, from more familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with than the agency of the gods". Some authors argue that Smith's social and economic philosophy is inherently theological and that his entire model of social order is logically dependent on the notion of God's action in nature. Brendan Long argues that Smith was a theist, whereas according to professor Gavin Kennedy, Smith was "in some sense" a Christian.
Smith was also a close friend of David Hume, who, despite debate about his religious views in modern scholarship, was commonly characterised in his own time as an atheist. The publication in 1777 of Smith's letter to William Strahan, in which he described Hume's courage in the face of death in spite of his irreligiosity, attracted considerable controversy.
Published works.
"The Theory of Moral Sentiments".
In 1759, Smith published his first work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," sold by co-publishers Andrew Millar of London and Alexander Kincaid of Edinburgh. Smith continued making extensive revisions to the book until his death. Although "The Wealth of Nations" is widely regarded as Smith's most influential work, Smith himself is believed to have considered "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" to be a superior work.
In the work, Smith critically examines the moral thinking of his time, and suggests that conscience arises from dynamic and interactive social relationships through which people seek "mutual sympathy of sentiments." His goal in writing the work was to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral judgment, given that people begin life with no moral sentiments at all. Smith proposes a theory of sympathy, in which the act of observing others and seeing the judgments they form of both others and oneself makes people aware of themselves and how others perceive their behaviour. The feedback we receive from perceiving (or imagining) others' judgment creates an incentive to achieve "mutual sympathy of sentiments" with them and leads people to develop habits, and then principles, of behaviour, which come to constitute one's conscience.
Some scholars have perceived a conflict between "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "The Wealth of Nations"; the former emphasises sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-interest. In recent years, however, some scholars of Smith's work have argued that no contradiction exists. They contend that in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", Smith develops a theory of psychology in which individuals seek the approval of the "impartial spectator" as a result of a natural desire to have outside observers sympathise with their sentiments. Rather than viewing "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "The Wealth of Nations" as presenting incompatible views of human nature, some Smith scholars regard the works as emphasising different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation. In the first part – "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" – he laid down the foundation of his vision of humanity and society. In the second – "The Wealth of Nations" – he elaborated on the virtue of prudence, which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy. It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book. Otteson argues that both books are Newtonian in their methodology and deploy a similar "market model" for explaining the creation and development of large-scale human social orders, including morality, economics, as well as language. Ekelund and Hebert offer a differing view, observing that self-interest is present in both works and that "in the former, sympathy is the moral faculty that holds self-interest in check, whereas in the latter, competition is the economic faculty that restrains self-interest."
"The Wealth of Nations".
Disagreement exists between classical and neoclassical economists about the central message of Smith's most influential work: "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776). Neoclassical economists emphasise Smith's invisible hand, a concept mentioned in the middle of his work – Book IV, Chapter II – and classical economists believe that Smith stated his programme for promoting the "wealth of nations" in the first sentences, which attributes the growth of wealth and prosperity to the division of labour. He elaborated on the virtue of prudence, which for him meant the relations between people in the private sphere of the economy. It was his plan to further elaborate on the virtue of justice in the third book.
Smith used the term "the invisible hand" in "History of Astronomy" referring to "the invisible hand of Jupiter", and once in each of his "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "The Wealth of Nations" (1776). This last statement about "an invisible hand" has been interpreted in numerous ways.
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
Those who regard that statement as Smith's central message also quote frequently Smith's dictum:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.However, in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" he had a more sceptical approach to self-interest as driver of behaviour:How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.
Smith's statement about the benefits of "an invisible hand" may have been meant to answer Mandeville's contention that "Private Vices ... may be turned into Public Benefits". It shows Smith's belief that when an individual pursues his self-interest under conditions of justice, he unintentionally promotes the good of society. Self-interested competition in the free market, he argued, would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices". Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the highest price "which can be squeezed out of the buyers". Smith also warned that a business-dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith states that the interest of manufacturers and merchants "in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention." Thus Smith's chief worry seems to be when business is given special protections or privileges from government; by contrast, in the absence of such special political favours, he believed that business activities were generally beneficial to the whole society:
It is the great multiplication of the production of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of society. ("The Wealth of Nations," I.i.10)
The neoclassical interest in Smith's statement about "an invisible hand" originates in the possibility of seeing it as a precursor of neoclassical economics and its concept of general equilibrium; Samuelson's "Economics" refers six times to Smith's "invisible hand". To emphasise this connection, Samuelson quotes Smith's "invisible hand" statement substituting "general interest" for "public interest". Samuelson concludes: "Smith was unable to prove the essence of his invisible-hand doctrine. Indeed, until the 1940s, no one knew how to prove, even to state properly, the kernel of truth in this proposition about perfectly competitive market."
Very differently, classical economists see in Smith's first sentences his programme to promote "The Wealth of Nations". Using the physiocratical concept of the economy as a circular process, to secure growth the inputs of Period 2 must exceed the inputs of Period 1. Therefore, those outputs of Period 1 which are not used or usable as inputs of Period 2 are regarded as unproductive labour, as they do not contribute to growth. This is what Smith had heard in France from, among others, François Quesnay, whose ideas Smith was so impressed by that he might have dedicated "The Wealth of Nations" to him had he not died beforehand. To this French insight that unproductive labour should be reduced to use labour more productively, Smith added his own proposal, that productive labour should be made even more productive by deepening the division of labour. Smith argued that deepening the division of labour under competition leads to greater productivity, which leads to lower prices and thus an increasing standard of living—"general plenty" and "universal opulence"—for all. Extended markets and increased production lead to the continuous reorganisation of production and the invention of new ways of producing, which in turn lead to further increased production, lower prices, and improved standards of living. Smith's central message is, therefore, that under dynamic competition, a growth machine secures "The Wealth of Nations". Smith's argument predicted Britain's evolution as the workshop of the world, underselling and outproducing all its competitors. The opening sentences of the "Wealth of Nations" summarise this policy:
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes ... . [T]his produce ... bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it ... .[B]ut this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances;
However, Smith added that the "abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter."
Other works.
Shortly before his death, Smith had nearly all his manuscripts destroyed. In his last years, he seemed to have been planning two major treatises, one on the theory and history of law and one on the sciences and arts. The posthumously published "Essays on Philosophical Subjects", a history of astronomy down to Smith's own era, plus some thoughts on ancient physics and metaphysics, probably contain parts of what would have been the latter treatise. "Lectures on Jurisprudence" were notes taken from Smith's early lectures, plus an early draft of "The Wealth of Nations", published as part of the 1976 Glasgow Edition of the works and correspondence of Smith. Other works, including some published posthumously, include "Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms" (1763) (first published in 1896); and "Essays on Philosophical Subjects" (1795).
Legacy.
In economics and moral philosophy.
"The Wealth of Nations" was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, Smith expounded how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of Hogarth and Swift, as a discussion at the University of Winchester suggests. In 2005, "The Wealth of Nations" was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time.
In light of the arguments put forward by Smith and other economic theorists in Britain, academic belief in mercantilism began to decline in Britain in the late 18th century. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain embraced free trade and Smith's "laissez-faire" economics, and via the British Empire, used its power to spread a broadly liberal economic model around the world, characterised by open markets, and relatively barrier-free domestic and international trade.
George Stigler attributes to Smith "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics". It is that, under competition, owners of resources (for example labour, land, and capital) will use them most profitably, resulting in an equal rate of return in equilibrium for all uses, adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training, trust, hardship, and unemployment.
Paul Samuelson finds in Smith's pluralist use of supply and demand as applied to wages, rents, and profit a valid and valuable anticipation of the general equilibrium modelling of Walras a century later. Smith's allowance for wage increases in the short and intermediate term from capital accumulation and invention contrasted with Malthus, Ricardo, and Karl Marx in their propounding a rigid subsistence–wage theory of labour supply.
Joseph Schumpeter criticised Smith for a lack of technical rigour, yet he argued that this enabled Smith's writings to appeal to wider audiences: "His very limitation made for success. Had he been more brilliant, he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite truth, had he used more difficult and ingenious methods, he would not have been understood. But he had no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along."
Classical economists presented competing theories to those of Smith, termed the "labour theory of value". Later Marxian economics descending from classical economics also use Smith's labour theories, in part. The first volume of Karl Marx's major work, "Das Kapital", was published in German in 1867. In it, Marx focused on the labour theory of value and what he considered to be the exploitation of labour by capital. The labour theory of value held that the value of a thing was determined by the labour that went into its production. This contrasts with the modern contention of neoclassical economics, that the value of a thing is determined by what one is willing to give up to obtain the thing.
The body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" or "marginalism" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier, broader term "political economy" used by Smith. This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences. Neoclassical economics systematised supply and demand as joint determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium, affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value of which Smith was most famously identified with in classical economics, in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.
The bicentennial anniversary of the publication of "The Wealth of Nations" was celebrated in 1976, resulting in increased interest for "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and his other works throughout academia. After 1976, Smith was more likely to be represented as the author of both "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", and thereby as the founder of a moral philosophy and the science of economics. His "homo economicus" or "economic man" was also more often represented as a moral person. Additionally, economists David Levy and Sandra Peart in "The Secret History of the Dismal Science" point to his opposition to hierarchy and beliefs in inequality, including racial inequality, and provide additional support for those who point to Smith's opposition to slavery, colonialism, and empire. Emphasised also are Smith's statements of the need for high wages for the poor, and the efforts to keep wages low. In The "Vanity of the Philosopher: From Equality to Hierarchy in Postclassical Economics", Peart and Levy also cite Smith's view that a common street porter was not intellectually inferior to a philosopher, and point to the need for greater appreciation of the public views in discussions of science and other subjects now considered to be technical. They also cite Smith's opposition to the often expressed view that science is superior to common sense.
Smith also explained the relationship between growth of private property and civil government:
Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, civil government is not so necessary. Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property. (...) Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs. All the inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel that the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to support their authority. Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
In British imperial debates.
Smith opposed empire. He challenged ideas that colonies were key to British prosperity and power. He rejected that other cultures, such as China and India, were culturally and developmentally inferior to Europe. While he favoured "commercial society", he did not support radical social change and the imposition of commercial society on other societies. He proposed that colonies be given independence or that full political rights be extended to colonial subjects.
Smith's chapter on colonies, in turn, would help shape British imperial debates from the mid-19th century onward. "The Wealth of Nations" would become an ambiguous text regarding the imperial question. In his chapter on colonies, Smith pondered how to solve the crisis developing across the Atlantic among the empire's 13 American colonies. He offered two different proposals for easing tensions. The first proposal called for giving the colonies their independence, and by thus parting on a friendly basis, Britain would be able to develop and maintain a free-trade relationship with them, and possibly even an informal military alliance. Smith's second proposal called for a theoretical imperial federation that would bring the colonies and the metropole closer together through an imperial parliamentary system and imperial free trade.
Smith's most prominent disciple in 19th-century Britain, peace advocate Richard Cobden, preferred the first proposal. Cobden would lead the Anti-Corn Law League in overturning the Corn Laws in 1846, shifting Britain to a policy of free trade and empire "on the cheap" for decades to come. This hands-off approach toward the British Empire would become known as Cobdenism or the Manchester School. By the turn of the century, however, advocates of Smith's second proposal such as Joseph Shield Nicholson would become ever more vocal in opposing Cobdenism, calling instead for imperial federation. As Marc-William Palen notes: "On the one hand, Adam Smith's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Cobdenite adherents used his theories to argue for gradual imperial devolution and empire 'on the cheap'. On the other, various proponents of imperial federation throughout the British World sought to use Smith's theories to overturn the predominant Cobdenite hands-off imperial approach and instead, with a firm grip, bring the empire closer than ever before." Smith's ideas thus played an important part in subsequent debates over the British Empire.
Portraits, monuments, and banknotes.
Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks; his portrait has appeared since 1981 on the £50 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in Scotland, and in March 2007 Smith's image also appeared on the new series of £20 notes issued by the Bank of England, making him the first Scotsman to feature on an English banknote.
A large-scale memorial of Smith by Alexander Stoddart was unveiled on 4 July 2008 in Edinburgh. It is a -tall bronze sculpture and it stands above the Royal Mile outside St Giles' Cathedral in Parliament Square, near the Mercat cross. 20th-century sculptor Jim Sanborn (best known for the "Kryptos" sculpture at the United States Central Intelligence Agency) has created multiple pieces which feature Smith's work. At Central Connecticut State University is "Circulating Capital", a tall cylinder which features an extract from "The Wealth of Nations" on the lower half, and on the upper half, some of the same text, but represented in binary code. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, outside the Belk College of Business Administration, is "Adam Smith's Spinning Top". Another Smith sculpture is at Cleveland State University. He also appears as the narrator in the 2013 play "The Low Road", centred on a proponent on "laissez-faire" economics in the late 18th century, but dealing obliquely with the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the recession which followed; in the premiere production, he was portrayed by Bill Paterson.
A bust of Smith is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.
Residence.
Adam Smith resided at Panmure House from 1778 to 1790. This residence has now been purchased by the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University and fundraising has begun to restore it. Part of the Northern end of the original building appears to have been demolished in the 19th century to make way for an iron foundry.
As a symbol of free-market economics.
Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free-market policies as the founder of free-market economics, a view reflected in the naming of bodies such as the Adam Smith Institute in London, multiple entities known as the "Adam Smith Society", including an historical Italian organisation, and the U.S.-based Adam Smith Society, and the Australian Adam Smith Club, and in terms such as the Adam Smith necktie.
Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argues that, while Smith did not coin the term "laissez-faire", "it was left to Adam Smith to identify the more-general set of principles that brought conceptual clarity to the seeming chaos of market transactions". Greenspan continues that "The Wealth of Nations" was "one of the great achievements in human intellectual history". P.J. O'Rourke describes Smith as the "founder of free market economics".
Other writers have argued that Smith's support for "laissez-faire" (which in French means leave alone) has been overstated. Herbert Stein wrote that the people who "wear an Adam Smith necktie" do it to "make a statement of their devotion to the idea of free markets and limited government", and that this misrepresents Smith's ideas. Stein writes that Smith "was not pure or doctrinaire about this idea. He viewed government intervention in the market with great skepticism...yet he was prepared to accept or propose qualifications to that policy in the specific cases where he judged that their net effect would be beneficial and would not undermine the basically free character of the system. He did not wear the Adam Smith necktie." In Stein's reading, "The Wealth of Nations" could justify the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, mandatory employer health benefits, environmentalism, and "discriminatory taxation to deter improper or luxurious behavior".
Similarly, Vivienne Brown stated in "The Economic Journal" that in the 20th-century United States, Reaganomics supporters, "The Wall Street Journal", and other similar sources have spread among the general public a partial and misleading vision of Smith, portraying him as an "extreme dogmatic defender of "laissez-faire" capitalism and supply-side economics". In fact, "The Wealth of Nations" includes the following statement on the payment of taxes:
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.
Some commentators have argued that Smith's works show support for a progressive, not flat, income tax and that he specifically named taxes that he thought should be required by the state, among them luxury-goods taxes and tax on rent. Yet Smith argued for the "impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion to their economic revenue, by any capitation". Smith argued that taxes should principally go toward protecting "justice" and "certain publick institutions" that were necessary for the benefit of all of society, but that could not be provided by private enterprise.
Additionally, Smith outlined the proper expenses of the government in "The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch. I". Included in his requirements of a government is to enforce contracts and provide justice system, grant patents and copy rights, provide public goods such as infrastructure, provide national defence, and regulate banking. The role of the government was to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual" such as roads, bridges, canals, and harbours. He also encouraged invention and new ideas through his patent enforcement and support of infant industry monopolies. He supported partial public subsidies for elementary education, and he believed that competition among religious institutions would provide general benefit to the society. In such cases, however, Smith argued for local rather than centralised control: "Even those publick works which are of such a nature that they cannot afford any revenue for maintaining themselves ... are always better maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the management of a local and provincial administration, than by the general revenue of the state" ("Wealth of Nations," V.i.d.18). Finally, he outlined how the government should support the dignity of the monarch or chief magistrate, such that they are equal or above the public in fashion. He even states that monarchs should be provided for in a greater fashion than magistrates of a republic because "we naturally expect more splendor in the court of a king than in the mansion-house of a doge". In addition, he allowed that in some specific circumstances, retaliatory tariffs may be beneficial:
The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconvenience of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods.
However, he added that in general, a retaliatory tariff "seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes of them".
Economic historians such as Jacob Viner regard Smith as a strong advocate of free markets and limited government (what Smith called "natural liberty"), but not as a dogmatic supporter of "laissez-faire".
Economist Daniel Klein believes using the term "free-market economics" or "free-market economist" to identify the ideas of Smith is too general and slightly misleading. Klein offers six characteristics central to the identity of Smith's economic thought and argues that a new name is needed to give a more accurate depiction of the "Smithian" identity. Economist David Ricardo set straight some of the misunderstandings about Smith's thoughts on free market. Many continue to fall victim to the thinking that Smith was a free-market economist without exception, though he was not. Ricardo pointed out that Smith was in support of helping infant industries. Smith believed that the government should subsidise newly formed industry, but he did fear that when the infant industry grew into adulthood, it would be unwilling to surrender the government help. Smith also supported tariffs on imported goods to counteract an internal tax on the same good. Smith also fell to pressure in supporting some tariffs in support for national defence.
Some have also claimed, Emma Rothschild among them, that Smith would have supported a minimum wage, although no direct textual evidence supports the claim. Indeed, Smith wrote:
The price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the workmen, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to do so. ("The Wealth of Nations", Book 1, Chapter 8)
However, Smith also noted, to the contrary, the existence of an imbalanced, inequality of bargaining power:
A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
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1822 | Antoine Lavoisier | Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology.
It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), and opposed phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same. His wife and laboratory assistant, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, became a renowned chemist in her own right.
Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the "Ferme générale". The "Ferme générale" was one of the most hated components of the "Ancien Régime" because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French Revolution, he was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and was guillotined.
Biography.
Early life and education.
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born to a wealthy family of the nobility in Paris on 26 August 1743. The son of an attorney at the Parlement of Paris, he inherited a large fortune at the age of five upon the death of his mother. Lavoisier began his schooling at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris (also known as the Collège Mazarin) in Paris in 1754 at the age of 11. In his last two years (1760–1761) at the school, his scientific interests were aroused, and he studied chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics. In the philosophy class he came under the tutelage of Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, a distinguished mathematician and observational astronomer who imbued the young Lavoisier with an interest in meteorological observation, an enthusiasm which never left him. Lavoisier entered the school of law, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1763 and a licentiate in 1764. Lavoisier received a law degree and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced as a lawyer. However, he continued his scientific education in his spare time.
Early scientific work.
Lavoisier's education was filled with the ideals of the French Enlightenment of the time, and he was fascinated by Pierre Macquer's dictionary of chemistry. He attended lectures in the natural sciences. Lavoisier's devotion and passion for chemistry were largely influenced by Étienne Condillac, a prominent French scholar of the 18th century. His first chemical publication appeared in 1764. From 1763 to 1767, he studied geology under Jean-Étienne Guettard. In collaboration with Guettard, Lavoisier worked on a geological survey of Alsace-Lorraine in June 1767. In 1764 he read his first paper to the French Academy of Sciences, France's most elite scientific society, on the chemical and physical properties of gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate), and in 1766 he was awarded a gold medal by the King for an essay on the problems of urban street lighting. In 1768 Lavoisier received a provisional appointment to the Academy of Sciences. In 1769, he worked on the first geological map of France.
Lavoisier as a social reformer.
Research benefitting the public good.
While Lavoisier is commonly known for his contributions to the sciences, he also dedicated a significant portion of his fortune and work toward benefitting the public. Lavoisier was a humanitarian—he cared deeply about the people in his country and often concerned himself with improving the livelihood of the population by agriculture, industry, and the sciences. The first instance of this occurred in 1765, when he submitted an essay on improving urban street lighting to the French Academy of Sciences.
Three years later in 1768, he focused on a new project to design an aqueduct. The goal was to bring water from the river Yvette into Paris so that the citizens could have clean drinking water. But, since the construction never commenced, he instead turned his focus to purifying the water from the Seine. This was the project that interested Lavoisier in the chemistry of water and public sanitation duties.
Additionally, he was interested in air quality and spent some time studying the health risks associated with gunpowder's effect on the air. In 1772, he performed a study on how to reconstruct the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, after it had been damaged by fire, in a way that would allow proper ventilation and clean air throughout.
At the time, the prisons in Paris were known to be largely unlivable and the prisoners' treatment inhumane. Lavoisier took part in investigations in 1780 (and again in 1791) on the hygiene in prisons and had made suggestions to improve living conditions, suggestions which were largely ignored.
Once a part of the Academy, Lavoisier also held his own competitions to push the direction of research towards bettering the public and his own work.
Sponsorship of the sciences.
Lavoisier had a vision of public education having roots in "scientific sociability" and philanthropy.
Lavoisier gained a vast majority of his income through buying stock in the General Farm, which allowed him to work on science full-time, live comfortably, and allowed him to contribute financially to better the community. (It would also contribute to his demise during the Reign of Terror many years later.)
It was very difficult to secure public funding for the sciences at the time, and additionally not very financially profitable for the average scientist, so Lavoisier used his wealth to open a very expensive and sophisticated laboratory in France so that aspiring scientists could study without the barriers of securing funding for their research.
He also pushed for public education in the sciences. He founded two organizations, and Musée des Arts et Métiers, which were created to serve as educational tools for the public. Funded by the wealthy and noble, the Lycée regularly taught courses to the public beginning in 1793.
Ferme générale and marriage.
At the age of 26, around the time he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier bought a share in the "Ferme générale", a tax farming financial company which advanced the estimated tax revenue to the royal government in return for the right to collect the taxes. On behalf of the Ferme générale Lavoisier commissioned the building of a wall around Paris so that customs duties could be collected from those transporting goods into and out of the city. His participation in the collection of its taxes did not help his reputation when the Reign of Terror began in France, as taxes and poor government reform were the primary motivators during the French Revolution.
Lavoisier consolidated his social and economic position when, in 1771 at age 28, he married Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, the 13-year-old daughter of a senior member of the "Ferme générale". She was to play an important part in Lavoisier's scientific career—notably, she translated English documents for him, including Richard Kirwan's "Essay on Phlogiston" and Joseph Priestley's research. In addition, she assisted him in the laboratory and created many sketches and carved engravings of the laboratory instruments used by Lavoisier and his colleagues for their scientific works. Madame Lavoisier edited and published Antoine's memoirs (whether any English translations of those memoirs have survived is unknown as of today) and hosted parties at which eminent scientists discussed ideas and problems related to chemistry.
A portrait of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier was painted by the famed artist Jacques-Louis David. Completed in 1788 on the eve of the Revolution, the painting was denied a customary public display at the Paris Salon for fear that it might inflame anti-aristocratic passions.
For three years following his entry into the "Ferme générale", Lavoisier's scientific activity diminished somewhat, for much of his time was taken up with official "Ferme générale" business. He did, however, present one important memoir to the Academy of Sciences during this period, on the supposed conversion of water into earth by evaporation. By a very precise quantitative experiment, Lavoisier showed that the "earthy" sediment produced after long-continued reflux heating of water in a glass vessel was not due to a conversion of the water into earth but rather to the gradual disintegration of the inside of the glass vessel produced by the boiling water. He also attempted to introduce reforms in the French monetary and taxation system to help the peasants.
Adulteration of tobacco.
The Farmers General held a monopoly of the production, import and sale of tobacco in France, and the taxes they levied on tobacco brought revenues of 30 million livres a year. This revenue began to fall because of a growing black market in tobacco that was smuggled and adulterated, most commonly with ash and water. Lavoisier devised a method of checking whether ash had been mixed in with tobacco: "When a spirit of vitriol, "aqua fortis" or some other acid solution is poured on ash, there is an immediate very intense effervescent reaction, accompanied by an easily detected noise." Lavoisier also noticed that the addition of a small amount of ash improved the flavour of tobacco. Of one vendor selling adulterated goods, he wrote "His tobacco enjoys a very good reputation in the province... the very small proportion of ash that is added gives it a particularly pungent flavour that consumers look for. Perhaps the Farm could gain some advantage by adding a bit of this liquid mixture when the tobacco is fabricated." Lavoisier also found that while adding a lot of water to bulk the tobacco up would cause it to ferment and smell bad, the addition of a very small amount improved the product. Thereafter the factories of the Farmers General added, as he recommended, a consistent 6.3% of water by volume to the tobacco they processed. To allow for this addition, the Farmers General delivered to retailers seventeen ounces of tobacco while only charging for sixteen. To ensure that only these authorised amounts were added, and to exclude the black market, Lavoisier saw to it that a watertight system of checks, accounts, supervision and testing made it very difficult for retailers to source contraband tobacco or to improve their profits by bulking it up. He was energetic and rigorous in implementing this, and the systems he introduced were deeply unpopular with the tobacco retailers across the country. This unpopularity was to have consequences for him during the French Revolution.
Royal Commission on Agriculture.
Lavoisier urged the establishment of a Royal Commission on Agriculture. He then served as its Secretary and spent considerable sums of his own money in order to improve the agricultural yields in the Sologne, an area where farmland was of poor quality. The humidity of the region often led to a blight of the rye harvest, causing outbreaks of ergotism among the population. In 1788 Lavoisier presented a report to the Commission detailing ten years of efforts on his experimental farm to introduce new crops and types of livestock. His conclusion was that despite the possibilities of agricultural reforms, the tax system left tenant farmers with so little that it was unrealistic to expect them to change their traditional practices.
Gunpowder Commission.
Lavoisier's researches on combustion were carried out in the midst of a very busy schedule of public and private duties, especially in connection with the "Ferme Générale". There were also innumerable reports for and committees of the Academy of Sciences to investigate specific problems on order of the royal government. Lavoisier, whose organizing skills were outstanding, frequently landed the task of writing up such official reports. In 1775 he was made one of four commissioners of gunpowder appointed to replace a private company, similar to the Ferme Générale, which had proved unsatisfactory in supplying France with its munitions requirements. As a result of his efforts, both the quantity and quality of French gunpowder greatly improved, and it became a source of revenue for the government. His appointment to the Gunpowder Commission brought one great benefit to Lavoisier's scientific career as well. As a commissioner, he enjoyed both a house and a laboratory in the Royal Arsenal. Here he lived and worked between 1775 and 1792.
Lavoisier was a formative influence in the formation of the Du Pont gunpowder business because he trained Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, its founder, on gunpowder-making in France; the latter said that the Du Pont gunpowder mills "would never have been started but for his kindness to me."
During the Revolution.
In June 1791, Lavoisier made a loan of 71,000 livres to Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours to buy a printing works so that du Pont could publish a newspaper, "La Correspondance Patriotique". The plan was for this to include both reports of debates in the National Constituent Assembly as well as papers from the Academy of Sciences. The revolution quickly disrupted the elder du Pont's first newspaper, but his son E.I. du Pont soon launched "Le Republicain" and published Lavoisier's latest chemistry texts.
Lavoisier also chaired the commission set up to establish a uniform system of weights and measures which in March 1791 recommended the adoption of the metric system. The new system of weights and measures was adopted by the Convention on 1 August 1793. Lavoisier was one of the 27 Farmers General who, by order of the Convention, were all to be detained. Although temporarily going into hiding, on 30 November 1793 he handed himself into the Port Royal convent for questioning. He claimed he had not operated on this commission for many years, having instead devoted himself to science.
Lavoisier himself was removed from the commission on weights and measures on 23 December 1793, together with mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace and several other members, for political reasons.
One of his last major works was a proposal to the National Convention for the reform of French education. He also intervened on behalf of a number of foreign-born scientists including mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, helping to exempt them from a mandate stripping all foreigners of possessions and freedom.
Final days and execution.
As the French Revolution gained momentum, attacks mounted on the deeply unpopular "Ferme générale", and it was eventually abolished in March 1791. In 1792 Lavoisier was forced to resign from his post on the Gunpowder Commission and to move from his house and laboratory at the Royal Arsenal. On 8 August 1793, all the learned societies, including the Academy of Sciences, were suppressed at the request of Abbé Grégoire.
On 24 November 1793, the arrest of all the former tax farmers was ordered. Lavoisier and the other Farmers General faced nine accusations of defrauding the state of money owed to it, and of adding water to tobacco before selling it. Lavoisier drafted their defense, refuting the financial accusations, reminding the court of how they had maintained a consistently high quality of tobacco. The court was however inclined to believe that by condemning them and seizing their goods, it would recover huge sums for the state. Lavoisier was convicted and guillotined on 8 May 1794 in Paris, at the age of 50, along with his 27 co-defendants.
According to popular legend, the appeal to spare his life so that he could continue his experiments was cut short by the judge, Coffinhal: "La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu." ("The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.") The judge Coffinhal himself would be executed less than three months later, in the wake of the Thermidorian reaction.
Lavoisier's importance to science was expressed by Lagrange who lamented the beheading by saying: "Il ne leur a fallu qu'un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable." ("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")
Exoneration.
A year and a half after his execution, Lavoisier was completely exonerated by the French government. During the White Terror, his belongings were delivered to his widow. A brief note was included, reading "To the widow of Lavoisier, who was falsely convicted".
Contributions to chemistry.
Oxygen theory of combustion.
Contrary to prevailing thought at the time, Lavoisier theorized that common air combines with substance when they are burned. He demonstrated this through experiment.
During late 1772 Lavoisier turned his attention to the phenomenon of combustion, the topic on which he was to make his most significant contribution to science. He reported the results of his first experiments on combustion in a note to the Academy on 20 October, in which he reported that when phosphorus burned, it combined with a large quantity of air to produce acid spirit of phosphorus, and that the phosphorus increased in weight on burning. In a second sealed note deposited with the Academy a few weeks later (1 November) Lavoisier extended his observations and conclusions to the burning of sulfur and went on to add that "what is observed in the combustion of sulfur and phosphorus may well take place in the case of all substances that gain in weight by combustion and calcination: and I am persuaded that the increase in weight of metallic calces is due to the same cause."
Joseph Black's "fixed air".
During 1773 Lavoisier determined to review thoroughly the literature on air, particularly "fixed air," and to repeat many of the experiments of other workers in the field. He published an account of this review in 1774 in a book entitled "Opuscules physiques et chimiques" (Physical and Chemical Essays). In the course of this review, he made his first full study of the work of Joseph Black, the Scottish chemist who had carried out a series of classic quantitative experiments on the mild and caustic alkalies. Black had shown that the difference between a mild alkali, for example, chalk (CaCO3), and the caustic form, for example, quicklime (CaO), lay in the fact that the former contained "fixed air," not common air fixed in the chalk, but a distinct chemical species, now understood to be carbon dioxide (CO2), which was a constituent of the atmosphere. Lavoisier recognized that Black's fixed air was identical with the air evolved when metal calces were reduced with charcoal and even suggested that the air which combined with metals on calcination and increased the weight might be Black's fixed air, that is, CO2.
Joseph Priestley.
In the spring of 1774, Lavoisier carried out experiments on the calcination of tin and lead in sealed vessels, the results of which conclusively confirmed that the increase in weight of metals in combustion was due to combination with air. But the question remained about whether it was in combination with common atmospheric air or with only a part of atmospheric air. In October the English chemist Joseph Priestley visited Paris, where he met Lavoisier and told him of the air which he had produced by heating the red calx of mercury with a burning glass and which had supported combustion with extreme vigor. Priestley at this time was unsure of the nature of this gas, but he felt that it was an especially pure form of common air. Lavoisier carried out his own research on this peculiar substance. The result was his memoir "On the Nature of the Principle Which Combines with Metals during Their Calcination and Increases Their Weight", read to the Academy on 26 April 1775 (commonly referred to as the Easter Memoir). In the original memoir, Lavoisier showed that the mercury calx was a true metallic calx in that it could be reduced with charcoal, giving off Black's fixed air in the process. When reduced without charcoal, it gave off an air which supported respiration and combustion in an enhanced way. He concluded that this was just a pure form of common air and that it was the air itself "undivided, without alteration, without decomposition" which combined with metals on calcination.
After returning from Paris, Priestley took up once again his investigation of the air from mercury calx. His results now showed that this air was not just an especially pure form of common air but was "five or six times better than common air, for the purpose of respiration, inflammation, and ... every other use of common air". He called the air dephlogisticated air, as he thought it was common air deprived of its phlogiston. Since it was therefore in a state to absorb a much greater quantity of phlogiston given off by burning bodies and respiring animals, the greatly enhanced combustion of substances and the greater ease of breathing in this air were explained.
Pioneer of stoichiometry.
Lavoisier's researches included some of the first truly quantitative chemical experiments. He carefully weighed the reactants and products of a chemical reaction in a sealed glass vessel so that no gases could escape, which was a crucial step in the advancement of chemistry. In 1774, he showed that, although matter can change its state in a chemical reaction, the total mass of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical change. Thus, for instance, if a piece of wood is burned to ashes, the total mass remains unchanged if gaseous reactants and products are included. Lavoisier's experiments supported the law of conservation of mass. In France it is taught as Lavoisier's Law and is paraphrased from a statement in his "Traité Élémentaire de Chimie": "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed." Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) had previously expressed similar ideas in 1748 and proved them in experiments; others whose ideas pre-date the work of Lavoisier include Jean Rey (1583–1645), Joseph Black (1728–1799), and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810).
Chemical nomenclature.
Lavoisier, together with Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, submitted a new program for the reforms of chemical nomenclature to the Academy in 1787, for there was virtually no rational system of chemical nomenclature at this time. This work, titled "Méthode de nomenclature chimique" ("Method of Chemical Nomenclature", 1787), introduced a new system which was tied inextricably to Lavoisier's new oxygen theory of chemistry.
The classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water were discarded, and instead some 33 substances which could not be decomposed into simpler substances by any known chemical means were provisionally listed as elements. The elements included light; caloric (matter of heat); the principles of oxygen, hydrogen, and azote (nitrogen); carbon; sulfur; phosphorus; the yet unknown "radicals" of muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid), boric acid, and "fluoric" acid; 17 metals; 5 earths (mainly oxides of yet unknown metals such as magnesia, baria, and strontia); three alkalies (potash, soda, and ammonia); and the "radicals" of 19 organic acids.
The acids, regarded in the new system as compounds of various elements with oxygen, were given names which indicated the element involved together with the degree of oxygenation of that element, for example sulfuric and sulfurous acids, phosphoric and phosphorous acids, nitric and nitrous acids, the "ic" termination indicating acids with a higher proportion of oxygen than those with the "ous" ending.
Similarly, salts of the "ic" acids were given the terminal letters "ate," as in copper sulfate, whereas the salts of the "ous" acids terminated with the suffix "ite," as in copper sulfite.
The total effect of the new nomenclature can be gauged by comparing the new name "copper sulfate" with the old term "vitriol of Venus." Lavoisier's new nomenclature spread throughout Europe and to the United States and became common use in the field of chemistry. This marked the beginning of the anti-phlogistic approach to the field.
Chemical revolution and opposition.
Lavoisier is commonly cited as a central contributor to the chemical revolution. His precise measurements and meticulous keeping of balance sheets throughout his experiment were vital to the widespread acceptance of the law of conservation of mass. His introduction of new terminology, a binomial system modeled after that of Linnaeus, also helps to mark the dramatic changes in the field which are referred to generally as the chemical revolution. Lavoisier encountered much opposition in trying to change the field, especially from British phlogistic scientists. Joseph Priestley, Richard Kirwan, James Keir, and William Nicholson, among others, argued that quantification of substances did not imply conservation of mass. Rather than reporting factual evidence, opposition claimed Lavoisier was misinterpreting the implications of his research. One of Lavoisier's allies, Jean Baptiste Biot, wrote of Lavoisier's methodology, "one felt the necessity of linking accuracy in experiments to rigor of reasoning." His opposition argued that precision in experimentation did not imply precision in inferences and reasoning. Despite opposition, Lavoisier continued to use precise instrumentation to convince other chemists of his conclusions, often results to five to eight decimal places. Nicholson, who estimated that only three of these decimal places were meaningful, stated:
Notable works.
Easter memoir.
The "official" version of Lavoisier's Easter Memoir appeared in 1778. In the intervening period, Lavoisier had ample time to repeat some of Priestley's latest experiments and perform some new ones of his own. In addition to studying Priestley's dephlogisticated air, he studied more thoroughly the residual air after metals had been calcined. He showed that this residual air supported neither combustion nor respiration and that approximately five volumes of this air added to one volume of the dephlogisticated air gave common atmospheric air. Common air was then a mixture of two distinct chemical species with quite different properties. Thus when the revised version of the Easter Memoir was published in 1778, Lavoisier no longer stated that the principle which combined with metals on calcination was just common air but "nothing else than the healthiest and purest part of the air" or the "eminently respirable part of the air". The same year he coined the name oxygen for this constituent of the air, from the Greek words meaning "acid former". He was struck by the fact that the combustion products of such nonmetals as sulfur, phosphorus, charcoal, and nitrogen were acidic. He held that all acids contained oxygen and that oxygen was therefore the acidifying principle.
Dismantling phlogiston theory.
Lavoisier's chemical research between 1772 and 1778 was largely concerned with developing his own new theory of combustion. In 1783 he read to the academy his paper entitled "Réflexions sur le phlogistique" (Reflections on Phlogiston), a full-scale attack on the current phlogiston theory of combustion. That year Lavoisier also began a series of experiments on the composition of water which were to prove an important capstone to his combustion theory and win many converts to it. Many investigators had been experimenting with the combination of Henry Cavendish's inflammable air, which Lavoisier termed hydrogen (Greek for "water-former"), with "dephlogisticated air" (air in the process of combustion, now known to be oxygen) by electrically sparking mixtures of the gases. All of the researchers noted Cavendish's production of pure water by burning hydrogen in oxygen, but they interpreted the reaction in varying ways within the framework of phlogiston theory. Lavoisier learned of Cavendish's experiment in June 1783 via Charles Blagden (before the results were published in 1784), and immediately recognized water as the oxide of a hydroelectric gas.
In cooperation with Laplace, Lavoisier synthesized water by burning jets of hydrogen and oxygen in a bell jar over mercury. The quantitative results were good enough to support the contention that water was not an element, as had been thought for over 2,000 years, but a compound of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. The interpretation of water as a compound explained the inflammable air generated from dissolving metals in acids (hydrogen produced when water decomposes) and the reduction of calces by inflammable air (a combination of gas from calx with oxygen to form water).
Despite these experiments, Lavoisier's antiphlogistic approach remained unaccepted by many other chemists. Lavoisier labored to provide definitive proof of the composition of water, attempting to use this in support of his theory. Working with Jean-Baptiste Meusnier, Lavoisier passed water through a red-hot iron gun barrel, allowing the oxygen to form an oxide with the iron and the hydrogen to emerge from the end of the pipe. He submitted his findings of the composition of water to the Académie des Sciences in April 1784, reporting his figures to eight decimal places. Opposition responded to this further experimentation by stating that Lavoisier continued to draw the incorrect conclusions and that his experiment demonstrated the displacement of phlogiston from iron by the combination of water with the metal. Lavoisier developed a new apparatus which used a pneumatic trough, a set of balances, a thermometer, and a barometer, all calibrated carefully. Thirty savants were invited to witness the decomposition and synthesis of water using this apparatus, convincing many who attended of the correctness of Lavoisier's theories. This demonstration established water as a compound of oxygen and hydrogen with great certainty for those who viewed it. The dissemination of the experiment, however, proved subpar, as it lacked the details to properly display the amount of precision taken in the measurements. The paper ended with a hasty statement that the experiment was "more than sufficient to lay hold of the certainty of the proposition" of the composition of water and stated that the methods used in the experiment would unite chemistry with the other physical sciences and advance discoveries.
"Elementary Treatise of Chemistry".
Lavoisier employed the new nomenclature in his "Traité élémentaire de chimie" ("Elementary Treatise on Chemistry"), published in 1789. This work represents the synthesis of Lavoisier's contribution to chemistry and can be considered the first modern textbook on the subject. The core of the work was the oxygen theory, and the work became a most effective vehicle for the transmission of the new doctrines. It presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the law of conservation of mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. This text clarified the concept of an element as a substance that could not be broken down by any known method of chemical analysis and presented Lavoisier's theory of the formation of chemical compounds from elements. It remains a classic in the history of science. While many leading chemists of the time refused to accept Lavoisier's new ideas, demand for "Traité élémentaire" as a textbook in Edinburgh was sufficient to merit translation into English within about a year of its French publication. In any event, the "Traité élémentaire" was sufficiently sound to convince the next generation.
Physiological work.
The relationship between combustion and respiration had long been recognized from the essential role which air played in both processes. Lavoisier was almost obliged, therefore, to extend his new theory of combustion to include the area of respiration physiology. His first memoirs on this topic were read to the Academy of Sciences in 1777, but his most significant contribution to this field was made in the winter of 1782–1783 in association with Laplace. The result of this work was published in a memoir, "On Heat." Lavoisier and Laplace designed an ice calorimeter apparatus for measuring the amount of heat given off during combustion or respiration. The outer shell of the calorimeter was packed with snow, which melted to maintain a constant temperature of around an inner shell filled with ice. By measuring the quantity of carbon dioxide and heat produced by confining a live guinea pig in this apparatus, and by comparing the amount of heat produced when sufficient carbon was burned in the ice calorimeter to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as that which the guinea pig exhaled, they concluded that respiration was, in fact, a slow combustion process. Lavoisier stated, "la respiration est donc une combustion," that is, respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, like that of a candle burning.
This continuous slow combustion, which they supposed took place in the lungs, enabled the living animal to maintain its body temperature above that of its surroundings, thus accounting for the puzzling phenomenon of animal heat. Lavoisier continued these respiration experiments in 1789–1790 in cooperation with Armand Seguin. They designed an ambitious set of experiments to study the whole process of body metabolism and respiration using Seguin as a human guinea pig in the experiments. Their work was only partially completed and published because of the Revolution's disruption, but Lavoisier's pioneering work in this field inspired similar research on physiological processes for generations.
Legacy.
Lavoisier's fundamental contributions to chemistry were a result of a conscious effort to fit all experiments into the framework of a single theory. He established the consistent use of the chemical balance, used oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a new system of chemical nomenclature which held that oxygen was an essential constituent of all acids (which later turned out to be erroneous).
Lavoisier also did early research in physical chemistry and thermodynamics in joint experiments with Laplace. They used a calorimeter to estimate the heat evolved per unit of carbon dioxide produced, eventually finding the same ratio for a flame and animals, indicating that animals produced energy by a type of combustion reaction.
Lavoisier also contributed to early ideas on composition and chemical changes by stating the radical theory, believing that radicals, which function as a single group in a chemical process, combine with oxygen in reactions. He also introduced the possibility of allotropy in chemical elements when he discovered that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.
He was also responsible for the construction of the gasometer, an expensive instrument he used at his demonstrations. While he used his gasometer exclusively for these, he also created smaller, cheaper, more practical gasometers that worked with a sufficient degree of precision that more chemists could recreate.
Overall, his contributions are considered the most important in advancing chemistry to the level reached in physics and mathematics during the 18th century.
Mount Lavoisier in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
Awards and honours.
During his lifetime, Lavoisier was awarded a gold medal by the King of France for his work on urban street lighting (1766), and was appointed to the French Academy of Sciences (1768). He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1775.
Lavoisier's work was recognized as an International Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society, Académie des sciences de L'institut de France and the Société Chimique de France in 1999. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's Louis 1788 publication entitled "Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique", published with colleagues Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented at the Académie des Sciences (Paris) in 2015.
A number of Lavoisier Medals have been named and given in Lavoisier's honour, by organizations including the Société chimique de France, the International Society for Biological Calorimetry, and the DuPont company He is also commemorated by the Franklin-Lavoisier Prize, marking the friendship of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin. The prize, which includes a medal, is given jointly by the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie in Paris, France and the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
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1825 | Hermann Kolbe | Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe (27 September 1818 – 25 November 1884) was a major contributor to the birth of modern organic chemistry. He was a professor at Marburg and Leipzig. Kolbe was the first to apply the term synthesis in a chemical context, and contributed to the philosophical demise of vitalism through synthesis of the organic substance acetic acid from carbon disulfide, and also contributed to the development of structural theory. This was done via modifications to the idea of "radicals" and accurate prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols, and to the emerging array of organic reactions through his Kolbe electrolysis of carboxylate salts, the Kolbe-Schmitt reaction in the preparation of aspirin and the Kolbe nitrile synthesis. After studies with Wöhler and Bunsen, Kolbe was involved with the early internationalization of chemistry through work in London (with Frankland). He was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and won the Royal Society of London's Davy Medal in the year of his death. Despite these accomplishments and his training important members of the next generation of chemists (including Zaitsev, Curtius, Beckmann, Graebe, Markovnikov, and others), Kolbe is best remembered for editing the for more than a decade, in which his vituperative essays on Kekulé's structure of benzene, van't Hoff's theory on the origin of chirality and Baeyer's reforms of nomenclature were personally critical and linguistically violent. Kolbe died of a heart attack in Leipzig at age 66, six years after the death of his wife, Charlotte. He was survived by four children.
Life.
Kolbe was born in Elliehausen, near Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover (Germany) as the eldest son of a Protestant pastor. At the age of 13, he entered the Göttingen Gymnasium, residing at the home of one of the professors. He obtained the leaving certificate (the Abitur) six years later. He had become passionate about the study of chemistry, matriculating at the University of Göttingen in the spring of 1838 in order to study with the famous chemist Friedrich Wöhler.
In 1842, he became an assistant to Robert Bunsen at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. He took his doctoral degree in 1843 at the same university. A new opportunity arose in 1845, when he became assistant to Lyon Playfair at the new "Museum of Economic Geology" in London and a close friend of Edward Frankland. From 1847, he was engaged in editing the "Handwörterbuch der reinen und angewandten Chemie" ("Dictionary of Pure and Applied Chemistry") edited by Justus von Liebig, Wöhler, and Johann Christian Poggendorff, and he also wrote an important textbook. In 1851, Kolbe succeeded Bunsen as professor of chemistry at Marburg and, in 1865, he was called to the Universität Leipzig. In 1864, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1874.
In 1853, he married Charlotte, the daughter of General-Major Wilhelm von Bardeleben. His wife died in 1876 after 23 years of happy marriage. They had four children.
Work in chemical research.
As late as the 1840s, and despite Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of urea in 1828, some chemists still believed in the doctrine of vitalism, according to which a special life-force was necessary to create "organic" (i.e., in its original meaning, biologically derived) compounds. Kolbe promoted the idea that organic compounds could be derived from substances clearly sourced from outside this "organic" context, directly or indirectly, by substitution processes. (Hence, while by modern definitions, he was converting one organic molecule to another, by the parlance of his era, he was converting "inorganic"—"anorganisch"—substances into "organic" ones only thought accessible through vital processes.) He validated his theory by converting carbon disulfide (CS2) to acetic acid () in several steps (1843–45). Kolbe also introduced a modified idea of structural radicals, so contributing to the development of structural theory. A dramatic success came when his theoretical prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols was confirmed by the synthesis of the first of these classes of organic molecules. Kolbe was the first person to use the word synthesis in its present-day meaning, and contributed a number of new chemical reactions.
In particular, Kolbe developed procedures for the electrolysis of the salts of fatty and other carboxylic acids (Kolbe electrolysis) and prepared salicylic acid, a building block of aspirin in a process called Kolbe synthesis or Kolbe-Schmitt reaction. His method for the synthesis of nitriles is called the Kolbe nitrile synthesis, and with Edward Frankland he found that nitriles can be hydrolyzed to the corresponding acids.
In addition to his own bench research and scholarly and editorial work, Kolbe oversaw student research at Leipzig and especially at Marburg; students spending time under his tutelage included Peter Griess, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaitsev (known for Zaitsev's rule predicting the product composition of elimination reactions), Theodor Curtius (discoverer of diazo compounds, hydrazines, and the Curtius rearrangement), Ernst Otto Beckmann (discoverer of the Beckmann rearrangement), Carl Graebe (discoverer of alizarin), Oscar Loew, Constantin Fahlberg, Nikolai Menshutkin, Vladimir Markovnikov (first to describe carbocycles smaller and larger than cyclohexane, and known for Markovnikov's rule describing addition reactions to alkenes), Jacob Volhard, Ludwig Mond, Alexander Crum Brown (first to describe the double bond of ethylene), Maxwell Simpson, and Frederick Guthrie.
Work as journal editor.
Besides his work for periodicals he wrote numerous books
Kolbe served for more than a decade as what, in modern terms, would be understood the senior editor of the ("Journal of practical chemistry", from 1870 to 1884), Kolbe was sometimes so severely critical of the work of others, especially after about 1874, that some wondered whether he might have been suffering a mental illness. He was intolerant of what he regarded as loose speculation parading as theory, and sought through his writings to save his beloved science of chemistry from what he regarded as the scourge of modern structural theory.
His rejection of structural chemistry, especially the theories of the structure of benzene by August Kekulé, the theory of the asymmetric carbon atom by J.H. van't Hoff, and the reform of chemical nomenclature by Adolf von Baeyer, was expressed in his vituperative articles in the "Journal für Praktische Chemie". Some translated quotes illustrate his manner of articulating the deep conflict between his interpretation of chemistry and that of the structural chemists: «"...Baeyer is an excellent experimentor, but he is only an empiricist, lacking sense and capability, and his interpretations of his experiments show particular deficiency in his familiarity with the principles of true science...»"The violence of his language worked to limit his posthumous reputation.
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1828 | Amitabh Bachchan | Amitabh Bachchan (; born as Amitabh Shrivastav; 11 October 1942) is an Indian actor, film producer, television host, occasional playback singer and former politician, who works in Hindi cinema. In film career spanning over five decades, he has starred in more than 200 films. Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. Referred to as the "Shahenshah of Bollywood", "Sadi Ke Mahanayak" (Hindi for, "Greatest actor of the century"), "Star of the Millennium", or "Big B". His dominance in the Indian movie scene during the 1970s1980s made the French director François Truffaut call it a "one-man industry".
Bachchan was born in 1942 in Allahabad to the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and his wife, the social activist Teji Bachchan. He was educated at Sherwood College, Nainital, and Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi. His film career started in 1969 as a voice narrator in Mrinal Sen's film "Bhuvan Shome". He first gained popularity in the early 1970s for films such as "Zanjeer", "Deewaar" and "Sholay", and achieved greater stardom in later years, dubbed India's "angry young man" for several of his on-screen roles in Hindi films. He consistently starred in top grossing Indian films with critical acclaim since mid 1970s to 80s, such as "Amar Akbar Anthony", "Don", "Trishul", "Muqaddar Ka Sikander", "Kaala Patthar", "Kaalia", "Naseeb", "Namak Halaal", "Coolie", "Sharaabi" and "Mard", as well as some of his most acclaimed performances include "Namak Haraam", "Abhimaan", "Mili", "Silsala", "Dostana", "Shakti", "Shahenshah" and "Agneepath". After taking break from acting in 1990s, his resurgence marked in 2000 with "Mohabbatein". Since then he starred in several successful and acclaimed films such as "Aankhen", "Baghban", "Black", "Sarkar", "Paa", "Bhoothnath" and "Piku"; for which he won his fourth National Film Award for Best Actor, making him the only actor to do so. Bachchan also made an appearance in a Hollywood film, "The Great Gatsby" (2013), in which he played a non-Indian Jewish character.
He has won numerous accolades in his career, including four National Film Awards as Best Actor and many awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies. He has won sixteen Filmfare Awards and is the most nominated performer in any major acting category at Filmfare with 34 nominations in Best Actor and 42 nominations overall. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan in 2015 and India's highest award in the field of cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2018 for his contributions to the arts. The Government of France honoured him with its highest civilian honour, Knight of the Legion of honour, in 2007 for his exceptional career in the world of cinema and beyond.
In addition to acting, Bachchan has worked as a playback singer, film producer and television presenter. He has hosted several seasons of the game show "Kaun Banega Crorepati", India's version of the game show franchise, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". He also entered politics for a time in the 1980s. Bachchan has also been involved in several humanitarian works and he is a leading brand endorser in India. Beyond the Indian subcontinent, he acquired a large overseas following of the South Asian diaspora, as well as others, in markets including Africa (South Africa, Eastern Africa and Mauritius), the Middle East (especially UAE and Egypt), the United Kingdom, Russia, Central Asia, the Caribbean (Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago), Oceania (Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand), Canada and the United States.
Early life and family.
Bachchan was born on 11 October 1942 in Allahabad to the Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and social activist Teji Bachchan. Harivansh Rai Bachchan was an Awadhi Hindu Kayastha, who was fluent in Awadhi, Hindi and Urdu. Harivansh's ancestors came from a village called Babupatti, in the Raniganj tehsil, in the Pratapgarh district, in the present-day state of Uttar Pradesh, in India. Teji Bachchan was a Punjabi Sikh Khatri from Lyallpur, Punjab, British India (present-day Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan). Bachchan has a younger brother, Ajitabh, he is 5 years younger than him.
Bachchan's parents were initially going to name him "Inquilaab" (Hindustani for "Revolution"), inspired by the phrase "Inquilab Zindabad" (which translates into English as "Long live the revolution") popularly used during the Indian independence struggle; the name "Amitabh" was suggested to his father by poet Sumitranandan Pant. Although his surname was Shrivastava, Amitabh's father, who opposed the caste system, had adopted the pen name Bachchan ("child-like" in colloquial Hindi), under which he published all of his works. When his father was looking to get him admitted to a school, he and Bachchan's mother decided the family's name should be Bachchan instead of Shrivastava. It is with this last name that Amitabh debuted in films and used for all other practical purposes, Bachchan has become the surname for all of his immediate family. Bachchan's father died in 2003, and his mother in 2007.
Bachchan's secondary education was at Boys' High School & College in Allahabad and Sherwood College in Nainital. He attended Kirori Mal College at the University of Delhi in Delhi. He graduated with Bachelor of Science degree from Kirori Mal College in 1962. When Bachchan finished his studies his father approached Prithviraj Kapoor, the founder of Prithvi Theatre and patriarch of the Kapoor acting family, to see if there was an opening for him, but Kapoor offered no encouragement. Bachchan was a friend of Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, before he became an actor. He used to spend time with them when he was a resident in New Delhi. Bachchan's family were very close to the Nehru-Gandhi family of politicians. When Sonia Gandhi first came to India from Italy before her marriage, Bachchan had received her at the Palam International Airport on 13 January 1968. She spent 48 days at Bachchan's house with his parents before her marriage to Rajiv.
Bachchan applied for a role as a newsreader for All India Radio, Delhi but "failed the audition". He became a business executive for "Bird & Company" in Kolkata (Calcutta), and worked in the theatre before starting his film career. It is thought that his mother might have had some influence in Amitabh Bachchan's choice of career because she always insisted that he should "take centre stage".
Acting career.
Early career (1969–1972).
Bachchan made his film debut in 1969, as a voice narrator in Mrinal Sen's National Award-winning film "Bhuvan Shome". His first acting role was as one of the seven protagonists in the film "Saat Hindustani", directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and featuring Utpal Dutt, Anwar Ali (brother of comedian Mehmood), Madhu and Jalal Agha.
"Anand" (1971) followed, in which Bachchan starred alongside Rajesh Khanna. His role as a doctor with a cynical view of life garnered Bachchan his first Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. He then played his first antagonist role as an infatuated lover-turned-murderer in "Parwana" (1971). Following Parwana were several films including "Reshma Aur Shera" (1971). During this time, he made a guest appearance in the film "Guddi" which starred his future wife Jaya Bhaduri. He narrated part of the film "Bawarchi". In 1972, he made an appearance in the road action comedy "Bombay to Goa" directed by S. Ramanathan which was moderately successful. Many of Bachchan's films during this early period did not do well. His only film with Mala Sinha, "Sanjog" (1972) was also a box office failure.
Rise to stardom (1973–1974).
Bachchan was struggling, seen as a "failed newcomer" who, by the age of 30, had twelve flops and only two hits (as a lead in "Bombay to Goa" and supporting role in "Anand"). He was offered with a dual role movie by the director O.P Goyle, and writer O.P Ralhan for the film "Bandhe Hath" in 1973. This was Bachchan's first movie where he had played double role. Bachchan was soon discovered by screenwriter duo Salim–Javed, consisting of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. Salim Khan wrote the story, screenplay and script of "Zanjeer" (1973), and conceived the "angry young man" persona of the lead role. Javed Akhtar came on board as co-writer, and Prakash Mehra, who saw the script as potentially groundbreaking, as the film's director. However, they were struggling to find an actor for the lead "angry young man" role; it was turned down by a number of actors, owing to it going against the "romantic hero" image dominant in the industry at the time. Salim-Javed soon discovered Bachchan and "saw his talent, which most makers didn't. He was exceptional, a genius actor who was in films that weren't good." According to Salim Khan, they "strongly felt that Amitabh was the ideal casting for "Zanjeer"". Salim Khan introduced Bachchan to Prakash Mehra, and Salim-Javed insisted that Bachchan be cast for the role.
"Zanjeer" was a crime film with violent action, in sharp contrast to the romantically themed films that had generally preceded it, and it established Amitabh in a new persona—the "angry young man" of Bollywood cinema. He earned his first Filmfare Award nomination for Best Actor, with "Filmfare" later considering this one of the most iconic performances of Bollywood history. The film was a huge success and one of the highest-grossing films of that year, breaking Bachchan's dry spell at the box office and making him a star. It was the first of many collaborations between Salim-Javed and Amitabh Bachchan; Salim-Javed wrote many of their subsequent scripts with Bachchan in mind for the lead role, and insisted on him being cast for their later films, including blockbusters such as "Deewaar" (1975) and "Sholay" (1975). Salim Khan also introduced Bachchan to director Manmohan Desai with whom he formed a long and successful association, alongside Prakash Mehra and Yash Chopra.
Eventually, Bachchan became one of the most successful leading men of the film industry. Bachchan's portrayal of the wronged hero fighting a crooked system and circumstances of deprivation in films like "Zanjeer", "Deewaar", "Trishul", "Kaala Patthar" and "Shakti" resonated with the masses of the time, especially the youth who harboured a simmering discontent owing to social ills such as poverty, hunger, unemployment, corruption, social inequality and the brutal excesses of The Emergency. This led to Bachchan being dubbed as the "angry young man", a journalistic catchphrase which became a metaphor for the dormant rage, frustration, restlessness, sense of rebellion and anti-establishment disposition of an entire generation, prevalent in 1970s India.
The year 1973 was also when he married Jaya, and around this time they appeared in several films together: not only "Zanjeer" but also subsequent films such as "Abhimaan", which was released only a month after their marriage and was also successful at the box office. Later, Bachchan played the role of Vikram, once again along with Rajesh Khanna, in the film "Namak Haraam", a social drama directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee and scripted by Biresh Chatterjee addressing themes of friendship. His supporting role won him his second Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1974, Bachchan made several guest appearances in films such as "Kunwara Baap" and "Dost", before playing a supporting role in "Roti Kapda Aur Makaan". The film, directed and written by Manoj Kumar, addressed themes of honesty in the face of oppression and financial and emotional hardship and was the top-earning film of 1974. Bachchan then played the leading role in the film "Majboor". The film was a success at the box office.
Superstardom (1975–1988).
In 1975, he starred in a variety of film genres, from the comedy "Chupke Chupke" and the crime drama "Faraar" to the romantic drama "Mili". This was also the year in which Bachchan starred in two films regarded as important in Hindi cinema history, both written by Salim-Javed, who again insisted on casting Bachchan. The first was "Deewaar", directed by Yash Chopra, where he worked with Shashi Kapoor, Nirupa Roy, Parveen Babi, and Neetu Singh, and earned another Filmfare nomination for Best Actor. The film became a major hit at the box office in 1975, ranking in at number four. "Indiatimes Movies" ranks "Deewaar" amongst the "Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films". The other, released on 15 August 1975, was "Sholay", which became the highest-grossing film ever in India at the time, in which Bachchan played the role of Jaidev. "Deewaar" and "Sholay" are often credited with exalting Bachchan to the heights of superstardom, two years after he became a star with "Zanjeer", and consolidating his domination of the industry throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1999, BBC India declared "Sholay" the "Film of the Millennium" and, like "Deewaar", it has been cited by "Indiatimes Movies" as amongst the "Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films". In that same year, the judges of the 50th annual Filmfare Awards awarded it with the special distinction award called the Filmfare Best Film of 50 Years.
In 1976, he was cast by Yash Chopra in the romantic family drama "Kabhie Kabhie". Bachchan starred as a young poet, Amit Malhotra, who falls deeply in love with a beautiful young girl named Pooja (Rakhee Gulzar) who ends up marrying someone else (Shashi Kapoor). The film was notable for portraying Bachchan as a romantic hero, a far cry from his "angry young man" roles like "Zanjeer" and "Deewaar". The film evoked a favourable response from critics and audiences alike. Bachchan was again nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award for his role in the film. That same year he played a double role in the hit "Adalat" as father and son. In 1977, he won his first Filmfare Best Actor Award for his performance in "Amar Akbar Anthony", in which he played the third lead opposite Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor as Anthony Gonsalves. The film was the highest-grossing film of that year. His other successes that year include "Parvarish" and "Khoon Pasina".
He once again resumed double roles in films such as "Kasme Vaade" (1978) as Amit and Shankar and "Don" (1978) playing the characters of Don, a leader of an underworld gang and his look-alike Vijay. His performance won him his second Filmfare Best Actor Award. He also gave towering performances in Yash Chopra's " Trishul" and Prakash Mehra's "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar" both of which earned him further Filmfare Best Actor nominations. 1978 is arguably considered his most successful year at the box office since all of his six releases the same year, namely "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar", "Trishul", "Don", "Kasme Vaade", "Ganga Ki Saugandh" and "Besharam" were massive successes, the former three being the consecutive highest-grossing films of the year, a rare feat in Indian cinema.
In 1979, Bachchan starred in "Suhaag" which was the highest earning film of that year. In the same year he also enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success with films like "Mr. Natwarlal", "Kaala Patthar", "The Great Gambler" and "Manzil". Amitabh was required to use his singing voice for the first time in a song from the film "Mr. Natwarlal" in which he starred with Rekha. Bachchan's performance in the film saw him nominated for both the Filmfare Best Actor Award and the "Filmfare Award for Best Male Playback Singer". He also received Best Actor nomination for "Kaala Patthar" and then went on to be nominated again in 1980 for the Raj Khosla directed film "Dostana", in which he starred opposite Shatrughan Sinha and Zeenat Aman. "Dostana" proved to be the top-grossing film of 1980. In 1981, he starred in Yash Chopra's melodrama film "Silsila", where he starred alongside his wife Jaya and also Rekha. Other successful films of this period include "Shaan" (1980), "Ram Balram" (1980), "Naseeb" (1981), "Lawaaris" (1981), "Kaalia" (1981), "Yaarana" (1981), "Barsaat Ki Ek Raat" (1981) and "Shakti" (1982), also starring Dilip Kumar.
In 1982, he played double roles in the musical "Satte Pe Satta" and action drama" Desh Premee" which succeeded at the box office along with mega hits like action comedy "Namak Halaal", action drama "Khud-Daar" and the critically acclaimed drama "Bemisal". In 1983, he played a triple role in "Mahaan" which was not as successful as his previous films. Other releases during that year included "Nastik" and "Pukar" which were hits and "Andha Kanoon" (in which he had an extended guest appearance) was a blockbuster. During a stint in politics from 1984 to 1987, his completed films "Mard" (1985) and "Aakhree Raasta" (1986) were released and were major hits. Bachchan had played a role in a special appearance for the movie "Kaun Jeeta Kaun Haara" in the year 1987 and he sang a playback song with Kishore Kumar in this movie.
Coolie incident.
On 26 July 1982, while filming a fight scene with co-actor Puneet Issar for "Coolie", Bachchan had near-fatal intestinal injury. Bachchan was performing his own stunts in the film and one scene required him to fall onto a table and then on the ground. However, as he jumped towards the table, the corner of the table struck his abdomen, resulting in a splenic rupture from which he lost a significant amount of blood. He required an emergency splenectomy and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, at times close to death. There were long queues of well-wishing fans outside the hospital where he was recuperating; the public response included prayers in temples and offers to sacrifice limbs to save him. Nevertheless, he resumed filming later that year after a long period of recuperation. The director, Manmohan Desai, altered the ending of "Coolie": Bachchan's character was originally intended to have been killed off; but, after the change of script, the character lived in the end. Desai felt it would have been inappropriate for the man who had just fended off death in real life to be killed on screen. The footage of the fight scene is frozen at the critical moment, and a caption appears onscreen marking it as the instant of the actor's injury. The film was released in 1983, and partly due to the huge publicity of Bachchan's accident, the film was a box office success and the top-grossing film of that year.
Health issues.
Later, he was diagnosed with Myasthenia gravis. His illness made him feel weak both mentally and physically and he decided to quit films and venture into politics. At this time he became pessimistic, expressing concern with how a new film would be received, and stating before every release, "Yeh film to flop hogi!" ("This film will flop").
Career fluctuations and sabbatical (1988–1992).
After a three-year stint in politics from 1984 to 1987, Bachchan returned to films in 1988, playing the title role in "Shahenshah", which was a box office success. After the success of his comeback film however, his star power began to wane as all of his subsequent films like "Jaadugar", "Toofan" and "Main Azaad Hoon" (all released in 1989) failed at the box office. He gained success during this period with the crime drama "Aaj Ka Arjun" (1990) and action crime drama "Hum" (1991), for which he won his third Filmfare Best Actor Award, but this momentum was short-lived and his string of box office failures continued. Notably, despite the lack of hits, it was during this era that Bachchan won his first National Film Award for Best Actor for his performance as a Mafia don in the 1990 cult film "Agneepath". These years would see his last on-screen appearances for some time. After the release of the critically acclaimed epic "Khuda Gawah" in 1992, Bachchan went into semi-retirement for five years. With the exception of the delayed release of "Insaniyat" (1994), which was also a box office failure, Bachchan did not appear in any new releases for five years.
Business ventures and acting comeback (1996–1999).
Bachchan turned producer during his temporary retirement period, setting up Amitabh Bachchan Corporation, Ltd. (ABCL) in 1996. ABCL's strategy was to introduce products and services covering an entire cross-section of India's entertainment industry. ABCL's operations were mainstream commercial film production and distribution, audio cassettes and video discs, production and marketing of television software, and celebrity and event management. Soon after the company was launched in 1996, the first film it produced was "Tere Mere Sapne", which was a moderate success and launched the careers of actors like Arshad Warsi and southern film star Simran.
In 1997, Bachchan attempted to make his acting comeback with the film "Mrityudata", produced by ABCL. Though "Mrityudaata" attempted to reprise Bachchan's earlier success as an action hero, the film was a failure both financially and critically. ABCL was the main sponsor of the "1996 Miss World beauty pageant", Bangalore, but lost millions. The fiasco and the consequent legal battles surrounding ABCL and various entities after the event, coupled with the fact that ABCL was reported to have overpaid most of its top-level managers, eventually led to its financial and operational collapse in 1997. The company went into administration and was later declared a failed company by the Indian Industries board. The Bombay high court, in April 1999, restrained Bachchan from selling off his Bombay bungalow 'Prateeksha' and two flats until the pending loan recovery cases of Canara Bank were disposed of. Bachchan had, however, pleaded that he had mortgaged his bungalow to raise funds for his company.
Bachchan attempted to revive his acting career, and eventually had commercial success with "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan" (1998) and "Major Saab" (1998), and received positive reviews for "Sooryavansham" (1999), but other films such as "Lal Baadshah" (1999) and "Hindustan Ki Kasam" (1999) were box office failures.
Return to prominence (2000–present).
In 2000, Bachchan appeared in Yash Chopra's box-office hit, "Mohabbatein", directed by Aditya Chopra. He played a stern, elder figure who rivalled the character of Shahrukh Khan. His role won him his third Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. Other hits followed, with Bachchan appearing as an older family patriarch in "" (2001), "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." (2001) and "Baghban" (2003). As an actor, he continued to perform in a range of characters, receiving critical praise for his performances in "Aks" (2001), "Aankhen" (2002), "Kaante" (2002), "Khakee" (2004) and "Dev" (2004). His performance in "Aks" won him his first Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor.
One project that did particularly well for Bachchan was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Black" (2005). The film starred Bachchan as an ageing teacher of a deaf-blind girl and followed their relationship. His performance was unanimously praised by critics and audiences and won him his second National Film Award for Best Actor, his fourth Filmfare Best Actor Award and his second Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor. Taking advantage of this resurgence, Amitabh began endorsing a variety of products and services, appearing in many television and billboard advertisements. In 2005 and 2006, he starred with his son Abhishek in the films "Bunty Aur Babli" (2005), the "Godfather" tribute "Sarkar" (2005), and "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (2006). All of them were successful at the box office. His later releases in 2006 and early 2007 were "Baabul" (2006), "Ekalavya" and "Nishabd" (2007), which failed to do well at the box office but his performances in each of them were praised by critics.
In May 2007, two of his films: the romantic comedy "Cheeni Kum" and the multi-starrer action drama "Shootout at Lokhandwala" were released. "Shootout at Lokhandwala" did well at the box office and was declared a hit in India, while "Cheeni Kum" picked up after a slow start and was a success. A remake of his biggest hit, "Sholay" (1975), entitled "Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag", released in August of that same year and proved to be a major commercial failure in addition to its poor critical reception. The year also marked Bachchan's first appearance in an English-language film, Rituparno Ghosh's "The Last Lear", co-starring Arjun Rampal and Preity Zinta. The film premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2007. He received positive reviews from critics who hailed his performance as his best ever since "Black". Bachchan was slated to play a supporting role in his first international film, "Shantaram", directed by Mira Nair and starring Hollywood actor Johnny Depp in the lead. The film was due to begin filming in February 2008 but due to the writer's strike, was pushed to September 2008. The film is currently "shelved" indefinitely.
Vivek Sharma's "Bhoothnath", in which he plays the title role as a ghost, was released on 9 May 2008. "Sarkar Raj", the sequel of the 2005 film "Sarkar", released in June 2008 and received a positive response at the box office. "Paa", which released at the end of 2009 was a highly anticipated project as it saw him playing his own son Abhishek's Progeria-affected 13-year-old son, and it opened to favourable reviews, particularly towards Bachchan's performance and was one of the top-grossing films of 2009. It won him his third National Film Award for Best Actor and fifth Filmfare Best Actor Award. In 2010, he debuted in Malayalam film through "Kandahar", directed by Major Ravi and co-starring Mohanlal. The film was based on the hijacking incident of the Indian Airlines Flight 814. Bachchan declined any remuneration for this film. In 2011 he played an aged retired former gangster in Bbuddah... Hoga Terra Baap who protects his son Sonu Sood who is an honest daring police officer from a notorious gangster Prakash Raj who unknowingly hired the latter to perform a contract killing not knowing that the police officer is the gangster's son. Directed By Puri Jagannadh the film won positive reviews and was a commercial success.
In 2013 he made his Hollywood debut in "The Great Gatsby" making a special appearance opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. In 2014, he played the role of the friendly ghost in the sequel "Bhoothnath Returns". The next year, he played the role of a grumpy father experiencing chronic constipation in the critically acclaimed "Piku" which was also one of the biggest hits of 2015. A review in "Daily News and Analysis" (DNA) summarised Bachchan's performance as "The heart and soul of Piku clearly belong to Amitabh Bachchan who is in his elements. His performance in Piku, without doubt, finds a place among the top 10 in his illustrious career." Rachel Saltz wrote for The New York Times, "Piku", an offbeat Hindi comedy, would have you contemplate the intestines and mortality of one Bhashkor Banerji and the actor who plays him, Amitabh Bachchan. Bhashkor's life and conversation may revolve around his constipation and fussy hypochondria, but there's no mistaking the scene-stealing energy that Mr. Bachchan, India's erstwhile Angry Young Man, musters for his new role of Cranky Old Man." Well known Indian critic Rajeev Masand wrote on his website, "Bachchan is pretty terrific as Bhashkor, who reminds you of that oddball uncle that you nevertheless have a soft spot for. He bickers with the maids, harrows his hapless helper, and expects that Piku stay unmarried so she can attend to him. At one point, to ward off a possible suitor, he casually mentions that his daughter isn't a virgin; that she's financially independent and sexually independent too. Bachchan embraces the character's many idiosyncrasies, never once slipping into caricature while all along delivering big laughs thanks to his spot-on comic timing." "The Guardian" summed up, "Bachchan seizes upon his cranky character part, making Bashkor as garrulously funny in his theories on caste and marriage as his system is backed-up." The performance won Bachchan his fourth National Film Award for Best Actor and his third Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor.
In 2016, he appeared in the women-centric courtroom drama film "Pink" which was highly praised by critics and with an increasingly good word of mouth, was a resounding success at the domestic and overseas box office. Bachchan's performance in the film received acclaim. According to Raja Sen of Rediff.com, "Amitabh Bachchan, a retired lawyer with bipolar disorder, takes up cudgels on behalf of the girls, delivering courtroom blows with pugilistic grace. Like we know from Prakash Mehra movies, into each life some Bachchan must fall. The girls hang on to him with incredulous desperation, and he bats for them with all he has. At one point Meenal hangs by Bachchan's elbow, words entirely unnecessary. Bachchan towers through Pink – the way he bellows "et cetera" is alone worth having the heavy-hitter at play—but there are softer moments like one where he appears to have dozed off in court, or where he lays his head by his convalescent wife's bedside and needs his hair ruffled and his conviction validated." Writing for Hindustan Times, noted film critic and author Anupama Chopra said of Bachchan's performance, "A special salute to Amitabh Bachchan, who imbues his character with a tragic majesty. Bachchan towers in every sense, but without a hint of showboating. Meena Iyer of The Times of India wrote, "The performances are pitch-perfect with Bachchan leading the way. Writing for NDTV, Troy Ribeiro of Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) stated, 'Amitabh Bachchan as Deepak Sehgall, the aged defence lawyer, shines as always, in a restrained, but powerful performance. His histrionics come primarily in the form of his well-modulated baritone, conveying his emotions and of course, from the well-written lines.' Mike McCahill of The Guardian remarked, "Among an electric ensemble, Tapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang give unwavering voice to the girls' struggles; Amitabh Bachchan brings his moral authority to bear as their sole legal ally.
In 2017, he appeared in the third instalment of the Sarkar film series: Ram Gopal Varma's "Sarkar 3". That year, he started filming for the swashbuckling action adventure film "Thugs Of Hindostan" with Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif and Fatima Sana Shaikh which released in November 2018. He co-starred with Rishi Kapoor in "102 Not Out", a comedy drama film directed by Umesh Shukla based on a Gujarati play of the same name written by Saumya Joshi. This film released in May 2018 and reunited him with Kapoor onscreen after a gap of twenty-seven years.
In 2019, he played the role of Badal Gupta in Sujoy Ghosh's Badla. Later that year, he made his Telugu debut in Surender Reddy's Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy as Gosayi Venkanna. He did Gulabo Sitabo in 2020 for which he received Filmfare Critics Award For Best Actor. In 2021, he appeared in Rumy Jaffery's mystery thriller Chehre along with Emraan Hashmi. In 2022, he did 5 films: Jhund, Runway 34, , Goodbye and Uunchai.
Now he is all set to appear in Nag Ashwin's Project K.
Other work.
Television appearances.
In 2000, Bachchan hosted the first season of "Kaun Banega Crorepati" ("KBC"), the Indian adaptation of the British television game show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". The show was well received. A second season followed in 2005 but its run was cut short by Star Plus when Bachchan fell ill in 2006.
In 2009, Bachchan hosted the third season of the reality show "Bigg Boss".
In 2010, Bachchan hosted the fourth season of "KBC". The fifth season started on 15 August 2011 and ended on 17 November 2011. The show became a massive hit with audiences and broke many TRP Records. CNN IBN awarded Indian of the Year- Entertainment to Team KBC and Bachchan. The Show also grabbed all the major Awards for its category.
The sixth season was also hosted by Bachchan, commencing on 7 September 2012, broadcast on Sony TV and received the highest number of viewers thus far.
In 2014, he debuted in the fictional Sony Entertainment Television TV series titled "Yudh" playing the lead role of a businessman battling both his personal and professional life.
Voice-acting.
Bachchan is known for his deep, baritone voice. He has been a narrator, a playback singer, and presenter for numerous programmes. Some prominent films featuring his narration are Satyajit Ray's 1977 film "Shatranj Ke Khiladi". and Ashutosh Gowarikar's 2001 film "Lagaan".
He also has done voice-over work for the following movies:
Business investments.
Around 1994, Bachchan started Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd (ABCL), an event management, production and distribution company. But the company led into debt with fiasco and gone into bankruptcy, subsequently Bachchan became nearly bankrupt. Reasons of this debacle was flop films such as Mrityudata, Major Saab (produced by this organisation), Miss World 1996 which was organised-managed by ABCL. Due to this he began work for TV, asked for work to Yash Chopra. Once he told that, 'it was darkest time for him'.
He has invested in many upcoming business ventures. In 2013, he bought a 10% stake in Just Dial from which he made a gain of 4600 per cent. He holds a 3.4% equity in Stampede Capital, a financial technology firm specialising in cloud computing for financial markets. The Bachchan family also bought shares worth $252,000 in Meridian Tech, a consulting company in U.S. Recently they made their first overseas investment in Ziddu.com, a cloud based content distribution platform.
Bachchan was named in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, leaked confidential documents relating to offshore investment.
Political career.
In 1984, Bachchan took a break from acting and briefly entered politics in support of a long-time family friend, Rajiv Gandhi. He contested Allahabad's seat for the 8th Lok Sabha against H. N. Bahuguna, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. With 68.2% of the votes in his favour, he won by one of the highest victory margins ever in Indian elections. In 1987, Indian Express said his brother Ajitabh Bachchan owned an apartment in Switzerland, giving rise to speculations about his involvement in the "Bofors scandal", revealed in the year before. Bachchan resigned from his seat in July 1987. Ajitabh Bachchan sued Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" for linking him to Bofors payments in 1990 and won damages in the United Kingdom. Sten Lindstrom, the Swedish police chief who had investigated the case, said in 2012 that "Indian investigators planted the Bachchan angle on" "Dagens Nyheter".
Bachchan's old friend, Amar Singh, helped him during the financial crisis caused by the failure of his company, ABCL. Thereafter Bachchan started supporting the Samajwadi Party, the political party to which Amar Singh belonged. Jaya Bachchan joined the Samajwadi Party and represented the party as an MP in the Rajya Sabha. Bachchan appeared in advertisements and political campaigns for the party. His claim that he too was a farmer in the advertisements were questioned in courts.
Bachchan has claimed to have been banned by film press during the emergency years for his family's friendship with Indira Gandhi.
Bachchan has been accused of using the slogan "blood for blood" in the context of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Bachchan has denied the allegation. In October 2014, Bachchan was summoned by a court in Los Angeles for "allegedly instigating violence against the Sikh community". Bachchan in an interview with journalist Arnab Goswami offered to fight the case in court and asked the accusers to file the same as also present proof. He was also one of the trustees of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
Humanitarian and social causes.
Bachchan has been involved with many social causes. For example, he donated to clear the debts of nearly 40 beleaguered farmers in Andhra Pradesh and to clear the debts of some 100 Vidarbha farmers. In 2010, he donated to Resul Pookutty's foundation for a medical centre at Kochi, and he has given () to the family of Delhi policeman Subhash Chand Tomar who died after succumbing to injuries during a protest against gang-rape after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case. He founded the Harivansh Rai Bachchan Memorial Trust, named after his father, in 2013. This trust, in association with Urja Foundation, will be powering 3,000 homes in India with electricity through solar energy. In June 2019 he cleared debts of 2100 farmers from Bihar.
Bachchan was made a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for the polio Eradication Campaign in India in 2002. In 2013, he and his family donated () to a charitable trust, Plan India, that works for the betterment of young girls in India. He also donated () to the Maharashtra Police Welfare Fund in 2013.
Bachchan was the face of the 'Save Our Tigers' campaign that promoted the importance of tiger conservation in India. He supported the campaign by PETA in India to free Sunder, a 14-year-old elephant who was chained and tortured in a temple in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.
In 2014, it was announced that he had recorded his voice and lent his image to the Hindi and English language versions of the TeachAids software, an international HIV/AIDS prevention education tool developed at Stanford University. He has been a vocal "brand ambassador" of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) and featured in a few advertisements to promote the campaign.
In 2020, Bachchan was helping the Government of India promote its public health message concerning COVID-19 before he and some members of his family themselves became infected. He was hospitalised with reported mild symptoms of the disease on 11 July. He was discharged from hospital on 2 August. During the pandemic he lent his support by donating Oxygen concentrators and 25 cr rupees in various forms.
Personal life.
Bachchan has been married to veteran actress and politician Jaya Bhaduri since 3 June 1973, when he was 30 years old, and together they have two children; Abhishek, an actor, and Shweta, an author, journalist and former model. Abhishek married actress Aishwarya Rai, and they have a daughter named Aaradhya. Shweta is married to businessman Nikhil Nanda who is a part of the Kapoor family of actors. They have a daughter, Navya Naveli, and a son, Agastya. Amitabh's family lives in Mumbai in Maharashtra. His younger brother Ajitabh Bachchan is a businessman. He did business and lived in London for brief period of time. Presently he is living in India. He and his family choose to stay away from limelight. His wife Ramola is a fashion designer and was active in business. Ajitabh has one son, Bhim, and three daughters Naina, Namrata and Nilima. Naina Bachchan is married to actor Kunal Kapoor.
Bachchan was famously rumoured to have had an extramarital affair with actress Rekha in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s after they first acted together in "Do Anjaane", and later in many successful films like "Khoon Pasina", "Ganga Ki Saugandh", "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar", "Mr. Natwarlal", "Suhaag", "Ram Balram" and ending in "Silsila", though they have both denied it.
Legacy.
Bachchan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. He earned respect among critics for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence, is also considered one of the most respected public figures of India. Referred to as the "Shahenshah of Bollywood", "Star of the Millennium" or "Big B", He inspired many great and successful Indian cinema actors for many generations including Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Kamal Hassan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Manoj Bajpayee, Ajay Devgn, Mohanlal, Ranveer Singh, Allu Arjun and Yash. Referred to as the "Shahenshah of Bollywood", "Star of the Millennium" or "Big B", French director François Truffaut called him a "one-man industry."
In 1999, Bachchan was voted the "greatest star of stage or screen" in a BBC "Your Millennium" online poll. The organisation noted that "Many people in the western world will not have heard of [him] ... [but it] is a reflection of the huge popularity of Indian films." In October 2003, TIME magazine dubbed Bachchan as "the Undisputed Godfather of Bollywood". In April 2005, The Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center in New York honored Bachchan with a special tribute, retrospective—titled "Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World".<ref name="thedailybeast.com/newsweek"></ref>
In the early 80s, Bachchan authorised the use of his likeness for the comic book character Supremo in a series titled "The Adventures of Amitabh Bachchan". In May 2014, La Trobe University in Australia named a Scholarship after Bachchan. In June 2000, he became the first living Asian to have been modelled in wax at London's Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Another statue was installed in New York in 2009, Hong Kong in 2011, Bangkok in 2011, Washington, DC in 2012 and Delhi in 2017.
In March 2010, Bachchan has been named the list of CNN's "top 25 Asian actors of all time". He was named "Hottest Vegetarian male" by PETA India in 2012. He also won the title of "Asia's Sexiest Vegetarian male" in a contest poll run by PETA Asia in 2008.
In Allahabad, the Amitabh Bachchan Sports Complex and Amitabh Bachchan Road are named after him. A government senior secondary school in Saifai, Etawah is called Amitabh Bachchan Government Inter College. There is a waterfall in Sikkim known as Amitabh Bachchan Falls.
In 2022, on the occasion of Bachchan's 80th birthday, not-for-profit organisation Film Heritage Foundation announced a film festival as a part of his 11 films collection had screened in 17 cities across the country shown in limited movies theatres.
Biographies.
Several books have been written about Bachchan. The following is the listing of books focused on his life career:
Awards and honours.
Apart from industry awards won for his performances throughout the years, Bachchan has received several honours for his achievements in the Indian film industry. In 1991, he became the first artist to receive the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award, which was established in the name of Raj Kapoor. Bachchan was crowned as Superstar of the Millennium in 2000 at the Filmfare Awards.
In 2001, he was honoured with the Actor of the Century award at the Alexandria International Film Festival in Egypt in recognition of his contribution to the world of cinema. Many other honours for his achievements were conferred upon him at several International Film Festivals, including the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 Asian Film Awards.
In 2003, he was conferred with the Honorary Citizenship of the French town of Deauville. The Government of India awarded him with the Padma Shri in 1984, the Padma Bhushan in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan in 2015 and Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2019. The then-President of Afghanistan awarded him the Order of Afghanistan in 1991 following the shooting of "Khuda Gawah" there. The Government of Madhya Pradesh honoured him with Rashtriya Kishore Kumar Samman for 2002–2003.
France's highest civilian honour, the Knight of the Legion of honour, was conferred upon him by the French Government in 2007 for his "exceptional career in the world of cinema and beyond". On 27 July 2012, at the age of 69, Bachchan carried the Olympic torch during the last leg of its relay in London's Southwark.
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1832 | Allomorph | In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term "allomorph" describes the realization of phonological variations for a specific morpheme. The different allomorphs that a morpheme can become are governed by morphophonemic rules. These phonological rules determine what phonetic form, or specific pronunciation, a morpheme will take based on the phonological or morphological context in which they appear.
In English.
English has several morphemes that vary in sound but not in meaning, such as past tense morphemes, plural morphemes, and negative morphemes.
Past tense allomorphs.
For example, an English past tense morpheme is "-ed", which occurs in several allomorphs depending on its phonological environment by assimilating the voicing of the previous segment or the insertion of a schwa after an alveolar stop:
The "other than" restrictions above are typical for allomorphy. If the allomorphy conditions are ordered from most restrictive (in this case, after an alveolar stop) to least restrictive, the first matching case usually has precedence. Thus, the above conditions could be rewritten as follows:
The allomorph does not appear after stem-final although the latter is voiceless, which is then explained by appearing in that environment, together with the fact that the environments are ordered. Likewise, the allomorph does not appear after stem-final because the earlier clause for the allomorph has priority. The allomorph does not appear after stem-final voiceless phoneme because the preceding clause for the comes first.
Irregular past tense forms, such as "broke" or "was/were," can be seen as still more specific cases since they are confined to certain lexical items, such as the verb "break," which take priority over the general cases listed above.
Plural allomorphs.
The plural morpheme for regular nouns in English is typically realized by adding an "s" or "es" to the end of the noun. However, the plural morpheme actually has three different allomorphs: [s], [z], and [əz]. The specific pronunciation that a plural morpheme takes on is determined by the following morphological rules:
Negative allomorphs.
In English, the negative prefix "in" has three allomorphs: [ɪn], [ɪŋ], and [ɪm]. The phonetic form that the negative morpheme /ɪn/ uses is determined by the following morphological rules:
In Sami languages.
The Sami languages have a trochaic pattern of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. The vowels and consonants that are allowed in an unstressed syllable differ from those that are allowed in a stressed syllable. Consequently, every suffix and inflectional ending has two forms, and the form that is used depends on the stress pattern of the word to which it is attached. For example, Northern Sami has the causative verb suffix - in which "-" is selected when it would be the third syllable (and the preceding verb has two syllables), and "-" is selected when it would be the third and the fourth syllables (and the preceding verb has three syllables):
The same applies to inflectional patterns in the Sami languages as well, which are divided into even stems and odd stems.
Stem allomorphy.
Allomorphy can also exist in stems or roots, as in Classical Sanskrit:
There are three allomorphs of the stem, , , and , which are conditioned by the particular case-marking suffixes.
The form of the stem , found in the nominative singular and locative plural, is the etymological form of the morpheme. Pre-Indic palatalization of velars resulted in the variant form , which was initially phonologically conditioned. The conditioning can still be seen in the locative singular form, for which the is followed by the high front vowel .
However, the subsequent merging of and into made the alternation unpredictable on phonetic grounds in the genitive case (both singular and plural) as well as the nominative plural and the instrumental singular. Thus, allomorphy was no longer directly relatable to phonological processes.
Phonological conditioning also accounts for the form in the instrumental plural, in which the assimilates in voicing to the following .
History.
The term was originally used to describe variations in chemical structure. It was first applied to language (in writing) in 1948, by Fatih Şat and Sibel Merve in Language XXIV.
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1834 | Allophone | In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor "phones"or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive (as in "stop" ) and the aspirated form (as in "top" ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Thai. On the other hand, in Spanish, (as in "dolor" ) and (as in "nada" ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible.
Native speakers of a given language perceive one phoneme in the language as a single distinctive sound and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes.
History of concept.
The term "allophone" was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf circa 1929. In doing so, he is thought to have placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term was popularized by George L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition.
Complementary and free-variant allophones and assimilation.
Whenever a user's speech is vocalized for a given phoneme, it is slightly different from other utterances, even for the same speaker. That has led to some debate over how real and how universal phonemes really are (see phoneme for details). Only some of the variation is significant, by being detectable or perceivable, to speakers.
There are two types of allophones, based on whether a phoneme must be pronounced using a specific allophone in a specific situation or whether the speaker has the unconscious freedom to choose the allophone that is used.
If a specific allophone from a set of allophones that correspond to a phoneme must be selected in a given context, and using a different allophone for a phoneme would cause confusion or make the speaker sound non-native, the allophones are said to be "complementary". The allophones then complement each other, and one of them is not used in a situation in which the usage of another is standard. For complementary allophones, each allophone is used in a specific phonetic context and may be involved in a phonological process.
In other cases, the speaker can freely select from "free-variant" allophones on personal habit or preference, but free-variant allophones are still selected in the specific context, not the other way around.
Another example of an allophone is assimilation, in which a phoneme is to sound more like another phoneme. One example of assimilation is consonant voicing and devoicing, in which voiceless consonants are voiced before and after voiced consonants, and voiced consonants are devoiced before and after voiceless consonants.
Allotone.
An allotone is a tonic allophone, such as the neutral tone in Standard Mandarin.
Examples.
English.
There are many allophonic processes in English: lack of plosion, nasal plosion, partial devoicing of sonorants, complete devoicing of sonorants, partial devoicing of obstruents, lengthening and shortening vowels, and retraction.
Because the choice among allophones is seldom under conscious control, few people realize their existence. English-speakers may be unaware of differences between a number of (dialect-dependent) allophones of the phoneme :
In addition, the following allophones of /t/ are found in (at least) some dialects of American(ised) English;
However, speakers may become aware of the differences iffor examplethey contrast the pronunciations of the following words:
A flame that is held in front of the lips while those words are spoken flickers more for the aspirated "nitrate" than for the unaspirated "night rate." The difference can also be felt by holding the hand in front of the lips. For a Mandarin-speaker, for whom and are separate phonemes, the English distinction is much more obvious than for an English-speaker, who has learned since childhood to ignore the distinction.
One may notice the (dialect-dependent) allophones of English such as the (palatal) alveolar "light" of "leaf" as opposed to the velar alveolar "dark" in "feel" found in the U.S. and Southern England. The difference is much more obvious to a Turkish-speaker, for whom and are separate phonemes, than to an English speaker, for whom they are allophones of a single phoneme.
These descriptions are more sequentially broken down in the next section.
Rules for English consonant allophones.
Peter Ladefoged, a renowned phonetician, clearly explains the consonant allophones of English in a precise list of statements to illustrate the language behavior. Some of these rules apply to all the consonants of English; the first item on the list deals with consonant length, items 2 through 18 apply to only selected groups of consonants, and the last item deals with the quality of a consonant.
These descriptive rules are as follows:
Other languages.
There are many examples for allophones in languages other than English. Typically, languages with a small phoneme inventory allow for quite a lot of allophonic variation: examples are Hawaiian and Pirahã. Here are some examples (the links of language names go to the specific article or subsection on the phenomenon):
Representing a phoneme with an allophone.
Since phonemes are abstractions of speech sounds, not the sounds themselves, they have no direct phonetic transcription. When they are realized without much allophonic variation, a simple broad transcription is used. However, when there are complementary allophones of a phoneme, the allophony becomes significant and things then become more complicated. Often, if only one of the allophones is simple to transcribe, in the sense of not requiring diacritics, that representation is chosen for the phoneme.
However, there may be several such allophones, or the linguist may prefer greater precision than that allows. In such cases, a common convention is to use the "elsewhere condition" to decide the allophone that stands for the phoneme. The "elsewhere" allophone is the one that remains once the conditions for the others are described by phonological rules.
For example, English has both oral and nasal allophones of its vowels. The pattern is that vowels are nasal only before a nasal consonant in the same syllable; elsewhere, they are oral. Therefore, by the "elsewhere" convention, the oral allophones are considered basic, and nasal vowels in English are considered to be allophones of oral phonemes.
In other cases, an allophone may be chosen to represent its phoneme because it is more common in the languages of the world than the other allophones, because it reflects the historical origin of the phoneme, or because it gives a more balanced look to a chart of the phonemic inventory.
An alternative, which is commonly used for archiphonemes, is to use a capital letter, such as /N/ for [m], [n], [ŋ].
In rare cases, a linguist may represent phonemes with abstract symbols, such as dingbats, to avoid privileging any particular allophone.
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1835 | Affix | In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English "-ness" and "pre-", or inflectional, like English plural "-s" and past tense "-ed". They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is the linguistic process that speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.
Positional categories of affixes.
"Prefix" and "suffix" may be subsumed under the term "adfix", in contrast to "infix."
When marking text for interlinear glossing, as in the third column in the chart above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are separated from the stem with hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde. Affixes which cannot be segmented are marked with a back slash.
Lexical affixes.
"Lexical affixes" (or "semantic affixes") are bound elements that appear as affixes, but function as incorporated nouns within verbs and as elements of nouns. In other words, they are similar to word roots/stems in function but similar to affixes in form. Although similar to incorporated nouns, lexical affixes differ in that they never occur as freestanding nouns, i.e. they always appear as affixes.
Lexical affixes are relatively rare. The Wakashan, Salishan, and Chimakuan languages all have lexical suffixes — the presence of these is an areal feature of the Pacific Northwest of North America.
The lexical suffixes of these languages often show little to no resemblance to free nouns with similar meanings. Compare the lexical suffixes and free nouns of Northern Straits Saanich written in the Saanich orthography and in Americanist notation:
Lexical suffixes, when compared with free nouns, often have a more generic or general meaning. For instance, one of these languages may have a lexical suffix that means water in a general sense, but it may not have any noun equivalent referring to water in general and instead have several nouns with a more specific meaning (such "saltwater", "whitewater", etc.). In other cases, the lexical suffixes have become grammaticalized to various degrees.
Some linguists have claimed that these lexical suffixes provide only adverbial or adjectival notions to verbs. Other linguists disagree arguing that they may additionally be syntactic arguments just as free nouns are and, thus, equating lexical suffixes with incorporated nouns. Gerdts (2003) gives examples of lexical suffixes in the Halkomelem language (the word order here is verb–subject–object):
In sentence (1), the verb "wash" is šak’ʷətəs where šak’ʷ- is the root and -ət and -əs are inflectional suffixes. The subject "the woman" is łə słeniʔ and the object "the baby" is łə qeq. In this sentence, "the baby" is a free noun. (The niʔ here is an auxiliary, which can be ignored for explanatory purposes.)
In sentence (2), "baby" does not appear as a free noun. Instead it appears as the lexical suffix -əyəł which is affixed to the verb root šk’ʷ- (which has changed slightly in pronunciation, but this can also be ignored here). The lexical suffix is neither "the baby" (definite) nor "a baby" (indefinite); such referential changes are routine with incorporated nouns.
Orthographic affixes.
In orthography, the terms for affixes may be used for the smaller elements of conjunct characters. For example, Maya glyphs are generally compounds of a "main sign" and smaller "affixes" joined at its margins. These are called "prefixes, superfixes, postfixes," and "subfixes" according to their position to the left, on top, to the right, or at the bottom of the main glyph. A small glyph placed inside another is called an "infix." Similar terminology is found with the conjunct consonants of the Indic alphabets. For example, the Tibetan alphabet utilizes prefix, suffix, superfix, and subfix consonant letters.
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1837 | Allegory | As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.
Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-) hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts.
Etymology.
First attested in English in 1382, the word "allegory" comes from Latin "allegoria", the latinisation of the Greek ἀλληγορία ("allegoría"), "veiled language, figurative", which in turn comes from both ἄλλος ("allos"), "another, different" and ἀγορεύω ("agoreuo"), "to harangue, to speak in the assembly", which originates from ἀγορά ("agora"), "assembly".
Types.
Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", a spectrum that ranges from what he termed the "naive allegory" of the likes of "The Faerie Queene", to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature.
In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and of the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the author has selected the allegory first, and the details merely flesh it out.
Classical allegory.
The origins of allegory can be traced at least back to Homer in his "quasi-allegorical" use of personifications of, e.g., Terror (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos) at Il. 115 f. The title of "first allegorist," however, is usually awarded to whoever was the earliest to put forth allegorical interpretations of Homer. This approach leads to two possible answers: Theagenes of Rhegium (whom Porphyry calls the "first allegorist," Porph. Quaest. Hom. 1.240.14-241.12 Schrad.) or Pherecydes of Syros, both of whom are presumed to be active in the 6th century B.C.E., though Pherecydes is earlier and as he is often presumed to be the first writer of prose. The debate is complex, since it demands we observe the distinction between two often conflated uses of the Greek verb "allēgoreīn," which can mean both "to speak allegorically" and "to interpret allegorically."
In the case of "interpreting allegorically," Theagenes appears to be our earliest example. Presumably in response to proto-philosophical moral critiques of Homer (e.g. Xenophanes fr. 11 Diels-Kranz ), Theagenes proposed symbolic interpretations whereby the Gods of the Iliad actually stood for physical elements. So, Hephestus represents Fire, for instance (for which see fr. A2 in Diels-Kranz ). Some scholars, however, argue that Pherecydes cosmogonic writings anticipated Theagenes allegorical work, illustrated especially by his early placement of Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods, which is thought to be a reinterpretation of the titan Kronos, from more traditional genealogies.
In classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Plato's "The Republic" (Book VII) and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa (Livy ii. 32).
Among the best-known examples of allegory, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, forms a part of his larger work "The Republic." In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall (514a–b). The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world (514c–515a). According to the allegory, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality, until one of them finds his way into the outside world where he sees the actual objects that produced the shadows. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, but they do not believe him and vehemently resist his efforts to free them so they can see for themselves (516e–518a). This allegory is, on a basic level, about a philosopher who upon finding greater knowledge outside the cave of human understanding, seeks to share it as is his duty, and the foolishness of those who would ignore him because they think themselves educated enough.
In Late Antiquity Martianus Capella organized all the information a fifth-century upper-class male needed to know into an allegory of the wedding of Mercury and "Philologia," with the seven liberal arts the young man needed to know as guests. Also the Neoplatonic philosophy developed a type of allegorical reading of Homer and Plato.
Biblical allegory.
Other early allegories are found in the Hebrew Bible, such as the extended metaphor in Psalm 80 of the Vine and its impressive spread and growth, representing Israel's conquest and peopling of the Promised Land. Also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israel's exile to Babylon.
Allegorical interpretation of the Bible was a common early Christian practice and continues. For example, the recently re-discovered Fourth Commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia has a comment by its English translator: "The principal characteristic of Fortunatianus' exegesis is a figurative approach, relying on a set of concepts associated with key terms in order to create an allegorical decoding of the text."
Medieval allegory.
Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, while infusing it with a spiritual context. Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a "reality" underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances. Thus, the Papal Bull "Unam Sanctam" (1302) presents themes of the unity of Christendom with the pope as its head in which the allegorical details of the metaphors are adduced as facts on which is based a demonstration with the vocabulary of logic: ""Therefore" of this one and only Church there is one body and one head—not two heads as if it were a monster... If, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they "necessarily" confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ." This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition and example of the Bible.
In the late 15th century, the enigmatic "Hypnerotomachia", with its elaborate woodcut illustrations, shows the influence of themed pageants and masques on contemporary allegorical representation, as humanist dialectic conveyed them.
The denial of medieval allegory as found in the 12th-century works of Hugh of St Victor and Edward Topsell's "Historie of Foure-footed Beastes" (London, 1607, 1653) and its replacement in the study of nature with methods of categorisation and mathematics by such figures as naturalist John Ray and the astronomer Galileo is thought to mark the beginnings of early modern science.
Modern allegory.
Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. Examples of allegory in popular culture that may or may not have been intended include the works of Bertolt Brecht, and even some works of science fiction and fantasy, such as "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C. S. Lewis.
The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newton's head is another famous allegory. It simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale.
Poetry and fiction.
While allegoresis may make discovery of allegory in any work, not every resonant work of modern fiction is allegorical, and some are clearly not intended to be viewed this way. According to Henry Littlefield's 1964 article, L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", may be readily understood as a plot-driven fantasy narrative in an extended fable with talking animals and broadly sketched characters, intended to discuss the politics of the time. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that "A fairy tale is not an allegory."
J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is another example of a well-known work mistakenly perceived as allegorical, as the author himself once stated, "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
Tolkien specifically resented the suggestion that the book's One Ring, which gives overwhelming power to those possessing it, was intended as an allegory of nuclear weapons. He noted that, had that been his intention, the book would not have ended with the Ring being destroyed but rather with an arms race in which various powers would try to obtain such a Ring for themselves. Then Tolkien went on to outline an alternative plot for "Lord of The Rings", as it would have been written had such an allegory been intended, and which would have made the book into a dystopia. While all this does not mean Tolkien's works may not be treated as having allegorical themes, especially when reinterpreted through postmodern sensibilities, it at least suggests that none were conscious in his writings. This further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention.
Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.
Some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works:
Art.
Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximate chronological order:
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1839 | Allotropy | Allotropy or allotropism () is the property of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different forms, in the same physical state, known as allotropes of the elements. Allotropes are different structural modifications of an element: the atoms of the element are bonded together in different manners.
For example, the allotropes of carbon include diamond (the carbon atoms are bonded together to form a cubic lattice of tetrahedra), graphite (the carbon atoms are bonded together in sheets of a hexagonal lattice), graphene (single sheets of graphite), and fullerenes (the carbon atoms are bonded together in spherical, tubular, or ellipsoidal formations).
The term "allotropy" is used for elements only, not for compounds. The more general term, used for any compound, is polymorphism, although its use is usually restricted to solid materials such as crystals. Allotropy refers only to different forms of an element within the same physical phase (the state of matter, such as a solid, liquid or gas). The differences between these states of matter would not alone constitute examples of allotropy. Allotropes of chemical elements are frequently referred to as "polymorphs" or as "phases" of the element.
For some elements, allotropes have different molecular formulae or different crystalline structures, as well as a difference in physical phase; for example, two allotropes of oxygen (dioxygen, O2, and ozone, O3) can both exist in the solid, liquid and gaseous states. Other elements do not maintain distinct allotropes in different physical phases; for example, phosphorus has numerous solid allotropes, which all revert to the same P4 form when melted to the liquid state.
History.
The concept of allotropy was originally proposed in 1840 by the Swedish scientist Baron Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779–1848). The term is derived . After the acceptance of Avogadro's hypothesis in 1860, it was understood that elements could exist as polyatomic molecules, and two allotropes of oxygen were recognized as O2 and O3. In the early 20th century, it was recognized that other cases such as carbon were due to differences in crystal structure.
By 1912, Ostwald noted that the allotropy of elements is just a special case of the phenomenon of polymorphism known for compounds, and proposed that the terms allotrope and allotropy be abandoned and replaced by polymorph and polymorphism. Although many other chemists have repeated this advice, IUPAC and most chemistry texts still favour the usage of allotrope and allotropy for elements only.
Differences in properties of an element's allotropes.
Allotropes are different structural forms of the same element and can exhibit quite different physical properties and chemical behaviours. The change between allotropic forms is triggered by the same forces that affect other structures, i.e., pressure, light, and temperature. Therefore, the stability of the particular allotropes depends on particular conditions. For instance, iron changes from a body-centered cubic structure (ferrite) to a face-centered cubic structure (austenite) above 906 °C, and tin undergoes a modification known as tin pest from a metallic form to a semiconductor form below 13.2 °C (55.8 °F). As an example of allotropes having different chemical behaviour, ozone (O3) is a much stronger oxidizing agent than dioxygen (O2).
List of allotropes.
Typically, elements capable of variable coordination number and/or oxidation states tend to exhibit greater numbers of allotropic forms. Another contributing factor is the ability of an element to catenate.
Examples of allotropes include:
Metals.
Among the metallic elements that occur in nature in significant quantities (56 up to U, without Tc and Pm), almost half (27) are allotropic at ambient pressure: Li, Be, Na, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Co, Sr, Y, Zr, Sn, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, Dy, Yb, Hf, Tl, Th, Pa and U. Some phase transitions between allotropic forms of technologically relevant metals are those of Ti at 882 °C, Fe at 912 °C and 1394 °C, Co at 422 °C, Zr at 863 °C, Sn at 13 °C and U at 668 °C and 776 °C.
Nanoallotropes.
In 2017, the concept of nanoallotropy was proposed by Prof. Rafal Klajn of the Organic Chemistry Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Nanoallotropes, or allotropes of nanomaterials, are nanoporous materials that have the same chemical composition (e.g., Au), but differ in their architecture at the nanoscale (that is, on a scale 10 to 100 times the dimensions of individual atoms). Such nanoallotropes may help create ultra-small electronic devices and find other industrial applications. The different nanoscale architectures translate into different properties, as was demonstrated for surface-enhanced Raman scattering performed on several different nanoallotropes of gold. A two-step method for generating nanoallotropes was also created.
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1840 | Agathocles of Syracuse | Agathocles (, "Agathoklḗs"; 361–289 BC) was a Greek tyrant of Syracuse (317–289 BC) and self-styled king of Sicily (304–289 BC).
Biography.
Agathocles was born at Thermae Himeraeae (modern name Termini Imerese) in Sicily. The son of a potter who had moved to Syracuse in about 343 BC, he learned his father's trade, but afterwards entered the army along with his brother Antander. In 333 BC he married the widow of his patron Damas, a distinguished and wealthy citizen. He was twice banished for attempting to overthrow the oligarchical party in Syracuse.
In 317 BC he returned with an army of mercenaries under a solemn oath to observe the democratic constitution which was established after they took the city. Having massacred the oligarchs and the richest of the citizenry, he thus made himself master of Syracuse, and he created a strong army and fleet and subdued the greater part of Sicily.
War with Carthage followed. In 311 BC Agathocles was defeated in the Battle of the Himera River and besieged in Syracuse. In 310 BC he made a desperate effort to break through the blockade and attack Carthage. He landed at Cape Bon in August 310 BC, and was able to defeat the Carthaginians for the first time, and establish a camp near Tunis. He then turned east, and tried to take over trading coastal cities such as Neapolis and Hadrumetum, and on this occasion concluded an alliance with Aelymas, king of the Libyans according to Diodorus of Sicily, in an attempt to surround and isolate Carthage. After capturing Hadrumetum, Thapsus and other coastal towns, Agathocles turned his attention to central Tunisia. Before or during this campaign, he broke his alliance with Ailymas, whom he pursued and killed, but he kept his Numidian army, including war chariots they built.
In 309/8 BC, Agathocles began trying to sway Ophellas, ruler of Cyrenaica, as he was likely to prove a useful ally in Agathocles' war against the Carthaginians. In order to gain his allegiance he promised to cede to Ophellas whatever conquests their combined forces might make in Africa, reserving to himself only the possession of Sicily. Ophellas gathered a powerful army from the homeland of his wife Euthydike (a descendant of Miltiades), Athens, where many citizens felt disgruntled after having lost their voting rights. Despite the natural obstacles which presented themselves on his route, Ophellas succeeded in reaching the Carthaginian territories after a toilsome and perilous march of more than two months. He was received by Agathocles with every demonstration of friendship, and the two armies encamped near each other, but a few days later Agathocles betrayed his new ally, by attacking the camp of the Cyrenaeans and having Ophellas killed. The Cyrenean troops, left without a leader, went over to Agathocles.
Following several victories he was at last completely defeated (307 BC) and fled secretly to Sicily. After concluding peace with Carthage in 306 BC, Agathocles styled himself king of Sicily in 304 BC, and established his rule over the Greek cities of the island more firmly than ever. A peace treaty with Carthage left him in control of Sicily east of the Halycus River. Even in his old age he displayed the same restless energy, and is said to have been contemplating a fresh attack on Carthage at the time of his death.
His last years were plagued by ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus, at whose instigation he is said to have been poisoned; according to others, he died a natural death. He was a born leader of mercenaries, and, although he did not shrink from cruelty to gain his ends, he afterwards showed himself a mild and popular "tyrant". Agathocles restored the Syracusan democracy on his death bed and did not want his sons to succeed him as king.
Agathocles was married three times. His first wife, by whom he had two sons, was the widow of his patron Damas, Archagathus and his brother, who were both murdered in 307 BC. His second wife was Alcia and they had a daughter called Lanassa, who married as the second wife of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, and a son, Agathocles, who was murdered in a succession dispute shortly before his father's death. His third wife was the Greek Ptolemaic Princess Theoxena, who was the second daughter of Berenice I from her first husband Philip and was a stepdaughter of Ptolemy I Soter. Theoxena bore Agathocles two children: Archagathus and Theoxena. Theoxena survived Agathocles. He had further descendants from his second and third marriage.
Legacy.
Agathocles was cited as an example "Of those who become princes through their crimes" in chapter 8 of Niccolò Machiavelli's treatise on politics - "The Prince" (1513).
He was described as behaving as a criminal at every stage of his career. Machiavelli claimed:
Machiavelli goes on to reason that Agathocles' success, in contrast to other criminal tyrants, was due to his ability to commit his crimes quickly and ruthlessly, and states that cruelties are best used when they
However, he came to "glory" as much as he did brutality by repelling invading Carthaginians and winning the loyalty of the denizens of his land.
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1841 | Economy of Alberta | The economy of Alberta is the sum of all economic activity in Alberta, Canada's fourth largest province by population. Alberta's GDP in 2018 was CDN$338.2 billion.
Although Alberta has a presence in many industries such as agriculture, forestry, education, tourism, finance, and manufacturing, the politics and culture of the province have been closely tied to the production of fossil energy since the 1940s. Alberta—with an estimated 1.4 billion cubic metres of unconventional oil resource in the bituminous oil sands—leads Canada as an oil producer.
In 2018, Alberta's energy sector contributed over $71.5 billion to Canada's nominal gross domestic product. According to Statistics Canada, in May 2018, the oil and gas extraction industry reached its highest proportion of Canada's national GDP since 1985, exceeding 7% and "surpass[ing] banking and insurance" with extraction of non-conventional oil from the oilsands reaching an "impressive", all-time high in May 2018. With conventional oil extraction "climbed up to the highs from 2007", the demand for Canadian oil was strong in May.
From 1990 to 2003, Alberta's economy grew by 57% compared to 43% for all of Canada—the strongest economic growth of any region in Canada. In 2006 Alberta's per capita GDP was higher than all US states, and one of the highest figures in the world. In 2006, the deviation from the national average was the largest for any province in Canadian history. Alberta's per capita GDP in 2007 was by far the highest of any province in Canada at C$74,825 (approx. US$75,000). Alberta's per capita GDP in 2007 was 61% higher than the Canadian average of C$46,441 and more than twice that of all the Maritime provinces. From 2004 to 2014 Alberta's "exports of commodities rose 91%, reaching $121 billion in 2014" and 500,000 new jobs were created. In 2014, Alberta's real GDP by expenditure grew by 4.8%, the strongest growth rate among the provinces." In 2017, Alberta's real per capita GDP—the economic output per person—was $71,092, compared to the Canadian average of $47,417. In 2016, Alberta's A grade on its income per capita was based on the fact that it was almost "identical" to that of the "top peer country"—Ireland.
The energy industry provided 7.7% of all jobs in Alberta in 2013, and 140,300 jobs representing 6.1% of total employment of 2,286,900 in Alberta in 2017. The unemployment rate in Alberta peaked in November 2016 at 9.1%. Its lowest point in a ten-year period from July 2009 to July 2019, was in September 2013 at 4.3%. The unemployment rate in the spring of 2019 in Alberta was 6.7% with 21,000 jobs added in April. By July 2019, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate had increased to 7.0%.
By August 2019, the employment number in Alberta was 2,344,000, following the loss of 14,000 full-time jobs in July, which represented the "largest decline" in Canada according to Statistics Canada.
Beginning in June 2014, the record high volume of worldwide oil inventories in storage—referred to as a global oil glut—caused crude oil prices to collapse at near ten-year low prices. By 2016 West Texas Intermediate (WTI)—the benchmark light, sweet crude oil—reached its lowest price in ten years—US$26.55. In 2012 the price of WTI had reached US$125 and in 2014 the price was $100. By February 2016 the price of Western Canadian Select WCS—the Alberta benchmark heavy crude oil—was US$14.10—the cheapest oil in the world. Alberta boom years from 2010 to 2014 ended with a "long and deep" recession that began in 2014, driven by low commodity pricing ended in 2017. By 2019—five years later—Alberta was still in recovery. Overall, there were approximately 35,000 jobs lost in mining, oil and gas alone. Since 2014, sectors that offered high-wage employment of $30 and above, saw about 100,000 jobs disappear—"construction (down more than 45,000 jobs), mining, oil and gas (down nearly 35,000), and professional services (down 18,000)," according to the economist, Trevor Tombe. There was a decrease in wages, in the number of jobs, and in the number of hours worked. The total loss of incomes from "workers, business, and government" amounted to about 20 percent or about CDN$75 billion less per year. Since 2011, prices have increased in Alberta by 18%. However, a typical worker in Alberta still earns more than a typical worker in all the other provinces and territories.
By March 2016, Alberta lost over 100,000 jobs in the oil patch. In spite of the surplus with the low price of WCS in 2015—99% of Canada's oil exports went to the United States and in 2015 Canada was still their largest exporter of total petroleum—3,789 thousand bpd in September—3,401 thousand bpd in October up from 3,026 thousand bpd in September 2014. By April 2019, two of the major oil companies, still had thousands of workers—Suncor had about 12,500 employees and Canadian Natural Resources had about 10,000 full-time employees.
Alberta has the "lowest taxes overall of any province or territory" in Canada, due in part to having high resource tax revenues. However, overall tax revenues from oil royalties and other non-renewable sources has fallen steeply along with the drop in global oil prices. For example, in 2013, oil tax revenues brought in 9.58 billion, or 21% of the total Provincial budget, whereas in 2018 it had fallen to just 5.43 billion, or 11% of the Provincial budget.
In the spring of 2020, Alberta's economy suffered from the economic fallout of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war."
Current overview.
According to ATB Financial's Vice President and Chief Economist—Todd Hirsch, who spoke during a April 2, 2020, webinar hosted by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta and its "economic fallout will permanently reshape our economy." Hirsch said that he expects that the resulting contraction in Alberta's economy will be the "worst...Alberta has ever seen."
The global price of oil decreased dramatically because of the combination of COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war. In March 2020, the United States benchmark crude oil EWest Texas Intermediate (WTI)—upon which Alberta's benchmark crude oil Western Canadian Select (WCS) price is based—dropped to an historical below of US$20 a barrel. The price of WCS bitumen-blend crude was US$3.82 per barrel by the end of March.
In 2018, the low price of heavy oil negatively impacted Alberta's economic growth.
In November 2018, the price of Western Canadian Select (WCS), the benchmark for Canadian heavy crude, hit its record low of less than US$14 a barrel, as a "surge of production met limited pipeline space causing bottlenecks." Previously, from 2008 through 2018, WCS had sold at an average discount of US$17 against West Texas Intermediate (WTI)—the U.S. crude oil benchmark, but by the fall of 2018, the differential between WCS and WTI reached a record of over US$50 per barrel. In response, then Premier Rachel Notley made a December 2 announcement of a mandatory cut of 8.7% in Alberta's oil production. By December 12, after the announcement of the government's "mandated oil output curtailment", the price of WCS rose c. 70% to c. US$41 a barrel with the WTI differential falling from US50 to c. US$11., according to the "Financial Post". The WCS price rose to US$28.60 by January 2019, as the international price of oil had begun to recover from the December "sharp downturn" caused by the ongoing China–U.S. trade war In March 2019, the differential of WTI over WCS decreased to $US9.94 as the price of WTI dropped to US$58.15 a barrel, which is 7.5% lower than it was in March 2018, while the price of WCS increased to US$48.21 a barrel which is 35.7% higher than in March 2018. According to TD Economics' September 2019 report, the government's "mandated oil output curtailment", has resulted in a sustained rebound in WCS prices. However, investment and spending were low in the province. The loss of 14, 000 of the full-time jobs out of 2,344,000 in Alberta in July 2019, represented the "largest decline" in employment in Canada for that month, according to Statistics Canada.
In 1985, Alberta's energy industry accounted for 36.1% of the provinces $66.8 billion GDP. In 2006, the mining, oil and gas extraction industry accounted for 29.1% of GDP; by 2012 it was 23.3%; in 2013, it was 24.6% of Alberta's $331.9 billion GDP, and in 2016, the mining, oil and gas extraction industry accounted for about 27.9% of Alberta's GDP.
By comparison, "In 2017, the federal, provincial and territorial governments spent some $724 billion on programs and more than $58 billion on interest payments on their public debt, which, combined, amounted to about 36 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). Their combined borrowing that year was $27 billion, and their net financial debt at year-end stood at around $1.2 trillion, about 54 percent of GDP."
In his July 2019 "CBC News" article, economist Trevor Tombe said that prior to the 2014 recession, Albertans had experienced boom years from 2010 to 2014, with workers earnings reaching exceptional highs. The recession, which "ended over two years ago" in 2017, was "long and deep". By 2019—five years later—the province was still in recovery. Overall, there were approximately 35,000 jobs lost in mining, oil and gas alone. By 2019, the slow recovery and low earnings growth have resulted in workers getting "fewer hours, fewer jobs and, in some cases, lower wages". Tombe said that from 2014 to 2016, Alberta earned CDN$75 billion less per year with the "total incomes of workers, business, and government combined [falling] by nearly 20 per cent". Tombes said that relative to Alberta's "growth path prior to the recession" Alberta's economy is "down $100 billion per year", compared to what was anticipated. Tombes said that the "boom years that ended in 2014 were the outliers" and the lower earnings in 2019 reflect a "natural adjustment that's moving Alberta to a more normal and balanced labour market." While earnings are lower, because of inflation, prices have increased in Alberta by 18% since 2011. "The $1,183 per week a typical worker earns today goes about as far as $1,000 did nearly a decade ago.", according to Tombe. In spite of the typical worker in Alberta earns $1,183 per week compared to Saskatchewan, where the typical worker earns $1,070 per week. The weekly income a typical worker in all the other Canadian provinces and territories is less than that.
Since 2014, sectors that offered high-wage employment of $30 and above, saw about 100,000 jobs disappear—"construction (down more than 45,000 jobs), mining, oil and gas (down nearly 35,000), and professional services (down 18,000)."
Alberta's deficit.
Alberta's net debt was $27.5 billion by March 2019, which represents the end of the 2018-19 fiscal year (FY). By November 2018, Alberta's government expenditures were $55 billion while the revenue was about $48 billion, according to a report by the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy (SPP) economist, Trevor Tombe. Capital investment amounted to $4.3 billion. The provincial government employs more than "210,000 full-time equivalent workers across hundreds of departments, boards and other entities." Tombe, cited a $8.3 billion deficit in his November report, prior to the release in February 2019 of the corrected deficit figures, which was "$1.9 billion less in 2018-19 than originally expected", —$6.9-billion deficit instead of the original $8.8-billion".
Alberta's current deficit is "unusual for the province", says Tombe in 2018. During the financial crisis, Alberta's "net asset position equivalent to 15 per cent of GDP"−it "owned more financial assets than it owed in debt."
In 2009 Alberta had $31.7 billion in financial assets.
Alberta's credit rating.
On December 3, 2019, Moody's downgraded Alberta's credit rating from Aa2 stable from Aa1 negative and "downgraded the long-term debt ratings of the Alberta Capital Finance Authority and the long-term issuer rating of ATB Financial to Aa2 from Aa1." The agency said that there is a "structural weakness in the provincial economy that remains concentrated and dependent on non-renewable resources ... and remains pressured by a lack of sufficient pipeline capacity to transport oil efficiently with no near-term expectation of a significant rebound in oil-related investments...Alberta's oil and gas sector is carbon-intensive and Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions are the highest among provinces. Alberta is also susceptible to natural disasters including wildfires and floods which could lead to significant mitigation costs by the province."
Alberta's real per capita GDP.
In 2006 Alberta's per capita GDP was higher than all US states, and one of the highest figures in the world. In 2006, the deviation from the national average was the largest for any province in Canadian history. In 2007, Alberta's per capita GDP in 2007 was C$74,825 (approx. US$75,000)—by far the highest of any Canadian province—61% higher than the Canadian average of C$46,441 and more than twice that of all the Maritime provinces. In 2017, Alberta's real per capita GDP—the economic output per person—was $71,092, compared to the Canadian average of $47,417. Alberta's A grade on its income per capita was based on the fact that it was almost "identical" to that of the "top peer country" in 2016, Ireland.
In 2017, Alberta's real per capita GDP—the economic output per person—was $71,092 compared to the Canadian average output per person of $47, 417 and Prince Edward Island at $32,123 per person. Since at least 1997, Alberta's per capita GDP has been higher than that of any other province. In 2014, Alberta's reached its highest gap ever—$30,069—between its real capita GDP and the Canadian average.
According to the Conference Board of Canada, in 2016 Alberta earned an "A grade with income per capita almost identical to the top peer country, Ireland." In 2016 income per capita in Alberta was $59,259.
Alberta's GDP compared to other provinces.
A table listing annual ""Gross domestic product (GDP) at basic prices, by industry, provinces and territories (x 1,000,000)." from 2014 through 2018 with value chained to 2012 dollars.
Source: Statistics Canada: GDP (totals),
Economic geography.
Alberta has a small internal market, and it is relatively distant from major world markets, despite good transportation links to the rest of Canada and to the United States to the south. Alberta is located in the northwestern quadrant of North America, in a region of low population density called the Interior Plains. Alberta is landlocked, and separated by a series of mountain ranges from the nearest outlets to the Pacific Ocean, and by the Canadian Shield from ports on the Lakehead or Hudson Bay. From these ports to major populations centres and markets in Europe or Asia is several thousands of kilometers. The largest population clusters of North America (the Boston – Washington, San Francisco - San Diego, Chicago – Pittsburgh, and Quebec City – Windsor Corridors) are all thousands of kilometers away from Alberta. Partly for this reason, Alberta has never developed a large presence in the industries that have traditionally started industrialization in other places (notably the original Industrial Revolution in Great Britain) but which require large labour forces, and large internal markets or easy transportation to export markets, namely textiles, metallurgy, or transportation-related manufacturing (automotives, ships, or train cars).
Agriculture has been a key industry since the 1870s. The climate is dry, temperate, and continental, with extreme variations between seasons. Productive soils are found in most of the southern half of the province (excluding the mountains), and in certain parts of the north. Agriculture on a large scale is practiced further north in Alberta than anywhere else in North America, extending into the Peace River country above the 55th parallel north. Generally, however, northern Alberta (and areas along the Alberta Rockies) is forested land and logging is more important than agriculture there. Agriculture is divided into primarily field crops in the east, livestock in the west, and a mixture in between and in the parkland belt in the near north.
Conventional oil and gas fields are found throughout the province on an axis running from the northwest to the southeast. Oil sands are found in the northeast, especially around Fort McMurray (the Athabasca Oil Sands).
Because of its (relatively) economically isolated location, Alberta relies heavily on transportation links with the rest of the world. Alberta's historical development has been largely influenced by the development of new transportation infrastructure, (see "trends" below). Alberta is now served by two major transcontinental railways (CN and CP), by three major highway connections to the Pacific (the Trans-Canada via Kicking Horse Pass, the Yellowhead via Yellowhead Pass and the Crowsnest via Crowsnest Pass), and one to the United States (Interstate 15), as well as two international airports (Calgary and Edmonton). Also, Alberta is connected to the TransCanada pipeline system (natural gas) to Eastern Canada, the Northern Border Pipeline (gas), Alliance Pipeline (gas) and Enbridge Pipeline System (oil) to the Eastern United States, the Gas Transmission Northwest and Northwest Pipeline (gas) to the Western United States, and the McNeill HVDC Back-to-back station (electric power) to Saskatchewan.
Economic regions and cities.
Since the days of early agricultural settlement, the majority of Alberta's population has been concentrated in the parkland belt (mixed forest-grassland), a boomerang-shaped strip of land extending along the North Saskatchewan River from Lloydminster to Edmonton and then along the Rocky Mountain foothills south to Calgary. This area is slightly more humid and treed than the drier prairie (grassland) region called Palliser's Triangle to its south, and large areas of the south (the "Special Areas") were depopulated during the droughts of the 1920s and 30s. The chernozem (black soil) of the parkland region is more agriculturally productive than the red and grey soils to the south. Urban development has also been most advanced in the parkland belt. Edmonton and Red Deer are parkland cities, while Calgary is on the parkland-prairie fringe. Lethbridge and Medicine Hat are prairie cities. Grande Prairie lies in the Peace River Country a parkland region (with isolated patches of prairie, hence the name) in the northwest isolated from the rest of the parkland by the forested Swan Hills. Fort McMurray is the only urbanized population centre in the boreal forest which covers much of the northern half of the province.
Calgary and Edmonton.
The Calgary and Edmonton regions, by far the province's two largest metropolitan regions, account for the majority of the province's population. They are relatively close to each other by the standards of Western Canada and distant from other metropolitan regions such as Vancouver or Winnipeg. This has produced a history of political and economic rivalry and comparison but also economic integration that has created an urbanized corridor between the two cities.
The economic profile of the two regions is slightly different. Both cities are mature service economies built on a base of resource extraction in their hinterlands. However, Calgary is predominant in hosting the regional and national headquarters of oil and gas exploration and drilling companies. Edmonton skews much more towards governments, universities and hospitals as large employers, while Edmonton's suburban fringes (e.g. Fort Saskatchewan, Nisku, Strathcona County (Refinery Row), Leduc, Beaumont, Acheson) are home to most of the province's manufacturing (much of it related to oil and gas).
Calgary-Edmonton Corridor.
The Calgary-Edmonton Corridor is the most urbanized region in the province and one of the densest in Canada. Measured from north to south, the region covers a distance of roughly . In 2001, the population of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor was 2.15 million (72% of Alberta's population). It is also one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. A 2003 study by TD Bank Financial Group found the corridor was the only Canadian urban centre to amass a U.S. level of wealth while maintaining a Canadian-style quality of life, offering universal health care benefits. The study found GDP per capita in the corridor was 10% above average U.S. metropolitan areas and 40% above other Canadian cities at that time.
Calgary–Edmonton rivalry.
Seeing Calgary and Edmonton as part of a single economic region as the TD study did in 2003 was novel. The more traditional view had been to see the two cities as economic rivals. For example, in the 1980 both cities claimed to be the "Oil Capital of Canada".
Background.
Alberta has always been an export-oriented economy. In line with Harold Innis' "Staples Thesis", the economy has changed substantially as different export commodities have risen or fallen in importance. In sequence, the most important products have been: fur, wheat and beef, and oil and gas.
The development of transportation in Alberta has been crucial to its historical economic development. The North American fur trade relied on birch-bark canoes, York boats, and Red River carts on buffalo trails to move furs out of, and European trade goods into, the region. Immigration into the province was eased tremendously by the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental line in 1880s. Commercial farming became viable in the area once the grain trade had developed technologies to handle the bulk export of grain, especially hopper cars and grain elevators. Oil and gas exports have been possible because of increasing pipeline technology.
Prior to the 1950s, Alberta was a primarily agricultural economy, based on the export of wheat, beef, and a few other commodities. The health of economy was closely bound up with the price of wheat.
In 1947 a major oil field was discovered near Edmonton. It was not the first petroleum find in Alberta, but it was large enough to significantly alter the economy of the province (and coincided with growing American demand for energy). Since that time, Alberta's economic fortunes have largely tracked the price of oil, and increasingly natural gas prices. When oil prices spiked during the 1967 Oil Embargo, 1973 oil crisis, and 1979 energy crisis, Alberta's economy boomed. However, during the 1980s oil glut Alberta's economy suffered. Alberta boomed once again during the 2003-2008 oil price spike. In July 2008 the price of oil peaked and began to decline and Alberta's economy soon followed suit, with unemployment doubling within a year. By 2009 with natural gas prices at a long-term low, Alberta's economy was in poor health compared to before, although still relatively better than many other comparable jurisdictions. By 2012 natural gas prices were at a ten-year low, the Canadian dollar was high, and oil prices recovered until June 2014.
The spin-offs from petroleum allowed Alberta to develop many other industries. Oilpatch-related manufacturing is an obvious example, but financial services and government services have also benefited from oil money.
A comparison of the development of Alberta's less oil and gas-endowed neighbours, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, reveals the role petroleum has played. Alberta was once the smallest of the three Prairie Provinces by population in the early 20th century, but by 2009, Alberta's population was 3,632,483 or approximately three times as much as either Saskatchewan (1,023,810) or Manitoba (1,213,815).
Employment.
Alberta's economy is a highly developed one in which most people work in services such as healthcare, government, or retail. Primary industries are also of great importance, however.
By March 2016 the unemployment rate in Alberta rose to 7.9%— its "highest level since April 1995 and the first time the province’s rate has surpassed the national average since December 1988." There were 21,200 fewer jobs than February 2015. The unemployment rate was expected to average 7.4% in 2016. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) claimed that Alberta lost 35,000 jobs in 2015–25,000 from the oil services sector and 10,000 from exploration and production. Full-time employment increased by 10,000 in February 2016 after falling 20,000 in both December 2015 and January 2016. The natural resources industry lost 7,400 jobs in February. "Year-over-year (y/y), the goods sector lost 56,000 jobs, while the services sector gained 34,800." In 2015 Alberta's population increased by 3,900. While Alberta had a reprieve in job loss in February 2016—up 1,400 jobs after losing jobs in October, November, December 2015 and January 2016—Ontario lost 11,200 jobs, Saskatchewan lost 7,800 jobs and New Brunswick lost 5,700 jobs.
The unemployment rate in spring 2019 in Alberta was 6.7% with 21,000 jobs added in April; in Calgary it was 7.4%, in Edmonton it was 6.9%, in Northern Alberta it was 11.2%, and in Southern Alberta it was 7.8%. By July 2019, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate had increased to 7.0%, which represented an increase of 0.3% from the previous year. The unemployment rate in Alberta peaked in November 2016 at 9.1%. Its lowest point in a ten-year period from July 2009 to July 2019 was in September 2013 at 4.3%.
By August 2019, the employment number in Alberta was 2,344,000, following the loss of 14,000 full-time jobs in July, which represented that the "largest decline" in Canada according to Statistics Canada.
Employment by industry, Alberta – seasonally adjusted (000s)
Extraction industries.
According to the Government of Alberta, the "mining and oil and gas extraction industry accounted for 6.1% of total employment in Alberta in 2017". By April 2019, there were about 145,100 people working directly with the oil and gas industry. In 2013, there were 171,200 people employed in the mining and oil and gas extraction industry.
In 2007 there were 146,900 people working in the mining and oil and gas extraction industry.
Largest employers of Alberta.
According to "Alberta Venture" magazine's list of the 50 largest employers in the province, the largest employers are:
Sectors.
Oil and gas extraction industries.
In 2018, Alberta's energy sector contributed over $71.5 billion to Canada's nominal gross domestic product. In 2006, it accounted for 29.1% of Alberta's GDP; by 2012 it was 23.3%; in 2013, it was 24.6%, and in 2016 it was 27.9%. According to Statistics Canada, in May 2018, the oil and gas extraction industry reached its highest proportion of Canada's national GDP since 1985, exceeding 7% and "surpass[ing] banking and insurance". with extraction of non-conventional oil from the oilsands reaching an "impressive", all-time high in May 2018. With conventional oil extraction "climbed up to the highs from 2007", the demand for Canadian oil was strong in May.
Alberta is the largest producer of conventional crude oil, synthetic crude, natural gas and gas products in the country. Alberta is the world's 2nd largest exporter of natural gas and the 4th largest producer. Two of the largest producers of petrochemicals in North America are located in central and north central Alberta. In both Red Deer and Edmonton, world class polyethylene and vinyl manufacturers produce products shipped all over the world, and Edmonton's oil refineries provide the raw materials for a large petrochemical industry to the east of Edmonton. Since the early 1940s, Alberta had supplied oil and gas to the rest of Canada and the United States. The Athabasca River region produces oil for internal and external use. The Athabasca Oil Sands contain the largest proven reserves of oil in the world outside Saudi Arabia.
The Athabasca Oil Sands (sometimes known as the Athabasca Tar sands) have estimated unconventional oil reserves approximately equal to the conventional oil reserves of the rest of the world, estimated to be . With the development of new extraction methods such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), which was developed in Alberta, bitumen and synthetic crude oil can be produced at costs close to those of conventional crude. Many companies employ both conventional strip mining and non-conventional in situ methods to extract the bitumen from the oil sands. With current technology and at current prices, about of bitumen are recoverable. Fort McMurray, one of Canada's fastest growing cities, has grown enormously in recent years because of the large corporations which have taken on the task of oil production. As of late 2006 there were over $100 billion in oil sands projects under construction or in the planning stages in northeastern Alberta.
Another factor determining the viability of oil extraction from the oil sands was the price of oil. The oil price increases since 2003 made it more than profitable to extract this oil, which in the past would give little profit or even a loss.
Alberta's economy was negatively impacted by the 2015-2016 oil glut with a record high volume of worldwide oil inventories in storage, with global crude oil collapsing at near ten-year low prices. The United States doubled its 2008 production levels mainly due to substantial improvements in shale "fracking" technology, OPEC members consistently exceeded their production ceiling, and China experienced a marked slowdown in economic growth and crude oil imports.
Mining and Oil and Gas Extraction Industry (2017)
Natural gas.
Natural gas has been found at several points, and in 1999, the production of natural gas liquids (ethane, propane, and butanes) totalled , valued at $2.27 billion. Alberta also provides 13% of all the natural gas used in the United States.
Notable gas reserves were discovered in the 1883 near Medicine Hat. The town of Medicine Hat began using gas for lighting the town, and supplying light and fuel for the people, and a number of industries using the gas for manufacturing.
One of North America's benchmarks is Alberta gas-trading price—the AECO "C" spot price.
In 2018, 69% of the marketable natural gas in Canada was produced in Alberta. Forty nine per cent of Alberta's natural gas production is consumed in Alberta. In Alberta, the average household uses of natural gas annually. Domestic demand for natural gas is divided across sectors, with the highest demand—83% coming from "industrial, electrical generation, transportation and other sectors," and 17 percent going towards residential and commercial sectors.
Of the provinces, Alberta is the largest consumer of natural gas at 3.9 billion cubic feet per day.
By August 2019, the "Financial Post" said that "AECO daily and monthly natural gas prices" were at the lowest they have been since 1992. Canada's largest natural gas producer, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., announced in early August that it had "shut in gas production of 27,000 million cubic feet per day because of depressed prices. Previously natural gas pipeline drilled in the southern Alberta and shipped to markets in Eastern Canada. By 2019, the entire natural gas industry had was primarily operating in northwestern Alberta and northeastern B.C., which resulted in strained infrastructure. New systems will not be complete until 2021 or 2023. In September 25, 2017 Alberta's benchmark AECO natural gas prices fell into "negative territory – "meaning producers have had to pay customers to take their gas". It happened again in early October with the price per gigajoule dropping to -7 cents. TransCanada (now TC Energy Corp)—which "owns and operates Alberta's "largest natural gas gathering and transmission system, interrupted its pipeline service in the fall of 2017 to complete field maintenance on the Alberta system. In July 2018, RS Energy Group's energy analyst Samir Kayande, said that faced with a glut of natural gas across North America, the continental market price was $3 per gigajoule. Alberta is "awash" with natural gas but faces pipeline bottlenecks. CEOs of nine Alberta natural gas producers requested the Kenney government to mandate production cuts to deal with the crisis. On June 30, the AECO price of gas dropped to 11 cents per gigajoule, because of maintenance issues with the pipeline giant TC Energy Corp.
In 2003 Alberta produced of marketable natural gas. That year, 62% of Alberta's natural gas was shipped to the United States, 24% was used within Alberta, and 14% was used in the rest of Canada. In 2006, Alberta consumed of natural gas. The rest was exported across Canada and to the United States. Royalties to Alberta from natural gas and its byproducts are larger than royalties from crude oil and bitumen. In 2006, there were 13,473 successful natural gas wells drilled in Alberta: 12,029 conventional gas wells and 1,444 coalbed methane wells. There may be up to of coalbed methane in Alberta, although it is unknown how much of this gas might be recoverable. Alberta has one of the most extensive natural gas systems in the world as part of its energy infrastructure, with of energy related pipelines.
Coal.
Coal has been mined in Alberta since the late 19th century. Over 1800 mines have operated in Alberta since then.
The coal industry was vital to the early development of several communities, especially those in the foothills and along deep river valleys where coal was close to the surface.
Alberta is still a major coal producer, every two weeks Alberta produces enough coal to fill the Sky Dome in Toronto.
Much of that coal is burned in Alberta for electricity generation. By 2008, Alberta used over 25 million tonnes of coal annually to generate electricity. However, Alberta is set to retire coal power by 2023, ahead of 2030 provincial deadline.
Alberta has vast coal resources and 70 per cent of Canada's coal reserves are located in Alberta. This amounts to 33.6 Gigatonnes.
Vast beds of coal are found extending for hundreds of miles, a short distance below the surface of the plains. The coal belongs to the Cretaceous beds, and while not so heavy as that of the Coal Measures in England is of excellent quality. In the valley of the Bow River, alongside the Canadian Pacific Railway, valuable beds of anthracite coal are still worked. The usual coal deposits of the area of bituminous or semi-bituminous coal. These are largely worked at Lethbridge in southern Alberta and Edmonton in the centre of the province. Many other parts of the province have pits for private use.
Electricity.
, Alberta's generating capacity was 16,261 MW, and Alberta has about of transmission lines.
Alberta has 1491 megawatts of wind power capacity.
Production of electricity in Alberta in 2016 by source:
Alberta has added 9,000 MW of new supply since 1998.
Peak for power use in one day was set on July 9, 2015 – 10,520 MW.
Mineral mining.
Building stones mined in Alberta include Rundle stone, and Paskapoo sandstone.
Diamonds were first found in Alberta in 1958, and many stones have been found since, although to date no large-scale mines have been developed.
Manufacturing.
The Edmonton area, and in particular Nisku is a major centre for manufacturing oil and gas related equipment. As well Edmonton's Refinery Row is home to a petrochemical industry.
According to a 2016 Statistics Canada report Alberta's manufacturing sales year-over-year sales fell 13.2 per cent, with a loss of almost four per cent from December to January. Alberta's economy continued to shrink because of the collapse of the oil and gas sector. The petroleum and coal product manufacturing industry is now third— behind food and chemicals.
Biotechnology.
Several companies and services in the biotech sector are clustered around the University of Alberta, for example ColdFX.
Food processing.
Owing to the strength of agriculture, food processing was once a major part of the economies of Edmonton and Calgary, but this sector has increasingly moved to smaller centres such as Brooks, the home of XL Foods, responsible for one third of Canada's beef processing in 2011.
Transportation.
Edmonton is a major distribution centre for northern communities, hence the nickname "Gateway to the North". Edmonton is one of CN Rail's most important hubs. Since 1996, Canadian Pacific Railway has its headquarters in downtown Calgary.
WestJet, Canada's second largest air carrier, is headquartered in Calgary, by Calgary International Airport, which serves as the airline's primary hub. Prior to its dissolution, Canadian Airlines was headquartered in Calgary by the airport. Prior to its dissolution, Air Canada subsidiary Zip was headquartered in Calgary.
Agriculture and forestry.
Agriculture.
In the past, cattle, horses, and sheep were reared in the southern prairie region on ranches or smaller holdings. Currently Alberta produces cattle valued at over $3.3 billion, as well as other livestock in lesser quantities. In this region irrigation is widely used. Wheat, accounting for almost half of the $2 billion agricultural economy, is supplemented by canola, barley, rye, sugar beets, and other mixed farming. In 2011, Alberta producers seeded an estimated total of to spring wheat, durum, barley, oats, mixed grains, triticale, canola and dry peas. Of the total seeded area, 94 per cent was harvested as grains and oilseeds and six per cent as greenfeed and silage. Saudi Arabia is a major export target especially for wheat and processed potato products. SA having decided to phase out their own forage and cereal production, Alberta expects this to be an opportunity to fill livestock feed demand in the kingdom.
Agriculture has a significant position in the province's economy. Over three million cattle are residents of the province at one time or another, and Albertan beef has a healthy worldwide market. Although beef could also be a major export to Saudi Arabia, as with wheat and potatoes above, market access is lacking at the moment. Nearly one half of all Canadian beef is produced in Alberta. Alberta is one of the prime producers of plains buffalo (bison) for the consumer market. Sheep for wool and lamb are also raised.
Wheat and canola are primary farm crops, with Alberta leading the provinces in spring wheat production, with other grains also prominent. Much of the farming is dryland farming, often with fallow seasons interspersed with cultivation. Continuous cropping (in which there is no fallow season) is gradually becoming a more common mode of production because of increased profits and a reduction of soil erosion. Across the province, the once common grain elevator is slowly being lost as rail lines are decreased and farmers now truck the grain to central points.
Clubroot ("Plasmodiophora brassicae") is a costly disease of "Brassicaceae" here including canola. In several experiments by Peng "et al.", out of fungicides, biofungicides, inoculation with beneficial microbes, cultivar resistance, and crop rotation, only genetic resistance combined with more than two years rotation worked "susceptible" cultivars rotated with other crops did not produce enough improvement.
Alberta is the leading beekeeping province of Canada, with some beekeepers wintering hives indoors in specially designed barns in southern Alberta, then migrating north during the summer into the Peace River valley where the season is short but the working days are long for honeybees to produce honey from clover and fireweed. Hybrid canola also requires bee pollination, and some beekeepers service this need.
Forestry.
The vast northern forest reserves of softwood allow Alberta to produce large quantities of lumber, oriented strand board (OSB) and plywood, and several plants in northern Alberta supply North America and the Pacific Rim nations with bleached wood pulp and newsprint.
In 1999, lumber products from Alberta were valued at $4.1 billion of which 72% were exported around the world. Since forests cover approximately 59% of the province's land area, the government allows about to be harvested annually from the forests on public lands.
Services.
Despite the high profile of the extractive industries, Alberta has a mature economy and most people work in services. In 2014 there were 1,635.8 thousand people employed in the services-producing sector. Since then, the number has steadily increased to 1754.8 thousand jobs by August 2019, which is an increase of 16.7 thousand jobs from August 2018 This includes wholesale and retail trade; transportation and warehousing; finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing; professional, scientific and technical services; business, building and other support services; educational services; health care and social assistance; information, culture and recreation; accommodation and food services; other services (except public administration) and public administration.
Finance.
The TSX Venture Exchange is headquartered in Calgary. The city has the second highest number of corporate head offices in Canada after Toronto, and the financial services industry in Calgary has developed to support them. All major banks including the Big Five maintain corporate offices in Calgary, along with smaller banks such as Equitable Group. Recently there has also been a number of fintech companies founded in Calgary such as the National Digital Asset Exchange and Neo Financial, founded by the Skip-the-Dishes team.
One of Canada's largest accounting firms, MNP LLP, is also headquartered in Calgary.
Edmonton hosts the headquarters of the only major Canadian banks west of Toronto: Canadian Western Bank, and ATB Financial, as well as the only province-wide credit union, Servus Credit Union.
Government.
Despite Alberta's reputation as a "small government" province, many health care and education professionals are lured to Alberta from other provinces by the higher wages the Alberta government is able to offer because of oil revenues. In 2014 the median household income in Alberta was $100,000 with the average weekly wage at $1,163—23 per cent higher than the Canadian national average.
In their May 2018 report co-authored by C. D. Howe Institute's President and CEO, William B.P. Robson, evaluating "the budgets, estimates and public accounts" of 2017/18 fiscal year that were tabled by senior governments in the Canadian provinces and the federal government in terms of reporting financial information, appropriately, with transparency, and in a timely fashion, Alberta and New Brunswick ranked highest. The report also said that, prior to 2016, Alberta had scored poorly in comparison with other provinces, because of "confusing array of "operating," "saving" and "capital" accounts that were not Public Sector Accounting Standards (PSAS) consistent." but since 2016, Alberta has received A-plus grades. The report said that Alberta and New Brunswick in FY2017 provided "straightforward reconciliations of results with budget intentions, their auditors record no reservations, and their budgets and public accounts are timely."
Technology.
Alberta has a burgeoning high tech sector, including prominent technology companies iStockPhoto, Shareworks, Benevity, and Attabotics in Calgary, and Bioware and AltaML in Edmonton. Growth in Calgary's technology sector, particularly at Benevity, fueled predictions of a modest economic recovery in February 2020.
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1842 | Augustin-Louis Cauchy | Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He was one of the first to state and rigorously prove theorems of calculus, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He (nearly) single-handedly founded complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra.
A profound mathematician, Cauchy had a great influence over his contemporaries and successors; Hans Freudenthal stated: "More concepts and theorems have been named for Cauchy than for any other mathematician (in elasticity alone there are sixteen concepts and theorems named for Cauchy)." Cauchy was a prolific writer; he wrote approximately eight hundred research articles and five complete textbooks on a variety of topics in the fields of mathematics and mathematical physics.
Biography.
Youth and education.
Cauchy was the son of Louis François Cauchy (1760–1848) and Marie-Madeleine Desestre. Cauchy had two brothers: Alexandre Laurent Cauchy (1792–1857), who became a president of a division of the court of appeal in 1847 and a judge of the court of cassation in 1849, and Eugene François Cauchy (1802–1877), a publicist who also wrote several mathematical works.
Cauchy married Aloise de Bure in 1818. She was a close relative of the publisher who published most of Cauchy's works. They had two daughters, Marie Françoise Alicia (1819) and Marie Mathilde (1823).
Cauchy's father was a highly ranked official in the Parisian Police of the
Ancien Régime, but lost this position due to the French Revolution (July 14, 1789), which broke out one month before Augustin-Louis was born. The Cauchy family survived the revolution and the following Reign of Terror (1793–94) by escaping to Arcueil, where Cauchy received his first education, from his father. After the execution of Robespierre (1794), it was safe for the family to return to Paris. There Louis-François Cauchy found himself a new bureaucratic job in 1800, and quickly moved up the ranks. When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power (1799), Louis-François Cauchy was further promoted, and became Secretary-General of the Senate, working directly under Laplace (who is now better known for his work on mathematical physics). The famous mathematician Lagrange was also a friend of the Cauchy family.
On Lagrange's advice, Augustin-Louis was enrolled in the École Centrale du Panthéon, the best secondary school of Paris at that time, in the fall of 1802. Most of the curriculum consisted of classical languages; the young and ambitious Cauchy, being a brilliant student, won many prizes in Latin and the humanities. In spite of these successes, Augustin-Louis chose an engineering career, and prepared himself for the entrance examination to the École Polytechnique.
In 1805, he placed second of 293 applicants on this exam and was admitted. One of the main purposes of this school was to give future civil and military engineers a high-level scientific and mathematical education. The school functioned under military discipline, which caused Cauchy some problems in adapting. Nevertheless, he completed the course in 1807, at the age of 18, and went on to the École des Ponts et Chaussées (School for Bridges and Roads). He graduated in civil engineering, with the highest honors.
Engineering days.
After finishing school in 1810, Cauchy accepted a job as a junior engineer in Cherbourg, where Napoleon intended to build a naval base. Here Augustin-Louis stayed for three years, and was assigned the Ourcq Canal project and the Saint-Cloud Bridge project, and worked at the Harbor of Cherbourg. Although he had an extremely busy managerial job, he still found time to prepare three mathematical manuscripts, which he submitted to the "Première Classe" (First Class) of the Institut de France. Cauchy's first two manuscripts (on polyhedra) were accepted; the third one (on directrices of conic sections) was rejected.
In September 1812, now 23 years old, Cauchy returned to Paris after becoming ill from overwork. Another reason for his return to the capital was that he was losing interest in his engineering job, being more and more attracted to the abstract beauty of mathematics; in Paris, he would have a much better chance to find a mathematics related position. Therefore, when his health improved in 1813, Cauchy chose to not return to Cherbourg. Although he formally kept his engineering position, he was transferred from the payroll of the Ministry of the Marine to the Ministry of the Interior. The next three years Augustin-Louis was mainly on unpaid sick leave; he spent his time quite fruitfully, working on mathematics (on the related topics of symmetric functions, the symmetric group and the theory of higher-order algebraic equations). He attempted admission to the First Class of the Institut de France but failed on three different occasions between 1813 and 1815. In 1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, and the newly installed Bourbon king Louis XVIII took the restoration in hand. The Académie des Sciences was re-established in March 1816; Lazare Carnot and Gaspard Monge were removed from this Academy for political reasons, and the king appointed Cauchy to take the place of one of them. The reaction of Cauchy's peers was harsh; they considered the acceptance of his membership in the Academy an outrage, and Cauchy thereby created many enemies in scientific circles.
Professor at École Polytechnique.
In November 1815, Louis Poinsot, who was an associate professor at the École Polytechnique, asked to be exempted from his teaching duties for health reasons. Cauchy was by then a rising mathematical star, who certainly merited a professorship. One of his great successes at that time was the proof of Fermat's polygonal number theorem. He finally quit his engineering job, and received a one-year contract for teaching mathematics to second-year students of the École Polytechnique. In 1816, this Bonapartist, non-religious school was reorganized, and several liberal professors were fired; Cauchy was promoted to full professor.
When Cauchy was 28 years old, he was still living with his parents. His father found it high time for his son to marry; he found him a suitable bride, Aloïse de Bure, five years his junior. The de Bure family were printers and booksellers, and published most of Cauchy's works. Aloïse and Augustin were married on April 4, 1818, with great Roman Catholic ceremony, in the Church of Saint-Sulpice. In 1819 the couple's first daughter, Marie Françoise Alicia, was born, and in 1823 the second and last daughter, Marie Mathilde.
The conservative political climate that lasted until 1830 suited Cauchy perfectly. In 1824 Louis XVIII died, and was succeeded by his even more conservative brother Charles X. During these years Cauchy was highly productive, and published one important mathematical treatise after another. He received cross-appointments at the Collège de France, and the .
In exile.
In July 1830, the July Revolution occurred in France. Charles X fled the country, and was succeeded by the non-Bourbon king Louis-Philippe (of the House of Orléans). Riots, in which uniformed students of the École Polytechnique took an active part, raged close to Cauchy's home in Paris.
These events marked a turning point in Cauchy's life, and a break in his mathematical productivity. Cauchy, shaken by the fall of the government and moved by a deep hatred of the liberals who were taking power, left Paris to go abroad, leaving his family behind. He spent a short time at Fribourg in Switzerland, where he had to decide whether he would swear a required oath of allegiance to the new regime. He refused to do this, and consequently lost all his positions in Paris, except his membership of the Academy, for which an oath was not required. In 1831 Cauchy went to the Italian city of Turin, and after some time there, he accepted an offer from the King of Sardinia (who ruled Turin and the surrounding Piedmont region) for a chair of theoretical physics, which was created especially for him. He taught in Turin during 1832–1833. In 1831, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the following year a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In August 1833 Cauchy left Turin for Prague to become the science tutor of the thirteen-year-old Duke of Bordeaux, Henri d'Artois (1820–1883), the exiled Crown Prince and grandson of Charles X. As a professor of the École Polytechnique, Cauchy had been a notoriously bad lecturer, assuming levels of understanding that only a few of his best students could reach, and cramming his allotted time with too much material. The young Duke had neither taste nor talent for either mathematics or science, so student and teacher were a perfect mismatch. Although Cauchy took his mission very seriously, he did this with great clumsiness, and with surprising lack of authority over the Duke.
During his civil engineering days, Cauchy once had been briefly in charge of repairing a few of the Parisian sewers, and he made the mistake of mentioning this to his pupil; with great malice, the young Duke went about saying Mister Cauchy started his career in the sewers of Paris. Cauchy's role as tutor lasted until the Duke became eighteen years old, in September 1838. Cauchy did hardly any research during those five years, while the Duke acquired a lifelong dislike of mathematics. The only good that came out of this episode was Cauchy's promotion to baron, a title by which Cauchy set great store.
In 1834, his wife and two daughters moved to Prague, and Cauchy was finally reunited with his family after four years in exile.
Last years.
Cauchy returned to Paris and his position at the Academy of Sciences late in 1838. He could not regain his teaching positions, because he still refused to swear an oath of allegiance.
In August 1839 a vacancy appeared in the Bureau des Longitudes. This Bureau bore some resemblance to the Academy; for instance, it had the right to co-opt its members. Further, it was believed that members of the Bureau could "forget about" the oath of allegiance, although formally, unlike the Academicians, they were obliged to take it. The Bureau des Longitudes was an organization founded in 1795 to solve the problem of determining position at sea — mainly the longitudinal coordinate, since latitude is easily determined from the position of the sun. Since it was thought that position at sea was best determined by astronomical observations, the Bureau had developed into an organization resembling an academy of astronomical sciences.
In November 1839 Cauchy was elected to the Bureau, and discovered immediately that the matter of the oath was not so easily dispensed with. Without his oath, the king refused to approve his election. For four years Cauchy was in the position of being elected but not approved; accordingly, he was not a formal member of the Bureau, did not receive payment, could not participate in meetings, and could not submit papers. Still Cauchy refused to take any oaths; however, he did feel loyal enough to direct his research to celestial mechanics. In 1840, he presented a dozen papers on this topic to the Academy. He also described and illustrated the signed-digit representation of numbers, an innovation presented in England in 1727 by John Colson. The confounded membership of the Bureau lasted until the end of 1843, when Cauchy was finally replaced by Poinsot.
Throughout the nineteenth century the French educational system struggled over the separation of church and state. After losing control of the public education system, the Catholic Church sought to establish its own branch of education and found in Cauchy a staunch and illustrious ally. He lent his prestige and knowledge to the École Normale Écclésiastique, a school in Paris run by Jesuits, for training teachers for their colleges. He also took part in the founding of the Institut Catholique. The purpose of this institute was to counter the effects of the absence of Catholic university education in France. These activities did not make Cauchy popular with his colleagues, who, on the whole, supported the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution. When a chair of mathematics became vacant at the Collège de France in 1843, Cauchy applied for it, but received just three of 45 votes.
The year 1848 was the year of revolution all over Europe; revolutions broke out in numerous countries, beginning in France. King Louis-Philippe, fearful of sharing the fate of Louis XVI, fled to England. The oath of allegiance was abolished, and the road to an academic appointment was finally clear for Cauchy. On March 1, 1849, he was reinstated at the Faculté de Sciences, as a professor of mathematical astronomy. After political turmoil all through 1848, France chose to become a Republic, under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and son of Napoleon's brother, who had been installed as the first king of Holland. Soon (early 1852) the President made himself Emperor of France, and took the name Napoleon III.
Not unexpectedly, the idea came up in bureaucratic circles that it would be useful to again require a loyalty oath from all state functionaries, including university professors. This time a cabinet minister was able to convince the Emperor to exempt Cauchy from the oath. Cauchy remained a professor at the university until his death at the age of 67. He received the Last Rites and died of a bronchial condition at 4 a.m. on 23 May 1857.
His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Work.
Early work.
The genius of Cauchy was illustrated in his simple solution of the problem of Apollonius—describing a circle touching three given circles—which he discovered in 1805, his generalization of Euler's formula on polyhedra in 1811, and in several other elegant problems. More important is his memoir on wave propagation, which obtained the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1816. Cauchy's writings covered notable topics. In the theory of series he developed the notion of convergence and discovered many of the basic formulas for q-series. In the theory of numbers and complex quantities, he was the first to define complex numbers as pairs of real numbers. He also wrote on the theory of groups and substitutions, the theory of functions, differential equations and determinants.
Wave theory, mechanics, elasticity.
In the theory of light he worked on Fresnel's wave theory and on the dispersion and polarization of light. He also contributed research in mechanics, substituting the notion of the continuity of geometrical displacements for the principle of the continuity of matter. He wrote on the equilibrium of rods and elastic membranes and on waves in elastic media. He introduced a 3 × 3 symmetric matrix of numbers that is now known as the Cauchy stress tensor. In elasticity, he originated the theory of stress, and his results are nearly as valuable as those of Siméon Poisson.
Number theory.
Other significant contributions include being the first to prove the Fermat polygonal number theorem.
Complex functions.
Cauchy is most famous for his single-handed development of complex function theory. The first pivotal theorem proved by Cauchy, now known as "Cauchy's integral theorem", was the following:
where "f"("z") is a complex-valued function holomorphic on and within the non-self-intersecting closed curve "C" (contour) lying in the complex plane. The "contour integral" is taken along the contour "C". The rudiments of this theorem can already be found in a paper that the 24-year-old Cauchy presented to the Académie des Sciences (then still called "First Class of the Institute") on August 11, 1814. In full form the theorem was given in 1825. The 1825 paper is seen by many as Cauchy's most important contribution to mathematics.
In 1826 Cauchy gave a formal definition of a residue of a function. This concept concerns functions that have poles—isolated singularities, i.e., points where a function goes to positive or negative infinity. If the complex-valued function "f"("z") can be expanded in the neighborhood of a singularity "a" as
where φ("z") is analytic (i.e., well-behaved without singularities), then "f" is said to have a pole of order "n" in the point "a". If "n" = 1, the pole is called simple.
The coefficient "B"1 is called by Cauchy the residue of function "f" at "a". If "f" is non-singular at "a" then the residue of "f" is zero at "a". Clearly, the residue is in the case of a simple pole equal to
where we replaced "B"1 by the modern notation of the residue.
In 1831, while in Turin, Cauchy submitted two papers to the Academy of Sciences of Turin. In the first he proposed the formula now known as Cauchy's integral formula,
where "f"("z") is analytic on "C" and within the region bounded by the contour "C" and the complex number "a" is somewhere in this region. The contour integral is taken counter-clockwise. Clearly, the integrand has a simple pole at "z" = "a". In the second paper he presented the residue theorem,
where the sum is over all the "n" poles of "f"("z") on and within the contour "C". These results of Cauchy's still form the core of complex function theory as it is taught today to physicists and electrical engineers. For quite some time, contemporaries of Cauchy ignored his theory, believing it to be too complicated. Only in the 1840s the theory started to get response, with Pierre Alphonse Laurent being the first mathematician besides Cauchy to make a substantial contribution (his work on what are now known as Laurent series, published in 1843).
Cours d'Analyse.
In his book "Cours d'Analyse" Cauchy stressed the importance of rigor in analysis. "Rigor" in this case meant the rejection of the principle of "Generality of algebra" (of earlier authors such as Euler and Lagrange) and its replacement by geometry and infinitesimals. Judith Grabiner wrote Cauchy was "the man who taught rigorous analysis to all of Europe". The book is frequently noted as being the first place that inequalities, and formula_6 arguments were introduced into calculus. Here Cauchy defined continuity as follows: "The function f(x) is continuous with respect to x between the given limits if, between these limits, an infinitely small increment in the variable always produces an infinitely small increment in the function itself."
M. Barany claims that the École mandated the inclusion of infinitesimal methods against Cauchy's better judgement. Gilain notes that when the portion of the curriculum devoted to "Analyse Algébrique" was reduced in 1825, Cauchy insisted on placing the topic of continuous functions (and therefore also infinitesimals) at the beginning of the Differential Calculus. Laugwitz (1989) and Benis-Sinaceur (1973) point out that Cauchy continued to use infinitesimals in his own research as late as 1853.
Cauchy gave an explicit definition of an infinitesimal in terms of a sequence tending to zero. There has been a vast body of literature written about Cauchy's notion of "infinitesimally small quantities", arguing they lead from everything from the usual "epsilontic" definitions or to the notions of non-standard analysis. The consensus is that Cauchy omitted or left implicit the important ideas to make clear the precise meaning of the infinitely small quantities he used.
Taylor's theorem.
He was the first to prove Taylor's theorem rigorously, establishing his well-known form of the remainder. He wrote a textbook (see the illustration) for his students at the École Polytechnique in which he developed the basic theorems of mathematical analysis as rigorously as possible. In this book he gave the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a limit in the form that is still taught. Also Cauchy's well-known test for absolute convergence stems from this book: Cauchy condensation test. In 1829 he defined for the first time a complex function of a complex variable in another textbook. In spite of these, Cauchy's own research papers often used intuitive, not rigorous, methods; thus one of his theorems was exposed to a "counter-example" by Abel, later fixed by the introduction of the notion of uniform continuity.
Argument principle, stability.
In a paper published in 1855, two years before Cauchy's death, he discussed some theorems, one of which is similar to the "Principle of the argument" in many modern textbooks on complex analysis. In modern control theory textbooks, the Cauchy argument principle is quite frequently used to derive the Nyquist stability criterion, which can be used to predict the stability of negative feedback amplifier and negative feedback control systems. Thus Cauchy's work has a strong impact on both pure mathematics and practical engineering.
Published works.
Cauchy was very productive, in number of papers second only to Leonhard Euler. It took almost a century to collect all his writings into 27 large volumes:
His greatest contributions to mathematical science are enveloped in the rigorous methods which he introduced; these are mainly embodied in his three great treatises:
His other works include:
Politics and religious beliefs.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy grew up in the house of a staunch royalist. This made his father flee with the family to Arcueil during the French Revolution. Their life there during that time was apparently hard; Augustin-Louis's father, Louis François, spoke of living on rice, bread, and crackers during the period. A paragraph from an undated letter from Louis François to his mother in Rouen says:
In any event, he inherited his father's staunch royalism and hence refused to take oaths to any government after the overthrow of Charles X.
He was an equally staunch Catholic and a member of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. He also had links to the Society of Jesus and defended them at the Academy when it was politically unwise to do so. His zeal for his faith may have led to his caring for Charles Hermite during his illness and leading Hermite to become a faithful Catholic. It also inspired Cauchy to plead on behalf of the Irish during the Great Famine of Ireland.
His royalism and religious zeal made him contentious, which caused difficulties with his colleagues. He felt that he was mistreated for his beliefs, but his opponents felt he intentionally provoked people by berating them over religious matters or by defending the Jesuits after they had been suppressed. Niels Henrik Abel called him a "bigoted Catholic" and added he was "mad and there is nothing that can be done about him", but at the same time praised him as a mathematician. Cauchy's views were widely unpopular among mathematicians and when Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja was made chair in mathematics before him he, and many others, felt his views were the cause. When Libri was accused of stealing books he was replaced by Joseph Liouville rather than Cauchy, which caused a rift between Liouville and Cauchy. Another dispute with political overtones concerned Jean-Marie Constant Duhamel and a claim on inelastic shocks. Cauchy was later shown, by Jean-Victor Poncelet, to be wrong.
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1844 | Archimedes | Archimedes of Syracuse (; ) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.
Archimedes' other mathematical achievements include deriving an approximation of pi, defining and investigating the Archimedean spiral, and devising a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, working on statics and hydrostatics. Archimedes' achievements in this area include a proof of the law of the lever, the widespread use of the concept of center of gravity, and the enunciation of the law of buoyancy or Archimedes' principle. He is also credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion.
Archimedes died during the siege of Syracuse, when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Cicero describes visiting Archimedes' tomb, which was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder that Archimedes requested be placed there to represent his mathematical discoveries.
Unlike his inventions, Archimedes' mathematical writings were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until by Isidore of Miletus in Byzantine Constantinople, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes by Eutocius in the 6th century opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance and again in the 17th century, while the discovery in 1906 of previously lost works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.
Biography.
Archimedes was born c. 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily, at that time a self-governing colony in Magna Graecia. The date of birth is based on a statement by the Byzantine Greek historian John Tzetzes that Archimedes lived for 75 years before his death in 212 BC. In the "Sand-Reckoner", Archimedes gives his father's name as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing else is known. A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides, but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure. It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children, or if he ever visited Alexandria, Egypt, during his youth. From his surviving written works, it is clear that he maintained collegiate relations with scholars based there, including his friend Conon of Samos and the head librarian Eratosthenes of Cyrene.
The standard versions of Archimedes' life were written long after his death by Greek and Roman historians. The earliest reference to Archimedes occurs in "The Histories" by Polybius ( 200–118 BC), written about 70 years after his death. It sheds little light on Archimedes as a person, and focuses on the war machines that he is said to have built in order to defend the city from the Romans. Polybius remarks how, during the Second Punic War, Syracuse switched allegiances from Rome to Carthage, resulting in a military campaign under the command of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Appius Claudius Pulcher, who besieged the city from 213 to 212 BC. He notes that the Romans underestimated Syracuse's defenses, and mentions several machines Archimedes designed, including improved catapults, crane-like machines that could be swung around in an arc, and other stone-throwers. Although the Romans ultimately captured the city, they suffered considerable losses due to Archimedes' inventiveness.
Cicero (106–43 BC) mentions Archimedes in some of his works. While serving as a quaestor in Sicily, Cicero found what was presumed to be Archimedes' tomb near the Agrigentine gate in Syracuse, in a neglected condition and overgrown with bushes. Cicero had the tomb cleaned up and was able to see the carving and read some of the verses that had been added as an inscription. The tomb carried a sculpture illustrating Archimedes' favorite mathematical proof, that the volume and surface area of the sphere are two-thirds that of an enclosing cylinder including its bases. He also mentions that Marcellus brought to Rome two planetariums Archimedes built. The Roman historian Livy (59 BC–17 AD) retells Polybius' story of the capture of Syracuse and Archimedes' role in it.
Plutarch (45–119 AD) wrote in his "Parallel Lives" that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse. He also provides at least two accounts on how Archimedes died after the city was taken. According to the most popular account, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet Marcellus, but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. This enraged the soldier, who killed Archimedes with his sword. Another story has Archimedes carrying mathematical instruments before being killed because a soldier thought they were valuable items. Marcellus was reportedly angered by Archimedes' death, as he considered him a valuable scientific asset (he called Archimedes "a geometrical Briareus") and had ordered that he should not be harmed.
The last words attributed to Archimedes are "Do not disturb my circles" (Latin, "Noli turbare circulos meos"; Katharevousa Greek, "μὴ μου τοὺς κύκλους τάραττε"), a reference to the mathematical drawing that he was supposedly studying when disturbed by the Roman soldier. There is no reliable evidence that Archimedes uttered these words and they do not appear in Plutarch's account. A similar quotation is found in the work of Valerius Maximus (fl. 30 AD), who wrote in "Memorable Doings and Sayings", "" ("... but protecting the dust with his hands, said 'I beg of you, do not disturb this).
Discoveries and inventions.
Archimedes' principle.
The most widely known anecdote about Archimedes tells of how he invented a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. According to Vitruvius, a crown for a temple had been made for King Hiero II of Syracuse, who supplied the pure gold to be used. The crown was likely made in the shape of a votive wreath. Archimedes was asked to determine whether some silver had been substituted by the goldsmith without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density.
In this account, Archimedes noticed while taking a bath that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the golden crown's volume. For practical purposes water is incompressible, so the submerged crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume. By dividing the mass of the crown by the volume of water displaced, its density could be obtained; if cheaper and less dense metals had been added, the density would be lower than that of gold. Archimedes found that this is what had happened, proving that silver had been mixed in. Archimedes then took to the streets naked so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying "Eureka!" (, "heúrēka"!, ).
The story of the golden crown does not appear anywhere in Archimedes' known works. The practicality of the method described has been called into question due to the extreme accuracy that would be required to measure water displacement. Archimedes may have instead sought a solution that applied the hydrostatics principle known as Archimedes' principle, found in his treatise "On Floating Bodies": a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. Using this principle, it would have been possible to compare the density of the crown to that of pure gold by balancing it on a scale with a pure gold reference sample of the same weight, then immersing the apparatus in water. The difference in density between the two samples would cause the scale to tip accordingly. Galileo Galilei, who invented a hydrostatic balance in 1586 inspired by Archimedes' work, considered it "probable that this method is the same that Archimedes followed, since, besides being very accurate, it is based on demonstrations found by Archimedes himself."
Law of the lever.
While Archimedes did not invent the lever, he gave a mathematical proof of the principle involved in his work "On the Equilibrium of Planes". Earlier descriptions of the principle of the lever are found in a work by Euclid and in the "Mechanical Problems," belonging to the Peripatetic school of the followers of Aristotle, the authorship of which has been attributed by some to Archytas.
There are several, often conflicting, reports regarding Archimedes' feats using the lever to lift very heavy objects. Plutarch describes how Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move. According to Pappus of Alexandria, Archimedes' work on levers and his understanding of mechanical advantage caused him to remark: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth" (). Olympiodorus later attributed the same boast to Archimedes' invention of the "baroulkos", a kind of windlass, rather than the lever.
Astronomical instruments.
Archimedes discusses astronomical measurements of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, as well as Aristarchus' heliocentric model of the universe, in the "Sand-Reckoner". Without the use of either trigonometry or a table of chords, Archimedes describes the procedure and instrument used to make observations (a straight rod with pegs or grooves), applies correction factors to these measurements, and finally gives the result in the form of upper and lower bounds to account for observational error. Ptolemy, quoting Hipparchus, also references Archimedes' solstice observations in the "Almagest". This would make Archimedes the first known Greek to have recorded multiple solstice dates and times in successive years.
Cicero's "De re publica" portrays a fictional conversation taking place in 129 BC, after the Second Punic War. General Marcus Claudius Marcellus is said to have taken back to Rome two mechanisms after capturing Syracuse in 212 BC, which were constructed by Archimedes and which showed the motion of the Sun, Moon and five planets. Cicero also mentions similar mechanisms designed by Thales of Miletus and Eudoxus of Cnidus. The dialogue says that Marcellus kept one of the devices as his only personal loot from Syracuse, and donated the other to the Temple of Virtue in Rome. Marcellus' mechanism was demonstrated, according to Cicero, by Gaius Sulpicius Gallus to Lucius Furius Philus, who described it thus:
This is a description of a small planetarium. Pappus of Alexandria reports on a treatise by Archimedes (now lost) dealing with the construction of these mechanisms entitled "On Sphere-Making". Modern research in this area has been focused on the Antikythera mechanism, another device built BC that was probably designed for the same purpose. Constructing mechanisms of this kind would have required a sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing. This was once thought to have been beyond the range of the technology available in ancient times, but the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism in 1902 has confirmed that devices of this kind were known to the ancient Greeks.
Archimedes' screw.
A large part of Archimedes' work in engineering probably arose from fulfilling the needs of his home city of Syracuse. Athenaeus of Naucratis quotes a certain Moschion in a description on how King Hiero II commissioned the design of a huge ship, the "Syracusia", which could be used for luxury travel, carrying supplies, and as a display of naval power. The "Syracusia" is said to have been the largest ship built in classical antiquity and, according to Athenaeus' account, it was launched by Archimedes. The ship presumably was capable of carrying 600 people and included garden decorations, a gymnasium, and a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite among its facilities. The account also mentions that, in order to remove any potential water leaking through the hull, a device with a revolving screw-shaped blade inside a cylinder was designed by Archimedes.
Archimedes' screw was turned by hand, and could also be used to transfer water from a body of water into irrigation canals. The screw is still in use today for pumping liquids and granulated solids such as coal and grain. Described by Vitruvius, Archimedes' device may have been an improvement on a screw pump that was used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The world's first seagoing steamship with a screw propeller was the SS "Archimedes", which was launched in 1839 and named in honor of Archimedes and his work on the screw.
Archimedes' claw.
Archimedes is said to have designed a claw as a weapon to defend the city of Syracuse. Also known as "", the claw consisted of a crane-like arm from which a large metal grappling hook was suspended. When the claw was dropped onto an attacking ship the arm would swing upwards, lifting the ship out of the water and possibly sinking it.
There have been modern experiments to test the feasibility of the claw, and in 2005 a television documentary entitled "Superweapons of the Ancient World" built a version of the claw and concluded that it was a workable device. Archimedes has also been credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult, and with inventing the odometer during the First Punic War. The odometer was described as a cart with a gear mechanism that dropped a ball into a container after each mile traveled.
Heat ray.
Archimedes may have written a work on mirrors entitled "Catoptrica", and later authors believed he might have used mirrors acting collectively as a parabolic reflector to burn ships attacking Syracuse. Lucian wrote, in the second century AD, that during the siege of Syracuse Archimedes destroyed enemy ships with fire. Almost four hundred years later, Anthemius of Tralles mentions, somewhat hesitantly, that Archimedes could have used burning-glasses as a weapon.
Often called the "", the purported mirror arrangement focused sunlight onto approaching ships, presumably causing them to catch fire. In the modern era, similar devices have been constructed and may be referred to as a heliostat or solar furnace.
Archimedes' alleged heat ray has been the subject of an ongoing debate about its credibility since the Renaissance. René Descartes rejected it as false, while modern researchers have attempted to recreate the effect using only the means that would have been available to Archimedes, mostly with negative results. It has been suggested that a large array of highly polished bronze or copper shields acting as mirrors could have been employed to focus sunlight onto a ship, but the overall effect would have been blinding, dazzling, or distracting the crew of the ship rather than fire.
Mathematics.
While he is often regarded as a designer of mechanical devices, Archimedes also made contributions to the field of mathematics. Plutarch wrote that Archimedes "placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life", though some scholars believe this may be a mischaracterization.
Method of exhaustion.
Archimedes was able to use indivisibles (a precursor to infinitesimals) in a way that is similar to modern integral calculus. Through proof by contradiction ("reductio ad absurdum"), he could give answers to problems to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, while specifying the limits within which the answer lay. This technique is known as the method of exhaustion, and he employed it to approximate the areas of figures and the value of π.
In "Measurement of a Circle", he did this by drawing a larger regular hexagon outside a circle then a smaller regular hexagon inside the circle, and progressively doubling the number of sides of each regular polygon, calculating the length of a side of each polygon at each step. As the number of sides increases, it becomes a more accurate approximation of a circle. After four such steps, when the polygons had 96 sides each, he was able to determine that the value of π lay between 3 (approx. 3.1429) and 3 (approx. 3.1408), consistent with its actual value of approximately 3.1416. He also proved that the area of a circle was equal to π multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle (formula_1).
Archimedean property.
In "On the Sphere and Cylinder", Archimedes postulates that any magnitude when added to itself enough times will exceed any given magnitude. Today this is known as the Archimedean property of real numbers.
Archimedes gives the value of the square root of 3 as lying between (approximately 1.7320261) and (approximately 1.7320512) in "Measurement of a Circle". The actual value is approximately 1.7320508, making this a very accurate estimate. He introduced this result without offering any explanation of how he had obtained it. This aspect of the work of Archimedes caused John Wallis to remark that he was: "as it were of set purpose to have covered up the traces of his investigation as if he had grudged posterity the secret of his method of inquiry while he wished to extort from them assent to his results." It is possible that he used an iterative procedure to calculate these values.
The infinite series.
In "Quadrature of the Parabola", Archimedes proved that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is times the area of a corresponding inscribed triangle as shown in the figure at right. He expressed the solution to the problem as an infinite geometric series with the common ratio :
If the first term in this series is the area of the triangle, then the second is the sum of the areas of two triangles whose bases are the two smaller secant lines, and whose third vertex is where the line that is parallel to the parabola's axis and that passes through the midpoint of the base intersects the parabola, and so on. This proof uses a variation of the series which sums to .
Myriad of myriads.
In "The Sand Reckoner", Archimedes set out to calculate a number that was greater than the grains of sand needed to fill the universe. In doing so, he challenged the notion that the number of grains of sand was too large to be counted. He wrote:There are some, King Gelo (Gelo II, son of Hiero II), who think that the number of the sand is infinite in multitude; and I mean by the sand not only that which exists about Syracuse and the rest of Sicily but also that which is found in every region whether inhabited or uninhabited.To solve the problem, Archimedes devised a system of counting based on the myriad. The word itself derives from the Greek , for the number 10,000. He proposed a number system using powers of a myriad of myriads (100 million, i.e., 10,000 x 10,000) and concluded that the number of grains of sand required to fill the universe would be 8 vigintillion, or 8.
Writings.
The works of Archimedes were written in Doric Greek, the dialect of ancient Syracuse. Many written works by Archimedes have not survived or are only extant in heavily edited fragments; at least seven of his treatises are known to have existed due to references made by other authors. Pappus of Alexandria mentions "On Sphere-Making" and another work on polyhedra, while Theon of Alexandria quotes a remark about refraction from the "Catoptrica".
Archimedes made his work known through correspondence with the mathematicians in Alexandria. The writings of Archimedes were first collected by the Byzantine Greek architect Isidore of Miletus (), while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD helped to bring his work a wider audience. Archimedes' work was translated into Arabic by Thābit ibn Qurra (836–901 AD), and into Latin via Arabic by Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187). Direct Greek to Latin translations were later done by William of Moerbeke (c. 1215–1286) and Iacobus Cremonensis (c. 1400–1453).
During the Renaissance, the "Editio princeps" (First Edition) was published in Basel in 1544 by Johann Herwagen with the works of Archimedes in Greek and Latin.
Surviving works.
The following are ordered chronologically based on new terminological and historical criteria set by Knorr (1978) and Sato (1986).
"Measurement of a Circle".
This is a short work consisting of three propositions. It is written in the form of a correspondence with Dositheus of Pelusium, who was a student of Conon of Samos. In Proposition II, Archimedes gives an approximation of the value of pi (), showing that it is greater than and less than .
"The Sand Reckoner".
In this treatise, also known as Psammites, Archimedes finds a number that is greater than the grains of sand needed to fill the universe. This book mentions the heliocentric theory of the solar system proposed by Aristarchus of Samos, as well as contemporary ideas about the size of the Earth and the distance between various celestial bodies. By using a system of numbers based on powers of the myriad, Archimedes concludes that the number of grains of sand required to fill the universe is 8 in modern notation. The introductory letter states that Archimedes' father was an astronomer named Phidias. "The Sand Reckoner" is the only surviving work in which Archimedes discusses his views on astronomy.
"On the Equilibrium of Planes".
There are two books to "On the Equilibrium of Planes": the first contains seven postulates and fifteen propositions, while the second book contains ten propositions. In the first book, Archimedes proves the law of the lever, which states that:
Archimedes uses the principles derived to calculate the areas and centers of gravity of various geometric figures including triangles, parallelograms and parabolas.
"Quadrature of the Parabola".
In this work of 24 propositions addressed to Dositheus, Archimedes proves by two methods that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is 4/3 the area of a triangle with equal base and height. He achieves this in one of his proofs by calculating the value of a geometric series that sums to infinity with the ratio 1/4.
"On the Sphere and Cylinder".
In this two-volume treatise addressed to Dositheus, Archimedes obtains the result of which he was most proud, namely the relationship between a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder of the same height and diameter. The volume is 3 for the sphere, and 23 for the cylinder. The surface area is 42 for the sphere, and 62 for the cylinder (including its two bases), where is the radius of the sphere and cylinder.
"On Spirals".
This work of 28 propositions is also addressed to Dositheus. The treatise defines what is now called the Archimedean spiral. It is the locus of points corresponding to the locations over time of a point moving away from a fixed point with a constant speed along a line which rotates with constant angular velocity. Equivalently, in modern polar coordinates (, ), it can be described by the equation formula_3 with real numbers and .
This is an early example of a mechanical curve (a curve traced by a moving point) considered by a Greek mathematician.
"On Conoids and Spheroids".
This is a work in 32 propositions addressed to Dositheus. In this treatise Archimedes calculates the areas and volumes of sections of cones, spheres, and paraboloids.
"On Floating Bodies".
There are two books of "On Floating Bodies". In the first book, Archimedes spells out the law of equilibrium of fluids and proves that water will adopt a spherical form around a center of gravity. This may have been an attempt at explaining the theory of contemporary Greek astronomers such as Eratosthenes that the Earth is round. The fluids described by Archimedes are not since he assumes the existence of a point towards which all things fall in order to derive the spherical shape. Archimedes' principle of buoyancy is given in this work, stated as follows:Any body wholly or partially immersed in fluid experiences an upthrust equal to, but opposite in direction to, the weight of the fluid displaced.
In the second part, he calculates the equilibrium positions of sections of paraboloids. This was probably an idealization of the shapes of ships' hulls. Some of his sections float with the base under water and the summit above water, similar to the way that icebergs float.
"Ostomachion".
Also known as Loculus of Archimedes or Archimedes' Box, this is a dissection puzzle similar to a Tangram, and the treatise describing it was found in more complete form in the Archimedes Palimpsest. Archimedes calculates the areas of the 14 pieces which can be assembled to form a square. Reviel Netz of Stanford University argued in 2003 that Archimedes was attempting to determine how many ways the pieces could be assembled into the shape of a square. Netz calculates that the pieces can be made into a square 17,152 ways. The number of arrangements is 536 when solutions that are equivalent by rotation and reflection are excluded. The puzzle represents an example of an early problem in combinatorics.
The origin of the puzzle's name is unclear, and it has been suggested that it is taken from the Ancient Greek word for "throat" or "gullet", "stomachos" (). Ausonius calls the puzzle , a Greek compound word formed from the roots of () and ().
The cattle problem.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing discovered this work in a Greek manuscript consisting of a 44-line poem in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany in 1773. It is addressed to Eratosthenes and the mathematicians in Alexandria. Archimedes challenges them to count the numbers of cattle in the Herd of the Sun by solving a number of simultaneous Diophantine equations. There is a more difficult version of the problem in which some of the answers are required to be square numbers. A. Amthor first solved this version of the problem in 1880, and the answer is a very large number, approximately 7.760271.
"The Method of Mechanical Theorems".
This treatise was thought lost until the discovery of the Archimedes Palimpsest in 1906. In this work Archimedes uses indivisibles, and shows how breaking up a figure into an infinite number of infinitely small parts can be used to determine its area or volume. He may have considered this method lacking in formal rigor, so he also used the method of exhaustion to derive the results. As with "The Cattle Problem", "The Method of Mechanical Theorems" was written in the form of a letter to Eratosthenes in Alexandria.
Apocryphal works.
Archimedes' "Book of Lemmas" or "Liber Assumptorum" is a treatise with 15 propositions on the nature of circles. The earliest known copy of the text is in Arabic. T. L. Heath and Marshall Clagett argued that it cannot have been written by Archimedes in its current form, since it quotes Archimedes, suggesting modification by another author. The "Lemmas" may be based on an earlier work by Archimedes that is now lost.
It has also been claimed that the formula for calculating the area of a triangle from the length of its sides was known to Archimedes, though its first appearance is in the work of Heron of Alexandria in the 1st century AD. Other questionable attributions to Archimedes' work include the Latin poem "Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris" (4th or 5th century), which describes the use of a hydrostatic balance to solve the problem of the crown, and the 12th-century text "Mappae clavicula", which contains instructions on how to perform assaying of metals by calculating their specific gravities.
Archimedes Palimpsest.
The foremost document containing Archimedes' work is the Archimedes Palimpsest. In 1906, the Danish professor Johan Ludvig Heiberg visited Constantinople to examine a 174-page goatskin parchment of prayers, written in the 13th century, after reading a short transcription published seven years earlier by Papadopoulos-Kerameus. He confirmed that it was indeed a palimpsest, a document with text that had been written over an erased older work. Palimpsests were created by scraping the ink from existing works and reusing them, a common practice in the Middle Ages, as vellum was expensive. The older works in the palimpsest were identified by scholars as 10th-century copies of previously lost treatises by Archimedes. The parchment spent hundreds of years in a monastery library in Constantinople before being sold to a private collector in the 1920s. On 29 October 1998, it was sold at auction to an anonymous buyer for $2 million.
The palimpsest holds seven treatises, including the only surviving copy of "On Floating Bodies" in the original Greek. It is the only known source of "The Method of Mechanical Theorems", referred to by Suidas and thought to have been lost forever. "Stomachion" was also discovered in the palimpsest, with a more complete analysis of the puzzle than had been found in previous texts. The palimpsest was stored at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where it was subjected to a range of modern tests including the use of ultraviolet and light to read the overwritten text. It has since returned to its anonymous owner.
The treatises in the Archimedes Palimpsest include:
Legacy.
Sometimes called the father of mathematics and mathematical physics, Archimedes had a wide influence on mathematics and science.
Mathematics and physics.
Historians of science and mathematics almost universally agree that Archimedes was the finest mathematician from antiquity. Eric Temple Bell, for instance, wrote:
Likewise, Alfred North Whitehead and George F. Simmons said of Archimedes:
Reviel Netz, Suppes Professor in Greek Mathematics and Astronomy at Stanford University and an expert in Archimedes notes:
Leonardo da Vinci repeatedly expressed admiration for Archimedes, and attributed his invention Architonnerre to Archimedes. Galileo called him "superhuman" and "my master", while Huygens said, "I think Archimedes is comparable to no one", consciously emulating him in his early work. Leibniz said, "He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times". Gauss's heroes were Archimedes and Newton, and Moritz Cantor, who studied under Gauss in the University of Göttingen, reported that he once remarked in conversation that "there had been only three epoch-making mathematicians: Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein".
The inventor Nikola Tesla praised him, saying:
Honors and commemorations.
There is a crater on the Moon named Archimedes () in his honor, as well as a lunar mountain range, the Montes Archimedes ().
The Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics carries a portrait of Archimedes, along with a carving illustrating his proof on the sphere and the cylinder. The inscription around the head of Archimedes is a quote attributed to 1st century AD poet Manilius, which reads in Latin: "Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri" ("Rise above oneself and grasp the world").
Archimedes has appeared on postage stamps issued by East Germany (1973), Greece (1983), Italy (1983), Nicaragua (1971), San Marino (1982), and Spain (1963).
The exclamation of Eureka! attributed to Archimedes is the state motto of California. In this instance, the word refers to the discovery of gold near Sutter's Mill in 1848 which sparked the California Gold Rush.
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1845 | Alternative medicine | Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of medical science and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others resort to the supernatural or superstitious to explain their effect or lack thereof. In others, the practice has plausibility but lacks a positive risk–benefit outcome probability. Research into alternative therapies often fails to follow proper research protocols (such as placebo-controlled trials, blind experiments and calculation of prior probability), providing invalid results. History has shown that if a method is proven to work, it eventually ceases to be alternative and becomes mainstream medicine.
Much of the perceived effect of an alternative practice arises from a belief that it will be effective (the placebo effect), or from the treated condition resolving on its own (the natural course of disease). This is further exacerbated by the tendency to turn to alternative therapies upon the failure of medicine, at which point the condition will be at its worst and most likely to spontaneously improve. In the absence of this bias, especially for diseases that are not expected to get better by themselves such as cancer or HIV infection, multiple studies have shown significantly worse outcomes if patients turn to alternative therapies. While this may be because these patients avoid effective treatment, some alternative therapies are actively harmful (e.g. cyanide poisoning from amygdalin, or the intentional ingestion of hydrogen peroxide) or actively interfere with effective treatments.
The alternative medicine sector is a highly profitable industry with a strong lobby, and faces far less regulation over the use and marketing of unproven treatments. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), and holistic medicine attempt to combine alternative practices with those of mainstream medicine. Traditional medicine practices become "alternative" when used outside their original settings and without proper scientific explanation and evidence. Alternative methods are often marketed as more "natural" or "holistic" than methods offered by medical science, that is sometimes derogatorily called "Big Pharma" by supporters of alternative medicine. Billions of dollars have been spent studying alternative medicine, with few or no positive results and many methods thoroughly disproven.
Definitions and terminology.
The terms "alternative medicine", "complementary medicine", "integrative medicine," "holistic medicine", "natural medicine", "unorthodox medicine", "fringe medicine", "unconventional medicine", and "new age medicine" are used interchangeably as having the same meaning and are almost synonymous in most contexts. Terminology has shifted over time, reflecting the preferred branding of practitioners. For example, the United States National Institutes of Health department studying alternative medicine, currently named the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), was established as the "Office of Alternative Medicine" (OAM) and was renamed the "National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine" (NCCAM) before obtaining its current name. Therapies are often framed as "natural" or "holistic", implicitly and intentionally suggesting that conventional medicine is "artificial" and "narrow in scope".
The meaning of the term "alternative" in the expression "alternative medicine", is not that it is an effective alternative to medical science (though some alternative medicine promoters may use the loose terminology to give the appearance of effectiveness).<ref name="Sampson_6/1995"></ref> Loose terminology may also be used to suggest meaning that a dichotomy exists when it does not (e.g., the use of the expressions "Western medicine" and "Eastern medicine" to suggest that the difference is a cultural difference between the Asian east and the European west, rather than that the difference is between evidence-based medicine and treatments that do not work).
Alternative medicine.
Alternative medicine is defined loosely as a set of products, practices, and theories that are believed or perceived by their users to have the healing effects of medicine, but whose effectiveness has not been established using scientific methods, or whose theory and practice is not part of biomedicine, or whose theories or practices are directly contradicted by scientific evidence or scientific principles used in biomedicine. "Biomedicine" or "medicine" is that part of medical science that applies principles of biology, physiology, molecular biology, biophysics, and other natural sciences to clinical practice, using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of that practice. Unlike medicine, an alternative product or practice does not originate from using scientific methods, but may instead be based on hearsay, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural energies, pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources.
Some other definitions seek to specify alternative medicine in terms of its social and political marginality to mainstream healthcare. This can refer to the lack of support that alternative therapies receive from medical scientists regarding access to research funding, sympathetic coverage in the medical press, or inclusion in the standard medical curriculum. For example, a widely used definition devised by the US NCCIH calls it "a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine". However, these descriptive definitions are inadequate in the present-day when some conventional doctors offer alternative medical treatments and introductory courses or modules can be offered as part of standard undergraduate medical training; alternative medicine is taught in more than half of US medical schools and US health insurers are increasingly willing to provide reimbursement for alternative therapies.
Complementary or integrative medicine.
Complementary medicine (CM) or integrative medicine (IM) is when alternative medicine is used together with mainstream functional medical treatment in a belief that it improves the effect of treatments. For example, acupuncture (piercing the body with needles to influence the flow of a supernatural energy) might be believed to increase the effectiveness or "complement" science-based medicine when used at the same time. Significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may make treatments less effective, notably in cancer therapy.
Several medical organizations differentiate between complementary and alternative medicine including the UK National Health Service (NHS), Cancer Research UK, and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the latter of which states that ""Complementary medicine" is used in addition to standard treatments" whereas ""Alternative medicine" is used instead of standard treatments."
Complementary and integrative interventions are used to improve fatigue in adult cancer patients.
David Gorski has described integrative medicine as an attempt to bring pseudoscience into academic science-based medicine with skeptics such as Gorski and David Colquhoun referring to this with the pejorative term "quackademia". Robert Todd Carroll described Integrative medicine as "a synonym for 'alternative' medicine that, at its worst, integrates sense with nonsense. At its best, integrative medicine supports both consensus treatments of science-based medicine and treatments that the science, while promising perhaps, does not justify" Rose Shapiro has criticized the field of alternative medicine for rebranding the same practices as integrative medicine.
CAM is an abbreviation of the phrase "complementary and alternative medicine". The 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine states that the terms complementary and alternative medicine "refer to a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country's own traditional or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health care system. They are used interchangeably with traditional medicine in some countries."
The Integrative Medicine Exam by the American Board of Physician Specialties includes the following subjects: Manual Therapies, Biofield Therapies, Acupuncture, Movement Therapies, Expressive Arts, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Indigenous Medical Systems, Homeopathic Medicine, Naturopathic Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, Chiropractic, and Functional Medicine.
Other terms.
Traditional medicine (TM) refers to certain practices within a culture which have existed since before the advent of medical science, Many TM practices are based on "holistic" approaches to disease and health, versus the scientific evidence-based methods in conventional medicine. The 2019 WHO report defines traditional medicine as "the sum total of the knowledge, skill and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness." When used outside the original setting and in the absence of scientific evidence, TM practices are typically referred to as "alternative medicine".
Holistic medicine is another rebranding of alternative medicine. In this case, the words "balance" and "holism" are often used alongside "complementary" or "integrative", claiming to take into fuller account the "whole" person, in contrast to the supposed reductionism of medicine.
Challenges in defining alternative medicine.
Prominent members of the science and biomedical science community say that it is not meaningful to define an alternative medicine that is separate from a conventional medicine because the expressions "conventional medicine", "alternative medicine", "complementary medicine", "integrative medicine", and "holistic medicine" do not refer to any medicine at all. Others say that alternative medicine cannot be precisely defined because of the diversity of theories and practices it includes, and because the boundaries between alternative and conventional medicine overlap, are porous, and change. Healthcare practices categorized as alternative may differ in their historical origin, theoretical basis, diagnostic technique, therapeutic practice and in their relationship to the medical mainstream. Under a definition of alternative medicine as "non-mainstream", treatments considered alternative in one location may be considered conventional in another.
Critics say the expression is deceptive because it implies there is an effective alternative to science-based medicine, and that "complementary" is deceptive because it implies that the treatment increases the effectiveness of (complements) science-based medicine, while alternative medicines that have been tested nearly always have no measurable positive effect compared to a placebo. Journalist John Diamond wrote that "there is really no such thing as alternative medicine, just medicine that works and medicine that doesn't", a notion later echoed by Paul Offit: "The truth is there's no such thing as conventional or alternative or complementary or integrative or holistic medicine. There's only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't. And the best way to sort it out is by carefully evaluating scientific studies—not by visiting Internet chat rooms, reading magazine articles, or talking to friends."
Types.
Alternative medicine consists of a wide range of health care practices, products, and therapies. The shared feature is a claim to heal that is not based on the scientific method. Alternative medicine practices are diverse in their foundations and methodologies. Alternative medicine practices may be classified by their cultural origins or by the types of beliefs upon which they are based. Methods may incorporate or be based on traditional medicinal practices of a particular culture, folk knowledge, superstition, spiritual beliefs, belief in supernatural energies (antiscience), pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, new or different concepts of health and disease, and any bases other than being proven by scientific methods. Different cultures may have their own unique traditional or belief based practices developed recently or over thousands of years, and specific practices or entire systems of practices.
Unscientific belief systems.
Alternative medicine, such as using naturopathy or homeopathy in place of conventional medicine, is based on belief systems not grounded in science.
Traditional ethnic systems.
Alternative medical systems may be based on traditional medicine practices, such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Ayurveda in India, or practices of other cultures around the world. Some useful applications of traditional medicines have been researched and accepted within ordinary medicine, however the underlying belief systems are seldom scientific and are not accepted.
Traditional medicine is considered alternative when it is used outside its home region; or when it is used together with or instead of known functional treatment; or when it can be reasonably expected that the patient or practitioner knows or should know that it will not work – such as knowing that the practice is based on superstition.
Supernatural energies.
Bases of belief may include belief in existence of supernatural energies undetected by the science of physics, as in biofields, or in belief in properties of the energies of physics that are inconsistent with the laws of physics, as in energy medicine.
Herbal remedies and other substances.
Substance based practices use substances found in nature such as herbs, foods, non-vitamin supplements and megavitamins, animal and fungal products, and minerals, including use of these products in traditional medical practices that may also incorporate other methods. Examples include healing claims for non-vitamin supplements, fish oil, Omega-3 fatty acid, glucosamine, echinacea, flaxseed oil, and ginseng. Herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, includes not just the use of plant products, but may also include the use of animal and mineral products. It is among the most commercially successful branches of alternative medicine, and includes the tablets, powders and elixirs that are sold as "nutritional supplements". Only a very small percentage of these have been shown to have any efficacy, and there is little regulation as to standards and safety of their contents.
NCCIH classification.
The US agency NCCIH has created a classification system for branches of complementary and alternative medicine that divides them into five major groups. These groups have some overlap, and distinguish two types of energy medicine: "veritable" which involves scientifically observable energy (including magnet therapy, colorpuncture and light therapy) and "putative", which invokes physically undetectable or unverifiable energy. None of these energies have any evidence to support that they affect the body in any positive or health promoting way.
History.
The history of alternative medicine may refer to the history of a group of diverse medical practices that were collectively promoted as "alternative medicine" beginning in the 1970s, to the collection of individual histories of members of that group, or to the history of western medical practices that were labeled "irregular practices" by the western medical establishment.<ref name="RiseRise_6/2004"></ref><ref name="Whorton_9/2002"></ref> It includes the histories of complementary medicine and of integrative medicine. Before the 1970s, western practitioners that were not part of the increasingly science-based medical establishment were referred to "irregular practitioners", and were dismissed by the medical establishment as unscientific and as practicing quackery. Until the 1970s, irregular practice became increasingly marginalized as quackery and fraud, as western medicine increasingly incorporated scientific methods and discoveries, and had a corresponding increase in success of its treatments. In the 1970s, irregular practices were grouped with traditional practices of nonwestern cultures and with other unproven or disproven practices that were not part of biomedicine, with the entire group collectively marketed and promoted under the single expression "alternative medicine".
Use of alternative medicine in the west began to rise following the counterculture movement of the 1960s, as part of the rising new age movement of the 1970s. This was due to misleading mass marketing of "alternative medicine" being an effective "alternative" to biomedicine, changing social attitudes about not using chemicals and challenging the establishment and authority of any kind, sensitivity to giving equal measure to beliefs and practices of other cultures (cultural relativism), and growing frustration and desperation by patients about limitations and side effects of science-based medicine. At the same time, in 1975, the American Medical Association, which played the central role in fighting quackery in the United States, abolished its quackery committee and closed down its Department of Investigation. By the early to mid 1970s the expression "alternative medicine" came into widespread use, and the expression became mass marketed as a collection of "natural" and effective treatment "alternatives" to science-based biomedicine. By 1983, mass marketing of "alternative medicine" was so pervasive that the "British Medical Journal" ("BMJ") pointed to "an apparently endless stream of books, articles, and radio and television programmes urge on the public the virtues of (alternative medicine) treatments ranging from meditation to drilling a hole in the skull to let in more oxygen".
An analysis of trends in the criticism of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in five prestigious American medical journals during the period of reorganization within medicine (1965–1999) was reported as showing that the medical profession had responded to the growth of CAM in three phases, and that in each phase, changes in the medical marketplace had influenced the type of response in the journals. Changes included relaxed medical licensing, the development of managed care, rising consumerism, and the establishment of the USA Office of Alternative Medicine (later National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, currently National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health).
Medical education.
Mainly as a result of reforms following the Flexner Report of 1910 medical education in established medical schools in the US has generally not included alternative medicine as a teaching topic. Typically, their teaching is based on current practice and scientific knowledge about: anatomy, physiology, histology, embryology, neuroanatomy, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology and immunology. Medical schools' teaching includes such topics as doctor-patient communication, ethics, the art of medicine, and engaging in complex clinical reasoning (medical decision-making). Writing in 2002, Snyderman and Weil remarked that by the early twentieth century the Flexner model had helped to create the 20th-century academic health center, in which education, research, and practice were inseparable. While this had much improved medical practice by defining with increasing certainty the pathophysiological basis of disease, a single-minded focus on the pathophysiological had diverted much of mainstream American medicine from clinical conditions that were not well understood in mechanistic terms, and were not effectively treated by conventional therapies.
By 2001 some form of CAM training was being offered by at least 75 out of 125 medical schools in the US. Exceptionally, the School of Medicine of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, includes a research institute for integrative medicine (a member entity of the Cochrane Collaboration). Medical schools are responsible for conferring medical degrees, but a physician typically may not legally practice medicine until licensed by the local government authority. Licensed physicians in the US who have attended one of the established medical schools there have usually graduated Doctor of Medicine (MD). All states require that applicants for MD licensure be graduates of an approved medical school and complete the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).
Efficacy.
There is a general scientific consensus that alternative therapies lack the requisite scientific validation, and their effectiveness is either unproved or disproved. Many of the claims regarding the efficacy of alternative medicines are controversial, since research on them is frequently of low quality and methodologically flawed. Selective publication bias, marked differences in product quality and standardisation, and some companies making unsubstantiated claims call into question the claims of efficacy of isolated examples where there is evidence for alternative therapies.
"The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine" points to confusions in the general population – a person may attribute symptomatic relief to an otherwise-ineffective therapy just because they are taking something (the placebo effect); the natural recovery from or the cyclical nature of an illness (the regression fallacy) gets misattributed to an alternative medicine being taken; a person not diagnosed with science-based medicine may never originally have had a true illness diagnosed as an alternative disease category.
Edzard Ernst, the first university professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, characterized the evidence for many alternative techniques as weak, nonexistent, or negative and in 2011 published his estimate that about 7.4% were based on "sound evidence", although he believes that may be an overestimate. Ernst has concluded that 95% of the alternative therapies he and his team studied, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathy, and reflexology, are "statistically indistinguishable from placebo treatments", but he also believes there is something that conventional doctors can usefully learn from the chiropractors and homeopath: this is the therapeutic value of the placebo effect, one of the strangest phenomena in medicine.
In 2003, a project funded by the CDC identified 208 condition-treatment pairs, of which 58% had been studied by at least one randomized controlled trial (RCT), and 23% had been assessed with a meta-analysis. According to a 2005 book by a US Institute of Medicine panel, the number of RCTs focused on CAM has risen dramatically.
, the Cochrane Library had 145 CAM-related Cochrane systematic reviews and 340 non-Cochrane systematic reviews. An analysis of the conclusions of only the 145 Cochrane reviews was done by two readers. In 83% of the cases, the readers agreed. In the 17% in which they disagreed, a third reader agreed with one of the initial readers to set a rating. These studies found that, for CAM, 38.4% concluded positive effect or possibly positive (12.4%), 4.8% concluded no effect, 0.7% concluded harmful effect, and 56.6% concluded insufficient evidence. An assessment of conventional treatments found that 41.3% concluded positive or possibly positive effect, 20% concluded no effect, 8.1% concluded net harmful effects, and 21.3% concluded insufficient evidence. However, the CAM review used the more developed 2004 Cochrane database, while the conventional review used the initial 1998 Cochrane database.
Alternative therapies do not "complement" (improve the effect of, or mitigate the side effects of) functional medical treatment. Significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may instead negatively impact functional treatment by making prescription drugs less effective, such as interference by herbal preparations with warfarin.
In the same way as for conventional therapies, drugs, and interventions, it can be difficult to test the efficacy of alternative medicine in clinical trials. In instances where an established, effective, treatment for a condition is already available, the Helsinki Declaration states that withholding such treatment is unethical in most circumstances. Use of standard-of-care treatment in addition to an alternative technique being tested may produce confounded or difficult-to-interpret results.
Cancer researcher Andrew J. Vickers has stated:
Perceived mechanism of effect.
Anything classified as alternative medicine by definition does not have a proven healing or medical effect. However, there are different mechanisms through which it can be perceived to "work". The common denominator of these mechanisms is that effects are mis-attributed to the alternative treatment.
Placebo effect.
A placebo is a treatment with no intended therapeutic value. An example of a placebo is an inert pill, but it can include more dramatic interventions like sham surgery. The "placebo effect" is the concept that patients will perceive an improvement after being treated with an inert treatment. The opposite of the placebo effect is the "nocebo effect", when patients who expect a treatment to be harmful will perceive harmful effects after taking it.
Placebos do not have a physical effect on diseases or improve overall outcomes, but patients may report improvements in subjective outcomes such as pain and nausea. A 1955 study suggested that a substantial part of a medicine's impact was due to the placebo effect. However, reassessments found the study to have flawed methodology. This and other modern reviews suggest that other factors like natural recovery and reporting bias should also be considered.
All of these are reasons why alternative therapies may be credited for improving a patient's condition even though the objective effect is non-existent, or even harmful. David Gorski argues that alternative treatments should be treated as a placebo, rather than as medicine. Almost none have performed significantly better than a placebo in clinical trials. Furthermore, distrust of conventional medicine may lead to patients experiencing the nocebo effect when taking effective medication.
Regression to the mean.
A patient who receives an inert treatment may report improvements afterwards that it did not cause. Assuming it was the cause without evidence is an example of the regression fallacy. This may be due to a natural recovery from the illness, or a fluctuation in the symptoms of a long-term condition. The concept of regression toward the mean implies that an extreme result is more likely to be followed by a less extreme result.
Other factors.
There are also reasons why a placebo treatment group may outperform a "no-treatment" group in a test which are not related to a patient's experience. These include patients reporting more favourable results than they really felt due to politeness or "experimental subordination", observer bias, and misleading wording of questions. In their 2010 systematic review of studies into placebos, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson and Peter C. Gøtzsche write that "even if there were no true effect of placebo, one would expect to record differences between placebo and no-treatment groups due to bias associated with lack of blinding." Alternative therapies may also be credited for perceived improvement through decreased use or effect of medical treatment, and therefore either decreased side effects or nocebo effects towards standard treatment.
Use and regulation.
Appeal.
Practitioners of complementary medicine usually discuss and advise patients as to available alternative therapies. Patients often express interest in mind-body complementary therapies because they offer a non-drug approach to treating some health conditions.
In addition to the social-cultural underpinnings of the popularity of alternative medicine, there are several psychological issues that are critical to its growth, notably psychological effects, such as the will to believe, cognitive biases that help maintain self-esteem and promote harmonious social functioning, and the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy.
In a 2018 interview with "The BMJ", Edzard Ernst stated: "The present popularity of complementary and alternative medicine is also inviting criticism of what we are doing in mainstream medicine. It shows that we aren't fulfilling a certain need-we are not giving patients enough time, compassion, or empathy. These are things that complementary practitioners are very good at. Mainstream medicine could learn something from complementary medicine."
Marketing.
Alternative medicine is a profitable industry with large media advertising expenditures. Accordingly, alternative practices are often portrayed positively and compared favorably to "big pharma".
The popularity of complementary & alternative medicine (CAM) may be related to other factors that Ernst mentioned in a 2008 interview in "The Independent":
Paul Offit proposed that "alternative medicine becomes quackery" in four ways: by recommending against conventional therapies that are helpful, promoting potentially harmful therapies without adequate warning, draining patients' bank accounts, or by promoting "magical thinking". Promoting alternative medicine has been called dangerous and unethical.
Social factors.
Authors have speculated on the socio-cultural and psychological reasons for the appeal of alternative medicines among the minority using them "in lieu" of conventional medicine. There are several socio-cultural reasons for the interest in these treatments centered on the low level of scientific literacy among the public at large and a concomitant increase in antiscientific attitudes and new age mysticism. Related to this are vigorous marketing of extravagant claims by the alternative medical community combined with inadequate media scrutiny and attacks on critics. Alternative medicine is criticized for taking advantage of the least fortunate members of society.
There is also an increase in conspiracy theories toward conventional medicine and pharmaceutical companies, mistrust of traditional authority figures, such as the physician, and a dislike of the current delivery methods of scientific biomedicine, all of which have led patients to seek out alternative medicine to treat a variety of ailments. Many patients lack access to contemporary medicine, due to a lack of private or public health insurance, which leads them to seek out lower-cost alternative medicine. Medical doctors are also aggressively marketing alternative medicine to profit from this market.
Patients can be averse to the painful, unpleasant, and sometimes-dangerous side effects of biomedical treatments. Treatments for severe diseases such as cancer and HIV infection have well-known, significant side-effects. Even low-risk medications such as antibiotics can have potential to cause life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in a very few individuals. Many medications may cause minor but bothersome symptoms such as cough or upset stomach. In all of these cases, patients may be seeking out alternative therapies to avoid the adverse effects of conventional treatments.
Prevalence of use.
According to research published in 2015, the increasing popularity of CAM needs to be explained by moral convictions or lifestyle choices rather than by economic reasoning.
In developing nations, access to essential medicines is severely restricted by lack of resources and poverty. Traditional remedies, often closely resembling or forming the basis for alternative remedies, may comprise primary healthcare or be integrated into the healthcare system. In Africa, traditional medicine is used for 80% of primary healthcare, and in developing nations as a whole over one-third of the population lack access to essential medicines.
In Latin America, inequities against BIPOC communities keep them tied to their traditional practices and therefore, it is often these communities that constitute the majority of users of alternative medicine. Racist attitudes towards certain communities disable them from accessing more urbanized modes of care. In a study that assessed access to care in rural communities of Latin America, it was found that discrimination is a huge barrier to the ability of citizens to access care; more specifically, women of Indigenous and African descent, and lower-income families were especially hurt. Such exclusion exacerbates the inequities that minorities in Latin America already face. Consistently excluded from many systems of westernized care for socioeconomic and other reasons, low-income communities of color often turn to traditional medicine for care as it has proved reliable to them across generations.
Commentators including David Horrobin have proposed adopting a prize system to reward medical research. This stands in opposition to the current mechanism for funding research proposals in most countries around the world. In the US, the NCCIH provides public research funding for alternative medicine. The NCCIH has spent more than US$2.5 billion on such research since 1992 and this research has not demonstrated the efficacy of alternative therapies. As of 2011, the NCCIH's sister organization in the NIC Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine had given out grants of around $105 million each year for several years. Testing alternative medicine that has no scientific basis (as in the aforementioned grants) has been called a waste of scarce research resources.
That alternative medicine has been on the rise "in countries where Western science and scientific method generally are accepted as the major foundations for healthcare, and 'evidence-based' practice is the dominant paradigm" was described as an "enigma" in the "Medical Journal of Australia". A 15-year systematic review published in 2022 on the global acceptance and use of CAM among medical specialists found the overall acceptance of CAM at 52% and the overall use at 45%.
In the United States.
In the United States, the 1974 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) required that for states to receive federal money, they had to grant religious exemptions to child neglect and abuse laws regarding religion-based healing practices. Thirty-one states have child-abuse religious exemptions.
The use of alternative medicine in the US has increased, with a 50 percent increase in expenditures and a 25 percent increase in the use of alternative therapies between 1990 and 1997 in America. According to a national survey conducted in 2002, "36 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 years and over use some form of complementary and alternative medicine." Americans spend many billions on the therapies annually. Most Americans used CAM to treat and/or prevent musculoskeletal conditions or other conditions associated with chronic or recurring pain. In America, women were more likely than men to use CAM, with the biggest difference in use of mind-body therapies including prayer specifically for health reasons". In 2008, more than 37% of American hospitals offered alternative therapies, up from 27 percent in 2005, and 25% in 2004. More than 70% of the hospitals offering CAM were in urban areas.
A survey of Americans found that 88 percent thought that "there are some good ways of treating sickness that medical science does not recognize". Use of magnets was the most common tool in energy medicine in America, and among users of it, 58 percent described it as at least "sort of scientific", when it is not at all scientific. In 2002, at least 60 percent of US medical schools have at least some class time spent teaching alternative therapies. "Therapeutic touch" was taught at more than 100 colleges and universities in 75 countries before the practice was debunked by a nine-year-old child for a school science project.
Prevalence of use of specific therapies.
The most common CAM therapies used in the US in 2002 were prayer (45%), herbalism (19%), breathing meditation (12%), meditation (8%), chiropractic medicine (8%), yoga (5–6%), body work (5%), diet-based therapy (4%), progressive relaxation (3%), mega-vitamin therapy (3%) and Visualization (2%)
In Britain, the most often used alternative therapies were Alexander technique, aromatherapy, Bach and other flower remedies, body work therapies including massage, Counseling stress therapies, hypnotherapy, meditation, reflexology, Shiatsu, Ayurvedic medicine, nutritional medicine, and Yoga. Ayurvedic medicine remedies are mainly plant based with some use of animal materials. Safety concerns include the use of herbs containing toxic compounds and the lack of quality control in Ayurvedic facilities.
According to the National Health Service (England), the most commonly used complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) supported by the NHS in the UK are: acupuncture, aromatherapy, chiropractic, homeopathy, massage, osteopathy and clinical hypnotherapy.
In palliative care.
Complementary therapies are often used in palliative care or by practitioners attempting to manage chronic pain in patients. Integrative medicine is considered more acceptable in the interdisciplinary approach used in palliative care than in other areas of medicine. "From its early experiences of care for the dying, palliative care took for granted the necessity of placing patient values and lifestyle habits at the core of any design and delivery of quality care at the end of life. If the patient desired complementary therapies, and as long as such treatments provided additional support and did not endanger the patient, they were considered acceptable." The non-pharmacologic interventions of complementary medicine can employ mind-body interventions designed to "reduce pain and concomitant mood disturbance and increase quality of life."
Regulation.
The alternative medicine lobby has successfully pushed for alternative therapies to be subject to far less regulation than conventional medicine. Some professions of complementary/traditional/alternative medicine, such as chiropractic, have achieved full regulation in North America and other parts of the world and are regulated in a manner similar to that governing science-based medicine. In contrast, other approaches may be partially recognized and others have no regulation at all. In some cases, promotion of alternative therapies is allowed when there is demonstrably no effect, only a tradition of use. Despite laws making it illegal to market or promote alternative therapies for use in cancer treatment, many practitioners promote them.
Regulation and licensing of alternative medicine ranges widely from country to country, and state to state. In Austria and Germany complementary and alternative medicine is mainly in the hands of doctors with MDs, and half or more of the American alternative practitioners are licensed MDs. In Germany herbs are tightly regulated: half are prescribed by doctors and covered by health insurance.
Government bodies in the US and elsewhere have published information or guidance about alternative medicine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has issued online warnings for consumers about medication health fraud. This includes a section on Alternative Medicine Fraud, such as a warning that Ayurvedic products generally have not been approved by the FDA before marketing.
Risks and problems.
The National Science Foundation has studied the problematic side of the public's attitudes and understandings of science fiction, pseudoscience, and belief in alternative medicine. They use a quote from Robert L. Park to describe some issues with alternative medicine:
Negative outcomes.
According to the Institute of Medicine, use of alternative medical techniques may result in several types of harm:
Interactions with conventional pharmaceuticals.
Forms of alternative medicine that are biologically active can be dangerous even when used in conjunction with conventional medicine. Examples include immuno-augmentation therapy, shark cartilage, bioresonance therapy, oxygen and ozone therapies, and insulin potentiation therapy. Some herbal remedies can cause dangerous interactions with chemotherapy drugs, radiation therapy, or anesthetics during surgery, among other problems. An example of these dangers was reported by Associate Professor Alastair MacLennan of Adelaide University, Australia regarding a patient who almost bled to death on the operating table after neglecting to mention that she had been taking "natural" potions to "build up her strength" before the operation, including a powerful anticoagulant that nearly caused her death.
To "ABC Online", MacLennan also gives another possible mechanism:
Side-effects.
Conventional treatments are subjected to testing for undesired side-effects, whereas alternative therapies, in general, are not subjected to such testing at all. Any treatment – whether conventional or alternative – that has a biological or psychological effect on a patient may also have potential to possess dangerous biological or psychological side-effects. Attempts to refute this fact with regard to alternative therapies sometimes use the "appeal to nature" fallacy, i.e., "That which is natural cannot be harmful." Specific groups of patients such as patients with impaired hepatic or renal function are more susceptible to side effects of alternative remedies.
An exception to the normal thinking regarding side-effects is homeopathy. Since 1938, the FDA has regulated homeopathic products in "several significantly different ways from other drugs." Homeopathic preparations, termed "remedies", are extremely dilute, often far beyond the point where a single molecule of the original active (and possibly toxic) ingredient is likely to remain. They are, thus, considered safe on that count, but "their products are exempt from good manufacturing practice requirements related to expiration dating and from finished product testing for identity and strength", and their alcohol concentration may be much higher than allowed in conventional drugs.
Treatment delay.
Alternative medicine may discourage people from getting the best possible treatment. Those having experienced or perceived success with one alternative therapy for a minor ailment may be convinced of its efficacy and persuaded to extrapolate that success to some other alternative therapy for a more serious, possibly life-threatening illness. For this reason, critics argue that therapies that rely on the placebo effect to define success are very dangerous. According to mental health journalist Scott Lilienfeld in 2002, "unvalidated or scientifically unsupported mental health practices can lead individuals to forgo effective treatments" and refers to this as opportunity cost. Individuals who spend large amounts of time and money on ineffective treatments may be left with precious little of either, and may forfeit the opportunity to obtain treatments that could be more helpful. In short, even innocuous treatments can indirectly produce negative outcomes. Between 2001 and 2003, four children died in Australia because their parents chose ineffective naturopathic, homeopathic, or other alternative medicines and diets rather than conventional therapies.
Unconventional cancer "cures".
There have always been "many therapies offered outside of conventional cancer treatment centers and based on theories not found in biomedicine. These alternative cancer cures have often been described as 'unproven,' suggesting that appropriate clinical trials have not been conducted and that the therapeutic value of the treatment is unknown." However, "many alternative cancer treatments have been investigated in good-quality clinical trials, and they have been shown to be ineffective... The label 'unproven' is inappropriate for such therapies; it is time to assert that many alternative cancer therapies have been 'disproven'."
Edzard Ernst has stated:
Rejection of science.
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is not as well researched as conventional medicine, which undergoes intense research before release to the public. Practitioners of science-based medicine also discard practices and treatments when they are shown ineffective, while alternative practitioners do not. Funding for research is also sparse making it difficult to do further research for effectiveness of CAM. Most funding for CAM is funded by government agencies. Proposed research for CAM are rejected by most private funding agencies because the results of research are not reliable. The research for CAM has to meet certain standards from research ethics committees, which most CAM researchers find almost impossible to meet. Even with the little research done on it, CAM has not been proven to be effective. Studies that have been done will be cited by CAM practitioners in an attempt to claim a basis in science. These studies tend to have a variety of problems, such as small samples, various biases, poor research design, lack of controls, negative results, etc. Even those with positive results can be better explained as resulting in false positives due to bias and noisy data.
Alternative medicine may lead to a false understanding of the body and of the process of science. Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale School of Medicine, wrote that government-funded studies of integrating alternative medicine techniques into the mainstream are "used to lend an appearance of legitimacy to treatments that are not legitimate." Marcia Angell considered that critics felt that healthcare practices should be classified based solely on scientific evidence, and if a treatment had been rigorously tested and found safe and effective, science-based medicine will adopt it regardless of whether it was considered "alternative" to begin with. It is possible for a method to change categories (proven vs. unproven), based on increased knowledge of its effectiveness or lack thereof. Prominent supporters of this position are George D. Lundberg, former editor of the "Journal of the American Medical Association" ("JAMA") and the journal's interim editor-in-chief Phil Fontanarosa.
Writing in 1999 in "CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians" Barrie R. Cassileth mentioned a 1997 letter to the US Senate Subcommittee on Public Health and Safety, which had deplored the lack of critical thinking and scientific rigor in OAM-supported research, had been signed by four Nobel Laureates and other prominent scientists. (This was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).)
In March 2009, a staff writer for "the Washington Post" reported that the impending national discussion about broadening access to health care, improving medical practice and saving money was giving a group of scientists an opening to propose shutting down the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. They quoted one of these scientists, Steven Salzberg, a genome researcher and computational biologist at the University of Maryland, as saying "One of our concerns is that NIH is funding pseudoscience." They noted that the vast majority of studies were based on fundamental misunderstandings of physiology and disease, and had shown little or no effect.
Writers such as Carl Sagan, a noted astrophysicist, advocate of scientific skepticism and the author of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" (1996), have lambasted the lack of empirical evidence to support the existence of the putative energy fields on which these therapies are predicated.
Sampson has also pointed out that CAM tolerated contradiction without thorough reason and experiment. Barrett has pointed out that there is a policy at the NIH of never saying something does not work, only that a different version or dose might give different results. Barrett also expressed concern that, just because some "alternatives" have merit, there is the impression that the rest deserve equal consideration and respect even though most are worthless, since they are all classified under the one heading of alternative medicine.
Some critics of alternative medicine are focused upon health fraud, misinformation, and quackery as public health problems, notably Wallace Sampson and Paul Kurtz founders of Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and Stephen Barrett, co-founder of The National Council Against Health Fraud and webmaster of Quackwatch. Grounds for opposing alternative medicine include that:
Many alternative medical treatments are not patentable, which may lead to less research funding from the private sector. In addition, in most countries, alternative therapies (in contrast to pharmaceuticals) can be marketed without any proof of efficacy – also a disincentive for manufacturers to fund scientific research.
English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in his 2003 book "A Devil's Chaplain", defined alternative medicine as a "set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests." Dawkins argued that if a technique is demonstrated effective in properly performed trials then it ceases to be alternative and simply becomes medicine.
CAM is also often less regulated than conventional medicine. There are ethical concerns about whether people who perform CAM have the proper knowledge to treat patients. CAM is often done by non-physicians who do not operate with the same medical licensing laws which govern conventional medicine, and it is often described as an issue of non-maleficence.
According to two writers, Wallace Sampson and K. Butler, marketing is part of the training required in alternative medicine, and propaganda methods in alternative medicine have been traced back to those used by Hitler and Goebels in their promotion of pseudoscience in medicine.
In November 2011 Edzard Ernst stated that the "level of misinformation about alternative medicine has now reached the point where it has become dangerous and unethical. So far, alternative medicine has remained an ethics-free zone. It is time to change this."
Harriet Hall criticized the low standard of evidence accepted by the alternative medicine community:
Conflicts of interest.
Some commentators have said that special consideration must be given to the issue of conflicts of interest in alternative medicine. Edzard Ernst has said that most researchers into alternative medicine are at risk of "unidirectional bias" because of a generally uncritical belief in their chosen subject. Ernst cites as evidence the phenomenon whereby 100% of a sample of acupuncture trials originating in China had positive conclusions. David Gorski contrasts evidence-based medicine, in which researchers try to disprove hyphotheses, with what he says is the frequent practice in pseudoscience-based research, of striving to confirm pre-existing notions. Harriet Hall writes that there is a contrast between the circumstances of alternative medicine practitioners and disinterested scientists: in the case of acupuncture, for example, an acupuncturist would have "a great deal to lose" if acupuncture were rejected by research; but the disinterested skeptic would not lose anything if its effects were confirmed; rather their change of mind would enhance their skeptical credentials.
Use of health and research resources.
Research into alternative therapies has been criticized for "diverting research time, money, and other resources from more fruitful lines of investigation in order to pursue a theory that has no basis in biology." Research methods expert and author of "Snake Oil Science", R. Barker Bausell, has stated that "it's become politically correct to investigate nonsense." A commonly cited statistic is that the US National Institute of Health had spent $2.5 billion on investigating alternative therapies prior to 2009, with none being found to be effective.
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1847 | Archimedean solid | In geometry, an Archimedean solid is one of the 13 solids first enumerated by Archimedes. They are the convex uniform polyhedra composed of regular polygons meeting in identical vertices, excluding the five Platonic solids (which are composed of only one type of polygon), excluding the prisms and antiprisms, and excluding the pseudorhombicuboctahedron. They are a subset of the Johnson solids, whose regular polygonal faces do not need to meet in identical vertices.
"Identical vertices" means that each two vertices are symmetric to each other: A global isometry of the entire solid takes one vertex to the other while laying the solid directly on its initial position. observed that a 14th polyhedron, the elongated square gyrobicupola (or pseudo-rhombicuboctahedron), meets a weaker definition of an Archimedean solid, in which "identical vertices" means merely that the faces surrounding each vertex are of the same types (i.e. each vertex looks the same from close up), so only a local isometry is required. Grünbaum pointed out a frequent error in which authors define Archimedean solids using this local definition but omit the 14th polyhedron. If only 13 polyhedra are to be listed, the definition must use global symmetries of the polyhedron rather than local neighborhoods.
Prisms and antiprisms, whose symmetry groups are the dihedral groups, are generally not considered to be Archimedean solids, even though their faces are regular polygons and their symmetry groups act transitively on their vertices. Excluding these two infinite families, there are 13 Archimedean solids. All the Archimedean solids (but not the elongated square gyrobicupola) can be made via Wythoff constructions from the Platonic solids with tetrahedral, octahedral and icosahedral symmetry.
Origin of name.
The Archimedean solids take their name from Archimedes, who discussed them in a now-lost work. Pappus refers to it, stating that Archimedes listed 13 polyhedra. During the Renaissance, artists and mathematicians valued "pure forms" with high symmetry, and by around 1620 Johannes Kepler had completed the rediscovery of the 13 polyhedra, as well as defining the prisms, antiprisms, and the non-convex solids known as Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. (See for more information about the rediscovery of the Archimedean solids during the renaissance.)
Kepler may have also found the elongated square gyrobicupola (pseudorhombicuboctahedron): at least, he once stated that there were 14 Archimedean solids. However, his published enumeration only includes the 13 uniform polyhedra, and the first clear statement of the pseudorhombicuboctahedron's existence was made in 1905, by Duncan Sommerville.
Classification.
There are 13 Archimedean solids (not counting the elongated square gyrobicupola; 15 if the mirror images of two enantiomorphs, the snub cube and snub dodecahedron, are counted separately).
Here the "vertex configuration" refers to the type of regular polygons that meet at any given vertex. For example, a vertex configuration of 4.6.8 means that a square, hexagon, and octagon meet at a vertex (with the order taken to be clockwise around the vertex).
Some definitions of Semiregular polyhedron include one more figure, the Elongated square gyrobicupola or "pseudo-rhombicuboctahedron".
Properties.
The number of vertices is 720° divided by the vertex angle defect.
The cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron are edge-uniform and are called quasi-regular.
The duals of the Archimedean solids are called the Catalan solids. Together with the bipyramids and trapezohedra, these are the face-uniform solids with regular vertices.
Chirality.
The snub cube and snub dodecahedron are known as "chiral", as they come in a left-handed form (Latin: levomorph or laevomorph) and right-handed form (Latin: dextromorph). When something comes in multiple forms which are each other's three-dimensional mirror image, these forms may be called enantiomorphs. (This nomenclature is also used for the forms of certain chemical compounds.)
Construction of Archimedean solids.
The different Archimedean and Platonic solids can be related to each other using a handful of general constructions. Starting with a Platonic solid, truncation involves cutting away of corners. To preserve symmetry, the cut is in a plane perpendicular to the line joining a corner to the center of the polyhedron and is the same for all corners. Depending on how much is truncated (see table below), different Platonic and Archimedean (and other) solids can be created. If the truncation is exactly deep enough such that each pair of faces from adjacent vertices shares exactly one point, it is known as a rectification. An expansion, or cantellation, involves moving each face away from the center (by the same distance so as to preserve the symmetry of the Platonic solid) and taking the convex hull. Expansion with twisting also involves rotating the faces, thus splitting each rectangle corresponding to an edge into two triangles by one of the diagonals of the rectangle. The last construction we use here is truncation of both corners and edges. Ignoring scaling, expansion can also be viewed as the rectification of the rectification. Likewise, the cantitruncation can be viewed as the truncation of the rectification.
Note the duality between the cube and the octahedron, and between the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. Also, partially because the tetrahedron is self-dual, only one Archimedean solid that has at most tetrahedral symmetry. (All Platonic solids have at least tetrahedral symmetry, as tetrahedral symmetry is a symmetry operation of (i.e. is included in) octahedral and isohedral symmetries, which is demonstrated by the fact that an octahedron can be viewed as a rectified tetrahedron, and an icosahedron can be used as a snub tetrahedron.)
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1851 | Antiprism | In geometry, an antiprism or is a polyhedron composed of two parallel direct copies (not mirror images) of an polygon, connected by an alternating band of triangles. They are represented by the Conway notation .
Antiprisms are a subclass of prismatoids, and are a (degenerate) type of snub polyhedron.
Antiprisms are similar to prisms, except that the bases are twisted relatively to each other, and that the side faces (connecting the bases) are triangles, rather than quadrilaterals.
The dual polyhedron of an -gonal antiprism is an -gonal trapezohedron.
History.
At the intersection of modern-day graph theory and coding theory, the triangulation of a set of points have interested mathematicians since Isaac Newton, who fruitlessly sought a mathematical proof of the kissing number problem in 1694. The existence of antiprisms was discussed, and their name was coined by Johannes Kepler, though it is possible that they were previously known to Archimedes, as they satisfy the same conditions on faces and on vertices as the Archimedean solids. According to Ericson and Zinoviev, Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter wrote at length on the topic, and was among the first to apply the mathematics of Victor Schlegel to this field.
Knowledge in this field is "quite incomplete" and "was obtained fairly recently", i.e. in the 20th century. For example, as of 2001 it had been proven for only a limited number of non-trivial cases that the -gonal antiprism is the mathematically optimal arrangement of points in the sense of maximizing the minimum Euclidean distance between any two points on the set: in 1943 by László Fejes Tóth for 4 and 6 points (digonal and trigonal antiprisms, which are Platonic solids); in 1951 by Kurt Schütte and Bartel Leendert van der Waerden for 8 points (tetragonal antiprism, which is not a cube).
The chemical structure of binary compounds has been remarked to be in the family of antiprisms; especially those of the family of boron hydrides (in 1975) and carboranes because they are isoelectronic. This is a mathematically real conclusion reached by studies of X-ray diffraction patterns, and stems from the 1971 work of Kenneth Wade, the nominative source for Wade's rules of polyhedral skeletal electron pair theory.
Rare-earth metals such as the lanthanides form antiprismatic compounds with some of the halides or some of the iodides. The study of crystallography is useful here. Some lanthanides, when arranged in peculiar antiprismatic structures with chlorine and water, can form molecule-based magnets.
Right antiprism.
For an antiprism with regular -gon bases, one usually considers the case where these two copies are twisted by an angle of degrees.
The axis of a regular polygon is the line perpendicular to the polygon plane and lying in the polygon centre.
For an antiprism with congruent "regular" -gon bases, twisted by an angle of degrees, more regularity is obtained if the bases have the same axis: are "coaxial"; i.e. (for non-coplanar bases): if the line connecting the base centers is perpendicular to the base planes. Then the antiprism is called a right antiprism, and its side faces are "isosceles" triangles.
Uniform antiprism.
A uniform -antiprism has two congruent regular -gons as base faces, and equilateral triangles as side faces.
Uniform antiprisms form an infinite class of vertex-transitive polyhedra, as do uniform prisms. For , we have the regular tetrahedron as a "digonal antiprism" (degenerate antiprism); for , the regular octahedron as a "triangular antiprism" (non-degenerate antiprism).
Cartesian coordinates.
Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a right -antiprism (i.e. with regular -gon bases and isosceles triangle side faces) are:
where ;
if the -antiprism is uniform (i.e. if the triangles are equilateral), then:
Volume and surface area.
Let be the edge-length of a uniform -gonal antiprism; then the volume is:
and the surface area is:
Related polyhedra.
There are an infinite set of truncated antiprisms, including a lower-symmetry form of the truncated octahedron (truncated triangular antiprism). These can be alternated to create snub antiprisms, two of which are Johnson solids, and the "snub triangular antiprism" is a lower symmetry form of the regular icosahedron.
Four-dimensional antiprisms can be defined as having two dual polyhedra as parallel opposite faces, so that each three-dimensional face between them comes from two dual parts of the polyhedra: a vertex and a dual polygon, or two dual edges. Every three-dimensional polyhedron is combinatorially equivalent to one of the two opposite faces of a four-dimensional antiprism, constructed from its canonical polyhedron and its polar dual. However, there exist four-dimensional polyhedra that cannot be combined with their duals to form five-dimensional antiprisms.
Symmetry.
The symmetry group of a right -antiprism (i.e. with regular bases and isosceles side faces) is of order , except in the cases of:
The symmetry group contains inversion if and only if is odd.
The rotation group is of order , except in the cases of:
Note: The right -antiprisms have congruent regular -gon bases and congruent isosceles triangle side faces, thus have the same (dihedral) symmetry group as the uniform -antiprism, for .
Star antiprism.
Uniform star antiprisms are named by their star polygon bases, {"p"/"q"}, and exist in prograde and in retrograde (crossed) solutions. Crossed forms have intersecting vertex figures, and are denoted by "inverted" fractions: "p"/("p" – "q") instead of "p"/"q"; example: 5/3 instead of 5/2.
A right star antiprism has two congruent coaxial regular convex or star polygon base faces, and 2"n" isosceles triangle side faces.
Any star antiprism with "regular" convex or star polygon bases can be made a "right" star antiprism (by translating and/or twisting one of its bases, if necessary).
In the retrograde forms but not in the prograde forms, the triangles joining the convex or star bases intersect the axis of rotational symmetry. Thus:
Also, star antiprism compounds with regular star "p"/"q"-gon bases can be constructed if "p" and "q" have common factors. Example: a star 10/4-antiprism is the compound of two star 5/2-antiprisms.
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1853 | Natural history of Africa | The natural history of Africa encompasses some of the well known megafauna of that continent.
Natural history is the study and description of organisms and natural objects, especially their origins, evolution, and interrelationships.
Flora.
The vegetation of Africa follows very closely the distribution of heat and moisture. The northern and southern temperate zones have a flora distinct from that of the continent generally, which is tropical. In the countries bordering the Mediterranean, there are groves of orange and olive trees, evergreen oaks, cork trees and pines, intermixed with cypresses, myrtles, arbutus and fragrant tree-heaths.
South of the Atlas range, the conditions alter. The zones of minimum rainfall have a very scanty flora, consisting of plants adapted to resist the great dryness. Characteristic of the Sahara is the date palm, which flourishes where other vegetation can scarcely maintain existence, while in the semidesert regions the acacia, from which gum arabic is obtained, is abundant.
The more humid regions have a richer vegetation; dense forest where the rainfall is greatest and variations of temperature least, conditions found chiefly on the tropical coasts, and in the west African equatorial basin with its extension towards the upper Nile; and savanna interspersed with trees on the greater part of the plateaus, passing as the desert regions are approached into a scrub vegetation consisting of thorny acacias, etc. Forests also occur on the humid slopes of mountain ranges up to a certain elevation. In the coast regions, the typical tree is the mangrove, which flourishes wherever the soil is of a swamp character.
The dense forests of West Africa contain, in addition to a great variety of hardwoods, two palms, "Elaeis guineensis" (oil palm) and "Raphia vinifera" (bamboo palm), not found, generally speaking, in the savanna regions. "Bombax" or silk cotton trees attain gigantic proportions in the forests, which are the home of the India rubber-producing plants and of many valuable kinds of timber trees, such as odum ("Chlorophora excelsa"), ebony, mahogany ("Khaya senegalensis"), "Oldfieldia" ("Oldfieldia africana") and camwood ("Baphia nitida"). The climbing plants in the tropical forests are exceedingly luxuriant and the undergrowth or "bush" is extremely dense.
In the savannas the most characteristic trees are the monkey-bread tree or baobab ("Adansonia digitata"), doum palm ("Hyphaene") and euphorbias. The coffee plant grows wild in such widely separated places as Liberia and southern Ethiopia. The higher mountains have a special flora showing close agreement over wide intervals of space, as well as affinities with the mountain flora of the eastern Mediterranean, the Himalaya and Indo-China.
In the swamp regions of north-east Africa, papyrus and associated plants, including the soft-wooded ambach, flourished in immense quantities, and little else is found in the way of vegetation. South Africa is largely destitute of forest, save in the lower valleys and coast regions. Tropical flora disappears, and in the semi-desert plains the fleshy, leafless, contorted species of kapsias, mesembryanthemums, aloes and other succulent plants make their appearance. There are, too, valuable timber trees, such as the yellowwood ("Podocarpus elongatus"), stinkwood ("Ocotea"), sneezewood or Cape ebony ("Pteroxylon utile") and ironwood. Extensive miniature woods of heaths are found in almost endless variety and covered throughout the greater part of the year with innumerable blossoms in which red is very prevalent. Of the grasses of Africa, alfa is very abundant in the plateaus of the Atlas range.
Fauna.
The fauna again shows the effect of the characteristics of the vegetation. The open savannas are the home of large ungulates, especially antelopes, the giraffe (peculiar to Africa), zebra, buffalo, wild donkey and four species of rhinoceros; and of carnivores, such as the lion, leopard, hyena, etc. The okapi (a genus restricted to Africa) is found only in the dense forests of the Congo basin. Bears are confined to the Atlas region, wolves and foxes to North Africa. The elephant (though its range has become restricted through the attacks of hunters) is found both in the savannas and forest regions, the latter being otherwise poor in large game, though the special habitat of the chimpanzee and gorilla. Baboons and mandrills, with few exceptions, are peculiar to Africa. The single-humped camel, as a domestic animal, is especially characteristic of the northern deserts and steppes.
The rivers in the tropical zone abound with hippopotami and crocodiles, the former entirely confined to Africa. The vast herds of game, formerly so characteristic of many parts of Africa, have much diminished with the increase of intercourse with the interior. Game reserves have, however, been established in South Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Somaliland, etc., while measures for the protection of wild animals were laid down in an international convention signed in May 1900.
The ornithology of northern Africa presents a close resemblance to that of southern Europe, scarcely a species being found which does not also occur in the other countries bordering the Mediterranean. Among the birds most characteristic of Africa are the ostrich and the secretarybird. The ostrich is widely dispersed, but is found chiefly in the desert and steppe regions. The secretarybird is common in the south. The weaver birds and their allies, including the long-tailed whydahs, are abundant, as are, among game-birds, the francolin and guineafowl. Many of the smaller birds, such as the sunbirds, bee-eaters, the parrots and kingfishers, as well as the larger plantain-eaters, are noted for the brilliance of their feathers.
Of reptiles, the lizard and chameleon are common, and there are a number of venomous snakes, though these are not so numerous as in other tropical countries.
The scorpion is abundant. Of insects, Africa has many thousand different kinds; of these the locust is the proverbial scourge of the continent, and the ravages of the termites are almost incredible. The spread of malaria by means of mosquitoes is common. The tsetse fly, whose bite is fatal to all domestic animals, is common in many districts of South and East Africa. It is found nowhere outside Africa.
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1854 | Geography of Africa | Africa is a continent comprising 63 political territories, representing the largest of the great southward projections from the main mass of Earth's surface. Within its regular outline, it comprises an area of , excluding adjacent islands. Its highest mountain is Mount Kilimanjaro; its largest lake is Lake Victoria.
Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from much of Asia by the Red Sea, Africa is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez (which is transected by the Suez Canal), wide. For geopolitical purposes, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt – east of the Suez Canal – is often considered part of Africa. From the most northerly point, Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia, at 37°21′ N, to the most southerly point, Cape Agulhas in South Africa, 34°51′15″ S, is a distance approximately of ; from Cap-Vert, 17°31′13″W, the westernmost point, to Ras Hafun in the Somali Puntland region, in the Horn of Africa, 51°27′52″ E, the most easterly projection, is a distance (also approximately) of .
The main structural lines of the continent show both the east-to-west direction characteristic, at least in the eastern hemisphere, of the more northern parts of the world, and the north-to-south direction seen in the southern peninsulas. Africa is thus mainly composed of two segments at right angles, the northern running from east to west, and the southern from north to south.
Main features.
The average elevation of the continent approximates closely to above sea level, roughly near to the mean elevation of both North and South America, but considerably less than that of Asia, . In contrast with other continents, it is marked by the comparatively small area of either very high or very low ground, lands under occupying an unusually small part of the surface; while not only are the highest elevations inferior to those of Asia or South America, but the area of land over is also quite insignificant, being represented almost entirely by individual peaks and mountain ranges. Moderately elevated tablelands are thus the characteristic feature of the continent, though the surface of these is broken by higher peaks and ridges. (So prevalent are these isolated peaks and ridges that a specialised term—"Inselberg-Landschaft", island mountain landscape—has been adopted in Germany to describe this kind of country, thought to be in great part the result of wind action.)
As a general rule, the higher tablelands lie to the east and south, while a progressive diminution in altitude towards the west and north is observable. Apart from the lowlands and the Atlas mountain range, the continent may be divided into two regions of higher and lower plateaus, the dividing line (somewhat concave to the northwest) running from the middle of the Red Sea to about 6 degrees south on the west coast.
Africa can be divided into a number of geographic zones:
Plateau region.
There are many plateaus in Africa.
The high southern and eastern plateaus, rarely falling below , have a mean elevation of about . The South African plateau, as far as about 12° S, is bounded east, west and south by bands of high ground which fall steeply to the coasts. On this account South Africa has a general resemblance to an inverted saucer. Due south, the plateau rim is formed by three parallel steps with level ground between them. The largest of these level areas, the Great Karoo, is a dry, barren region, and a large tract of the plateau proper is of a still more arid character and is known as the Kalahari Desert.
The South African plateau is connected towards East African plateau, with probably a slightly greater average elevation, and marked by some distinct features. It is formed by a widening out of the eastern axis of high ground, which becomes subdivided into a number of zones running north and south and consisting in turn of ranges, tablelands and depressions. The most striking feature is the existence of two great lines of depression, due largely to the subsidence of whole segments of the Earth's crust, the lowest parts of which are occupied by vast lakes. Towards the south the two lines converge and give place to one great valley (occupied by Lake Nyasa), the southern part of which is less distinctly due to rifting and subsidence than the rest of the system.
Farther north the western hollow, known as the Albertine Rift, is occupied for more than half its length by water, forming the Great Lakes of Tanganyika, Kivu, Lake Edward and Lake Albert, the first-named over long and the longest freshwater lake in the world. Associated with these great valleys are a number of volcanic peaks, the greatest of which occur on a meridional line east of the eastern trough. The eastern branch of the East African Rift, contains much smaller lakes, many of them brackish and without outlet, the only one comparable to those of the western trough being Lake Turkana or Basso Norok.
A short distance east of this rift valley is Mount Kilimanjaro – with its two peaks Kibo and Mawenzi, the latter being , and the culminating point of the whole continent – and Mount Kenya, which is . Hardly less important is the Ruwenzori Range, over , which lies east of the western trough. Other volcanic peaks rise from the floor of the valleys, some of the Kirunga (Mfumbiro) group, north of Lake Kivu, being still partially active. This could cause most of the cities and states to be flooded with lava and ash.
The third division of the higher region of Africa is formed by the Ethiopian Highlands, a rugged mass of mountains forming the largest continuous area of its altitude in the whole continent, little of its surface falling below , while the summits reach heights of 4400 m to 4550 m. This block of country lies just west of the line of the great East African Trough, the northern continuation of which passes along its eastern escarpment as it runs up to join the Red Sea. There is, however, in the centre a circular basin occupied by Lake Tsana.
Both in the east and west of the continent the bordering highlands are continued as strips of plateau parallel to the coast, the Ethiopian mountains being continued northwards along the Red Sea coast by a series of ridges reaching in places a height of . In the west the zone of high land is broader but somewhat lower. The most mountainous districts lie inland from the head of the Gulf of Guinea (Adamawa, etc.), where heights of are reached. Exactly at the head of the gulf the great peak of the Cameroon, on a line of volcanic action continued by the islands to the south-west, has a height of , while Clarence Peak, in Fernando Po, the first of the line of islands, rises to over . Towards the extreme west the Futa Jallon highlands form an important diverging point of rivers, but beyond this, as far as the Atlas chain, the elevated rim of the continent is almost wanting.
Plains.
Much of Africa is made up of plains of the pediplain and etchplain type often occurring as steps. The etchplains are commonly associated with laterite soil and inselbergs. Inselberg-dotted plains are common in Africa including Tanzania, the Anti-Atlas of Morocco, Namibia, and the interior of Angola. One of the most wideaspread plain is the African Surface, a composite etchplain occurring across much of the continent.
The area between the east and west coast highlands, which north of 17° N is mainly desert, is divided into separate basins by other bands of high ground, one of which runs nearly centrally through North Africa in a line corresponding roughly with the curved axis of the continent as a whole. The best marked of the basins so formed (the Congo Basin) occupies a circular area bisected by the equator, once probably the site of an inland sea.
Running along the south of desert is the plains region known as the Sahel.
The arid region, the Sahara — the largest hot desert in the world, covering — extends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Though generally of slight elevation, it contains mountain ranges with peaks rising to Bordered N.W. by the Atlas range, to the northeast a rocky plateau separates it from the Mediterranean; this plateau gives place at the extreme east to the delta of the Nile. That river (see below) pierces the desert without modifying its character. The Atlas range, the north-westerly part of the continent, between its seaward and landward heights encloses elevated steppes in places broad. From the inner slopes of the plateau numerous wadis take a direction towards the Sahara. The greater part of that now desert region is, indeed, furrowed by old water-channels.
Mountains.
The mountains are an exception to Africa's general landscape. Geographers came up with the idea of "high Africa" and "low Africa" to help distinguish the difference in Geography; "high Africa" extending from Ethiopia down south to South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope while "low Africa" representing the plains of the rest of the continent. The following table gives the details of the chief mountains and ranges of the continent:
Rivers.
From the outer margin of the African plateaus, a large number of streams run to the sea with comparatively short courses, while the larger rivers flow for long distances on the interior highlands, before breaking through the outer ranges. The main drainage of the continent is to the north and west, or towards the basin of the Atlantic Ocean.
To the main African rivers belong: Nile (the longest river of Africa), Congo (river with the highest water discharge on the continent) and the Niger, which flows half of its length through the arid areas. The largest lakes are the following: Lake Victoria (Lake Ukerewe), Lake Chad, in the centre of the continent, Lake Tanganyika, lying between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia. There is also the considerably large Lake Malawi stretching along the eastern border of Malawi. There are also numerous water dams throughout the continent: Kariba on the river of Zambezi, Asuan in Egypt on the river of Nile, and Akosombo, the continent's biggest dam on the Volta River in Ghana (Fobil 2003).
The high lake plateau of the African Great Lakes region contains the headwaters of both the Nile and the Congo.
The break-up of Gondwana in Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic times led to a major reorganization of the river courses of various large African rivers including the Congo, Niger, Nile, Orange, Limpopo and Zambezi rivers.
Flowing to the Mediterranean Sea.
The upper Nile receives its chief supplies from the mountainous region adjoining the Central African trough in the neighborhood of the equator. From there, streams pour eastward into Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa (covering over 26,000 square m.), and to the west and north into Lake Edward and Lake Albert. To the latter of these, the effluents of the other two lakes add their waters. Issuing from there, the Nile flows northward, and between the latitudes of 7 and 10 degrees north it traverses a vast marshy level, where its course is liable to being blocked by floating vegetation. After receiving the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the west and the Sobat, Blue Nile and Atbara from the Ethiopian Highlands (the chief gathering ground of the flood-water), it separates the great desert with its fertile watershed, and enters the Mediterranean at a vast delta.
Flowing to the Atlantic Ocean.
The most remote head-stream of the Congo is the Chambezi, which flows southwest into the marshy Lake Bangweulu. From this lake issues the Congo, known in its upper course by various names. Flowing first south, it afterwards turns north through Lake Mweru and descends to the forest-clad basin of west equatorial Africa. Traversing this in a majestic northward curve, and receiving vast supplies of water from many great tributaries, it finally turns southwest and cuts a way to the Atlantic Ocean through the western highlands. The area of the Congo basin is greater than that of any other river except the Amazon, while the African inland drainage area is greater than that of any continent but Asia, where the corresponding area is .
West of Lake Chad is the basin of the Niger, the third major river of Africa. With its principal source in the far west, it reverses the direction of flow exhibited by the Nile and Congo, and ultimately flows into the Atlantic — a fact that eluded European geographers for many centuries. An important branch, however — the Benue — flows from the southeast.
These four river basins occupy the greater part of the lower plateaus of North and West Africa — the remainder consists of arid regions watered only by intermittent streams that do not reach the sea.
Of the remaining rivers of the Atlantic basin, the Orange, in the extreme south, brings the drainage from the Drakensberg on the opposite side of the continent, while the Kunene, Kwanza, Ogowe and Sanaga drain the west coastal highlands of the southern limb; the Volta, Komoe, Bandama, Gambia and Senegal the highlands of the western limb. North of the Senegal, for over of coast, the arid region reaches to the Atlantic. Farther north are the streams, with comparatively short courses, reaching the Atlantic and Mediterranean from the Atlas mountains.
Flowing to the Indian Ocean.
Of the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean, the only one draining any large part of the interior plateaus is the Zambezi, whose western branches rise in the western coastal highlands. The main stream has its rise in 11°21′3″ S 24°22′ E, at an elevation of . It flows to the west and south for a considerable distance before turning eastward. All the largest tributaries, including the Shire, the outflow of Lake Nyasa, flow down the southern slopes of the band of high ground stretching across the continent from 10° to 12° S. In the southwest, the Zambezi system interlaces with that of the Taukhe (or Tioghe), from which it at times receives surplus water. The rest of the water of the Taukhe, known in its middle course as the Okavango, is lost in a system of swamps and saltpans that was formerly centred in Lake Ngami, now dried up.
Farther south, the Limpopo drains a portion of the interior plateau, but breaks through the bounding highlands on the side of the continent nearest its source. The Rovuma, Rufiji and Tana principally drain the outer slopes of the African Great Lakes highlands.
In the Horn region to the north, the Jubba and the Shebelle rivers begin in the Ethiopian Highlands. These rivers mainly flow southwards, with the Jubba emptying in the Indian Ocean. The Shebelle River reaches a point to the southwest. After that, it consists of swamps and dry reaches before finally disappearing in the desert terrain near the Jubba River. Another large stream, the Hawash, rising in the Ethiopian mountains, is lost in a saline depression near the Gulf of Aden.
Inland basins.
Between the basins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, there is an area of inland drainage along the centre of the Ethiopian plateau, directed chiefly into the lakes in the Great Rift Valley. The largest river is the Omo, which, fed by the rains of the Ethiopian highlands, carries down a large body of water into Lake Turkana. The rivers of Africa are generally obstructed either by bars at their mouths, or by cataracts at no great distance upstream. But when these obstacles have been overcome, the rivers and lakes afford a vast network of navigable waters.
North of the Congo basin, and separated from it by a broad undulation of the surface, is the basin of Lake Chad — a flat-shored, shallow lake filled principally by the Chari coming from the southeast.
Lakes.
The principal lakes of Africa are situated in the African Great Lakes plateau.
The lakes found within the Great Rift Valley have steep sides and are very deep.
This is the case with the two largest of the type, Tanganyika and Nyasa, the latter with depths of .
Others, however, are shallow, and hardly reach the steep sides of the valleys in the dry season.
Such are Lake Rukwa, in a subsidiary depression north of Nyasa, and Eiassi and Manyara in the system of the Great Rift Valley.
Lakes of the broad type are of moderate depth, the deepest sounding in Lake Victoria being under .
Besides the African Great Lakes, the principal lakes on the continent are: Lake Chad, in the northern inland watershed; Bangweulu and Mweru, traversed by the head-stream of the Congo; and Lake Mai-Ndombe and Ntomba (Mantumba), within the great bend of that river. All, except possibly Mweru, are more or less shallow, and Lake Chad appears to be drying up.
Divergent opinions have been held as to the mode of origin of the African Great Lakes, especially Tanganyika, which some geologists have considered to represent an old arm of the sea, dating from a time when the whole central Congo basin was under water; others holding that the lake water has accumulated in a depression caused by subsidence. The former view is based on the existence in the lake of organisms of a decidedly marine type. They include jellyfish, molluscs, prawns, crabs, etc.
Islands.
With the exception of Madagascar, the African islands are small. Madagascar, with an area of , is, after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo, the fourth largest island on the Earth. It lies in the Indian Ocean, off the southeast coast of the continent, from which it is separated by the deep Mozambique Channel, wide at its narrowest point. Madagascar in its general structure, as in flora and fauna, forms a connecting link between Africa and southern Asia. East of Madagascar are the small islands of Mauritius and Réunion. There are also islands in the Gulf of Guinea on which lies the Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe (islands of São Tomé and Príncipe). Part of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea is lying on the island of Bioko (with the capital Malabo and the town of Lubu) and the island of Annobón. Socotra lies E.N.E. of Cape Guardafui. Off the north-west coast are the Canary and Cape Verde archipelagoes. which, like some small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, are of volcanic origin. The South Atlantic Islands of Saint Helena and Ascension are classed as Africa but are situated on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge half way to South America.
Climatic conditions.
Lying almost entirely within the tropics, and equally to north and south of the equator, Africa does not show excessive variations of temperature.
Great heat is experienced in the lower plains and desert regions of North Africa, removed by the great width of the continent from the influence of the ocean, and here, too, the contrast between day and night, and between summer and winter, is greatest. (The rarity of the air and the great radiation during the night cause the temperature in the Sahara to fall occasionally to freezing point.)
Farther south, the heat is to some extent modified by the moisture brought from the ocean, and by the greater elevation of a large part of the surface, especially in East Africa, where the range of temperature is wider than in the Congo basin or on the Guinea coast.
In the extreme north and south the climate is a warm temperate one, the northern countries being on the whole hotter and drier than those in the southern zone; the south of the continent being narrower than the north, the influence of the surrounding ocean is more felt.
The most important climatic differences are due to variations in the amount of rainfall. The wide heated plains of the Sahara, and in a lesser degree the corresponding zone of the Kalahari in the south, have an exceedingly scanty rainfall, the winds which blow over them from the ocean losing part of their moisture as they pass over the outer highlands, and becoming constantly drier owing to the heating effects of the burning soil of the interior; while the scarcity of mountain ranges in the more central parts likewise tends to prevent condensation. In the inter-tropical zone of summer precipitation, the rainfall is greatest when the sun is vertical or soon after. It is therefore greatest of all near the equator, where the sun is twice vertical, and less in the direction of both tropics.
The rainfall zones are, however, somewhat deflected from a due west-to-east direction, the drier northern conditions extending southwards along the east coast, and those of the south northwards along the west. Within the equatorial zone certain areas, especially on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea and in the upper Nile basin, have an intensified rainfall, but this rarely approaches that of the rainiest regions of the world. The rainiest district in all Africa is a strip of coastland west of Mount Cameroon, where there is a mean annual rainfall of about as compared with a mean of at Cherrapunji, in Meghalaya, India.
The two distinct rainy seasons of the equatorial zone, where the sun is vertical at half-yearly intervals, become gradually merged into one in the direction of the tropics, where the sun is overhead but once. Snow falls on all the higher mountain ranges, and on the highest the climate is thoroughly Alpine.
The countries bordering the Sahara are much exposed to a very dry wind, full of fine particles of sand, blowing from the desert towards the sea. Known in Egypt as the khamsin, on the Mediterranean as the sirocco, it is called on the Guinea coast the harmattan. This wind is not invariably hot; its great dryness causes so much evaporation that cold is not infrequently the result. Similar dry winds blow from the Kalahari Desert in the south. On the eastern coast the monsoons of the Indian Ocean are regularly felt, and on the southeast hurricanes are occasionally experienced.
Health.
The climate of Africa lends itself to certain environmental diseases, the most serious of which are: malaria, sleeping sickness and yellow fever. Malaria is the most deadly environmental disease in Africa. It is transmitted by a genus of mosquito (anopheles mosquito) native to Africa, and can be contracted over and over again. There is not yet a vaccine for malaria, which makes it difficult to prevent the disease from spreading in Africa. Recently, the dissemination of mosquito netting has helped lower the rate of malaria.
Yellow fever is a disease also transmitted by mosquitoes native to Africa. Unlike malaria, it cannot be contracted more than once. Like chicken pox, it is a disease that tends to be severe the later in life a person contracts the disease.
Sleeping sickness, or African trypanosomiasis, is a disease that usually affects animals, but has been known to be fatal to some humans as well. It is transmitted by the tsetse fly and is found almost exclusively in Sub-Saharan Africa. This disease has had a significant impact on African development not because of its deadly nature, like Malaria, but because it has prevented Africans from pursuing agriculture (as the sleeping sickness would kill their livestock).
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1857 | Approval voting | Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select many candidates instead of selecting only one candidate.
Description.
Approval voting ballots show a list of all the candidates running and each voter indicates support for as many candidates as they see fit. Final tallies show how many votes each candidate received, and the winner is the candidate with the most support.
Effect on elections.
Approval voting advocates Steven Brams and Dudley R. Herschbach predict that Approval should increase voter participation, prevent minor-party candidates from being spoilers, and reduce negative campaigning. One study showed that Approval would not have chosen the same two winners as plurality voting (Chirac and Le Pen) in the first round of the 2002 French presidential election; it instead would have chosen Chirac and Jospin as the top two candidates to proceed to the runoff.
Le Pen lost by an overwhelming margin in the runoff, 82.2% to 17.8%, a sign that the true top two candidates had not been found. In the approval voting survey primary Chirac took first place with 36.7%, compared to Jospin at 32.9%. Le Pen, in that study, received 25.1% and so would not have made the cut to the second round. In the real primary election, the top three were Chirac, 19.9%, Le Pen, 16.9%, and Jospin, 16.2%. A study of various "evaluative voting" methods (Approval and score voting) during the 2012 French presidential election showed that "unifying" candidates tended to do better, and polarizing candidates did worse, as compared to under plurality voting.
A generalized version of the Burr dilemma applies to Approval when two candidates are appealing to the same subset of voters. Although Approval differs from the voting system used in the Burr dilemma, Approval can still leave candidates and voters with the generalized dilemma of whether to compete or cooperate. But, Approval satisfies the favorite betrayal criterion, which means that it is always safe for a voter to give their true favorite maximum support.
While in the modern era there have been relatively few competitive Approval elections where tactical voting is more likely, Brams argues that Approval usually elects Condorcet winners in practice.
Usage.
Current.
The Latvian parliament uses approval voting within open list proportional representation.
In 2018, Fargo, North Dakota, passed a local ballot initiative adopting Approval for the city's local elections, and it was used to elect officials in June 2020, becoming the first United States city and jurisdiction to adopt Approval.
In November 2020, St. Louis, Missouri, passed Proposition D to authorize a variant of Approval (as unified primary) for municipal offices.
History.
Robert J. Weber coined the term "Approval Voting" in 1971. It was more fully published in 1978 by political scientist Steven Brams and mathematician Peter Fishburn.
Historically, several voting methods that incorporate aspects of Approval have been used:
Political organizations and jurisdictions.
Approval has been used in privately administered nomination contests by the Independent Party of Oregon in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Oregon is a fusion voting state, and the party has cross-nominated legislators and statewide officeholders using this method; its 2016 presidential preference primary did not identify a potential nominee due to no candidate earning more than 32% support. The party switched to using STAR voting in 2020.
It is also used in internal elections by the American Solidarity Party, the Green Parties of Texas and Ohio, the Libertarian National Committee, the Libertarian parties of Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and New York, the US Modern Whig party, Alliance 90/The Greens in Germany, and the Czech and German Pirate Party.
In 2018, Fargo, North Dakota passed a ballot initiative adopting Approval for local elections, becoming the first U.S. city and jurisdiction to adopt Approval. (Previously in 2015, a Fargo city commissioner election had suffered from six-way vote-splitting, resulting in a candidate winning with an unconvincing 22% plurality of the vote.)
The first election was held June 9, 2020, selecting two city commissioners, from seven candidates on the ballot. Both winners received over 50% approval, with an average 2.3 approvals per ballot, and 62% of voters supported the change to Approval in a poll. A poll by opponents of Approval was conducted to test whether voters had in fact voted strategically according to the Burr dilemma. They found that 30% of voters who bullet voted did so for strategic reasons, while 57% did so because it was their sincere opinion. Fargo's second Approval election took place in June 2022, for mayor and city commission. The incumbent mayor was re-elected with an estimated 65% approval, with voters expressing 1.6 approvals per ballot.
In 2020, St. Louis, Missouri passed an initiative to adopt Approval followed by a top-two runoff (see Unified primary), thus becoming the second U.S. city to adopt Approval and the first to use a variant of it. The first such primary was held in March 2021, with voters expressing 1.1 to 1.6 approvals per ballot, in races with more than two candidates.
Other organizations.
The idea of approval was adopted by X. Hu and Lloyd Shapley in 2003 in studying authority distribution in organizations.
Approval has been adopted by several societies: the Society for Social Choice and Welfare (1992), Mathematical Association of America (1986), the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Management Sciences (1987) (now the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), the American Statistical Association (1987), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (1987). The IEEE board in 2002 rescinded its decision to use Approval. IEEE Executive Director Daniel J. Senese stated that Approval was abandoned because "few of our members were using it and it was felt that it was no longer needed." Because none of these associations report results to their members and the public, it is difficult to evaluate Senese's claim and whether it is also true of other associations; Steven Brams' analysis of the 5-candidate 1987 Mathematical Association of America presidential election shows that 79% of voters cast a ballot for one candidate, 16% for 2 candidates, 5% for 3, and 1% for 4, with the winner earning the approval of 1,267 (32%) of 3,924 voters.
Approval also can be used in social scenarios as a fairer, but still quick system compared to a First-Past-The-Post equivalent, being able to avoid a spoiler effect while being very quick to calculate.
See also: Multiwinner approval voting.
Strategic voting.
Overview.
Approval voting allows voters to select all the candidates whom they consider to be reasonable choices.
"Strategic Approval" differs from ranked voting (aka preferential voting) methods where voters might "reverse" the preference order of two options, which if done on a larger scale can cause an unpopular candidate to win. Strategic Approval, with more than two options, involves the voter changing their approval threshold. The voter decides which options to give the "same" rating, even if they were to have a preference order between them. This leaves a tactical concern any voter has for approving their second-favorite candidate, in the case that there are three or more candidates. Approving their second-favorite means the voter harms their favorite candidate's chance to win. Not approving their second-favorite means the voter helps the candidate they least desire to beat their second-favorite and perhaps win.
Approval allows for bullet voting and compromising, while it is immune to push-over and burying.
Bullet voting occurs when a voter approves "only" candidate "a" instead of "both" "a" and "b" for the reason that voting for "b" can cause "a" to lose. The voter would be satisfied with either "a" or "b" but has a moderate preference for "a". Were "b" to win, this hypothetical voter would still be satisfied. If supporters of both "a" and "b" do this, it could cause candidate "c" to win. This creates the "chicken dilemma", as supporters of "a" and "b" are playing chicken as to which will stop strategic voting first, before both of these candidates lose.
Compromising occurs when a voter approves an "additional" candidate who is otherwise considered unacceptable to the voter to prevent an even worse alternative from winning.
Sincere voting.
Approval experts describe sincere votes as those "... that directly reflect the true preferences of a voter, i.e., that do not report preferences 'falsely. They also give a specific definition of a sincere approval vote in terms of the voter's ordinal preferences as being any vote that, if it votes for one candidate, it also votes for any more preferred candidate. This definition allows a sincere vote to treat strictly preferred candidates the same, ensuring that every voter has at least one sincere vote. The definition also allows a sincere vote to treat equally preferred candidates differently. When there are two or more candidates, every voter has at least three sincere approval votes to choose from. Two of those sincere approval votes do not distinguish between any of the candidates: vote for none of the candidates and vote for all of the candidates. When there are three or more candidates, every voter has more than one sincere approval vote that distinguishes between the candidates.
Examples.
Based on the definition above, if there are four candidates, A, B, C, and D, and a voter has a strict preference order, preferring A to B to C to D, then the following are the voter's possible sincere approval votes:
If the voter instead equally prefers B and C, while A is still the most preferred candidate and D is the least preferred candidate, then all of the above votes are sincere and the following combination is also a sincere vote:
The decision between the above ballots is equivalent to deciding an arbitrary "approval cutoff." All candidates preferred to the cutoff are approved, all candidates less preferred are not approved, and any candidates equal to the cutoff may be approved or not arbitrarily.
Sincere strategy with ordinal preferences.
A sincere voter with multiple options for voting sincerely still has to choose which sincere vote to use. Voting strategy is a way to make that choice, in which case strategic Approval includes sincere voting, rather than being an alternative to it. This differs from other voting systems that typically have a unique sincere vote for a voter.
When there are three or more candidates, the winner of an Approval election can change, depending on which sincere votes are used. In some cases, Approval can sincerely elect any one of the candidates, including a Condorcet winner and a Condorcet loser, without the voter preferences changing. To the extent that electing a Condorcet winner and not electing a Condorcet loser is considered desirable outcomes for a voting system, Approval can be considered vulnerable to sincere, strategic voting. In one sense, conditions where this can happen are robust and are not isolated cases. On the other hand, the variety of possible outcomes has also been portrayed as a virtue of Approval, representing the flexibility and responsiveness of Approval, not just to voter ordinal preferences, but cardinal utilities as well.
Dichotomous preferences.
Approval avoids the issue of multiple sincere votes in special cases when voters have dichotomous preferences. For a voter with dichotomous preferences, Approval is strategy-proof (also known as strategy-free). When all voters have dichotomous preferences and vote the sincere, strategy-proof vote, Approval is guaranteed to elect the Condorcet winner, if one exists. However, having dichotomous preferences when there are three or more candidates is not typical. It is an unlikely situation for all voters to have dichotomous preferences when there are more than a few voters.
Having dichotomous preferences means that a voter has bi-level preferences for the candidates. All of the candidates are divided into two groups such that the voter is indifferent between any two candidates in the same group and any candidate in the top-level group is preferred to any candidate in the bottom-level group. A voter that has strict preferences between three candidates—prefers A to B and B to C—does not have dichotomous preferences.
Being strategy-proof for a voter means that there is a unique way for the voter to vote that is a strategically best way to vote, regardless of how others vote. In Approval, the strategy-proof vote, if it exists, is a sincere vote.
Approval threshold.
Another way to deal with multiple sincere votes is to augment the ordinal preference model with an approval or acceptance threshold. An approval threshold divides all of the candidates into two sets, those the voter approves of and those the voter does not approve of. A voter can approve of more than one candidate and still prefer one approved candidate to another approved candidate. Acceptance thresholds are similar. With such a threshold, a voter simply votes for every candidate that meets or exceeds the threshold.
With threshold voting, it is still possible to not elect the Condorcet winner and instead elect the Condorcet loser when they both exist. However, according to Steven Brams, this represents a strength rather than a weakness of Approval. Without providing specifics, he argues that the pragmatic judgements of voters about which candidates are acceptable should take precedence over the Condorcet criterion and other social choice criteria.
Strategy with cardinal utilities.
Voting strategy under approval is guided by two competing features of Approval. On the one hand, Approval fails the later-no-harm criterion, so voting for a candidate can cause that candidate to win instead of a candidate more preferred by that voter. On the other hand, Approval satisfies the monotonicity criterion, so not voting for a candidate can never help that candidate win, but can cause that candidate to lose to a less preferred candidate. Either way, the voter can risk getting a less preferred election winner. A voter can balance the risk-benefit trade-offs by considering the voter's cardinal utilities, particularly via the von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem, and the probabilities of how others vote.
A rational voter model described by Myerson and Weber specifies an Approval strategy that votes for those candidates that have a positive prospective rating. This strategy is optimal in the sense that it maximizes the voter's expected utility, subject to the constraints of the model and provided the number of other voters is sufficiently large.
An optimal approval vote always votes for the most preferred candidate and not for the least preferred candidate. However, an optimal vote can require voting for a candidate and not voting for a more preferred candidate if there 4 candidates or more.
Other strategies are also available and coincide with the optimal strategy in special situations. For example:
Another strategy is to vote for the top half of the candidates, the candidates that have an above-median utility. When the voter thinks that others are balancing their votes randomly and evenly, the strategy maximizes the voter's power or efficacy, meaning that it maximizes the probability that the voter will make a difference in deciding which candidate wins.
Optimal strategic Approval fails to satisfy the Condorcet criterion and can elect a Condorcet loser. Strategic Approval can guarantee electing the Condorcet winner in some special circumstances. For example, if all voters are rational and cast a strategically optimal vote based on a common knowledge of how all the other voters vote except for small-probability, statistically independent errors in recording the votes, then the winner will be the Condorcet winner, if one exists.
Strategy examples.
In the example election described , assume that the voters in each faction share the following von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities, fitted to the interval between 0 and 100. The utilities are consistent with the rankings given earlier and reflect a strong preference each faction has for choosing its city, compared to weaker preferences for other factors such as the distance to the other cities.
Using these utilities, voters choose their optimal strategic votes based on what they think the various pivot probabilities are for pairwise ties. In each of the scenarios summarized below, all voters share a common set of pivot probabilities.
In the first scenario, voters all choose their votes based on the assumption that all pairwise ties are equally likely. As a result, they vote for any candidate with an above-average utility. Most voters vote for only their first choice. Only the Knoxville faction also votes for its second choice, Chattanooga. As a result, the winner is Memphis, the Condorcet loser, with Chattanooga coming in second place. In this scenario, the winner has minority approval (more voters disapproved than approved) and all the others had even less support, reflecting the position that no choice gave an above-average utility to a majority of voters.
In the second scenario, all of the voters expect that Memphis is the likely winner, that Chattanooga is the likely runner-up, and that the pivot probability for a Memphis-Chattanooga tie is much larger than the pivot probabilities of any other pair-wise ties. As a result, each voter votes for any candidate they prefer more than the leading candidate, and also vote for the leading candidate if they prefer that candidate more than the expected runner-up. Each remaining scenario follows a similar pattern of expectations and voting strategies.
In the second scenario, there is a three-way tie for first place. This happens because the expected winner, Memphis, was the Condorcet loser and was also ranked last by any voter that did not rank it first.
Only in the last scenario does the actual winner and runner-up match the expected winner and runner-up. As a result, this can be considered a stable strategic voting scenario. In the language of game theory, this is an "equilibrium." In this scenario, the winner is also the Condorcet winner.
Dichotomous cutoff.
As this voting method is cardinal rather than ordinal, it is possible to model voters in a way that does not simplify to an ordinal method. Modelling voters with a 'dichotomous cutoff' assumes a voter has an immovable approval cutoff, while having meaningful cardinal preferences. This means that rather than voting for their top 3 candidates, or all candidates above the average approval (which may result in their vote changing if one candidate drops out, resulting in a system that does not satisfy IIA), they instead vote for all candidates above a certain approval 'cutoff' that they have decided. This cutoff does not change, regardless of which and how many candidates are running, so when all available alternatives are either above or below the cutoff, the voter votes for all or none of the candidates, despite preferring some over others. This could be imagined to reflect a case where many voters become disenfranchised and apathetic if they see no candidates they approve of. In a case such as this, many voters may have an internal cutoff, and would not simply vote for their top 3, or the above average candidates, although that is not to say that it is necessarily entirely immovable.
For example, in this scenario, voters are voting for candidates with approval above 50% (bold signifies that the voters voted for the candidate):
C wins with 65% of the voters' approval, beating B with 60%, D with 40% and A with 35%
If voters' threshold for receiving a vote is that the candidate has an above average approval, or they vote for their two most approved of candidates, this is not a dichotomous cutoff, as this can change if candidates drop out. On the other hand, if voters' threshold for receiving a vote is fixed (say 50%), this is a dichotomous cutoff, and satisfies IIA as shown below:
B now wins with 60%, beating C with 55% and D with 40%
With dichotomous cutoff, C still wins.
B now wins with 70%, beating C and A with 65%
With dichotomous cutoff, C still wins.
Compliance with voting system criteria.
Most of the mathematical criteria by which voting systems are compared were formulated for voters with ordinal preferences. In this case, approval voting requires voters to make an additional decision of where to put their approval cutoff (see examples above). Depending on how this decision is made, Approval satisfies different sets of criteria.
There is no ultimate authority on which criteria should be considered, but the following are criteria that many voting theorists accept and consider desirable:
Approval satisfies the mutual majority criterion and Smith criterion when voters' preferences are dichotomous; this is because the winner will be someone that the most voters prefer above all others, or that ties with other candidates but the group of tied candidates is preferred by more voters than any candidate not in the group.
See also.
Some variants and generalizations of approval voting are:
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1859 | Arizona State University | Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the United States.
One of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents, ASU is a member of the Association of American Universities and classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". ASU has nearly 150,000 students attending classes, with more than 38,000 students attending online, and 90,000 undergraduates and nearly 20,000 postgraduates across its five campuses and four regional learning centers throughout Arizona. ASU offers 350 degree options from its 17 colleges and more than 170 cross-discipline centers and institutes for undergraduates students, as well as more than 400 graduate degree and certificate programs. The Arizona State Sun Devils compete in 26 varsity-level sports in the NCAA Division I Pac-12 Conference and is home to over 1,100 registered student organizations. Sun Devil teams have won 165 national championships, including 24 NCAA trophies. 179 Sun Devils have made Olympic teams, winning 60 Olympic medals: 25 gold, 12 silver, and 23 bronze.
ASU reported that its faculty of more than 4,700 scholars included 5 Nobel laureates, 6 MacArthur Fellows, 10 Pulitzer Prize winners, 10 National Academy of Engineering members, 24 National Academy of Sciences members, 26 American Academy of Arts and Sciences members, 40 Guggenheim fellows, 151 National Endowment for the Humanities fellows, and 279 Fulbright Program American Scholars.
History.
1885–1929.
Arizona State University was established as the Territorial Normal School at Tempe on March 12, 1885, when the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature passed an act to create a normal school to train teachers for the Arizona Territory. The campus consisted of a single, four-room schoolhouse on a 20-acre plot largely donated by Tempe residents George and Martha Wilson. Classes began with 33 students on February 8, 1886. The curriculum evolved over the years and the name was changed several times; the institution was also known as Tempe Normal School of Arizona (1889–1903), Tempe Normal School (1903–1925), Tempe State Teachers College (1925–1929), Arizona State Teachers College (1929–1945), Arizona State College (1945–1958) and, by a 2–1 margin of the state's voters, Arizona State University in 1958.
In 1923, the school stopped offering high school courses and added a high school diploma to the admissions requirements. In 1925, the school became the Tempe State Teachers College and offered four-year Bachelor of Education degrees as well as two-year teaching certificates. In 1929, the 9th Arizona State Legislature authorized Bachelor of Arts in Education degrees as well, and the school was renamed the Arizona State Teachers College. Under the 30-year tenure of president Arthur John Matthews (1900–1930), the school was given all-college student status. The first dormitories built in the state were constructed under his supervision in 1902. Of the 18 buildings constructed while Matthews was president, six are still in use. Matthews envisioned an "evergreen campus", with many shrubs brought to the campus, and implemented the planting of 110 Mexican Fan Palms on what is now known as Palm Walk, a century-old landmark of the Tempe campus.
During the Great Depression, Ralph Waldo Swetman was hired to succeed President Matthews, coming to Arizona State Teachers College in 1930 from Humboldt State Teachers College where he had served as president. He served a three-year term, during which he focused on improving teacher-training programs. During his tenure, enrollment at the college doubled, topping the 1,000 mark for the first time. Matthews also conceived of a self-supported summer session at the school at Arizona State Teachers College, a first for the school.
1930–1989.
In 1933, Grady Gammage, then president of Arizona State Teachers College at Flagstaff, became president of Arizona State Teachers College at Tempe, beginning a tenure that would last for nearly 28 years, second only to Swetman's 30 years at the college's helm. Like President Arthur John Matthews before him, Gammage oversaw the construction of several buildings on the Tempe campus. He also guided the development of the university's graduate programs; the first Master of Arts in Education was awarded in 1938, the first Doctor of Education degree in 1954 and 10 non-teaching master's degrees were approved by the Arizona Board of Regents in 1956. During his presidency, the school's name was changed to Arizona State College in 1945, and finally to Arizona State University in 1958. At the time, two other names were considered: Tempe University and State University at Tempe. Among Gammage's greatest achievements in Tempe was the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed construction of what is Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium/ASU Gammage. One of the university's hallmark buildings, ASU Gammage was completed in 1964, five years after the president's (and Wright's) death.
Gammage was succeeded by Harold D. Richardson, who had served the school earlier in a variety of roles beginning in 1939, including director of graduate studies, college registrar, dean of instruction, dean of the College of Education and academic vice president. Although filling the role of acting president of the university for just nine months (Dec. 1959 to Sept. 1960), Richardson laid the groundwork for the future recruitment and appointment of well-credentialed research science faculty.
By the 1960s, under G. Homer Durham, the university's 11th president, ASU began to expand its curriculum by establishing several new colleges and, in 1961, the Arizona Board of Regents authorized doctoral degree programs in six fields, including Doctor of Philosophy. By the end of his nine-year tenure, ASU had more than doubled enrollment, reporting 23,000 in 1969.
The next three presidents—Harry K. Newburn (1969–71), John W. Schwada (1971–81) and J. Russell Nelson (1981–89), including and Interim President Richard Peck (1989)—led the university to increased academic stature, the establishment of the ASU West campus in 1984 and its subsequent construction in 1986, a focus on computer-assisted learning and research, and rising enrollment.
1990–present.
Under the leadership of Lattie F. Coor, president from 1990 to 2002, ASU grew through the creation of the Polytechnic campus and extended education sites. Increased commitment to diversity, quality in undergraduate education, research, and economic development occurred over his 12-year tenure. Part of Coor's legacy to the university was a successful fundraising campaign: through private donations, more than $500 million was invested in areas that would significantly impact the future of ASU. Among the campaign's achievements were the naming and endowing of Barrett, The Honors College, and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts; the creation of many new endowed faculty positions; and hundreds of new scholarships and fellowships.
In 2002, Michael M. Crow became the university's 16th president. At his inauguration, he outlined his vision for transforming ASU into a "New American University"—one that would be open and inclusive, and set a goal for the university to meet Association of American Universities criteria and to become a member. Crow initiated the idea of transforming ASU into "One university in many places"—a single institution comprising several campuses, sharing students, faculty, staff and accreditation. Subsequent reorganizations combined academic departments, consolidated colleges and schools, and reduced staff and administration as the university expanded its West and Polytechnic campuses. ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus was also expanded, with several colleges and schools relocating there. The university established learning centers throughout the state, including the ASU Colleges at Lake Havasu City and programs in Thatcher, Yuma, and Tucson. Students at these centers can choose from several ASU degree and certificate programs.
During Crow's tenure, and aided by hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, ASU began a years-long research facility capital building effort that led to the establishment of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and several large interdisciplinary research buildings. Along with the research facilities, the university faculty was expanded, including the addition of five Nobel Laureates. Since 2002, the university's research expenditures have tripled and more than 1.5 million square feet of space has been added to the university's research facilities.
The economic downturn that began in 2008 took a particularly hard toll on Arizona, resulting in large cuts to ASU's budget. In response to these cuts, ASU capped enrollment, closed some four dozen academic programs, combined academic departments, consolidated colleges and schools, and reduced university faculty, staff and administrators; with an economic recovery underway in 2011, however, the university continued its campaign to expand the West and Polytechnic Campuses, and establish a low-cost, teaching-focused extension campus in Lake Havasu City. As of 2011, an article in "Slate" reported that, "the bottom line looks good", noting that:
On May 1, 2014, ASU was listed as one of fifty-five higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints" by Barack Obama's White House Task Force To Protect Students from Sexual Assault. The publicly announced investigation followed two Title IX suits. In July 2014, a group of at least nine current and former students who alleged they were harassed or assaulted asked the federal investigation be expanded.
In August 2014 ASU president Michael Crow appointed a task force comprising faculty and staff, students, and members of the university police force to review the university's efforts to address sexual violence. Crow accepted the recommendations of the task force in November 2014.
In 2015, the Thunderbird School of Global Management became the fifth ASU campus, as the Thunderbird School of Global Management at ASU. Partnerships for education and research with Mayo Clinic established collaborative degree programs in health care and law, and shared administrator positions, laboratories and classes at the Mayo Clinic Arizona campus.
The Beus Center for Law and Society, the new home of ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, opened in fall 2016 on the Downtown Phoenix campus, relocating faculty and students from the Tempe campus to the state capital.
Organization and administration.
The Arizona Board of Regents governs Arizona State University as well as the state's other public universities; University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. The Board of Regents is composed of 12 members including 11 who are voting members, and one non-voting member. Members of the board include the state governor and superintendent of public instruction acting as ex-officio members, eight volunteer Regents members with eight-year terms who are appointed by the governor, and two student regents, each with two-year terms, and each serving a one-year term as non-voting apprentices. ABOR provides policy guidance to the state universities of Arizona. ASU has four campuses in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, including the Tempe campus in Tempe; the West campus in Glendale; the Downtown Phoenix campus; and the Polytechnic campus in Mesa. ASU also offers courses and degrees through ASU Online and at the ASU Colleges at Lake Havasu City in western Arizona, and offers regional learning programs in Thatcher, Yuma and Tucson.
The Arizona Board of Regents appoints and elects the president of the university, who is considered the institution's chief executive officer and the chief budget officer. The president executes measures enacted by the Board of Regents, controls the university's property, and acts as the university's official representative to the Board of Regents. The chief executive officer is assisted through the administration of the institution by the provost, vice presidents, deans, faculty, directors, department chairs, and other officers. The president also selects and appoints administrative officers and general counsels. The 16th ASU president is Michael M. Crow, who has served since July 1, 2002.
Campuses and locations.
Academic programs are spread across four distinct campuses in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area; unlike most multi-campus institutions, however, ASU describes itself as "one university in many places", inferring there is "not a system with separate campuses, and not one main campus with branch campuses." The university considers each campus "distinctive" and academically focused on certain aspects of the overall university mission. The Tempe campus is the university's research and graduate school center. Undergraduate studies on the Tempe campus are research-based programs that prepare students for graduate school, professional school, or employment. The Polytechnic campus is designed with an emphasis on professional and technological programs for direct workforce preparation. The Polytechnic campus is the site of many of the university's simulators and laboratories dedicated for project-based learning. The West campus is focused on interdisciplinary degrees and the liberal arts, while maintaining professional programs with a direct impact on the community and society. The Downtown Phoenix campus focuses on direct urban and public programs such as nursing, public policy, criminal justice, mass communication, and journalism. ASU recently relocated some nursing and health related programs to its new ASU-Mayo Medical School campus. Inter-campus shuttles and light rail allow students and faculty to easily travel between the campuses. In addition to the physical campuses, ASU's "virtual campus" at the university's SkySong Innovation Center, provides online and extended education.
The Arizona Board of Regents reports the ASU facilities inventory totals more than 23 million gross square feet.
Tempe campus.
ASU's Tempe campus is in downtown Tempe, Arizona, about east of downtown Phoenix. The campus is considered urban, and is approximately in size. It is arranged around broad pedestrian malls and is completely encompassed by an arboretum. The Tempe campus is also the largest of ASU's campuses, with more than 70,000 students enrolled in at least one class on campus in fall 2017. The campus is considered to range from the streets Rural Road on the east to Mill Avenue on the west, and Apache Boulevard on the south to Rio Salado Parkway on the north.
The Tempe campus is ASU's original campus, and Old Main, the oldest building on campus, still stands. Today's university and the Tempe campus were founded as the Territorial Normal School when first constructed, and was originally a teachers college. There are many notable landmarks on campus, including Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Palm Walk, which is lined by 111 palm trees; Charles Trumbull Hayden Library; the University Club building; Margaret Gisolo Dance Theatre; Arizona State University Art Museum; and University Bridge. Furthermore, the Tempe campus is home to Barrett, The Honors College. In addition, the campus has an extensive public art collection; It was named "the single most impressive venue for contemporary art in Arizona" by "Art in America" magazine. Against the northwest edge of campus is the Mill Avenue district (part of downtown Tempe), which has a college atmosphere that attracts many students to its restaurants and bars. Students also have Tempe Marketplace, a shopping, dining and entertainment center with an outdoor setting near the northeast border of the campus. The Tempe campus is also home to all of the university's athletic facilities.
West campus.
Established in 1984 by the Arizona legislature, the West campus sits on in a suburban area of northwest Phoenix. The West campus lies about northwest of Downtown Phoenix, and about northwest of the Tempe campus. The West campus is designated as a Phoenix Point of Pride and is nearly completely powered by a solar array. The campus serves more than 4,000 students enrolled in at least a single course and offers more than 100 degree programs from the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, W. P. Carey School of Business, College of Public Service and Community Solutions, College of Health Solutions, and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Patterned after the University of Oxford's architecture, the West campus provides modern amenities in its residence halls, dining facilities and the Sun Devil Fitness Complex and swimming pool. Subtropical landscaping, fountains and outdoor enclaves are third-space opportunities for students to socialize or collaborate while pursuing any of the undergraduate and graduate degree programs available.
Polytechnic campus.
Founded in 1996 as "ASU East", the ASU Polytechnic campus serves more than 4,800 students and is home to more than 130 bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in professional and technical programs through the W. P. Carey School of Business/Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, and College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, and focuses on professional and technological programs including simulators and lab space in various fields of study. The campus is in southeast Mesa, Arizona, approximately southeast of the Tempe campus, and southeast of downtown Phoenix. The Polytechnic campus sits on the former Williams Air Force Base.
Downtown Phoenix campus.
The Downtown Phoenix campus was established in 2006 on the north side of Downtown Phoenix. The campus has an urban design, with several large modern academic buildings intermingled with commercial and retail office buildings. In addition to the new buildings, the campus included the adaptive reuse of several existing structures, including a 1930s era Post Office that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Serving 11,465 students, the campus houses the College of Health Solutions, College of Integrative Arts and Sciences, College of Nursing and Health Innovation, College of Public Service and Community Solutions, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. In 2013, the campus added the Sun Devil Fitness Center in conjunction with the original YMCA building. ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law relocated from Tempe to the Downtown Phoenix campus in 2016.
ASU Colleges at Lake Havasu City.
In response to demands for lower-cost public higher education in Arizona, ASU developed the small, undergraduate-only college in Lake Havasu City. ASU Colleges are teaching-focused and provide a selection of popular undergraduate majors. The Lake Havasu City campus offers undergraduate degrees at lower tuition rates than other Arizona research universities and a 15-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio.
ASU Online.
ASU Online offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate degree programs through an online platform. The degree programs delivered online hold the same accreditation as the university's traditional face-to-face programs. ASU Online is headquartered at ASU's SkySong campus in Scottsdale, Arizona. ASU Online was ranked in the Top 4 for Best Online Bachelor's Programs by "U.S. News & World Report".
Online students are taught by the same faculty and receive the same diploma as on-campus students. ASU online programs allow students to learn in highly interactive environments through student collaboration and through technological personalized learning environments.
In April 2015, ASU Online announced a partnership with edX to form a one of a kind program called the Global Freshman Academy. The program is open to all potential students. The students do not need to submit a high school transcript or GPA to apply for the courses. They only pay for the courses ($600 per credit) after they have passed the course if they want to earn the credits.
As of spring 2017, more than 25,000 students were enrolled through ASU Online. In June 2014, ASU Online and Starbucks announced a partnership called the Starbucks College Achievement Plan. The Starbucks College Achievement Plan offers all benefits-eligible employees full-tuition coverage when they enroll in any one of ASU Online's undergraduate degree programs.
Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, in collaboration with ASU.
In 2016, Mayo Clinic and ASU formed a new platform for health care education and research: the Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care. Beginning in 2017, Mayo Clinic School of Medicine students in Phoenix and Scottsdale are among the first to earn a certificate in the Science of Health Care Delivery, with the option to earn a master's degree in the Science of Health Care Delivery through ASU.
Thunderbird Campus.
Thunderbird School of Global Management is one of the newest units of "Arizona State University Knowledge Enterprise." The flagship campus was in Glendale, Arizona, at Thunderbird Field No. 1, a former military airfield from which it derives its name, until 2018 when the Thunderbird School relocated to the Downtown area.
Barrett and O'Connor Center.
Following a nearly 15-year presence in Washington, D.C., through more minor means, ASU opened the Barrett and O'Connor Center in 2018 to solidify the university's contacts with the capital city. The center houses ASU's D.C.-based academic programs, including the Washington Bureau of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law Rule of Law and Governance program, the Capital Scholars program, and the McCain Institute's Next Generation Leaders program, among many others. In addition to hosting classes and internships on-site, special lectures and seminars taught from the Barrett & O'Connor Washington Center are connected to classrooms in Arizona through video-conferencing technology. The Barrett and O'Connor center is located at 1800 I St NW, Washington, DC 20006, very close to the White House.
ASU California Center in Downtown Los Angeles.
ASU's California Center is located in Los Angeles at the Herald Examiner Building. The center offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs, executive education, workshops and seminars.
Academics.
Admissions.
As of August 2022, ASU had a systemwide enrolled student population (both in-person and online) of 140,759, a 4% increase over the systemwide total in 2021. Out of that total, approximately 79,000 students were enrolled in-person at one of the ASU campuses, an increase of 3.2% from 2021. Just over 61,000 students were enrolled in ASU Online courses and programs as of August 2022, an increase of roughly 7% in online student enrollment from the previous year.
According to the "U.S. News & World Report", for the 2022-2023 academic year ASU admitted 88% of all freshman applicants and classified the school’s admissions in the “selective” category. The average high school GPA of incoming first-year students for the 2022-23 academic year was 3.54.
Barrett, The Honors College is ranked among the top honors programs in the nation. Although there are no set minimum admissions criteria for Barrett College, the average GPA of Fall 2017 incoming freshmen was 3.78, with an average SAT score of 1380 and an average ACT score of 29. The Honors college has 7,236 students, with 719 National Merit Scholars.
ASU enrolls 10,268 international students, 14.3% of the total student population. The international student body represents more than 150 nations. The Institute of International Education ranked ASU as the top public university in the U.S. for hosting international students in 2016–2017.
In June 2022, Arizona State University was designated a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) by the United States Department of Education in recognition of the fact that for the first time in the school’s history, during the Fall Semester of 2021 Hispanic students comprised over 25% of the university’s total undergraduate enrollment.
Academic programs.
ASU offers over 350 majors to undergraduate students, and more than 100 graduate programs leading to numerous masters and doctoral degrees in the liberal arts and sciences, design and arts, engineering, journalism, education, business, law, nursing, public policy, technology, and sustainability. These programs are divided into 16 colleges and schools that are spread across ASU's six campuses. ASU also offers the 4+1 accelerated program, which allows students in their senior year to attain their master's degree the following year. The 4+1 accelerated program is not associated with all majors; for example, in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College the 4+1 accelerated program only works with Education Exploratory majors. ASU uses a plus-minus grading system with highest cumulative GPA awarded of 4.0 (at time of graduation). Arizona State University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. ASU is one of only four universities in the country to offer a certificate in veterans studies.
Rankings.
The 2021 "U.S. News & World Report" ratings ranked ASU tied for 103rd among universities in the United States and tied for 146th globally. It was also tied for 46th among public universities in the United States, and was ranked 1st among "most innovative schools", tied for 16th in "best undergraduate teaching", 131st in "best value schools", and tied for 191st in "top performers on social mobility" among national universities in the U.S. The innovation ranking, new for 2016, was determined by a poll of top college officials nationwide asking them to name institutions "that are making the most innovative improvements in terms of curriculum, faculty, students, campus life, technology or facilities."
ASU is ranked 42nd–56th in the U.S. and 101st–150th in the world among the top 1000 universities in the 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities, and 67th U.S./183rd world by the 2020–21 Center for World University Rankings. "Money" magazine ranked ASU 124th in the country out of 739 schools evaluated for its 2020 "Best Colleges for Your Money" edition. "The Wall Street Journal" ranks ASU 5th in the nation for producing the best-qualified graduates, determined by a nationwide poll of corporate recruiters.
ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication has been named one of America's top 10 journalism schools by national publications and organizations for more than a decade. The rankings include: College Magazine (10th), Quality Education and Jobs (6th), and International Student (1st).
For its efforts as a national leader in campus sustainability, ASU was named one of the top 6 "Cool Schools" by the Sierra Club in 2017, was named one of the Princeton Review's most sustainable schools in 2015 and earned an "A−" grade on the 2011 College Sustainability Green Report Card.
Research and Institutes.
ASU is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". The university spent $673 million in fiscal year 2020, ranking it 43rd nationally. ASU is a NASA designated national space-grant institute and a member of the Universities Research Association. In 2023, it became a member of the Association of American Universities, an elite organization of 71 research universities in the U.S. and Canada. The university is currently in the top 10 for NASA-funded research expenditures.
The university has raised more than $999 million in external funding, and more than 180 companies based on ASU innovations have been launched through the university's exclusive intellectual property management company, Skysong Innovations. The U.S. National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association rank ASU in the top 10 nationally and No. 11 globally for U.S. patents awarded to universities in 2020, along with MIT, Stanford and Harvard. ASU jumped to 10th place from 17th in 2017, according to the U.S. National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association. Since its inception, Skysong Innovations has fostered the launch of more than 180 companies based on ASU innovations, and attracted more than $999 million in venture funding, including $96 million in fiscal year 2016 alone. In 2013, the Sweden-based University Business Incubator (UBI) Index, named ASU as one of the top universities in the world for business incubation, ranking 17th. UBI reviewed 550 universities and associated business incubators from around the world using an assessment framework that takes more than 50 performance indicators into consideration. As an example, one of ASU's spin-offs (Heliae Development, LLC) raised more than $28 million in venture capital in 2013 alone. In June 2016, ASU received the Entrepreneurial University Award from the Deshpande Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports social entrepreneurship and innovation.
The university's push to create various institutes has led to greater funding and an increase in the number of researchers in multiple fields. ASU Knowledge Enterprise (KE) advances research, innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, economic development and international development. KE is led by Sally C. Morton. KE supports several interdisciplinary research institutes and initiatives: J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Interplanetary Initiative, Institute for Humanities Research, NewSpace Initiative, Biodesign Institute, Institute for the Science of Teaching and Learning, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, Institute for Social Science Research, LightWorks, McCain Institute for International Leadership, Decision Theater Network, Flexible Electronics and Display Center, Complex Adaptive Systems @ ASU, Global Security Initiative and the student-run Luminosity Lab. Other notable and famed institutes at ASU are The Institute of Human Origins, L. William Seidman Research Institute (W. P. Carey School of Business), Learning Sciences Institute, Herberger Research Institute, and the Hispanic Research Center. The Biodesign Institute for instance, conducts research on issues such as biomedical and health care outcomes as part of a collaboration with Mayo Clinic to diagnose and treat diseases. The institute has attracted more than $760 million in external funding, filed 860 invention disclosures, nearly 200 patents, and generated 35 spinout companies based on its research. In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Biodesign developed a rapid, saliva-based testing option for the university community, and partnered with the Arizona Department of Health Services to make the saliva-based COVID test available to the public. In October 2021, Biodesign announced their millionth test. The institute also is heavily involved in sustainability research, primarily through reuse of CO2 via biological feedback and various biomasses (e.g. algae) to synthesize clean biofuels. Heliae is a Biodesign Institute spin-off and much of its business centers on algal-derived, high value products. Furthermore, the institute is heavily involved in security research including technology that can detect biological and chemical changes in the air and water. The university has received more than $30 million in funding from the Department of Defense for adapting this technology for use in detecting the presence of biological and chemical weapons. Research conducted at the Biodesign Institute by ASU professor Charles Arntzen made possible the production of Ebola antibodies in specially modified tobacco plants that researchers at Mapp Biopharmaceutical used to create the Ebola therapeutic ZMapp. The treatment is credited with saving the lives of two aid workers. For his work, Arntzen was named the No. 1 honoree among Fast Company's annual "100 Most Creative People in Business" 2015 awards.
World-renowned scholars have been integral to the successes of the institutes associated with the university. ASU students and researchers have been selected as Marshall, Truman, Rhodes, and Fulbright Scholars with the university ranking 1st overall in the U.S. for Fulbright Scholar awards to faculty and 5th overall for recipients of Fulbright U.S. Student awards in the 2015–2016 academic year. ASU faculty includes Nobel Laureates, Royal Society members, National Academy members, and members of the National Institutes of Health, to name a few. ASU Professor Donald Johanson, who discovered the 3.18 million year old fossil hominid Lucy (Australopithecus) in Ethiopia, established the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) in 1981. The institute was first established in Berkeley, California, and later moved to ASU in 1997. As one of the leading research organization in the United States devoted to the science of human origins, IHO pursues a transdisciplinary strategy for field and analytical paleoanthropological research. The Herberger Institute Research Center supports the scholarly inquiry, applied research and creative activity of more than 400 faculty and nearly 5,000 students. The renowned ASU Art Museum, Herberger Institute Community Programs, urban design, and other outreach and initiatives in the arts community round out the research and creative activities of the Herberger Institute. Among well known professors within the Herberger Institute is Johnny Saldaña of the School of Theatre and Film. Saldaña received the 1996 Distinguished Book Award and the prestigious Judith Kase Cooper Honorary Research Award, both from the American Alliance for Theatre Education (AATE). The Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability is the center of ASU's initiatives focusing on practical solutions to environmental, economic, and social challenges. The institute has partnered with various cities, universities, and organizations from around the world to address issues affecting the global community.
ASU is also involved with NASA in the field of space exploration. To meet the needs of NASA programs, ASU built the LEED Gold Certified, 298,000-square-foot Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV (ISTB 4) at a cost of $110 million in 2012. The building includes space for the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) and includes labs and other facilities for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. One of the main projects at ISTB 4 includes the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES). Although ASU built the spectrometers aboard the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity, OTES will be the first major scientific instrument completely designed and built at ASU for a NASA space mission. Phil Christensen, the principal investigator for the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES), is a Regents' Professor at ASU. He also serves as the principal investigator for the Mars Odyssey THEMIS instruments, as well as co-investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers. ASU scientists are responsible for the Mini-TES instruments aboard the Mars Exploration Rovers. The Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies, which is home to rare Martian meteorites and exotic fragments from space, and the Mars Space Flight Facility are on ASU's Tempe campus. In 2017, Lindy Elkins-Tanton of ASU was selected by NASA to lead a deep space mission to Psyche, a metal asteroid believed to be a former planetary core. The $450 million project is the first NASA mission led by the university.
The Army Research Laboratory extended funding for the Arizona State University Flexible Display Center (FDC) in 2009 with a $50 million grant. The university has partnered with the Pentagon on such endeavors since 2004 with an initial $43.7 million grant. In 2012, researchers at the center created the world's largest flexible full-color organic light-emitting diode (OLED), which at the time was 7.4 inches. The following year, the FEDC staff broke their own world record, producing a 14.7-inch version of the display. The technology delivers high-performance while remaining cost-effective during the manufacturing process. Vibrant colors, high switching speeds for video and reduced power consumption are some of the features the center has integrated into the technology. In 2012, ASU eliminated the need for specialized equipment and processing, thereby reducing costs compared to competitive approaches.
Luminosity Lab.
The Luminosity Lab is a student-led research and development think tank located on the Tempe campus of ASU. It was founded in 2016 by Dr. Mark Naufel. Fifteen students from multiple disciplines were selected for the initial team.
Notable projects.
NASA
A team of students from the Luminosity Lab were finalists in NASA's 2020 BIG Idea Challenge, a national competition to build a probe to explore the darkened regions of the Moon.
A team of students from the Luminosity Lab were among 22 finalists in the Space Robotics Challenge, one of NASA's Centennial Challenges.
X-Prize
In Summer 2020, Salesforce CEO Marc Beinhoff partnered with CNBC's Jim Cramer and the X-Prize Foundation, an international mask design competition with an overall prize purse of $1 million. A team of five students from the Luminosity Lab were the winners of the X-prize Next-gen Mask challenge, winning $500,000. The team received national and international press coverage and recognition as the result of being named the top mask of the competition.
Libraries.
ASU's faculty and students are served by nine libraries across five campuses: Hayden Library, Noble Library, Music Library and Design and the Arts Library on the Tempe campus; Fletcher Library on the West campus; Downtown Phoenix campus library and Ross-Blakley Law Library at the Downtown Phoenix campus; Polytechnic campus library; and the Thunderbird Library at the Thunderbird campus.
, ASU's libraries held 4.5 million volumes. The Arizona State University library system is ranked the 34th largest research library in the United States and Canada, according to criteria established by the Association of Research Libraries that measures various aspects of quality and size of the collection. The university continues to grow its special collections, such as the recent addition of a privately held collection of manuscripts by poet Rubén Darío.
Hayden Library is on Cady Mall in the center of the Tempe campus and is currently under renovation. It opened in 1966 and is the largest library facility at ASU. An expansion in 1989 created the subterranean entrance underneath Hayden Lawn and is attached to the above-ground portion of the original library. There are two floors underneath Hayden Lawn with a landmark known as the "Beacon of Knowledge" rising from the center. The underground library lights the beacon at night.
The 2013 Capital Improvement Plan, approved by the Arizona Board of Regents, incorporates a $35 million repurposing and renovation project for Hayden Library. The open air moat area that serves as an outdoor study space will be enclosed to increase indoor space for the library. Along with increasing space and renovating the facility, the front entrance of Hayden Library was rebuilt.
Sustainability.
, ASU was the top institution of higher education in the United States for solar generating capacity. Today, the university generates over 24 megawatts (MW) of electricity from on-campus solar arrays. This is an increase over the June 2012 total of 15.3 MW. ASU has 88 solar photovoltaic (PV) installations containing 81,424 solar panels across four campuses and the ASU Research Park. An additional 29 MWdc solar installation was dedicated at Red Rock, Pinal County, Arizona, in January 2017, bringing the university's solar generating capacity to 50 MWdc.
Additionally, six wind turbines installed on the roof of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability building on the Tempe campus have operated since October 2008. Under normal conditions, the six turbines produce enough electricity to power approximately 36 computers.
In 2021, ASU researchers installed a passive radiative cooling film to local Tempe bus shelters to cool temperatures during the daytime by radiating heat to space with zero energy use. The film was produced by 3M and cooled shelter temperatures by 4°C. It was one of the first applications of the cooling film in the country.
ASU's School of Sustainability was the first school in the United States to introduce degrees in the field of sustainability. ASU's School of Sustainability is part of the Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. The School was established in spring 2007 and began enrolling undergraduates in fall 2008. The school offers majors, minors, and a number of certificates in sustainability. ASU is also home to the Sustainability Consortium, which was founded by Jay Golden in 2009.
The School of Sustainability has been essential in establishing the university as "a leader in the academics of sustainable business". The university is widely considered to be one of the most ambitious and principled organizations for embedding sustainable practices into its operating model. The university has embraced several challenging sustainability goals. Among the numerous benchmarks outlined in the university's prospectus, is the creation of a large recycling and composting operation that will eliminate 30% and divert 90% of waste from landfills. This endeavor will be aided by educating students about the benefits of avoiding overconsumption that contributes to excessive waste. Sustainability courses have been expanded to attain this goal and many of the university's individual colleges and schools have integrated such material into their lectures and courses. Second, ASU is on track to reduce its rate of water consumption by 50%. The university's most aggressive benchmark is to be the first, large research university to achieve carbon neutrality as it pertains to its Scope 1, 2 and non-transportation Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Traditions.
Maroon and gold.
Gold is the oldest color associated with Arizona State University and dates back to 1896 when the school was named the Tempe Normal School. Maroon and white were later added to the color scheme in 1898. Gold signifies the "golden promise" of ASU. The promise includes every student receiving a valuable educational experience. Gold also signifies the sunshine Arizona is famous for; including the power of the sun and its influence on the climate and the economy. The first uniforms worn by athletes associated with the university were black and white when the "Normals" were the name of the athletic teams. The student section, known as The Inferno, wears gold on game days. Maroon signifies sacrifice and bravery while white represents the balance of negativity and positivity. As it is in the city of Tempe, Arizona, the school's colors adorn the neighboring buildings during big game days and festive events.
Mascot and Spirit Squad.
Sparky the Sun Devil is the mascot of Arizona State University and was named by vote of the student body on November 8, 1946. Sparky often travels with the team across the country and has been at every football bowl game in which the university has participated. The university's mascot is not to be confused with the athletics department's logo, the "Pitchfork" or hand gesture used by those associated with the university. The new logo is used on various sport facilities, uniforms and athletics documents. Arizona State Teacher's College had a different mascot and the sports teams were known as the Owls and later, the Bulldogs. When the school was first established, the Tempe Normal School's teams were simply known as the Normals. Sparky is visible on the sidelines of every home game played in Sun Devil Stadium or other ASU athletic facilities. His routine at football games includes pushups after every touchdown scored by the Sun Devils. He is aided by Sparky's Crew, male yell leaders that must meet physical requirements to participate as members. The female members are known as the Spirit Squad and are categorized into a dance line and spirit line. They are the official squad that represents ASU. The spirit squad competes every year at the ESPN Universal Dance Association (UDA) College Nationals in the Jazz and Hip-Hop categories. They were chosen by the UDA to represent the US at the World Dance Championship 2013 in the Jazz category.
"A" Mountain.
A letter has existed on the slope of the mountain since 1918. A "T" followed by an "N" were the first letters to grace the landmark. Tempe Butte, home to "A" Mountain, has had the "A" installed on the slope of its south face since 1938 and is visible from campus just to the south. The original "A" was destroyed by vandals in 1952 with pipe bombs and a new "A", constructed of reinforced concrete, was built in 1955. The vandals were never identified but many speculate the conspirators were students from the rival in-state university (University of Arizona). Many ancient Hohokam petroglyphs were destroyed by the bomb; nevertheless, many of these archeological sites around the mountain remain. There are many traditions surrounding "A" Mountain, including a revived "guarding of the 'A'" in which students camp on the mountainside before games with rival schools. "Whitewashing" of the "A" is a tradition in which incoming freshmen paint the letter white during orientation week and is repainted gold before the first football game of the season. Whitewashing dates back to the 1930s and it grows in popularity every year, with thousands of students going up to paint the "A" every year.
Lantern Walk and Homecoming.
The Lantern Walk is one of the oldest traditions at ASU and dates back to 1917. It is considered one of ASU's "most cherished" traditions and is an occasion used to mark the work of those associated with ASU throughout history. Anyone associated with ASU is free to participate in the event, including students, alumni, faculty, employees, and friends. This differs slightly from the original tradition in which the seniors would carry lanterns up "A" Mountain followed by the freshman. The senior class president would describe ASU's traditions and the freshman would repeat an oath of allegiance to the university. It was described as a tradition of "good will between the classes" and a way of ensuring new students would continue the university's traditions with honor. In modern times, the participants walk through campus and follow a path up to "A" Mountain to "light up" Tempe. Keynote speakers, performances, and other events are used to mark the occasion. The night is culminated with a fireworks display. The Lantern Walk was held after the Spring Semester (June) but is now held the week before Homecoming, a tradition that dates to 1924 at ASU. It is held in the fall and in conjunction with a football game.
Victory Bell.
In 2012, Arizona State University reintroduced the tradition of ringing a bell after each win for the football team. The ROTC cadets associated with the university transport the bell to various events and ring it after Sun Devil victories. The first Victory Bell, in various forms, was used in the 1930s but the tradition faded in the 1970s when the bell was removed from Memorial Union for renovations. The bell cracked and was no longer capable of ringing. That bell is on the southeast corner of Sun Devil Stadium, near the entrance to the student section. That bell, given to the university in the late 1960s, is painted gold and is a campus landmark.
Sun Devil Marching Band, Devil Walk and songs of the university.
The Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band, created in 1915 and known as the "Pride of the Southwest", was the first of only two marching bands in the Pac-12 to receive the prestigious Sudler Trophy. The John Philip Sousa Foundation awarded the band the trophy in 1991. The Sun Devil Marching Band remains one of only 28 bands in the nation to have earned the designation. The band performs at every football game played in Sun Devil Stadium. In addition, the Sun Devil Marching Band has made appearances in the Fiesta Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Holiday Bowl, and the Super Bowl XLII, in addition to many others. Smaller ensembles of band members perform at other sport venues including basketball games at Wells Fargo Arena and baseball games. The Devil Walk is held in Wells Fargo Arena by the football team and involves a more formal introduction of the players to the community; a new approach to the tradition added in 2012 with the arrival of head coach Todd Graham. It begins 2 hours and 15 minutes prior to the game and allows the players to establish rapport with the fans. The walk ends as the team passes the band and fans lined along the path to Sun Devil Stadium. The walk was discontinued when Graham was fired. However in 2022, interim coach Shaun Aguano announced that the Sun Devil Walk is returning. The most recognizable songs played by the band are "Alma Mater" and ASU's fight songs titled "Maroon and Gold" and the "Al Davis Fight Song". "Alma Mater" was composed by former Music Professor and Director of Sun Devil Marching Band (then known as Bulldog Marching Band), Miles A. Dresskell, in 1937. "Maroon and Gold" was authored by former Director of Sun Devil Marching Band, Felix E. McKernan, in 1948. The "Al Davis Fight Song" (also known as "Go, Go Sun Devils" and "Arizona State University Fight Song") was composed by ASU alumnus Albert Oliver Davis in the 1940s without any lyrics. Recently lyrics were added to the song.
Curtain of Distraction.
The Curtain of Distraction is a tradition that appears at every men's and women's basketball game. The tradition started in 2013 in order to get fans to the games. In the second half of basketball games, a portable "curtain" opens up in front of the opponents shooting a free throw and students pop out of the curtain to try and distract the opponent. Some of the skits include an Elvis impersonator, people rubbing mayonnaise on their chest, and people wearing unicorn heads. Sometimes celebrities come out of the Curtain. Most notably in 2016, former Olympian Michael Phelps came out of the curtain wearing a Speedo during a game against Oregon State. ESPN estimated that distraction may give ASU a one-to-three point advantage.
Student life.
Extracurricular programs.
Arizona State University has an active extracurricular involvement program. Located on the second floor of the Student Pavilion at the Tempe campus, Educational Outreach and Student Services (EOSS) provides opportunities for student involvement through clubs, sororities, fraternities, community service, leadership, student government, and co-curricular programming.
The oldest student organization on campus is Devils' Advocates, the volunteer campus tour guide organization, which was founded in 1966 as a way to more competitively recruit National Merit Scholars. There are over 1,100 ASU alumni who can call themselves Advos.
Changemaker Central is a student-run centralized resource hub for student involvement in social entrepreneurship, civic engagement, service-learning, and community service that catalyzes student-driven social change. Changemaker Central locations have opened on all campuses in fall 2011, providing flexible, creative workspaces for everyone in the ASU community. The project is entirely student run and advances ASU's institutional commitments to social embeddedness and entrepreneurship. The space allows students to meet, work and join new networks and collaborative enterprises while taking advantage of ASU's many resources and opportunities for engagement. Changemaker Central has signature programs, including Changemaker Challenge, that support students in their journey to become changemakers by creating communities of support around new solutions/ideas and increasing access to early stage seed funding. The Changemaker Challenge seeks undergraduate and graduate students from across the university who are dedicated to making a difference in our local and global communities through innovation. Students can win up to $10,000 to make their innovative project, prototype, venture or community partnership ideas happen.
In addition to Changemaker Central, the Greek community (Greek Life) at Arizona State University has been important in binding students to the university, and providing social outlets. ASU is also home to one of the nation's first and fastest growing gay fraternities, Sigma Phi Beta, founded in 2003; considered a sign of the growing university's commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion.
The second Eta chapter of Phrateres, a non-exclusive, non-profit social-service club, was installed here in 1958 and became inactive in the 1990s.
There are multiple councils for Greek Life, including the Interfraternity Council (IFC), Multicultural Greek Council (MGC), National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations (NALFO), National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), Panhellenic Association (PHA), and the Professional Fraternity Council (PFC).
Student media.
"The State Press" is the university's independent, student-operated news publication. "The State Press" covers news and events on all four ASU campuses. Student editors and managers are solely responsible for the content of the "State Press" website. These publications are overseen by an independent board and guided by a professional adviser employed by the university.
"The Downtown Devil" is a student-run news publication website for the Downtown Phoenix Campus, produced by students at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
ASU has one student-run radio station, Blaze Radio. Blaze Radio is a completely student-run broadcast station owned and funded by the Cronkite School of Journalism. The station broadcasts using a 24-hour online stream on their official website. Blaze Radio plays music 24 hours a day and features daily student-hosted news, music, and sports specialty programs.
Student government.
Associated Students of Arizona State University (ASASU) is the student government at Arizona State University. It is composed of the Undergraduate Student Government and the Graduate & Professional Student Association (GPSA). Each ASU campus has a specific USG; USG Tempe (Tempe), USGD (Downtown), USG Polytechnic (Polytechnic) and USG West (West). Members and officers of ASASU are elected annually by the student body.
The Residence Hall Association (RHA) of Arizona State University is the student government for every ASU student living on-campus. Each ASU campus has an RHA that operates independently. RHA's purpose is to improve the quality of residence hall life and provide a cohesive voice for the residents by addressing the concerns of the on-campus populations to university administrators and other campus organizations; providing cultural, diversity, educational, and social programming; establishing and working with individual community councils.
Athletics.
Arizona State University's Division I athletic teams are called the Sun Devils, which is also the nickname used to refer to students and alumni of the university. They compete in the Pac-12 Conference in 20 varsity sports. Historically, the university has highly performed in men's, women's, and mixed archery; men's, women's, and mixed badminton; women's golf; women's swimming and diving; baseball; and football. Arizona State University's NCAA Division I-A program competes in 9 varsity sports for men and 11 for women. ASU's athletic director is Ray Anderson, former executive vice president of football operations for the National Football League. Anderson replaced Steve Patterson, who was appointed to the position in 2012, replacing Lisa Love, the former Senior Associate Athletic Director at the University of Southern California. Love was responsible for the hiring of coaches Herb Sendek, the men's basketball coach, and Dennis Erickson, the men's football coach. Erickson was fired in 2011 and replaced by Todd Graham. In December 2017, ASU announced that Herm Edwards would replace Graham as the head football coach. The rival to Arizona State University is University of Arizona.
ASU has won 24 national collegiate team championships in the following sports: baseball (5), men's golf (2), women's golf (8), men's gymnastics (1), softball (2), men's indoor track (1), women's indoor track (2), men's outdoor track (1), women's outdoor track (1), and wrestling (1).
In September 2009, criticism over the seven-figure salaries earned by various coaches at Arizona's public universities (including ASU) prompted the Arizona Board of Regents to re-evaluate the salary and benefit policy for athletic staff. With the 2011 expansion of the Pac-12 Conference, a new $3 billion contract for revenue sharing among all the schools in the conference was established. With the infusion of funds, the salary issue and various athletic department budgeting issues at ASU were addressed. The Pac-12's new media contract with ESPN allowed ASU to hire a new coach in 2012. A new salary and bonus package (maximum bonus of $2.05 million) was instituted and is one of the most lucrative in the conference. ASU also plans to expand its athletic facilities with a public-private investment strategy to create an amateur sports district that can accommodate the Pan American Games and operate as an Olympic Training Center. The athletic district will include a $300 million renovation of Sun Devil Stadium that will include new football facilities. The press box and football offices in Sun Devil Stadium were remodeled in 2012.
Arizona State Sun Devils football was founded in 1896 under coach Fred Irish. The team has played in the 2012 Fight Hunger Bowl, the 2011 Las Vegas bowl, the 2016 Cactus Bowl, and the 2007 Holiday Bowl. The Sun Devils played in the 1997 Rose Bowl and won the Rose Bowl in 1987. The team has appeared in the Fiesta Bowl in 1983, 1977, 1975, 1973, 1972, and 1971 winning 5 of 6. In 1970, and 1975, they were champions of the NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship. The Sun Devils were Pac-12 Champions in 1986, 1996, and 2007. Altogether, the football team has 17 Conference Championships and has participated in a total of 29 bowl games as of the 2015–2016 season with a 14–14–1 record in those games.
ASU Sun Devils Hockey competed with NCAA Division 1 schools for the first time in 2012, largely due to the success of the program. In 2016, they began as a full-time Division I team.
Eight members of ASU's Women's Swimming and Diving Team were selected to the Pac-10 All-Academic Team on April 5, 2010. In addition, five member of ASU's Men's Swimming and Diving Team were selected to the Pac-10 All-Academic Team on April 6, 2010.
In April 2015, Bobby Hurley was hired as the men's basketball coach, replacing Herb Sendek. Previously, Hurley was the head coach at the University at Buffalo for the UB Bulls as well as an assistant coach at Rhode Island and Wagner University.
In 2015, Bob Bowman was hired as the head swim coach. Previously, Bowman trained Michael Phelps through his Olympic career.
As of Fall 2015, ASU students, including those enrolled in online courses, may avail of a free ticket to all ASU athletic events upon presentation of a valid student ID and reserving one online through their ASU and Ticketmaster account. Tickets may be limited or not available in the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 school years due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Alumni.
Arizona State University has produced over 400,000 alumni worldwide. The Arizona State University Alumni Association is on the Tempe campus in Old Main.
Political figures.
The university has produced many notable figures over its 125-year history, including influential U.S. senator Carl Hayden and Barbara Barrett, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Finland under President George W. Bush and served under President Donald Trump as the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, attained her bachelor's, master's, and law degrees from ASU.
Other notable alumni include nine current or former U.S. Representatives, including Barry Goldwater Jr., Ed Pastor, and Matt Salmon. The economy minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansoori, earned a bachelor's degree in engineering at ASU. Arizona governors Doug Ducey, Jane Dee Hull, and Evan Mecham also attended Arizona State. U.S. District Court Judge Michael T. Liburdi attended Arizona State for both his undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees. Peterson Zah, who was the first Navajo president and the last chairman of the Navajo Nation, is an ASU graduate.
Business leaders.
Ira A. Fulton, philanthropist and founder of Fulton Homes, Kate Spade, namesake and cofounder of Kate Spade New York, and Larry Carter, CFO of Cisco Systems attended ASU. Alumnus Kevin Warren is the COO of the Minnesota Vikings, and the highest ranking African-American executive working on the business side of an NFL team.
Athletes.
Many world renowned athletes have attended the school, including Silver Star recipient Pat Tillman, who left his National Football League career to enlist in the United States Army in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. World Golf Hall of Fame member Phil Mickelson, Baseball Hall of Fame member Reggie Jackson, Major League Baseball home run king Barry Bonds, National Basketball Association All-Star James Harden, and 2011 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Terrell Suggs are all alumni of ASU. ASU alumni enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame include: Curley Culp, Mike Haynes, John Henry Johnson, Randall McDaniel, and Charley Taylor.
Other notable athletes that attended ASU are: Major League Baseball All-Stars Ian Kinsler, Dustin Pedroia, Sal Bando, and Paul Lo Duca; National Basketball Association All-Stars Lionel Hollins and Fat Lever, and NBA All-Star coach Byron Scott; National Football League Pro Bowl selections Jake Plummer and Danny White; 2021 U.S. Open champion golfer Jon Rahm and three-time Olympic gold medalist swimmers Melissa Belote and Jan Henne, and two-time Olympian and double-Olympic gold medalist Megan Jendrick.
Actors, artists, comedians, commentators, and writers.
Celebrities who have attended ASU include: "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host Jimmy Kimmel; Steve Allen, who was the original host of "The Tonight Show"; Academy Award-nominated actor Nick Nolte; 11-Time Grammy Award winning singer Linda Ronstadt; singer-songwriter Carolyne Mas; "Saturday Night Live" and "Tommy Boy" actor David Spade; "Wonder Woman" actress Lynda Carter; and "Road to Perdition" actor Tyler Hoechlin. Influential writers and novelists include: Allison DuBois, whose novels and work inspired the TV miniseries "Medium"; novelist Amanda Brown; author and spiritual teacher Howard Falco; and best-selling author and Doctor of Animal Science Temple Grandin.
Journalists and commentators include former Monday Night Football announcer, and Sunday Night Football announcer Al Michaels, and writer and cartoonist Jerry Dumas, who is best known for his "Sam and Silo" comic strip. Radio host Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan and actress Jane Wyman, also briefly attended. Conservative author, commentator, and popular historian Larry Schweikart, known nationally for writing the New York Times bestseller "A Patriot's History of the United States", attended ASU for his bachelor's and master's degrees.
Faculty.
ASU faculty have included former CNN host Aaron Brown, Academic Claude Olney, meta-analysis developer Gene V. Glass, feminist and author Gloria Feldt, physicist Paul Davies, and Pulitzer Prize winner and "The Ants" coauthor Bert Hölldobler. David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency theorist, is a professor of practice. Donald Johanson, who discovered the 3.18 million year old fossil hominid Lucy (Australopithecus) in Ethiopia, is also a professor, as well as George Poste, Chief Scientist for the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative. Former US senator Jeff Flake was appointed as a distinguished dean fellow on December 2, 2020. Nobel laureate faculty include Leland Hartwell, and Edward C. Prescott. On June 12, 2012, Elinor Ostrom, ASU's third Nobel laureate, died at the age of 78.
ASU faculty's achievements include:
Presidential visits.
Arizona State University has been visited by nine United States presidents. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to visit campus, speaking on the steps of Old Main on March 20, 1911, while in Arizona to dedicate the Roosevelt Dam. President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke at ASU's Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on January 29, 1972, at a memorial service for ASU alumnus Senator Carl T. Hayden. Future president Gerald R. Ford debated Senator Albert Gore, Sr. at Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on April 28, 1968, and Ford returned to the same building as a former president to give a lecture on February 24, 1984. President Jimmy Carter visited Arizona PBS at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on July 31, 2015, to promote a memoir. Future president Ronald Reagan gave a political speech at the school's Memorial Union in 1957, and returned to campus as a former president on March 20, 1989, delivering his first ever post-presidential speech at ASU's Wells Fargo Arena. President George H. W. Bush gave a lecture at Wells Fargo Arena on May 5, 1998.
President Bill Clinton became the first sitting president to visit ASU on October 31, 1996, speaking on the Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium lawn. He returned to ASU in 2006, and in 2014, President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton came to campus to host the Clinton Global Initiative University. President George W. Bush became the second sitting president to visit the school's campus when he debated Senator John Kerry at the university's Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium on October 13, 2004. President Barack Obama visited ASU as sitting president on May 13, 2009. President Obama delivered the commencement speech for the Spring 2009 Commencement Ceremony. President Obama had previously visited the school as a United States senator. President Richard Nixon did not visit ASU as president, but visited Phoenix as president on October 31, 1970, at an event that included a performance by the Arizona State University Band, which President Nixon acknowledged. As part of President Nixon's remarks, he stated that, "when I am in Arizona, Arizona State is number one."
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1864 | Astoria, Oregon | Astoria is a port city and the seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1811, Astoria is the oldest city in the state and was the first permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. The county is the northwest corner of Oregon, and Astoria is located on the south shore of the Columbia River, where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean. The city is named for John Jacob Astor, an investor and entrepreneur from New York City, whose American Fur Company founded Fort Astoria at the site and established a monopoly in the fur trade in the early 19th century. Astoria was incorporated by the Oregon Legislative Assembly on October 20, 1856.
The city is served by the deepwater Port of Astoria. Transportation includes the Astoria Regional Airport. U.S. Route 30 and U.S. Route 101 are the main highways, and the Astoria–Megler Bridge connects to neighboring Washington across the river. The population was 10,181 at the 2020 census.
History.
Prehistoric settlements.
During archeological excavations in Astoria and Fort Clatsop in 2012, trading items from American settlers with Native Americans were found, including Austrian glass beads and falconry bells. The present area of Astoria belonged to a large, prehistoric Native American trade system of the Columbia Plateau.
19th century.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1805–1806 at Fort Clatsop, a small log structure southwest of modern-day Astoria. The expedition had hoped a ship would come by that could take them back east, but instead, they endured a torturous winter of rain and cold. They later returned overland and by internal rivers, the way they had traveled west. Today, the fort has been recreated and is part of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.
In 1811, British explorer David Thompson, the first person known to have navigated the entire length of the Columbia River, reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria near the mouth of the river. He arrived two months after the Pacific Fur Company's ship, the "Tonquin". The fort constructed by the "Tonquin" party established Astoria as a U.S., rather than a British, settlement and became a vital post for American exploration of the continent. It was later used as an American claim in the Oregon boundary dispute with European nations.
The Pacific Fur Company, a subsidiary of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, was created to begin fur trading in the Oregon Country. During the War of 1812, in 1813, the company's officers sold its assets to their Canadian rivals, the North West Company, which renamed the site Fort George. The fur trade remained under British control until U.S. pioneers following the Oregon Trail began filtering into the town in the mid-1840s. The Treaty of 1818 established joint U.S. – British occupancy of the Oregon Country.
Washington Irving, a prominent American writer with a European reputation, was approached by John Jacob Astor to mythologize the three-year reign of his Pacific Fur Company. "Astoria" (1835), written while Irving was Astor's guest, promoted the importance of the region in the American psyche. In Irving's words, the fur traders were "Sinbads of the wilderness", and their venture was a staging point for the spread of American economic power into both the continental interior and outward in Pacific trade.
In 1846, the Oregon Treaty divided the mainland at the 49th parallel north, making Astoria officially part of the United States.
As the Oregon Territory grew and became increasingly more colonized by Americans, Astoria likewise grew as a port city near the mouth of the great river that provided the easiest access to the interior. The first U.S. post office west of the Rocky Mountains was established in Astoria in 1847 and official state incorporation in 1876.
Astoria attracted a host of immigrants beginning in the late 19th century: Nordic settlers, primarily Swedes, Swedish speaking Finns, and Chinese soon became larger parts of the population. The Nordic settlers mostly lived in Uniontown, near the present-day end of the Astoria–Megler Bridge, and took fishing jobs; the Chinese tended to do cannery work, and usually lived either downtown or in bunkhouses near the canneries. By the late 1800s, 22% of Astoria's population was Chinese. Astoria also had a significant population of Indians, especially Sikhs from Punjab; the Ghadar Party, a political movement among Indians on the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada to overthrow British rule in India, was officially founded on July 15, 1913, in Astoria.
20th and 21st centuries.
In 1883, and again in 1922, downtown Astoria was devastated by fire, partly because the buildings were constructed mostly of wood, a readily available material. The buildings were entirely raised off the marshy ground on wooden pilings. Even after the first fire, the same building format was used. In the second fire, flames spread quickly again, and the collapsing streets took out the water system. Frantic citizens resorted to dynamite, blowing up entire buildings to create fire stops.
Astoria has served as a port of entry for over a century and remains the trading center for the lower Columbia basin. In the early 1900s, the Callendar Navigation Company was an important transportation and maritime concern based in the city. It has long since been eclipsed in importance by Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, as economic hubs on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Astoria's economy centered on fishing, fish processing, and lumber. In 1945, about 30 canneries could be found along the Columbia River.
In the early 20th century, the North Pacific Brewing Company contributed substantially to the economic well-being of the town. Before 1902, the company was owned by John Kopp, who sold the firm to a group of five men, one of whom was Charles Robinson, who became the company's president in 1907. The main plant for the brewery was located on East Exchange Street.
As the Pacific salmon resource diminished, canneries were closed. In 1974, the Bumble Bee Seafoods corporation moved its headquarters out of Astoria and gradually reduced its presence until closing its last Astoria cannery in 1980. The lumber industry likewise declined in the late 20th century. Astoria Plywood Mill, the city's largest employer, closed in 1989. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway discontinued service to Astoria in 1996, as it did not provide a large enough market.
From 1921 to 1966, a ferry route across the Columbia River connected Astoria with Pacific County, Washington. In 1966, the Astoria–Megler Bridge was opened. The bridge completed U.S. Route 101 and linked Astoria with Washington on the opposite shore of the Columbia, replacing the ferry service.
Today, tourism, Astoria's growing art scene, and light manufacturing are the main economic activities of the city. Logging and fishing persist, but at a fraction of their former levels. Since 1982 it has been a port of call for cruise ships, after the city and port authority spent $10 million in pier improvements to accommodate these larger ships.
To avoid Mexican ports of call during the swine flu outbreak of 2009, many cruises were rerouted to include Astoria. The floating residential community MS "The World" visited Astoria in June 2009.
The town's seasonal sport fishing tourism has been active for several decades. Visitors attracted by heritage tourism and the historic elements of the city have supplanted fishing in the economy. Since the early 21st century, the microbrewery/brewpub scene and a weekly street market have helped popularize the area as a destination.
In addition to the replicated Fort Clatsop, another point of interest is the Astoria Column, a tower high, built atop Coxcomb Hill above the town. Its inner circular staircase allows visitors to climb to see a panoramic view of the town, the surrounding lands, and the Columbia flowing into the Pacific. The tower was built in 1926. Financing was provided by the Great Northern Railway, seeking to encourage tourists, and Vincent Astor, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, in commemoration of the city's role in the family's business history and the region's early history.
Since 1998, artistically inclined fishermen and women from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest have traveled to Astoria for the Fisher Poets Gathering, where poets and singers tell their tales to honor the fishing industry and lifestyle.
Another popular annual event is the Dark Arts Festival, which features music, art, dance, and demonstrations of craft such as blacksmithing and glassblowing, in combination with offerings of a large array of dark craft brews. Dark Arts Festival began as a small gathering at a community arts space. Now Fort George Brewery hosts the event, which draws hundreds of visitors and tour buses from Seattle.
Astoria is the western terminus of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a coast-to-coast bicycle touring route created in 1976 by the Adventure Cycling Association.
Three United States Coast Guard cutters: the "Steadfast", "Alert", and "Elm", are homeported in Astoria.
Geography.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are covered by water.
Climate.
Astoria lies within the Mediterranean climate zone (Köppen "Csb"), with cool winters and mild summers, although short heat waves can occur. Rainfall is most abundant in late fall and winter and is lightest in July and August, averaging about of rain each year. Snowfall is relatively rare, averaging under a year and frequently having none. Nevertheless, when conditions are ripe, significant snowfalls can occur.
Astoria's monthly average humidity is always over 80% throughout the year, with average monthly humidity reaching a high of 84% from November to March, with a low of 81% during May. The average relative humidity in Astoria is 89% in the morning and 73% in the afternoon.
Annually, an average of only 4.2 afternoons have temperatures reaching or higher, and readings are rare. Normally, only one or two nights per year occur when the temperature remains at or above . An average of 31 mornings have minimum temperatures at or below the freezing mark. The record high temperature was on July 1, 1942, and June 27, 2021. The record low temperature was on December 8, 1972, and on December 21, 1990. Even with such a cold record low, afternoons usually remain mild in winter. On average. the coldest daytime high is whereas the lowest daytime maximum on record is . Even during brief heat spikes, nights remain cool. The warmest overnight low is set as early in the year as in May during 2008. Nights close to that record are common with the normally warmest night of the year being at .
On average, 191 days have measurable precipitation. The wettest "water year", defined as October 1 through September 30 of the next year, was from 1915 to 1916 with and the driest from 2000 to 2001 with . The most rainfall in one month was in December 1933, and the most in 24 hours was on November 25, 1998. The most snowfall in one month was in January 1950, and the most snow in 24 hours was on December 11, 1922.
Demographics.
2010 census.
As of the 2010 census, 9,477 people, 4,288 households, and 2,274 families were residing in the city. The population density was . The 4,980 housing units had an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 89.2% White, 0.6% African American, 1.1% Native American, 1.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 3.9% from other races, and 3.3% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 9.8% of the population.
Of the 4,288 households, 24.6% had children under 18 living with them, 37.9% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.3% had a male householder with no wife present, and 47.0% were not families. About 38.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.1% had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 2.15, and the average family size was 2.86.
The median age in the city was 41.9 years; 20.3% of residents were under 18; 8.6% were between 18 and 24; 24.3% were from 25 to 44; 29.9% were from 45 to 64; and 17.1% were 65 or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.4% male and 51.6% female.
2000 census.
As of the 2000 census, 9,813 people, 4,235 households, and 2,469 families resided in the city. The population density was . The 4,858 housing units had an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 91.08% White, 0.52% Black or African American, 1.14% Native American, 1.94% Asian, 0.19% Pacific Islander, 2.67% from other races, and 2.46% from two or more races. About 5.98% of the population were Hispanics or Latinos of any race.
By ethnicity, 14.2% were German, 11.4% Irish, 10.2% English, 8.3% United States or American, 6.1% Finnish, 5.6% Norwegian, and 5.4% Scottish according to the 2000 United States Census.
Of the 4,235 households, 28.8% had children under 18 living with them, 43.5% were married couples living together, 11.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.7% were not families. About 35.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.6% had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 2.26, and the average family size was 2.93.
In the city the age distribution was 24.0% under 18, 9.1% from 18 to 24, 26.4% from 25 to 44, 24.5% from 45 to 64, and 15.9% were 65 or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females 18 and over, there were 89.9 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $33,011, and for a family was $41,446. Males had a median income of $29,813 versus $22,121 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,759. About 11.6% of families and 15.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.0% of those under 18 and 9.6% of those 65 or over.
Government.
Astoria operates under a council–manager form of city government. Voters elect four councilors by ward and a mayor, who each serve four-year terms. The mayor and council appoint a city manager to conduct the ordinary business of the city. The current mayor is Sean Fitzpatrick, who took office in January 2023. His predecessor, Bruce Jones, served from 2019 to 2022.
Education.
The Astoria School District has four primary and secondary schools, including Astoria High School. Clatsop Community College is the city's two-year college. The city also has a library and many parks with historical significance, plus the second oldest Job Corps facility (Tongue Point Job Corps) in the nation. Tongue Point Job Corps center is the only such location in the country which provides seamanship training.
Media.
"The Astorian" (formerly "The Daily Astorian") is the main newspaper serving Astoria. It was established , in 1873, and has been in continuous publication since that time. The "Coast River Business Journal" is a monthly business magazine covering Astoria, Clatsop County, and the Northwest Oregon coast. It, along with "The Astorian", is part of the EO Media Group (formerly the East Oregonian Publishing Company) family of Oregon and Washington newspapers. The local NPR station is KMUN 91.9, and KAST 1370 is a local news-talk radio station.
In popular culture and entertainment.
Actor Clark Gable is claimed to have begun his career at the Astoria Theatre in 1922.
Leroy E. "Ed" Parsons, called the "Father of Cable Television", developed one of the first community antenna television stations (CATV) in the United States in Astoria starting in 1948.
The early 1960s television series "Route 66" filmed the episode entitled "One Tiger to a Hill" in Astoria; it was broadcast on September 21, 1962.
"Shanghaied in Astoria" is a musical about Astoria's history that has been performed in Astoria every year since 1984.
In recent popular culture, Astoria is most famous for being the setting of the 1985 film "The Goonies", which was filmed on location in the city. Other notable movies filmed in Astoria include "Short Circuit", "The Black Stallion", "Kindergarten Cop", "Free Willy", "", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III", "Benji the Hunted", "Come See the Paradise," "The Ring Two", "Into the Wild", "The Guardian" and "Green Room."
A scene in "The Real Thing", episode two of season five (in the 7th year), of the television series "Eureka" was set in Astoria. The character Jo Lupo parks her vehicle in an unauthorized location while she is meditating on the oceanfront. A tow truck is called to remove the vehicle. A law-enforcement officer whose shoulder clearly displays a patch that reads "Astoria, Oregon" speaks to Jo about the parking violation.
The fourth album of the pop punk band The Ataris was titled "So Long, Astoria" as an allusion to "The Goonies". A song of the same title is the album's first track. The album's back cover features news clippings from Astoria, including a picture of the port's water tower from a 2002 article on its demolition.
The pop punk band Marianas Trench has an album titled "Astoria". The band states the album was inspired by 1980s fantasy and adventure films, and "The Goonies" in particular. That film inspired the title, as it was set in Astoria, the album's artwork, as well as the title of their accompanying US tour ("Hey You Guys!!").
Astoria is featured as a city in "American Truck Simulator: Oregon".
In the series finale of the TV show "Dexter", the title character, Dexter Morgan, ends up in Astoria as the series ends.
Warships named "Astoria".
Two U.S. Navy cruisers were named USS "Astoria": A New Orleans-class heavy cruiser (CA-34) and a Cleveland class light cruiser (CL-90). The former was lost in the Pacific Ocean in combat at the Battle of Savo Island in August 1942, during World War II, and the latter was scrapped in 1971 after being removed from active duty in 1949.
Sister cities.
Astoria has one sister city, as designated by Sister Cities International:
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1866 | Alarums and Excursions | Alarums and Excursions (A&E) is an amateur press association (APA) started in June 1975 by Lee Gold; publication continues to the present day. It was one of the first publications to focus solely on role-playing games.
History.
In 1964, Bruce Pelz of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society (LASFS) began a weekly amateur press association named "APA-L". In 1974, with the publication of "Dungeons & Dragons" by TSR, Inc., articles and comments about the new roleplaying game began to fill the pages of "APA-L", a development to which Pelz objected. Lee Gold took note of this and started a new APA, "Alarums and Excursions" (the title taken from an Elizabethan drama stage direction that moved soldiers across a stage), to focus entirely on roleplaying games, attracting such material away from "APA-L". The first issue appeared in June 1975.
In addition to removing roleplaying games discussion out of "APA-L", the initial aim of the publication was to prevent roleplaying games from becoming so divergent that people from different cities could not participate in games together.
The June 2017 issue of "Alarums and Excursions" was number 500, with a color cover drawn by Lee Moyer and printed by Rob Heinsoo.
Contents.
Each issue is a collection of contributions from different authors, often featuring game design discussions, rules variants, write-ups of game sessions, reviews, and comments on others contributions.
Although game reports and social reactions are common parts of many "A&E" contributions, it has also, over the years, become a testing ground for new ideas on the development of the RPG as a genre and an art form. The idea that role-playing games "are" an art form took strong root in this zine, and left a lasting impression on many of the RPG professionals who contributed. The 1992 role-playing game "Over the Edge" was inspired by discussions in "A&E".
Over the years, contributors have included:
Reception.
In the February 1976 issue of "Strategic Review" (Issue 6), Gary Gygax complimented the new APA, calling it "an excellent source of ideas, inspirations and fun." Although Gygax felt some of the contributors were "woefully lacking in background", and the quality of printing varied dramatically from issue to issue, he concluded, "For all of its faults, it is far and away the best "D&D" 'zine, and well worth reading. See for yourself why it rates a Major Triumph."
In the June 1981 edition of "Dragon" (Issue #50), Dave Nalle reviewed "Alarums and Excursions" after its 63rd issue (November 1980), and although he found the writing style "a bit stuffy", with a "tendency for the writers to pat each other on the back", he still called it "the top APA publication... This is a very well run APA and features many of the leading thinkers in fantasy gaming."
Awards.
To date, "Alarums and Excursions" has been a winner of the Charles Roberts/Origins Award four times:
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1869 | Alfred Jarry | Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play "Ubu Roi" (1896)"," often cited as a forerunner of Dada and the Surrealist and Futurist movements of the 1920s and 1930s. He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics.
Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, France, and his mother was from Brittany. He wrote in a variety of hybrid genres and styles, prefiguring the postmodern, including novels, poems, short plays and opéras bouffes, absurdist essays and speculative journalism. His texts are considered examples of absurdist literature and postmodern philosophy.
Biography and works.
His father Anselme Jarry (1837–1895) was a salesman who descended into alcoholism; his mother Caroline, née Quernest (1842–1893), was interested in music and literature, but her family had a streak of insanity, and her mother and brother were institutionalized. The couple had two surviving children, a daughter Caroline-Marie, called Charlotte (1865–1925), and Alfred. In 1879 Caroline left Anselme and took the children to Saint-Brieuc in Brittany.
In 1888 the family moved to Rennes, where Jarry entered the lycée at 15. There he led a group of boys who enjoyed poking fun at their well-meaning, but obese and incompetent physics teacher, a man named Hébert. Jarry and his classmate, Henri Morin, wrote a play they called "Les Polonais" and performed it with marionettes in the home of one of their friends. The main character, "Père Heb", was a blunderer with a huge belly, three teeth (one of stone, one of iron and one of wood), a single, retractable ear and a misshapen body. In Jarry's later work "Ubu Roi", Père Heb would develop into Ubu, one of the most monstrous and astonishing characters in French literature.
At 17 Jarry passed his baccalauréat and moved to Paris to prepare for admission to the École Normale Supérieure. Though he was not admitted, he soon gained attention for his original poems and prose-poems. A collection of his work, "Les minutes de sable mémorial", was published in 1893.
That same year, Jarry contracted influenza. His mother and sister tended him, but once he recovered his mother fell ill of the disease and died; two years later his father perished from influenza as well, leaving Jarry a small inheritance which he quickly spent.
Jarry had meantime discovered the pleasures of alcohol, which he called "my sacred herb" or, when referring to absinthe, the "green goddess". A story is told that he once painted his face green and rode through town on his bicycle in its honour (and possibly under its influence).
When he was drafted into the army in 1894, his gift for turning notions upside down defeated attempts to instill military discipline. The sight of the small man in a uniform much too large for his less than 5-foot frame – the army did not issue uniforms small enough – was so disruptively funny that he was excused from parades and marching drills. Eventually the army discharged him for medical reasons. His military experience eventually inspired his novel "Days and Nights".
In his youth, Jarry was homosexually inclined, although like many bohemians he disavowed sexual categorization. A brief but passionate relationship with future poet Léon-Paul Fargue inspired his semi-autobiographical play Haldernablou (1894).
Jarry returned to Paris and applied himself to writing, drinking and the company of friends who appreciated his witty, sweet-tempered and unpredictable conversation. This period is marked by his intense involvement with Remy de Gourmont in the publication of "L'Ymagier ," a luxuriously produced "art" magazine devoted to the symbolic analysis of medieval and popular prints. Symbolism as an art movement was in full swing at this time, and "L'Ymagier" provided a nexus for many of its key contributors. Jarry's play "Caesar Antichrist" (1895) drew on this movement for material. This is a work that bridges the gap between serious symbolic meaning and the type of critical absurdity with which Jarry would soon become associated. Using the biblical Book of Revelation as a point of departure, "Caesar Antichrist" presents a parallel world of extreme formal symbolism in which Christ is resurrected not as an agent of spirituality but as an agent of the Roman Empire that seeks to dominate spirituality. It is a unique narrative that effectively links the domination of the soul to contemporaneous advances in the field of Egyptology such as the 1894 excavation of the Narmer Palette, an ancient artifact used for situating the rebus within hermeneutics. The character Ubu Roi first appears in this play.
The spring of 1896 saw the publication, in Paul Fort's review "Le Livre d'art", of Jarry's 5-act play "Ubu Roi," the rewritten and expanded "Les Polonais" of his school days. "Ubu Roi"s savage humour and monstrous absurdity, unlike anything thus far performed in French theatre, seemed unlikely to ever actually be performed on stage. However, impetuous theatre director Aurélien-Marie Lugné-Poe took the risk, producing the play at his Théâtre de l'Œuvre.
On opening night (10 December 1896), with traditionalists and the avant-garde in the audience, King Ubu (played by Firmin Gémier) stepped forward and intoned the opening word, "Merdre!" (often translated as "Pshit" or "Shittr!" in English). A quarter of an hour of pandemonium ensued: outraged cries, booing, and whistling by the offended parties, countered by cheers and applause by the more bohemian contingent. Such interruptions continued through the evening. At the time, only the dress rehearsal and opening night performance were held, and the play was not revived until after Jarry's death.
The play brought fame to the 23-year-old Jarry, and he immersed himself in the fiction he had created. Gémier had modelled his portrayal of Ubu on Jarry's own staccato, nasal vocal delivery, which emphasized each syllable (even the silent ones). From then on, Jarry would always speak in this style. He adopted Ubu's ridiculous and pedantic figures of speech; for example, he referred to himself using the royal "we", and called the wind "that which blows" and the bicycle he rode everywhere "that which rolls."
Jarry moved into a flat which the landlord had created through the unusual expedient of subdividing a larger flat by means of a horizontal rather than a vertical partition. The diminutive Jarry could just manage to stand up in the place, but guests had to bend or crouch. Jarry also took to carrying a loaded revolver. In response to a neighbour's complaint that his target shooting endangered her children, he replied, "If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you."
With Franc-Nohain and Claude Terrasse he co-founded the Théâtre des Pantins, which in 1898 was the site of marionette performances of "Ubu Roi".
Living in worsening poverty, neglecting his health and drinking excessively, Jarry went on to write the novel "Le Surmâle" ("The Supermale"), which is partly a satire on the Symbolist ideal of self-transcendence.
Unpublished until after his death, his fiction "Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician" ("Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien") describes the exploits and teachings of a sort of antiphilosopher who, born at age 63, travels through a hallucinatory Paris in a sieve and subscribes to the tenets of "'pataphysics". 'Pataphysics deals with "the laws which govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one." In 'pataphysics, every event in the universe is accepted as an extraordinary event.
Jarry once wrote, expressing some of the bizarre logic of 'pataphysics, "If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way; hundreds of other coins on other hands will follow this pattern in an infinitely unimaginable fashion."
In his final years, he was a legendary and heroic figure to some of the young writers and artists in Paris. Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon and Max Jacob sought him out in his truncated apartment. Pablo Picasso was fascinated with Jarry. After Jarry's death Picasso acquired his revolver and wore it on his nocturnal expeditions in Paris. He later bought many of his manuscripts as well as executing a fine drawing of him.
Jarry died in Paris on 1 November 1907 of tuberculosis, aggravated by drug and alcohol misuse. When he could not afford alcohol, he drank ether. It is recorded that his last request was for a toothpick. He was interred in the Cimetière de Bagneux, near Paris.
The complete works of Alfred Jarry are published in three volumes by Gallimard in the collection "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade".
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1870 | Amalric | Amalric or Amalaric (also Americ, Almerich, Emeric, Emerick and other variations) is a personal name derived from the tribal name "Amal" (referring to the Gothic Amali) and "ric" (Gothic "reiks") meaning "ruler, prince".
Equivalents in different languages include:
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1871 | Amalric of Jerusalem | Amalric or Amaury I (; ; 113611 July 1174) was King of Jerusalem from 1163, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. He was the second son of Melisende and Fulk of Jerusalem, and succeeded his older brother Baldwin III. During his reign, Jerusalem became more closely allied with the Byzantine Empire, and the two states launched an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt. He was the father of three future rulers of Jerusalem, Sibylla, Baldwin IV, and Isabella I.
Older scholarship mistook the two names Amalric and Aimery as variant spellings of the same name, so these historians erroneously added numbers, making Amalric to be Amalric I (1163–74) and King Aimery (1197–1205) to be "Amalric II". Now scholars recognize that the two names were not the same and no longer add the number for either king. Confusion between the two names was common even among contemporaries.
Youth.
Amalric was born in 1136 to King Fulk, the former count of Anjou married to the heiress of the kingdom, Queen Melisende. After the death of Fulk in a hunting accident in 1143, the throne passed jointly to Melisende and Amalric's older brother Baldwin III, who was still only 13 years old. Melisende did not step down when Baldwin came of age two years later, and by 1150 the two were becoming increasingly hostile towards each other. In 1152 Baldwin had himself crowned sole king, and civil war broke out, with Melisende retaining Jerusalem while Baldwin held territory further north. Amalric, who had been given the County of Jaffa as an apanage when he reached the age of majority in 1151, remained loyal to Melisende in Jerusalem, and when Baldwin invaded the south, Amalric was besieged in the Tower of David with his mother. Melisende was defeated in this struggle and Baldwin ruled alone thereafter. In 1153 Baldwin captured the Egyptian fortress of Ascalon, which was then added to Amalric's fief of Jaffa (see Battle of Ascalon).
Amalric married Agnes of Courtenay in 1157. Agnes, daughter of Joscelin II of Edessa, had lived in Jerusalem since the western regions of the former crusader County of Edessa were lost in 1150. Patriarch Fulcher objected to the marriage on grounds of consanguinity, as the two shared a great-great-grandfather, Guy I of Montlhéry, and it seems that they waited until Fulcher's death to marry. Agnes bore Amalric three children: Sibylla, the future Baldwin IV (both of whom would come to rule the kingdom in their own right), and Alix, who died in childhood.
Succession.
Baldwin III died on 10 February 1163 and the kingdom passed to Amalric, although there was some opposition among the nobility to Agnes; they were willing to accept the marriage in 1157 when Baldwin III was still capable of siring an heir, but now the "Haute Cour" refused to endorse Amalric as king unless his marriage to Agnes was annulled. The hostility to Agnes, it must be admitted, may be exaggerated by the chronicler William of Tyre, whom she prevented from becoming Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem decades later, as well as from William's continuators like Ernoul, who hints at a slight on her moral character: "car telle n'est que roine doie iestre di si haute cite comme de Jherusalem" ("there should not be such a queen for so holy a city as Jerusalem"). Nevertheless, consanguinity was enough for the opposition. Amalric agreed and ascended the throne without a wife, although Agnes continued to hold the title Countess of Jaffa and Ascalon and received a pension from that fief's income. Agnes soon thereafter married Hugh of Ibelin, to whom she had been engaged before her marriage with Amalric. The church ruled that Amalric and Agnes' children were legitimate and preserved their place in the order of succession. Through her children Agnes would exert much influence in Jerusalem for almost 20 years.
Conflicts with the Muslim states.
During Baldwin III's reign, the County of Edessa, the first crusader state established during the First Crusade, was conquered by Zengi, the Turkic emir of Aleppo. Zengi united Aleppo, Mosul, and other cities of northern Syria, and intended to impose his control on Damascus in the south. The Second Crusade in 1148 had failed to conquer Damascus, which soon fell to Zengi's son Nur ad-Din. Jerusalem also lost influence to Byzantium in northern Syria when the Empire imposed its suzerainty over the Principality of Antioch. Jerusalem thus turned its attention to Egypt, where the Fatimid dynasty was suffering from a series of young caliphs and civil wars. The crusaders had wanted to conquer Egypt since the days of Baldwin I, who died during an expedition there. The capture of Ascalon by Baldwin III made the conquest of Egypt more feasible.
Invasions of Egypt.
Amalric led his first expedition into Egypt in 1163, claiming that the Fatimids had not paid the yearly tribute that had begun during the reign of Baldwin III. The vizier, Dirgham, had recently overthrown the vizier Shawar, and marched out to meet Amalric at Pelusium, but was defeated and forced to retreat to Bilbeis. The Egyptians then opened up the Nile dams and let the river flood, hoping to prevent Amalric from invading any further. Amalric returned home but Shawar fled to the court of Nur ad-Din, who sent his general Shirkuh to settle the dispute in 1164. In response Dirgham sought help from Amalric, but Shirkuh and Shawar arrived before Amalric could intervene and Dirgham was killed. Shawar, however, feared that Shirkuh would seize power for himself, and he too looked to Amalric for assistance. Amalric returned to Egypt in 1164 and besieged Shirkuh in Bilbeis until Shirkuh retreated to Damascus.
Amalric could not follow up on his success in Egypt because Nur ad-Din was active in Syria, having taken Bohemund III of Antioch and Raymond III of Tripoli prisoner at the Battle of Harim during Amalric's absence. Amalric rushed to take up the regency of Antioch and Tripoli and secured Bohemund's ransom in 1165 (Raymond remained in captivity until 1173). The year 1166 was relatively quiet, but Amalric sent envoys to the Byzantine Empire seeking an alliance and a Byzantine wife, and throughout the year had to deal with raids by Nur ad-Din, who captured Banias.
In 1167, Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh back to Egypt and Amalric once again followed him, establishing a camp near Cairo; Shawar again allied with Amalric and a treaty was signed with the caliph al-Adid himself. Shirkuh encamped on the opposite side of the Nile. After an indecisive battle, Amalric retreated to Cairo and Shirkuh marched north to capture Alexandria; Amalric followed and besieged Shirkuh there, aided by a Pisan fleet from Jerusalem. Shirkuh negotiated for peace and Alexandria was handed over to Amalric. However, Amalric could not remain there indefinitely, and returned to Jerusalem after exacting an enormous tribute.
Byzantine alliance.
After his return to Jerusalem in 1167, Amalric married Maria Comnena, a great-grandniece of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus. The negotiations had taken two years, mostly because Amalric insisted that Manuel return Antioch to Jerusalem. Once Amalric gave up on this point he was able to marry Maria in the Cathedral of Tyre on August 29, 1167. During this time the queen dowager, Baldwin III's widow Theodora, eloped with her cousin Andronicus to Damascus, and Acre, which had been in her possession, reverted into the royal domain of Jerusalem. It was also around this time that William of Tyre was promoted to archdeacon of Tyre, and was recruited by Amalric to write a history of the kingdom.
In 1168 Amalric and Manuel negotiated an alliance against Egypt, and William of Tyre was among the ambassadors sent to Constantinople to finalize the treaty. Although Amalric still had a peace treaty with Shawar, Shawar was accused of attempting to ally with Nur ad-Din, and Amalric invaded. The Knights Hospitaller eagerly supported this invasion, while the Knights Templar refused to have any part in it. In October, without waiting for any Byzantine assistance (and in fact without even waiting for the ambassadors to return), Amalric invaded and seized Bilbeis. The inhabitants were either massacred or enslaved. Amalric then marched to Cairo, where Shawar offered Amalric two million pieces of gold. Meanwhile, Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh back to Egypt as well, and upon his arrival Amalric retreated.
Rise of Saladin.
In January 1169 Shirkuh had Shawar assassinated. Shirkuh became vizier, although he himself died in March, and was succeeded by his nephew Saladin. Amalric became alarmed and sent Frederick de la Roche, Archbishop of Tyre, to seek help from the kings and nobles of Europe, but no assistance was forthcoming. Later that year however a Byzantine fleet arrived, and in October Amalric launched yet another invasion and besieged Damietta by sea and by land. The siege was long and famine broke out in the Christian camp; the Byzantines and crusaders blamed each other for the failure, and a truce was signed with Saladin. Amalric returned home.
Now Jerusalem was surrounded by hostile enemies. In 1170 Saladin invaded Jerusalem and took the city of Eilat, severing Jerusalem's connection with the Red Sea. Saladin, who was set up as Vizier of Egypt, was declared Sultan in 1171 upon the death of the last Fatimid caliph. Saladin's rise to Sultan was an unexpected reprieve for Jerusalem, as Nur ad-Din was now preoccupied with reining in his powerful vassal. Nevertheless, in 1171 Amalric visited Constantinople himself, leaving Jobert of Syria as regent, and envoys were sent to the kings of Europe for a second time, but again no help was received. Over the next few years the kingdom was threatened not only by Saladin and Nur ad-Din, but also by the Assassins. In one episode, the Knights Templar murdered some Assassin envoys, leading to further disputes between Amalric and the Templars.
Death.
Nur ad-Din died in 1174, upon which Amalric immediately besieged Banias. On the way back after giving up the siege he fell ill from dysentery, which was ameliorated by doctors but turned into a fever in Jerusalem. William of Tyre explains that "after suffering intolerably from the fever for several days, he ordered physicians of the Greek, Syrian, and other nations noted for skill in diseases to be called and insisted that they give him some purgative remedy." Neither they nor Latin doctors could help, and he died on July 11, 1174.
Maria Comnena had borne Amalric two daughters: Isabella, who would eventually marry four husbands in turn and succeed as queen, was born in 1172; and a stillborn child some time later. On his deathbed Amalric bequeathed Nablus to Maria and Isabella, both of whom would retire there. The leprous child Baldwin IV succeeded his father and brought his mother Agnes of Courtenay (now married to her fourth husband) back to court.
Physical characteristics.
William was a good friend of Amalric and described him in great detail. "He had a slight impediment in his speech, not serious enough to be considered as a defect but sufficient to render him incapable of ready eloquence. He was far better in counsel than in fluent or ornate speech." Like his brother Baldwin III, he was more of an academic than a warrior, who studied law and languages in his leisure time: "He was well skilled in the customary law by which the kingdom was governed – in fact, he was second to no one in this respect." He was probably responsible for an assize making all rear-vassals directly subject to the king and eligible to appear at the Haute Cour. Amalric had an enormous curiosity, and William was reportedly astonished to find Amalric questioning, during an illness, the resurrection of the body. He especially enjoyed reading and being read to, spending long hours listening to William read early drafts of his history. He did not enjoy games or spectacles, although he liked to hunt. He was trusting of his officials, perhaps too trusting, and it seems that there were many among the population who despised him, although he refused to take any action against those who insulted him publicly.
He was tall and fairly handsome; "he had sparkling eyes of medium size; his nose, like that of his brother, was becomingly aquiline; his hair was blond and grew back somewhat from his forehead. A comely and very full beard covered his cheeks and chin. He had a way of laughing immoderately so that his entire body shook." He did not overeat or drink to excess, but his corpulence grew in his later years, decreasing his interest in military operations; according to William, he "was excessively fat, with breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist."
Amalric was pious and attended mass every day, although he also "is said to have absconded himself without restraint to the sins of the flesh and to have seduced married women..." Despite his piety he taxed the clergy, which they naturally opposed.
As William says, "he was a man of wisdom and discretion, fully competent to hold the reins of government in the kingdom." He is considered the last of the early kings of Jerusalem. Within a few years, Emperor Manuel died as well, and Saladin remained the only strong leader in the east.
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1872 | Aimery of Cyprus | Aimery of Lusignan (, , "Amorí"; before 11551 April 1205), erroneously referred to as Amalric or Amaury in earlier scholarship, was the first King of Cyprus, reigning from 1196 to his death. He also reigned as the King of Jerusalem from his marriage to Isabella I in 1197 to his death. He was a younger son of Hugh VIII of Lusignan, a nobleman in Poitou. After participating in a rebellion against Henry II of England in 1168, he went to the Holy Land and settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
His marriage to Eschiva of Ibelin (whose father was an influential nobleman) strengthened his position in the kingdom. His younger brother, Guy, married Sibylla, the sister of and heir presumptive to Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. Baldwin made Aimery the constable of Jerusalem at around 1180. He was one of the commanders of the Christian army in the Battle of Hattin, which ended with decisive defeat at the hands of the army of Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, on 4 July 1187.
Aimery supported Guy even after he lost his claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem according to most barons of the realm, because of the death of Sibylla and their two daughters. The new King of Jerusalem, Henry II of Champagne, arrested Aimery for a short period. After his release, he retired to Jaffa which was the fief of his elder brother, Geoffrey of Lusignan, who had left the Holy Land.
After Guy died in May 1194, his vassals in Cyprus elected Aimery as their lord. He accepted the suzerainty of the Holy Roman emperor, Henry VI. With the emperor's authorization, Aimery was crowned King of Cyprus in September 1197. He soon married Henry of Champagne's widow, Isabella I of Jerusalem. He and his wife were crowned King and Queen of Jerusalem in January 1198. He signed a truce with Al-Adil I, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, which secured the Christian possession of the coastline from Acre to Antioch. His rule was a period of peace and stability in both of his realms.
Early life.
Aimery was born before 1155. He was the fifth son of Hugh VIII of Lusignan and his wife, Burgundia of Rancon. His family had been noted for generations of crusaders in their native Poitou. His great-grandfather, Hugh VI of Lusignan, died in the Battle of Ramla in 1102; Aimery's grandfather, Hugh VII of Lusignan, took part in the Second Crusade. Aimery's father also came to the Holy Land and died in a Muslim prison in the 1160s. Earlier scholarship erroneously referred to him as Amalric (or Amaury, its French form), but evidences from documentaries shows he was actually called "Aimericus", which is a distinct name (although it was sometimes confused with "Amalricus" already in the Middle Ages). Runciman and other modern historians erroneously refer to him as Amalric II of Jerusalem, because they confused his name with that of Amalric "I" of Jerusalem.
Aimery joined a rebellion against Henry II of England (who also ruled Poitou) in 1168, according to Robert of Torigni's chronicle, but Henry crushed the rebellion. Aimery left for the Holy Land and settled in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was captured in a battle and held in captivity in Damascus. A popular tradition (which was first recorded by the 13th-century Philip of Novara and John of Ibelin) held, the King of Jerusalem, Amalric, ransomed him personally.
Ernoul (whose reliability is questioned) claimed Aimery was a lover of Amalric of Jerusalem's former wife, Agnes of Courtenay. Aimery married Eschiva of Ibelin, a daughter of Baldwin of Ibelin, who was one of the most powerful noblemen in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Amalric of Jerusalem, who died on 11 July 1174, was succeeded by his thirteen-year-old son by Agnes of Courtenay, Baldwin IV who suffered from leprosy. Aimery became a member of the royal court with his father-in-law's support.
Aimery's youngest brother, Guy, married Baldwin IV's widowed sister, Sibylla, in April 1180. Ernoul wrote, it was Aimery who had spoken of his brother to her and her mother, Agnes of Courtenay, describing him as a handsome and charming young man. Aimery, continued Ernoul, hurried back to Poitou and persuaded Guy to come to the kingdom, although Sibylla had promised herself to Aimery's father-in-law. Another source, William of Tyre, did not mention that Aimery had played any role in the marriage of his brother and the King's sister. Consequently, many elements of Ernoul's report (especially Aimery's alleged journey to Poitou) were most probably invented.
Constable of Jerusalem.
Aimery was first mentioned as Constable of Jerusalem on 24 February 1182. According to Steven Runciman and Malcolm Barber, he had already been granted the office shortly after his predecessor, Humphrey II of Toron, died in April 1179. Historian Bernard Hamilton writes that Aimery's appointment was the consequence of the growing influence of his brother and he was appointed only around 1181.
Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, launched a campaign against the Kingdom of Jerusalem on 29 September 1183. Aimery defeated the sultan's troops in a minor skirmish with the support of his father-in-law and his brother, Balian of Ibelin. After the victory, the crusaders' main army could advance as far as a spring near Saladin's camp, forcing him to retreat nine days later. During the campaign, it turned out that most barons of the realm were unwilling to cooperate with Aimery's brother, Guy, who was the designated heir to Baldwin IV. The ailing King dismissed Guy and made his five-year-old nephew (Guy's stepson), Baldwin V, his co-ruler on 20 November 1183.
In early 1185, Baldwin IV decreed that the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Kings of France and England were to be approached to choose between his sister, Sybilla, and their half-sister, Isabella, if Baldwin V died before reaching the age of majority. The leper King died in April or May 1185, his nephew in late summer of 1186. Ignoring Baldwin IV's decree, Sybilla was proclaimed queen by her supporters and she crowned her husband, Guy, king. Aimery was not listed among those who were present at the ceremony, but he obviously supported his brother and sister-in-law, according to Hamilton.
As Constable, Aimery organised the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem into units before the Battle of Hattin, which ended with the decisive victory of Saladin on 4 July 1187. Along with most commanders of the Christian army, Aimery was captured in the battlefield. During the siege of Ascalon, Saladin promised the defenders that he would set free ten persons whom they named if they surrendered. Aimery and Guy were among those whom the defenders named before surrendering on 4 September, but Saladin postponed their release until the spring of 1188.
Most barons of the realm thought that Guy lost his claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem when Sybilla and their two daughters died in late 1190, but Aimery remained loyal to his brother. Guy's opponents supported Conrad of Montferrat who married Sybilla's half-sister, Isabella in late November. An assembly of the noblemen of the realm unanimously declared Conrad the lawful king on 16 April 1192. Although Conrad was murdered twelve days later, his widow soon married Henry of Champagne, who was elected King of Jerusalem. To compensate Guy for the loss of Jerusalem, Richard I of England authorized him to purchase the island of Cyprus (that Richard had conquered in May 1191) from the Knights Templar. He was also to pay 40,000 bezants to Richard who donated the right to collect the sum from Guy to Henry of Champagne. Guy settled in Cyprus in early May.
Aimery remained in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was reduced to a narrow strip of land along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea from Jaffa to Tyre. Henry of Champagne ordered the expulsion of the merchants from Pisa from Acre in May, because he accused them of plotting with Guy of Lusignan. After Aimery intervened on behalf of the merchants, the King had him arrested. Aimery was only released at the demand of the grand masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers. He retired to Jaffa that Richard of England had granted to Aimery's eldest brother, Geoffrey of Lusignan.
Reign.
Lord of Cyprus.
Guy died in May 1194, and bequeathed Cyprus to his elder brother, Geoffrey. However Geoffrey had already returned to Poitou, thus Guy's vassals elected Aimery their new lord. Henry of Champagne demanded the right to be consulted about the succession in Cyprus, but the Cypriote noblemen ignored him. Around the same time, Henry of Champagne replaced Aimery with John of Ibelin as constable of Jerusalem.
Aimery realized that the treasury of Cyprus was almost empty, because his brother had granted most landed property in the island to his supporters, according to Ernoul. He summoned his vassals to an assembly. After emphasizing that each of them owned more land than he had, he persuaded them one by one "either by force, or by friendship, or by agreement" to surrender some their rents and lands.
Aimery dispatched an embassy to Pope Celestine III, asking him to set up Roman Catholic dioceses in Cyprus. He also sent his representative, Rainier of Gibelet, to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, proposing that he would acknowledge the emperor's suzerainty, if the emperor sent a royal crown to him. Aimery primarily wanted to secure the emperor's assistance against a potential Byzantine invasion of Cyprus, but he also wanted to strengthen his own legitimacy as king. Rainier of Gibelet swore loyalty to Henry VI on behalf of Aimery in Gelnhausen in October 1196. The emperor who had decided to lead a crusade to the Holy Land promised that he would personally crown Aimery king. He dispatched the archbishops of Brindisi and Trani to take a golden sceptre to Aimery as a symbol of his right to rule Cyprus.
King of Cyprus.
Henry VI's two envoys landed in Cyprus in April or May 1196. Aimery may have adopted the title of king around that time, because Pope Celestin styled him as king already in a letter in December 1196. In the same month, the Pope set up a Roman Catholic archdiocese in Nicosia with three suffragan bishops in Famagusta, Limassol and Paphos. The Greek Orthodox bishops were not expelled, but their property and income was seized by the new Catholic prelates.
Henry VI's chancellor, Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim, crowned Aimery king in Nicosia in September 1197. Aimery did homage to the chancellor. The noblemen who owned fiefs in both Cyprus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem wanted to bring about a reconciliation between Aimery and Henry of Champagne. One of them, Baldwin of Beisan, Constable of Cyprus, persuaded Henry of Champage to visit Cyprus in early 1197. The two kings made peace, agreeing that Aimery's three sons were to marry Henry's three daughters. Henry also renounced the debt that Aimery still owed to him for Cyprus and allowed Aimery to garrison his troops at Jaffa. Aimery sent Reynald Barlais to take possession of Jaffa. Aimery again used the title of Constable of Jerusalem in November 1197, which suggests that he had also recovered that office as a consequence of his treaty with Henry of Champagne.
King of two realms.
Henry of Champagne fell from the window in his palace and died in Acre on 10 September 1197. The aristocratic-yet-impoverished Raoul of Saint Omer was one of the possible candidates to succeed him, but the grand masters of the military orders opposed him vehemently. A few days later, Al-Adil I, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, occupied Jaffa.
Conrad of Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived to Acre on 20 September, was the first to propose that the crown should be offered to Aimery. Since Aimery's first wife had died, he could marry the widowed Isabella I of Jerusalem, who was the queen. Although Aymar, Patriarch of Jerusalem, stated that the marriage would be uncanonical, Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, started negotiations with Aimery who accepted the offer. The patriarch also withdrew his objections and crowned Aimery and Isabella king and queen in Tyre in January 1198.
The Cypriot Army fought for the Kingdom of Jerusalem during Aimery's rule, but otherwise he administered his two realms separately. Even before his coronation, Aimery united his forces with the German crusaders who were under the command of Duke Henry I of Brabant to launch a campaign against the Ayyubid troops. They forced Al-Adil to withdraw and captured Beirut on 21 October. He laid siege to Toron, but he had to lift the siege on 2 February, because the German crusaders decided to return to the Holy Roman Empire after learning that Emperor Henry VI had died.
Aimery was riding at Tyre when four German knights attacked him in March 1198. His retainers rescued him and captured the four knights. Aimery accused Raoul of Saint Omer of hiring the assailants and sentenced him to banishment without a trial by his peers. At Raoul's demand, the case was submitted to the High Court of Jerusalem which held that Aimery had unlawfully banished Raoul. Nevertheless, Raoul voluntarily left the kingdom and settled in Tripoli, because he knew that he had lost Aimery's goodwill.
Aimery signed a truce with Al-Adil on 1 July 1198, securing the possession of the coast from Acre as far as to Antioch for the crusaders for five years and eight months. The Byzantine emperor, Alexios III Angelos, did not abandon the idea of recovering Cyprus. He promised that he would help a new crusade if Pope Innocent III excommunicated Aimery to enable a Byzantine invasion in 1201, but Innocent refused him, stating that the Byzantines had lost their right to Cyprus when Richard I conquered the island in 1191.
Aimery kept the peace with the Muslims, even when Reynald II of Dampierre, who arrived at the head of 300 French crusaders, demanded that he launch a campaign against the Muslims in early 1202. After Aimery reminded him that more than 300 soldiers were needed to wage war against the Ayyubids, Reynald left the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the Principality of Antioch. An Egyptian emir seized a fortress near Sidon and made plundering raids against the neighboring territory. As Al-Adil failed to force the emir to respect the truce, Aimery's fleet seized 20 Egyptian ships and he invaded Al-Adil's realm. In retaliation, Al-Adil's son, Al-Mu'azzam Isa plundered the region of Acre. In May 1204, Aimery's fleet sacked a small town in the Nile Delta in Egypt. The envoys of Aimery and Al-Adil signed a new truce for six years in September 1204. Al-Adil ceded Jaffa and Ramleh to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and simplified the Christian pilgrims' visits in Jerusalem and Nazareth.
After eating an excess of white mullet, Aimery fell seriously ill. He died after a short illness on 1 April 1205. His six-year-old son, Hugh I, succeeded him in Cyprus; and his widow ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem until her own death four days later.
Legacy.
Historian Mary Nickerson Hardwicke described Aimery as a "self-assured, politically astute, sometimes hard, seldom sentimentally indulgent" ruler. His rule was a period of peace and consolidation. He initiated the revision of the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to specify royal prerogatives. The lawyers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem held him in high esteem. One of them, John of Ibelin emphasized that Aimery had governed both Cyprus and Jerusalem "well and wisely" until his death.
Family.
Aimery's first wife, Eschiva of Ibelin, was the elder daughter of Baldwin of Ibelin, Lord of Mirabel and Ramleh, and Richelda of Beisan. They had five children
Aimery's second wife, Isabella I of Jerusalem, was the only daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem and Maria Komnene. They had three children
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1873 | Anthemius of Tralles | Anthemius of Tralles (, Medieval Greek: , "Anthémios o Trallianós"; – 533 558) was a Byzantine Greek from Tralles who worked as a geometer and architect in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. With Isidore of Miletus, he designed the Hagia Sophia for Justinian I.
Life.
Anthemius was one of the five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician. His brothers were Dioscorus, Alexander, Olympius, and Metrodorus. Dioscorus followed his father's profession in Tralles; Alexander did so in Rome and became one of the most celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius became a noted lawyer; and Metrodorus worked as a grammarian in Constantinople.
Anthemius was said to have annoyed his neighbor Zeno in two ways: first, by engineering a miniature earthquake by sending steam through leather tubes he had fixed among the joists and flooring of Zeno's parlor while he was entertaining friends and, second, by simulating thunder and lightning and flashing intolerable light into Zeno's eyes from a slightly hollowed mirror. In addition to his familiarity with steam, some dubious authorities credited Anthemius with a knowledge of gunpowder or other explosive compound.
Mathematics.
Anthemius was a capable mathematician. In the course of his treatise "On Burning Mirrors", he intended to facilitate the construction of surfaces to reflect light to a single point, he described the string construction of the ellipse and assumed a property of ellipses not found in Apollonius of Perga's "Conics": the equality of the angles subtended at a focus by two tangents drawn from a point. His work also includes the first practical use of the directrix: having given the focus and a double ordinate, he used the focus and directrix to obtain any number of points on a parabola. This work was later known to Arab mathematicians such as Alhazen.
Eutocius's commentary on Apollonius's "Conics" was dedicated to Anthemius.
Architecture.
As an architect, Anthemius is best known for his work designing the Hagia Sophia. He was commissioned with Isidore of Miletus by Justinian I shortly after the earlier church on the site burned down in 532 but died early on in the project. He is also said to have repaired the flood defenses at Daras.
References.
Attribution:
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1874 | Absalon | Absalon (21 March 1201) was a Danish statesman and prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the bishop of Roskilde from 1158 to 1192 and archbishop of Lund from 1178 until his death. He was the foremost politician and church father of Denmark in the second half of the 12th century, and was the closest advisor of King Valdemar I of Denmark. He was a key figure in the Danish policies of territorial expansion in the Baltic Sea, Europeanization in close relationship with the Holy See, and reform in the relation between the Church and the public. He combined the ideals of Gregorian Reform with loyal support of a strong monarchical power.
Absalon was born into the powerful "Hvide" clan, and owned great land possessions. He endowed several church institutions, most prominently his family's Sorø Abbey. He was granted lands by the crown, and built the first fortification of the city that evolved into modern-day Copenhagen. His titles were passed on to his nephews Anders Sunesen and Peder Sunesen. He died in 1201, and was interred at Sorø Abbey.
Early life.
Absalon was born around 1128 near Sorø, Zealand. Due to his name being unusual in Denmark, it is speculated that he was baptized on the Danish "Absalon" name day, 30 October. He was the son of Asser Rig, a magnate of the "Hvide" clan from Fjenneslev on Zealand, and Inger Eriksdotter. He was also a kinsman of Archbishop Eskil of Lund. He grew up at the castle of his father, and was brought up alongside his older brother Esbern Snare and the young prince Valdemar, who later became King Valdemar I of Denmark. During the civil war following the death of Eric III of Denmark in 1146, Absalon travelled abroad to study theology in Paris, while Esbern fought for Valdemar's ascension to the throne. In Paris, he was influenced by the Gregorian Reform ideals of churchly independence from monarchical rule. He also befriended the canon William of Æbelholt at the Abbey of St Genevieve, whom he later made abbot of Eskilsø Abbey.
Absalon first appears in Saxo Grammaticus's contemporary chronicle "Gesta Danorum" at the end of the civil war, in the brokering of the peace agreement between Sweyn III and Valdemar at St. Alban's Priory in Odense. He was a guest at the subsequent Roskilde banquet given in 1157 by Sweyn for his rivals Canute V and Valdemar. Both Absalon and Valdemar narrowly escaped assassination by Sweyn on this occasion, and escaped to Jutland, whither Sweyn followed them. Absalon probably did not take part in the following battle of Grathe Heath in 1157, where Sweyn was defeated and slain. This led to Valdemar ascending to the Danish throne. On Good Friday 1158, bishop died, and Absalon was eventually elected bishop of Roskilde on Zealand with the help of Valdemar, as the king's reward for "Hvide" family support.
Bishop and advisor.
Absalon was a close counsellor of Valdemar, and chief promoter of the Danish crusades against the Wends. During the Danish civil war, Denmark had been open to coastal raids by the Wends. It was Absalon's intention to clear the Baltic Sea of the Wendish pirates who inhabited its southern littoral zone, which was later called Pomerania. The pirates had raided the Danish coasts during the civil war of Sweyn III, Canute V, and Valdemar, to the point where at the accession of Valdemar one-third of Denmark lay wasted and depopulated. Absalon formed a guardian fleet, built coastal defenses, and led several campaigns against the Wends. He even advocated forgiving the earlier enemies of Valdemar, which helped stabilize Denmark internally.
Wendish campaigns.
The first expedition against the Wends conducted by Absalon in person, set out in 1160. These expeditions were successful, but brought no lasting victories. What started out as mere retribution, eventually evolved into full-fledged campaigns of expansion with religious motives. In 1164 began twenty years of crusades against the Wends, sometimes with the help of German duke Henry the Lion, sometimes in opposition to him.
In 1168 the chief Wendish fortress at Arkona in Rügen, containing the sanctuary of their god Svantevit, was conquered. The Wends agreed to accept Danish suzerainty and the Christian religion at the same time. From Arkona, Absalon proceeded by sea to Charenza, in the midst of Rügen, the political capital of the Wends and an all but impregnable stronghold. But the unexpected fall of Arkona had terrified the garrison, which surrendered unconditionally at the first appearance of the Danish ships. Absalon, with only Bishop Sweyn of Aarhus and twelve "housecarls", thereupon disembarked, passed between a double row of Wendish warriors, 6000 strong, along the narrow path winding among the morasses, to the gates of the fortress, and, proceeding to the temple of the seven-headed god Rugievit, caused the idol to be hewn down, dragged forth and burnt. The whole population of Garz was then baptized, and Absalon laid the foundations of twelve churches in the isle of Rügen. Rügen was then subjected to Absalon's Bishopric of Roskilde.
The destruction of this chief sally-port of the Wendish pirates enabled Absalon to considerably reduce the Danish fleet. But he continued to keep a watchful eye over the Baltic, and in 1170 destroyed another pirate stronghold, farther eastward, at Dziwnów on the isle of Wolin. Absalon's last military exploit came in 1184, off Stralsund at Whitsun, when he soundly defeated a Pomeranian fleet that had attacked Denmark's vassal, Jaromar of Rügen.
Policies.
Absalon's main political goal was to free Denmark from entanglements with the Holy Roman Empire. Absalon reformed the Danish church organisation to closer match Holy See praxis, and worked to keep Denmark a close ally of the Holy See. However, during the schism between Pope Alexander III and Antipope Victor IV, Absalon stayed loyal to Valdemar even as he joined the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in supporting Victor IV. This caused a split within the Danish church, as it possibly forced Eskil of Lund into exile around 1161, despite Abaslon's attempts to keep the Danish church united. It was contrary to Absalon's advice and warnings that Valdemar I rendered fealty to the emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Dole in 1162. When Valdemar returned to Denmark, he was convinced to strengthen the Danevirke fortifications at the German border, with the support of Absalon.
Absalon built churches and monasteries, supporting international religious orders like the Cistercians and Augustinians, founding schools and doing his utmost to promote civilization and enlightenment. In 1162, Absalon transformed the Sorø Abbey of his family from Benedictine to Cistercian, granting it lands from his personal holdings. In 1167, Absalon was granted the land around the city of Havn (English: "Harbour"), and built there a castle for coastal defense against the Wends. Havn quickly expanded into one of Scandinavia's most important centers of trade, and eventually evolved into modern-day Copenhagen. It was also Absalon who held the first Danish Synod at Lund in 1167. He was interested in history and culture, and commissioned Saxo Grammaticus to write "Gesta Danorum", a comprehensive chronicle of the history of the Danes. In 1171, Absalon issued the "Zealand church law" (), which reduced the number of Canonical Law offenses for which the church could fine the public, while instituting the tithe payment system. Violation of the law was specified as subject to a secular legal process.
Archbishop of Lund.
Archbishop Eskil returned from exile in 1167. Eskil agreed on canonizing Valdemar's father Knud Lavard in 1170, with Absalon assisting him at the feast. When Eskil stepped down as Archbishop of Lund in 1177, he chose Absalon as his successor. Absalon initially resisted the new position, as he did not want to lose his power position on Zealand, but complied with Papal orders to do so in 1178. By a unique Papal dispensation, Absalon was allowed to simultaneously maintain his post as Bishop of Roskilde. As the Archbishop of Lund, Absalon utilized ombudsmen from Zealand, demanded unfree labour from the peasantry, and instituted tithes. He was a harsh and effective ruler, who cleared all Orthodox Christian liturgical remnants in favour of Papal standards. A rebellion in the Scanian peasantry forced him to flee to Zealand in 1180, but he returned and subdued the Scanians with the help of Valdemar.
Valdemar died in 1182 and was succeeded by his son, Canute VI, whom Absalon also served as counsellor. Under Canute VI, Absalon was the chief policymaker in Danish politics. Absalon kept his hostile attitude to the Holy Roman Empire. On the accession of Canute VI in 1182, an imperial ambassador arrived at Roskilde to get the new king to swear fealty to Frederick Barbarossa, but Absalon resolutely withstood him.
Death.
When Absalon retired from military service in 1184 at the age of fifty-seven, he resigned the command of fleets and armies to younger men, like Duke Valdemar, the later king Valdemar II. He instead confined himself to the administration of the Danish empire. In 1192, Absalon made his nephew his successor as Bishop of Roskilde, while his other nephew Anders Sunesen was named the chancellor of Canute VI. Absalon died at Sorø Abbey on 21 March 1201, 73 years old, with his last will granting his personal holdings to the Abbey, apart from Fjenneslev which went to Esbern Snarre. He had already given Copenhagen to the Bishopric of Roskilde. Absalon was interred at Sorø Abbey, and was succeeded as Archbishop of Lund by Anders Sunesen.
Legacy.
Saxo Grammaticus' "Gesta Danorum" was not finished until after the death of Absalon, but Absalon was one of the chief heroic figures of the chronicle, which was to be the main source of knowledge about early Danish history. Absalon left a legacy as the foremost politician and churchfather of Denmark in the 12th century. Absalon was equally great as churchman, statesman, and warrior. His policy of expansion was to give Denmark the dominion of the Baltic for three generations. That he enjoyed warfare there can be no doubt; yet he was not like the ordinary fighting bishops of the Middle Ages, whose sole indication of their religious role was to avoid the "shedding of blood" by using a mace in battle instead of a sword. Absalon never neglected his ecclesiastical duties.
In the 2000s, "Absalon" was adopted as the name for a class of Royal Danish Navy vessels, and the lead vessel of the class. HDMS Absalon (L16) and "Esbern Snare" (L17) were launched and commissioned by Denmark in 2004 and 2005.
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1875 | Adhemar of Le Puy | Adhemar (also known as Adémar, Aimar, or Aelarz) de Monteil (died 1 August 1098) was one of the principal figures of the First Crusade and was bishop of Puy-en-Velay from before 1087. He was the chosen representative of Pope Urban II for the expedition to the Holy Land. Remembered for his martial prowess, he led knights and men into battle and fought beside them, particularly at the Battle of Dorylaeum and Siege of Antioch. Adhemar is said to have carried the Holy Lance in the Crusaders’ desperate breakout at Antioch on 28 June 1098, in which superior Islamic forces under the atabeg Kerbogha were routed, securing the city for the Crusaders. He died in 1098 due to illness.
Life.
Born around 1045 into the family of the Counts of Valentinois and elected Bishop of Le Puy around 1080, he was an advocate of the Gregorian Reform. Among his supporters were the future Pope Urban II and Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and the richest, most powerful nobleman in France. He was also said to have gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem around 1086. He was the brother of William Hugh of Monteil, who was also a Crusader in the First Crusade. Adhemar most likely met Pope Urban II, when he visited Puy in August 1095.
At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Adhemar showed great zeal for the crusade (there is evidence that Urban II had conferred with Adhemar before the council). Adhemar was named apostolic legate and appointed to lead the crusade by Pope Urban II on 27 November 1095. In part, Adhemar was selected to lead because he had already undertaken a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1086 and 1087. Following the announcement of the Crusade Adhemar spent the next year raising money and recruiting men. Departing on 15 August 1096, he accompanied Raymond of Toulouse and his army to the east. Whilst Raymond and the other leaders often quarrelled with each other over the leadership of the crusade, Adhemar was always recognized as the spiritual leader of the crusade and was widely respected by the majority of the Crusaders.
During the leg of the trip from Durazzo to Constantinople, in the Valley of Pelagonia, Adhemar was set upon by a group of Pecheneg mercenaries, when he had wandered too far from the majority of the Crusader forces. The Pechenegs beat and robbed Adhemar, but began to fight among themselves over his belongings; Adhemar was saved by Crusader forces who had noticed the disturbance. Once the army had reached Thessalonica, Adhemar decided to stay there for some time, due to sickness, whilst the Crusader forces moved onward. Adhemar eventually was able to rejoin the Crusaders.
Adhemar negotiated with Alexius I Comnenus at Constantinople, reestablished some discipline among the crusaders at Nicaea, fought a crucial role at the Battle of Dorylaeum and was largely responsible for sustaining morale during the siege of Antioch through various religious rites including fasting and special observances of holy days. One such time he did this, was after an earthquake during the siege of Antioch, he had the Crusaders fast for three days and had the priests and clergy perform mass and prayers. Adhemar also ordered the Crusaders to shave and wear a cross in an attempt to stop Crusaders from attacking one another by accident. After the capture of the city in June 1098 and the subsequent siege led by Kerbogha, Adhemar organized a procession through the streets and had the gates locked so that the Crusaders, many of whom had begun to panic, would be unable to leave the city. He was extremely skeptical of Peter Bartholomew's discovery in Antioch of the Holy Lance, especially because he knew such a relic already existed in Constantinople; however, he was willing to let the Crusader army believe it was real if it raised their morale. Adhemar was protected by a band of Crusaders led by Henry of Esch to preserve the (albeit suspect) relic. In June 1098 Adhemar fell prey to sickness and in the following months his condition would deteriorate.
When Kerbogha was defeated, Adhemar organized a council in an attempt to settle the leadership disputes, but died on 1 August 1098, probably of typhus. Adhemar was buried in Antioch within the Basilica of St Peter. The disputes among the higher nobles went unsolved and the march to Jerusalem was delayed for months. However, the lower-class soldiers continued to think of Adhemar as a leader. Following his death, Adhemar reportedly appeared in several visions of various Crusaders. One of the first was reported by Peter Bartholomew who stated that Adhemar appeared to him stating that, due to his skepticism of the Holy Lance, he had spent a few days in hell and was only rescued because a candle had been burned in his memory, he had given a gift to the Shrine where the Holy Lance was kept, and due to the prayers of Bohemond. At the siege of Jerusalem, Peter Desiderius claimed that to have received a vision from Adhemar himself. Peter also claimed that, in this vision, Adhemar had instructed him to have the Crusaders fast and lead a procession around the Walls of Jerusalem. This was done and Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders in 1099. Later, Stephen of Valence also claimed to have had visions featuring Adhemar in which Adhemar spoke to Stephen of several relics. Adhemar told Stephen great reverence should be given to the cross Adhemar had taken with him on the crusade. He also told Stephen how the Holy Lance should be treated and told Stephen to give Stephen's ring to Count Raymond. He told Stephen that, through this ring, Count Raymond would be able to call upon the power of Mary.
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1878 | Alphonse, Count of Poitiers | Alphonse or Alfonso (11 November 122021 August 1271) was the count of Poitou from 1225 and count of Toulouse (as such called Alphonse II) from 1249. As count of Toulouse, he also governed the Marquisate of Provence.
Birth and early life.
Born at Poissy, Alphonse was a son of King Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. He was a younger brother of King Louis IX of France and an older brother of Count Charles I of Anjou. In 1229, his mother, who was regent of France, forced the Treaty of Paris on Count Raymond VII of Toulouse after his rebellion. It stipulated that a brother of King Louis was to marry Joan, daughter of Raymond VII of Toulouse, and so in 1237 Alphonse married her. Since she was Raymond's only child, they became rulers of Toulouse at Raymond's death in 1249.
By the terms of his father's will Alphonse received an "appanage" of Poitou and Auvergne. To enforce this Louis IX won the battle of Taillebourg in the Saintonge War together with Alphonse against a revolt allied with King Henry III of England, who also participated in the battle.
Crusades.
Alphonse took part in two crusades with his brother, St Louis, in 1248 (the Seventh Crusade) and in 1270 (the Eighth Crusade). For the first of these, he raised a large sum and a substantial force, arriving in Damietta on 24 October 1249, after the town had already been captured. He sailed for home on 10 August 1250. His father-in-law had died while he was away, and he went directly to Toulouse to take possession. There was some resistance to his accession as count, which was suppressed with the help of his mother Blanche of Castile who was acting as regent in the absence of Louis IX.
Later life.
In 1252, on the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, Alphonse was joint regent with Charles of Anjou until the return of Louis IX. During that time he took a great part in the campaigns and negotiations which led to the Treaty of Paris in 1259, under which King Henry III of England recognized his loss of continental territory to France (including Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou) in exchange for France withdrawing support from English rebels.
Aside from the crusades, Alphonse stayed primarily in Paris, governing his estates by officials, inspectors who reviewed the officials' work, and a constant stream of messages. His main work was on his own estates. There he repaired the evils of the Albigensian war and made a first attempt at administrative centralization, thus preparing the way for union with the crown. On 8 October 1268, Alphonse had all Jews throughout his lands arrested and their property confiscated.
When Louis IX formed the Eighth Crusade, Alphonse again raised a large sum of money and accompanied his brother. This time, however, he did not return to France, dying while on his way back, at Savona in Italy, on 21 August 1271.
Death and legacy.
Alphonse's death without heirs raised some questions as to the succession to his lands. One possibility was that they should revert to the crown, another that they should be redistributed to his family. The latter was claimed by Charles of Anjou, but in 1283 Parlement decided that the County of Toulouse should revert to the crown, if there were no male heirs. Alphonse's wife Joan (who died four days after Alphonse) had attempted to dispose of some of her inherited lands in her will. Joan was the only surviving child and heiress of Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne, and Marquis of Provence, so under Provençal and French law, the lands should have gone to her nearest male relative. But, her will was invalidated by Parlement in 1274. One specific bequest in Alphonse's will, giving his wife's lands in the Comtat Venaissin to the Holy See, was allowed, and it became a Papal territory, a status that it retained until 1791.
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1879 | Alfonso Jordan | Alfonso Jordan, also spelled Alfons Jordan or Alphonse Jourdain (1103–1148), was the Count of Tripoli (1105–09), Count of Rouergue (1109–48) and Count of Toulouse, Margrave of Provence and Duke of Narbonne (1112–48).
Life.
Alfonso was the son of Raymond IV of Toulouse by his third wife, Elvira of Castile. He was born in the castle of Mont Pèlerin in Tripoli while his father was on the First Crusade. He was given the name "Jourdain" after being baptised in the Jordan River.
Alfonso's father died when he was two years old and he remained under the guardianship of his cousin, William Jordan, Count of Cerdagne, until he was five. He was then taken to Europe, where his half-brother Bertrand had given him the county of Rouergue. Upon Bertrand's death in 1112, Alfonso succeeded to the county of Toulouse and marquisate of Provence.
In 1114, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who claimed Toulouse by right of his wife Philippa, daughter of Count William IV, invaded the county and conquered it. Alfonso recovered a part in 1119, but he was not in full control until 1123. When at last successful, he was excommunicated by Pope Callixtus II for having damaged the abbey of Saint-Gilles and assaulting the monks.
Alfonso next had to fight for his rights in Provence against Count Raymond Berengar III of Barcelona. Not until September 1125 did their war end in "peace and concord" ("pax et concordia"). At this stage, Alfonso was master of the regions lying between the Pyrenees and the Alps, the Auvergne and the sea. His ascendancy was, according to one commentator, an unmixed good to the country, for during a period of fourteen years art and industry flourished.
In March 1126, Alfonso was at the court of Alfonso VII of León when he acceded to the throne. According to the "Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris", Alfonso and Suero Vermúdez took the city of León from opposition magnates and handed it over to Alfonso VII. Among those who may have accompanied Alfonso on one of his many extended stays in Spain was the troubadour Marcabru.
By 1132, Alfonso was embroiled in a succession war over the county of Melgueil against Berenguer Ramon, Count of Provence. This brief conflict was resolved with Alfonso's defeat and Berenguer marrying Beatrice, heiress of Melgueil.
Alfonso seized the viscounty of Narbonne in 1134, and ruled it during the minority of the Viscountess Ermengarde, only restoring it to her in 1143.
In 1141 King Louis VII pressed the claim of Philippa on behalf of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, even besieging Toulouse, but without result.
That same year Alfonso Jordan was again in Spain, making a pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela, when he proposed a peace between the king of León and García VI of Navarre, which became the basis for subsequent negotiations.
In 1144, Alfonso again incurred the displeasure of the church by siding with the citizens of Montpellier against their lord.
In 1145, Bernard of Clairvaux addressed a letter to him full of concern about a heretic named Henry in the diocese of Toulouse. Bernard even went there to preach against the heresy, an early expression of Catharism. A second time he was excommunicated; but in 1146 he took the cross (i.e., vowed to go on crusade) at a meeting in Vézelay called by Louis VII. In August 1147, he embarked for the near east on the Second Crusade.
He lingered on the way in Italy and probably in Constantinople, where he may have met the Emperor Manuel I.
Alfonso finally arrived at Acre in 1148. He died at Caesarea, which was followed by accusations of poisoning, levelled against either Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Louis VII of France, or Melisende, the mother of King Baldwin III of Jerusalem, who may have wanted to eliminate him as a rival to her brother-in-law Raymond II.
Alfonso and Faydiva d'Uzès had:
He also had an illegitimate son, Bertrand.
Sources.
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1880 | Ambroise | Ambroise, sometimes Ambroise of Normandy, (flourished ) was a Norman poet and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called "", which describes in rhyming Old French verse the adventures of as a crusader. The poem is known to us only through one Vatican manuscript, and long escaped the notice of historians.
The credit for detecting its value belongs to Gaston Paris, although his edition (1897) was partially anticipated by the editors of the "", who published some selections in the twenty-seventh volume of their Scriptores (1885). Ambroise followed Richard I as a noncombatant, and not improbably as a court-minstrel. He speaks as an eyewitness of the king's doings at Messina, in Cyprus, at the siege of Acre, and in the abortive campaign which followed the capture of that city.
Ambroise is surprisingly accurate in his chronology; though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naïve vivacity which compels attention. He is by no means an impartial source: he is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master, including the "Polein" party which supported Conrad of Montferrat against Guy of Lusignan. He is rather to be treated as a biographer than as a historian of the Crusade in its broader aspects. Nonetheless he is an interesting primary source for the events of the years 1190–1192 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Books 2–6 of the "Itinerarium Regis Ricardi", a Latin prose narrative of the same events apparently compiled by Richard, a canon of Holy Trinity, London, are closely related to Ambroise's poem. They were formerly sometimes regarded as the first-hand narrative on which Ambroise based his work, but that can no longer be maintained.
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1881 | Art Deco | Art Deco, short for the French Arts Décoratifs, and sometimes referred to simply as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners.
It got its name after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris.
Art Deco combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, it represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.
From its outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bold geometric forms of Cubism and the Vienna Secession; the bright colours of Fauvism and of the Ballets Russes; the updated craftsmanship of the furniture of the eras of Louis XVI and Louis Philippe I; and the exoticized styles of China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt and Maya art. It featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. The Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other skyscrapers of New York City built during the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Art Deco became more subdued. New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco is one of the first truly international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed.
Etymology.
Art Deco took its name, short for "arts décoratifs", from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I.
"Arts décoratifs" was first used in France in 1858 in the "Bulletin de la Société française de photographie". In 1868, the "Le Figaro" newspaper used the term "objets d'art décoratifs" for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response, the "École royale gratuite de dessin" (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the "École nationale des arts décoratifs ("National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD ("École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs"), in 1927.
At the 1925 Exposition, architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine "L'Esprit Nouveau", under the title "1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO.", which were combined into a book, "L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui" (Decorative Art Today). The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the colourful, lavish objects at the Exposition, and on the idea that practical objects such as furniture should not have any decoration at all; his conclusion was that "Modern decoration has no decoration".
The actual term "art déco" did not appear in print until 1966, in the title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, "Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau", which covered a variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in "The Times" (London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit.
Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, "Art Deco of the 20s and 30s". He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites "The Times" (2 November 1966) and an essay named "Les Arts Déco" in "Elle" magazine (November 1967) as examples. In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book "The World of Art Deco".
Origins.
Society of Decorative Artists (1901–1945).
The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century were considered simply artisans. The term "arts décoratifs" had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The "Société des artistes décorateurs" (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to the decorative arts, the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna", was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including "Arts et décoration" and "L'Art décoratif moderne". Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the "Sociéte des artistes français", and later in the" Salon d'Automne". French nationalism also played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as "Déco".
Parisian department stores and fashion designers also played an important part in the rise of Art Deco. Prominent businesses such as silverware firm Christofle, glass designer René Lalique, and the jewellers Louis Cartier and Boucheron began designing products in more modern styles. Beginning in 1900, department stores recruited decorative artists to work in their design studios. The decoration of the 1912 "Salon d'Automne" was entrusted to the department store "Printemps", and that year it created its own workshop, "Primavera". By 1920 "Primavera" employed more than 300 artists, whose styles ranged from updated versions of Louis XIV, Louis XVI, and especially Louis Philippe furniture made by Louis Süe and the "Primavera" workshop, to more modern forms from the workshop of the "Au Louvre" department store. Other designers, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Paul Follot, refused to use mass production, insisting that each piece be made individually. The early Art Deco style featured luxurious and exotic materials such as ebony, ivory and silk, very bright colours and stylized motifs, particularly baskets and bouquets of flowers of all colours, giving a modernist look.
Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte (1897–1912).
The architects of the Vienna Secession (formed 1897), especially Josef Hoffmann, had a notable influence on Art Deco. His Stoclet Palace, in Brussels (1905–1911), was a prototype of the Art Deco style, featuring geometric volumes, symmetry, straight lines, concrete covered with marble plaques, finely-sculpted ornament, and lavish interiors, including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt. Hoffmann was also a founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932), an association of craftsmen and interior designers working in the new style. This became the model for the "Compagnie des arts français", created in 1919, which brought together André Mare, and Louis Süe, the first leading French Art Deco designers and decorators.
New materials and technologies.
New materials and technologies, especially reinforced concrete, were key to the development and appearance of Art Deco. The first concrete house was built in 1853 in the Paris suburbs by François Coignet. In 1877 Joseph Monier introduced the idea of strengthening the concrete with a mesh of iron rods in a grill pattern. In 1893 Auguste Perret built the first concrete garage in Paris, then an apartment building, house, then, in 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The theatre was denounced by one critic as the "Zeppelin of Avenue Montaigne", an alleged Germanic influence, copied from the Vienna Secession. Thereafter, the majority of Art Deco buildings were made of reinforced concrete, which gave greater freedom of form and less need for reinforcing pillars and columns. Perret was also a pioneer in covering the concrete with ceramic tiles, both for protection and decoration. The architect Le Corbusier first learned the uses of reinforced concrete working as a draftsman in Perret's studio.
Other new technologies that were important to Art Deco were new methods in producing plate glass, which was less expensive and allowed much larger and stronger windows, and for mass-producing aluminium, which was used for building and window frames and later, by Corbusier, Warren McArthur, and others, for lightweight furniture.
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–1913).
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–1913), by Auguste Perret, was the first landmark Art Deco building completed in Paris. Previously, reinforced concrete had been used only for industrial and apartment buildings, Perret had built the first modern reinforced-concrete apartment building in Paris on rue Benjamin Franklin in 1903–04. Henri Sauvage, another important future Art Deco architect, built another in 1904 at 7, rue Trétaigne (1904). From 1908 to 1910, the 21-year-old Le Corbusier worked as a draftsman in Perret's office, learning the techniques of concrete construction. Perret's building had clean rectangular form, geometric decoration and straight lines, the future trademarks of Art Deco. The décor of the theatre was also revolutionary; the façade was decorated with high reliefs by Antoine Bourdelle, a dome by Maurice Denis, paintings by Édouard Vuillard, and an Art Deco curtain by Ker-Xavier Roussel. The theatre became famous as the venue for many of the first performances of the Ballets Russes. Perret and Sauvage became the leading Art Deco architects in Paris in the 1920s.
Salon d'Automne (1903–1914).
At its birth between 1910 and 1914, Art Deco was an explosion of colours, featuring bright and often clashing hues, frequently in floral designs, presented in furniture upholstery, carpets, screens, wallpaper and fabrics. Many colourful works, including chairs and a table by Maurice Dufrêne and a bright Gobelin carpet by Paul Follot were presented at the 1912 Salon des artistes décorateurs. In 1912–1913 designer Adrien Karbowsky made a floral chair with a parrot design for the hunting lodge of art collector Jacques Doucet. The furniture designers Louis Süe and André Mare made their first appearance at the 1912 exhibit, under the name of the "Atelier français", combining polychromatic fabrics with exotic and expensive materials, including ebony and ivory. After World War I, they became one of the most prominent French interior design firms, producing the furniture for the first-class salons and cabins of the French transatlantic ocean liners.
The vivid hues of Art Deco came from many sources, including the exotic set designs by Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, which caused a sensation in Paris just before World War I. Some of the colours were inspired by the earlier Fauvism movement led by Henri Matisse; others by the Orphism of painters such as Sonia Delaunay; others by the movement known as Les Nabis, and in the work of symbolist painter Odilon Redon, who designed fireplace screens and other decorative objects. Bright shades were a feature of the work of fashion designer Paul Poiret, whose work influenced both Art Deco fashion and interior design.
Cubism.
The art movement known as Cubism appeared in France between 1907 and 1912, influencing the development of Art Deco. In "Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s" Alastair Duncan writes "Cubism, in some bastardized form or other, became the lingua franca of the era's decorative artists." The Cubists, themselves under the influence of Paul Cézanne, were interested in the simplification of forms to their geometric essentials: the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.
In 1912, the artists of the Section d'Or exhibited works considerably more accessible to the general public than the analytical Cubism of Picasso and Braque. The Cubist vocabulary was poised to attract fashion, furniture and interior designers.
The 1912 writings of André Vera, "Le Nouveau style", published in the journal "L'Art décoratif", expressed the rejection of Art Nouveau forms (asymmetric, polychrome and picturesque) and called for "simplicité volontaire, symétrie manifeste, l'ordre et l'harmonie", themes that would eventually become common within Art Deco; though the Deco style was often extremely colourful and often complex.
In the "Art Décoratif" section of the 1912 Salon d'Automne, an architectural installation was exhibited known as "La Maison Cubiste". The facade was designed by Raymond Duchamp-Villon. The décor of the house was by André Mare. "La Maison Cubiste" was a furnished installation with a façade, a staircase, wrought iron banisters, a bedroom, a living room—the "Salon Bourgeois", where paintings by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Marie Laurencin, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger and Roger de La Fresnaye were hung. Thousands of spectators at the salon passed through the full-scale model.
The façade of the house, designed by Duchamp-Villon, was not very radical by modern standards; the lintels and pediments had prismatic shapes, but otherwise the façade resembled an ordinary house of the period. For the two rooms, Mare designed the wallpaper, which featured stylized roses and floral patterns, along with upholstery, furniture and carpets, all with flamboyant and colourful motifs. It was a distinct break from traditional décor. The critic Emile Sedeyn described Mare's work in the magazine "Art et Décoration": "He does not embarrass himself with simplicity, for he multiplies flowers wherever they can be put. The effect he seeks is obviously one of picturesqueness and gaiety. He achieves it." The Cubist element was provided by the paintings. The installation was attacked by some critics as extremely radical, which helped make for its success. This architectural installation was subsequently exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, New York City, Chicago and Boston. Thanks largely to the exhibition, the term "Cubist" began to be applied to anything modern, from women's haircuts to clothing to theater performances."
The Cubist influence continued within Art Deco, even as Deco branched out in many other directions. In 1927, Cubists Joseph Csaky, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Henri Laurens, the sculptor Gustave Miklos, and others collaborated in the decoration of a Studio House, rue Saint-James, Neuilly-sur-Seine, designed by the architect Paul Ruaud and owned by the French fashion designer Jacques Doucet, also a collector of Post-Impressionist art by Henri Matisse and Cubist paintings (including "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", which he bought directly from Picasso's studio). Laurens designed the fountain, Csaky designed Doucet's staircase, Lipchitz made the fireplace mantel, and Marcoussis made a Cubist rug.
Besides the Cubist artists, Doucet brought in other Deco interior designers to help in decorating the house, including Pierre Legrain, who was in charge of organizing the decoration, and Paul Iribe, Marcel Coard, André Groult, Eileen Gray and Rose Adler to provide furniture. The décor included massive pieces made of macassar ebony, inspired by African art, and furniture covered with Morocco leather, crocodile skin and snakeskin, and patterns taken from African designs.
Cubism's adumbrated geometry became coin of the realm in the 1920s. Art Deco's development of Cubism's selective geometry into a wider array of shapes carried Cubism as a pictorial taxonomy to a much broader audience and wider appeal. (Richard Harrison Martin, Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Influences.
Art Deco was not a single style, but a collection of different and sometimes contradictory styles. In architecture, Art Deco was the successor to and reaction against Art Nouveau, a style which flourished in Europe between 1895 and 1900, and coexisted with the Beaux-Arts and neoclassical that were predominant in European and American architecture. In 1905 Eugène Grasset wrote and published "Méthode de Composition Ornementale, Éléments Rectilignes," in which he systematically explored the decorative (ornamental) aspects of geometric elements, forms, motifs and their variations, in contrast with (and as a departure from) the undulating Art Nouveau style of Hector Guimard, so popular in Paris a few years earlier. Grasset stressed the principle that various simple geometric shapes like triangles and squares are the basis of all compositional arrangements. The reinforced-concrete buildings of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage, and particularly the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, offered a new form of construction and decoration which was copied worldwide.
In decoration, many different styles were borrowed and used by Art Deco. They included pre-modern art from around the world and observable at the Musée du Louvre, Musée de l'Homme and the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. There was also popular interest in archaeology due to excavations at Pompeii, Troy, and the tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Artists and designers integrated motifs from ancient Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Asia, Mesoamerica and Oceania with Machine Age elements.
Other styles borrowed included Futurism, Orphism, Functionalism, and Modernism in general. Cubism discovers its decorative potential within the Art Deco aesthetic, when transposed from the canvas onto a textile material or wallpaper. Sonia Delaunay conceives her dress models in an abstract and geometric style, "as live paintings or sculptures of living forms". Cubist-like designs are created by Louis Barrilet in the stained-glass windows of the American bar at the Atrium Casino in Dax (1926), but also including names of fashionable cocktails. In architecture, the clear contrast between horizontal and vertical volumes, specific both to Russian Constructivism and the Frank Lloyd Wright-Willem Marinus Dudok line, becomes a common device in articulating Art Deco facades, from individual homes and tenement buildings to cinemas or oil stations. Art Deco also used the clashing colours and designs of Fauvism, notably in the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain, inspired the designs of art deco textiles, wallpaper, and painted ceramics. It took ideas from the high fashion vocabulary of the period, which featured geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized bouquets of flowers. It was influenced by discoveries in Egyptology, and growing interest in the Orient and in African art. From 1925 onwards, it was often inspired by a passion for new machines, such as airships, automobiles and ocean liners, and by 1930 this influence resulted in the style called Streamline Moderne.
Style of luxury and modernity.
Art Deco was associated with both luxury and modernity; it combined very expensive materials and exquisite craftsmanship put into modernistic forms. Nothing was cheap about Art Deco: pieces of furniture included ivory and silver inlays, and pieces of Art Deco jewellery combined diamonds with platinum, jade, coral and other precious materials. The style was used to decorate the first-class salons of ocean liners, deluxe trains, and skyscrapers. It was used around the world to decorate the great movie palaces of the late 1920s and 1930s. Later, after the Great Depression, the style changed and became more sober.
A good example of the luxury style of Art Deco is the boudoir of the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, designed by Armand-Albert Rateau (1882–1938) made between 1922 and 1925. It was located in her house at 16 rue Barbet de Jouy, in Paris, which was demolished in 1965. The room was reconstructed in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The walls are covered with moulded "lambris" below sculpted bas-reliefs in stucco. The alcove is framed with columns of marble on bases and a plinth of sculpted wood. The floor is of white and black marble, and in the cabinets decorative objects are displayed against a background of blue silk. Her bathroom had a tub and washstand made of sienna marble, with a wall of carved stucco and bronze fittings.
By 1928 the style had become more comfortable, with deep leather club chairs. The study designed by the Paris firm of Alavoine for an American businessman in 1928–30, is now in the Brooklyn Museum.
By the 1930s, the style had been somewhat simplified, but it was still extravagant. In 1932 the decorator Paul Ruaud made the Glass Salon for Suzanne Talbot. It featured a serpentine armchair and two tubular armchairs by Eileen Gray, a floor of mat silvered glass slabs, a panel of abstract patterns in silver and black lacquer, and an assortment of animal skins.
International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (1925).
The event that marked the zenith of the style and gave it its name was the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which took place in Paris from April to October in 1925. This was officially sponsored by the French government, and covered a site in Paris of 55 acres, running from the Grand Palais on the right bank to Les Invalides on the left bank, and along the banks of the Seine. The Grand Palais, the largest hall in the city, was filled with exhibits of decorative arts from the participating countries. There were 15,000 exhibitors from twenty different countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the new Soviet Union. Germany was not invited because of tensions after the war; The United States, misunderstanding the purpose of the exhibit, declined to participate. The event was visited by sixteen million people during its seven-month run. The rules of the exhibition required that all work be modern; no historical styles were allowed. The main purpose of the Exhibit was to promote the French manufacturers of luxury furniture, porcelain, glass, metalwork, textiles, and other decorative products. To further promote the products, all the major Paris department stores, and major designers had their own pavilions. The Exposition had a secondary purpose in promoting products from French colonies in Africa and Asia, including ivory and exotic woods.
The Hôtel du Collectionneur was a popular attraction at the Exposition; it displayed the new furniture designs of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, as well as Art Deco fabrics, carpets, and a painting by Jean Dupas. The interior design followed the same principles of symmetry and geometric forms which set it apart from Art Nouveau, and bright colours, fine craftsmanship rare and expensive materials which set it apart from the strict functionality of the Modernist style. While most of the pavilions were lavishly decorated and filled with hand-made luxury furniture, two pavilions, those of the Soviet Union and Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau, built by the magazine of that name run by Le Corbusier, were built in an austere style with plain white walls and no decoration; they were among the earliest examples of modernist architecture.
Skyscrapers.
American skyscrapers marked the summit of the Art Deco style; they became the tallest and most recognizable modern buildings in the world. They were designed to show the prestige of their builders through their height, their shape, their color, and their dramatic illumination at night. The American Radiator Building by Raymond Hood (1924) combined Gothic and Deco modern elements in the design of the building. Black brick on the frontage of the building (symbolizing coal) was selected to give an idea of solidity and to give the building a solid mass. Other parts of the façade were covered in gold bricks (symbolizing fire), and the entry was decorated with marble and black mirrors. Another early Art Deco skyscraper was Detroit's Guardian Building, which opened in 1929. Designed by modernist Wirt C. Rowland, the building was the first to employ stainless steel as a decorative element, and the extensive use of colored designs in place of traditional ornaments.
New York City's skyline was radically changed by the Chrysler Building in Manhattan (completed in 1930), designed by William Van Alen. It was a giant seventy-seven-floor tall advertisement for Chrysler automobiles. The top was crowned by a stainless steel spire, and was ornamented by deco "gargoyles" in the form of stainless steel radiator cap decorations. The base of the tower, thirty-three stories above the street, was decorated with colorful art deco friezes, and the lobby was decorated with art deco symbols and images expressing modernity.
The Chrysler Building was soon surpassed in height by the Empire State Building by William F. Lamb (1931), in a slightly less lavish Deco style and the RCA Building (now 30 Rockefeller Plaza) by Raymond Hood (1933) which together completely changed New York City's skyline. The tops of the buildings were decorated with Art Deco crowns and spires covered with stainless steel, and, in the case of the Chrysler building, with Art Deco gargoyles modeled after radiator ornaments, while the entrances and lobbies were lavishly decorated with Art Deco sculpture, ceramics, and design. Similar buildings, though not quite as tall, soon appeared in Chicago and other large American cities. Rockefeller Center added a new design element: several tall buildings grouped around an open plaza, with a fountain in the middle.
Late Art Deco.
In 1925, two different competing schools coexisted within Art Deco: the traditionalists, who had founded the Society of Decorative Artists; included the furniture designer Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand, the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and designer Paul Poiret; they combined modern forms with traditional craftsmanship and expensive materials. On the other side were the modernists, who increasingly rejected the past and wanted a style based upon advances in new technologies, simplicity, a lack of decoration, inexpensive materials, and mass production. The modernists founded their own organisation, The French Union of Modern Artists, in 1929. Its members included architects Pierre Chareau, Francis Jourdain, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Corbusier, and, in the Soviet Union, Konstantin Melnikov; the Irish designer Eileen Gray; the French designer Sonia Delaunay; and the jewellers Georges Fouquet and Jean Puiforcat. They fiercely attacked the traditional art deco style, which they said was created only for the wealthy, and insisted that well-constructed buildings should be available to everyone, and that form should follow function. The beauty of an object or building resided in whether it was perfectly fit to fulfil its function. Modern industrial methods meant that furniture and buildings could be mass-produced, not made by hand.
The Art Deco interior designer Paul Follot defended Art Deco in this way: "We know that man is never content with the indispensable and that the superfluous is always needed...If not, we would have to get rid of music, flowers, and perfumes..!" However, Le Corbusier was a brilliant publicist for modernist architecture; he stated that a house was simply "a machine to live in", and tirelessly promoted the idea that Art Deco was the past and modernism was the future. Le Corbusier's ideas were gradually adopted by architecture schools, and the aesthetics of Art Deco were abandoned. The same features that made Art Deco popular in the beginning, its craftsmanship, rich materials and ornament, led to its decline. The Great Depression that began in the United States in 1929, and reached Europe shortly afterwards, greatly reduced the number of wealthy clients who could pay for the furnishings and art objects. In the Depression economic climate, few companies were ready to build new skyscrapers. Even the Ruhlmann firm resorted to producing pieces of furniture in series, rather than individual hand-made items. The last buildings built in Paris in the new style were the Museum of Public Works by Auguste Perret (now the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council), the Palais de Chaillot by Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, Jacques Carlu and Léon Azéma, and the Palais de Tokyo of the 1937 Paris International Exposition; they looked out at the grandiose pavilion of Nazi Germany, designed by Albert Speer, which faced the equally grandiose socialist-realist pavilion of Stalin's Soviet Union.
After World War II, the dominant architectural style became the International Style pioneered by Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe. A handful of Art Deco hotels were built in Miami Beach after World War II, but elsewhere the style largely vanished, except in industrial design, where it continued to be used in automobile styling and products such as jukeboxes. In the 1960s, it experienced a modest academic revival, thanks in part to the writings of architectural historians such as Bevis Hillier. In the 1970s efforts were made in the United States and Europe to preserve the best examples of Art Deco architecture, and many buildings were restored and repurposed. Postmodern architecture, which first appeared in the 1980s, like Art Deco, often includes purely decorative features. Deco continues to inspire designers, and is often used in contemporary fashion, jewellery, and toiletries.
Painting.
There was no section set aside for painting at the 1925 Exposition. Art deco painting was by definition decorative, designed to decorate a room or work of architecture, so few painters worked exclusively in the style, but two painters are closely associated with Art Deco. Jean Dupas painted Art Deco murals for the Bordeaux Pavilion at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris, and also painted the picture over the fireplace in the Maison du Collectionneur exhibit at the 1925 Exposition, which featured furniture by Ruhlmann and other prominent Art Deco designers. His murals were also prominent in the décor of the French ocean liner SS "Normandie". His work was purely decorative, designed as a background or accompaniment to other elements of the décor.
The other painter closely associated with the style is Tamara de Lempicka. Born in Poland, she emigrated to Paris after the Russian Revolution. She studied under Maurice Denis and André Lhote, and borrowed many elements from their styles. She painted portraits in a realistic, dynamic and colourful Art Deco style.
In the 1930s a dramatic new form of Art Deco painting appeared in the United States. During the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration was created to give work to unemployed artists. Many were given the task of decorating government buildings, hospitals and schools. There was no specific art deco style used in the murals; artists engaged to paint murals in government buildings came from many different schools, from American regionalism to social realism; they included Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent and the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The murals were Art Deco because they were all decorative and related to the activities in the building or city where they were painted: Reginald Marsh and Rockwell Kent both decorated U.S. postal buildings, and showed postal employees at work while Diego Rivera depicted automobile factory workers for the Detroit Institute of Arts. Diego Rivera's mural "Man at the Crossroads" (1933) for 30 Rockefeller Plaza featured an unauthorized portrait of Lenin. When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, the painting was destroyed and a new mural was painted by the Spanish artist Josep Maria Sert.
Sculpture.
Monumental and public sculpture.
Sculpture was a very common and integral feature of Art Deco architecture. In France, allegorical bas-reliefs representing dance and music by Antoine Bourdelle decorated the earliest Art Deco landmark in Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, in 1912. The 1925 Exposition had major sculptural works placed around the site, pavilions were decorated with sculptural friezes, and several pavilions devoted to smaller studio sculpture. In the 1930s, a large group of prominent sculptors made works for the 1937 at Chaillot. Alfred Janniot made the relief sculptures on the façade of the Palais de Tokyo. The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the esplanade in front of the Palais de Chaillot, facing the Eiffel Tower, was crowded with new statuary by Charles Malfray, Henry Arnold, and many others.
Public art deco sculpture was almost always representational, usually of heroic or allegorical figures related to the purpose of the building or room. The themes were usually selected by the patrons, not the artist. Abstract sculpture for decoration was extremely rare.
In the United States, the most prominent Art Deco sculptor for public art was Paul Manship, who updated classical and mythological subjects and themes in an Art Deco style. His most famous work was the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York City, a 20th-century adaptation of a classical subject. Other important works for Rockefeller Center were made by Lee Lawrie, including the sculptural façade and the Atlas statue.
During the Great Depression in the United States, many sculptors were commissioned to make works for the decoration of federal government buildings, with funds provided by the WPA, or Works Progress Administration. They included sculptor Sidney Biehler Waugh, who created stylized and idealized images of workers and their tasks for federal government office buildings. In San Francisco, Ralph Stackpole provided sculpture for the façade of the new San Francisco Stock Exchange building. In Washington D.C., Michael Lantz made works for the Federal Trade Commission building.
In Britain, Deco public statuary was made by Eric Gill for the BBC Broadcasting House, while Ronald Atkinson decorated the lobby of the former Daily Express Building in London (1932).
One of the best known and certainly the largest public Art Deco sculpture is the "Christ the Redeemer" by the French sculptor Paul Landowski, completed between 1922 and 1931, located on a mountain top overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Studio sculpture.
Many early Art Deco sculptures were small, designed to decorate salons. One genre of this sculpture was called the Chryselephantine statuette, named for a style of ancient Greek temple statues made of gold and ivory. They were sometimes made of bronze, or sometimes with much more lavish materials, such as ivory, onyx, alabaster, and gold leaf.
One of the best-known Art Deco salon sculptors was the Romanian-born Demétre Chiparus, who produced colourful small sculptures of dancers. Other notable salon sculptors included Ferdinand Preiss, Josef Lorenzl, Alexander Kelety, Dorothea Charol and Gustav Schmidtcassel. Another important American sculptor in the studio format was Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, who had studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris.
Pierre Le Paguays was a prominent Art Deco studio sculptor, whose work was shown at the 1925 Exposition. He worked with bronze, marble, ivory, onyx, gold, alabaster and other precious materials.
François Pompon was a pioneer of modern stylised animalier sculpture. He was not fully recognised for his artistic accomplishments until the age of 67 at the Salon d'Automne of 1922 with the work "Ours blanc", also known as "The White Bear", now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Parallel with these Art Deco sculptors, more avant-garde and abstract modernist sculptors were at work in Paris and New York City. The most prominent were Constantin Brâncuși, Joseph Csaky, Alexander Archipenko, Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz, Gustave Miklos, Jean Lambert-Rucki, Jan et Joël Martel, Chana Orloff and Pablo Gargallo.
Graphic arts.
The Art Deco style appeared early in the graphic arts, in the years just before World War I. It appeared in Paris in the posters and the costume designs of Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, and in the catalogues of the fashion designers Paul Poiret. The illustrations of Georges Barbier, and Georges Lepape and the images in the fashion magazine "La Gazette du bon ton" perfectly captured the elegance and sensuality of the style. In the 1920s, the look changed; the fashions stressed were more casual, sportive and daring, with the woman models usually smoking cigarettes. American fashion magazines such as "Vogue", "Vanity Fair" and "Harper's Bazaar" quickly picked up the new style and popularized it in the United States. It also influenced the work of American book illustrators such as Rockwell Kent. In Germany, the most famous poster artist of the period was Ludwig Hohlwein, who created colourful and dramatic posters for music festivals, beers, and, late in his career, for the Nazi Party.
During the Art Nouveau period, posters usually advertised theatrical products or cabarets. In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on the product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single color background. In France, popular Art Deco designers included, Charles Loupot and Paul Colin, who became famous for his posters of American singer and dancer Josephine Baker. Jean Carlu designed posters for Charlie Chaplin movies, soaps, and theatres; in the late 1930s he emigrated to the United States, where, during the World War, he designed posters to encourage war production. The designer Charles Gesmar became famous making posters for the singer Mistinguett and for Air France. Among the best known French Art Deco poster designers was Cassandre, who made the celebrated poster of the ocean liner SS "Normandie" in 1935.
In the 1930s a new genre of posters appeared in the United States during the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project hired American artists to create posters to promote tourism and cultural events.
Architecture.
The architectural style of art deco made its debut in Paris in 1903–04, with the construction of two apartment buildings in Paris, one by Auguste Perret on rue Benjamin Franklin and the other on rue Trétaigne by Henri Sauvage. The two young architects used reinforced concrete for the first time in Paris residential buildings; the new buildings had clean lines, rectangular forms, and no decoration on the facades; they marked a clean break with the art nouveau style. Between 1910 and 1913, Perret used his experience in concrete apartment buildings to construct the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 15 avenue Montaigne. Between 1925 and 1928 Sauvage constructed the new art deco façade of La Samaritaine department store in Paris.
After the First World War, art deco buildings of steel and reinforced concrete began to appear in large cities across Europe and the United States. In the United States the style was most commonly used for office buildings, government buildings, cinemas, and railroad stations. It sometimes was combined with other styles; Los Angeles City Hall combined Art Deco with a roof based on the ancient Greek Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, while the Los Angeles railroad station combined Deco with Spanish mission architecture. Art Deco elements also appeared in engineering projects, including the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge and the intake towers of Hoover Dam. In the 1920s and 1930s it became a truly international style, with examples including the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City by , the Mayakovskaya Metro Station in Moscow and the National Diet Building in Tokyo by Watanabe Fukuzo.
The Art Deco style was not limited to buildings on land; the ocean liner SS "Normandie", whose first voyage was in 1935, featured Art Deco design, including a dining room whose ceiling and decoration were made of glass by Lalique.
"Cathedrals of Commerce".
The grand showcases of American Art deco interior design were the lobbies of government buildings, theaters, and particularly office buildings. Interiors were extremely colorful and dynamic, combining sculpture, murals, and ornate geometric design in marble, glass, ceramics and stainless steel. An early example was the Fisher Building in Detroit, by Joseph Nathaniel French; the lobby was highly decorated with sculpture and ceramics. The Guardian Building (originally the Union Trust Building) in Detroit, by Wirt Rowland (1929), decorated with red and black marble and brightly colored ceramics, highlighted by highly polished steel elevator doors and counters. The sculptural decoration installed in the walls illustrated the virtues of industry and saving; the building was immediately termed the "Cathedral of Commerce". The Medical and Dental Building called 450 Sutter Street in San Francisco by Timothy Pflueger was inspired by Mayan architecture, in a highly stylized form; it used pyramid shapes, and the interior walls were covered with highly stylized rows of hieroglyphs.
In France, the best example of an Art Deco interior during this period was the Palais de la Porte Dorée (1931) by Albert Laprade, Léon Jaussely and Léon Bazin. The building (now the National Museum of Immigration, with an aquarium in the basement) was built for the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, to celebrate the people and products of French colonies. The exterior façade was entirely covered with sculpture, and the lobby created an Art Deco harmony with a wood parquet floor in a geometric pattern, a mural depicting the people of French colonies; and a harmonious composition of vertical doors and horizontal balconies.
Movie palaces.
Many of the best surviving examples of Art Deco are cinemas built in the 1920s and 1930s. The Art Deco period coincided with the conversion of silent films to sound, and movie companies built large display destinations in major cities to capture the huge audience that came to see movies. Movie palaces in the 1920s often combined exotic themes with art deco style; Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood (1922) was inspired by ancient Egyptian tombs and pyramids, while the Fox Theater in Bakersfield, California attached a tower in California Mission style to an Art Deco hall. The largest of all is Radio City Music Hall in New York City, which opened in 1932. Originally designed as theatrical performance space, it quickly transformed into a cinema, which could seat 6,015 customers. The interior design by Donald Deskey used glass, aluminum, chrome, and leather to create a visual escape from reality. The Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, by Timothy Pflueger, had a colorful ceramic façade, a lobby four stories high, and separate Art Deco smoking rooms for gentlemen and ladies. Similar grand palaces appeared in Europe. The Grand Rex in Paris (1932), with its imposing tower, was the largest cinema in Europe after the 6,000 seats of the Gaumont-Palace (1931-1973). The Gaumont State Cinema in London (1937) had a tower modelled on the Empire State building, covered with cream ceramic tiles and an interior in an Art Deco-Italian Renaissance style. The Paramount Theatre in Shanghai, China (1933) was originally built as a dance hall called "The gate of 100 pleasures"; it was converted to a cinema after the Communist Revolution in 1949, and now is a ballroom and disco. In the 1930s Italian architects built a small movie palace, the Cinema Impero, in Asmara in what is now Eritrea. Today, many of the movie theatres have been subdivided into multiplexes, but others have been restored and are used as cultural centres in their communities.
Streamline Moderne.
In the late 1930s, a new variety of Art Deco architecture became common; it was called Streamline Moderne or simply Streamline, or, in France, the "Style Paquebot", or Ocean Liner style. Buildings in the style had rounded corners and long horizontal lines; they were built of reinforced concrete, and were almost always white; and they sometimes had nautical features, such as railings and portholes that resembled those on a ship. The rounded corner was not entirely new; it had appeared in Berlin in 1923 in the Mossehaus by Erich Mendelsohn, and later in the Hoover Building, an industrial complex in the London suburb of Perivale. In the United States, it became most closely associated with transport; Streamline moderne was rare in office buildings, but was often used for bus stations and airport terminals, such as the terminal at La Guardia airport in New York City that handled the first transatlantic flights, via the PanAm Clipper flying boats; and in roadside architecture, such as gas stations and diners. In the late 1930s a series of diners, modelled upon streamlined railroad cars, were produced and installed in towns in New England; at least two examples still remain and are now registered historic buildings.
Decoration and motifs.
Decoration in the Art Deco period went through several distinct phases. Between 1910 and 1920, as Art Nouveau was exhausted, design styles saw a return to tradition, particularly in the work of Paul Iribe. In 1912 André Vera published an essay in the magazine "L'Art Décoratif" calling for a return to the craftsmanship and materials of earlier centuries, and using a new repertoire of forms taken from nature, particularly baskets and garlands of fruit and flowers. A second tendency of Art Deco, also from 1910 to 1920, was inspired by the bright colours of the artistic movement known as the Fauves and by the colourful costumes and sets of the Ballets Russes. This style was often expressed with exotic materials such as sharkskin, mother of pearl, ivory, tinted leather, lacquered and painted wood, and decorative inlays on furniture that emphasized its geometry. This period of the style reached its high point in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts. In the late 1920s and the 1930s, the decorative style changed, inspired by new materials and technologies. It became sleeker and less ornamental. Furniture, like architecture, began to have rounded edges and to take on a polished, streamlined look, taken from the streamline modern style. New materials, such as nickel or chrome-plated steel, aluminium and bakelite, an early form of plastic, began to appear in furniture and decoration.
Throughout the Art Deco period, and particularly in the 1930s, the motifs of the décor expressed the function of the building. Theatres were decorated with sculpture which illustrated music, dance, and excitement; power companies showed sunrises, the Chrysler building showed stylized hood ornaments; The friezes of Palais de la Porte Dorée at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition showed the faces of the different nationalities of French colonies. The Streamline style made it appear that the building itself was in motion. The WPA murals of the 1930s featured ordinary people; factory workers, postal workers, families and farmers, in place of classical heroes.
Furniture.
French furniture from 1910 until the early 1920s was largely an updating of French traditional furniture styles, and the art nouveau designs of Louis Majorelle, Charles Plumet and other manufacturers. French furniture manufacturers felt threatened by the growing popularity of German manufacturers and styles, particularly the Biedermeier style, which was simple and clean-lined. The French designer Frantz Jourdain, the President of the Paris Salon d'Automne, invited designers from Munich to participate in the 1910 Salon. French designers saw the new German style, and decided to meet the German challenge. The French designers decided to present new French styles in the Salon of 1912. The rules of the Salon indicated that only modern styles would be permitted. All of the major French furniture designers took part in Salon: Paul Follot, Paul Iribe, Maurice Dufrêne, André Groult, André Mare and Louis Suë took part, presenting new works that updated the traditional French styles of Louis XVI and Louis Philippe with more angular corners inspired by Cubism and brighter colours inspired by Fauvism and the Nabis.
The painter André Mare and furniture designer Louis Süe both participated the 1912 Salon. After the war the two men joined to form their own company, formally called the "Compagnie des Arts Française", but usually known simply as Suë and Mare. Unlike the prominent art nouveau designers like Louis Majorelle, who personally designed every piece, they assembled a team of skilled craftsmen and produced complete interior designs, including furniture, glassware, carpets, ceramics, wallpaper and lighting. Their work featured bright colors and furniture and fine woods, such as ebony encrusted with mother of pearl, abalone and silvered metal to create bouquets of flowers. They designed everything from the interiors of ocean liners to perfume bottles for the label of Jean Patou.The firm prospered in the early 1920s, but the two men were better craftsmen than businessmen. The firm was sold in 1928, and both men left.
The most prominent furniture designer at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition was Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, from Alsace. He first exhibited his works at the 1913 Autumn Salon, then had his own pavilion, the "House of the Rich Collector", at the 1925 Exposition. He used only most rare and expensive materials, including ebony, mahogany, rosewood, ambon and other exotic woods, decorated with inlays of ivory, tortoise shell, mother of pearl, Little pompoms of silk decorated the handles of drawers of the cabinets. His furniture was based upon 18th-century models, but simplified and reshaped. In all of his work, the interior structure of the furniture was completely concealed. The framework usually of oak, was completely covered with an overlay of thin strips of wood, then covered by a second layer of strips of rare and expensive woods. This was then covered with a veneer and polished, so that the piece looked as if it had been cut out of a single block of wood. Contrast to the dark wood was provided by inlays of ivory, and ivory key plates and handles. According to Ruhlmann, armchairs had to be designed differently according to the functions of the rooms where they appeared; living room armchairs were designed to be welcoming, office chairs comfortable, and salon chairs voluptuous. Only a small number of pieces of each design of furniture was made, and the average price of one of his beds or cabinets was greater than the price of an average house.
Jules Leleu was a traditional furniture designer who moved smoothly into Art Deco in the 1920s; he designed the furniture for the dining room of the Élysée Palace, and for the first-class cabins of the steamship "Normandie". his style was characterized by the use of ebony, Macassar wood, walnut, with decoration of plaques of ivory and mother of pearl. He introduced the style of lacquered art deco furniture in the late 1920s, and in the late 1930s introduced furniture made of metal with panels of smoked glass. In Italy, the designer Gio Ponti was famous for his streamlined designs.
The costly and exotic furniture of Ruhlmann and other traditionalists infuriated modernists, including the architect Le Corbusier, causing him to write a famous series of articles denouncing the "arts décoratif" style. He attacked furniture made only for the rich, and called upon designers to create furniture made with inexpensive materials and modern style, which ordinary people could afford. He designed his own chairs, created to be inexpensive and mass-produced.
In the 1930s, furniture designs adapted to the form, with smoother surfaces and curved forms. The masters of the late style included Donald Deskey, who was one of the most influential designers; he created the interior of the Radio City Music Hall. He used a mixture of traditional and very modern materials, including aluminium, chrome, and bakelite, an early form of plastic. Other masters of art deco furniture of the 1930s in the United States included Gilbert Rohde, Warren McArthur, Kem Weber, and Wolfgang Hoffman.
The Waterfall style was popular in the 1930s and 1940s, the most prevalent Art Deco form of furniture at the time. Pieces were typically of plywood finished with blond veneer and with rounded edges, resembling a waterfall.
Design.
Streamline was a variety of Art Deco which emerged during the mid-1930s. It was influenced by modern aerodynamic principles developed for aviation and ballistics to reduce aerodynamic drag at high velocities. The bullet shapes were applied by designers to cars, trains, ships, and even objects not intended to move, such as refrigerators, gas pumps, and buildings. One of the first production vehicles in this style was the Chrysler Airflow of 1933. It was unsuccessful commercially, but the beauty and functionality of its design set a precedent; meant modernity. It continued to be used in car design well after World War II.
New industrial materials began to influence the design of cars and household objects. These included aluminium, chrome, and bakelite, an early form of plastic. Bakelite could be easily moulded into different forms, and soon was used in telephones, radios and other appliances.
Ocean liners also adopted a style of Art Deco, known in French as the "Style Paquebot", or "Ocean Liner Style". The most famous example was the SS "Normandie", which made its first transatlantic trip in 1935. It was designed particularly to bring wealthy Americans to Paris to shop. The cabins and salons featured the latest Art Deco furnishings and decoration. The Grand Salon of the ship, which was the restaurant for first-class passengers, was bigger than the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. It was illuminated by electric lights within twelve pillars of Lalique crystal; thirty-six matching pillars lined the walls. This was one of the earliest examples of illumination being directly integrated into architecture. The style of ships was soon adapted to buildings. A notable example is found on the San Francisco waterfront, where the Maritime Museum building, built as a public bath in 1937, resembles a ferryboat, with ship railings and rounded corners. The Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong also used a variation of the style.
Textiles and fashion.
Textiles were an important part of the Art Deco style, in the form of colourful wallpaper, upholstery and carpets, In the 1920s, designers were inspired by the stage sets of the Ballets Russes, fabric designs and costumes from Léon Bakst and creations by the Wiener Werkstätte. The early interior designs of André Mare featured brightly coloured and highly stylized garlands of roses and flowers, which decorated the walls, floors, and furniture. Stylized Floral motifs also dominated the work of Raoul Dufy and Paul Poiret, and in the furniture designs of J.E. Ruhlmann. The floral carpet was reinvented in Deco style by Paul Poiret.
The use of the style was greatly enhanced by the introduction of the "pochoir" stencil-based printing system, which allowed designers to achieve crispness of lines and very vivid colours. Art Deco forms appeared in the clothing of Paul Poiret, Charles Worth and Jean Patou. After World War I, exports of clothing and fabrics became one of the most important currency earners of France.
Late Art Deco wallpaper and textiles sometimes featured stylized industrial scenes, cityscapes, locomotives and other modern themes, as well as stylized female figures, metallic finishes and geometric designs.
Fashion changed dramatically during the Art Deco period, thanks in particular to designers Paul Poiret and later Coco Chanel. Poiret introduced an important innovation to fashion design, the concept of draping, a departure from the tailoring and pattern-making of the past. He designed clothing cut along straight lines and constructed of rectangular motifs. His styles offered structural simplicity The corseted look and formal styles of the previous period were abandoned, and fashion became more practical, and streamlined. with the use of new materials, brighter colours and printed designs. The designer Coco Chanel continued the transition, popularising the style of sporty, casual chic.
Jewelry.
In the 1920s and 1930s, designers including René Lalique and Cartier tried to reduce the traditional dominance of diamonds by introducing more colourful gemstones, such as small emeralds, rubies and sapphires. They also placed greater emphasis on very elaborate and elegant settings, featuring less-expensive materials such as enamel, glass, horn and ivory. Diamonds themselves were cut in less traditional forms; the 1925 Exposition saw many diamonds cut in the form of tiny rods or matchsticks. The settings for diamonds also changed; More and more often jewellers used platinum instead of gold, since it was strong and flexible, and could set clusters of stones. Jewellers also began to use more dark materials, such as enamels and black onyx, which provided a higher contrast with diamonds.
Jewellery became much more colourful and varied in style. Cartier and the firm of Boucheron combined diamonds with colourful other gemstones cut into the form of leaves, fruit or flowers, to make brooches, rings, earrings, clips and pendants. Far Eastern themes also became popular; plaques of jade and coral were combined with platinum and diamonds, and vanity cases, cigarette cases and powder boxes were decorated with Japanese and Chinese landscapes made with mother of pearl, enamel and lacquer.
Rapidly changing fashions in clothing brought new styles of jewellery. Sleeveless dresses of the 1920s meant that arms needed decoration, and designers quickly created bracelets of gold, silver and platinum encrusted with lapis-lazuli, onyx, coral, and other colourful stones; Other bracelets were intended for the upper arms, and several bracelets were often worn at the same time. The short haircuts of women in the twenties called for elaborate deco earring designs. As women began to smoke in public, designers created very ornate cigarette cases and ivory cigarette holders. The invention of the wrist-watch before World War I inspired jewelers to create extraordinary decorated watches, encrusted with diamonds and plated with enamel, gold and silver. Pendant watches, hanging from a ribbon, also became fashionable.
The established jewellery houses of Paris in the period, Cartier, Chaumet, Georges Fouquet, Mauboussin, and Van Cleef & Arpels all created jewellery and objects in the new fashion. The firm of Chaumet made highly geometric cigarette boxes, cigarette lighters, pillboxes and notebooks, made of hard stones decorated with jade, lapis lazuli, diamonds and sapphires. They were joined by many young new designers, each with his own idea of deco. Raymond Templier designed pieces with highly intricate geometric patterns, including silver earrings that looked like skyscrapers. Gerard Sandoz was only 18 when he started to design jewelry in 1921; he designed many celebrated pieces based on the smooth and polished look of modern machinery. The glass designer René Lalique also entered the field, creating pendants of fruit, flowers, frogs, fairies or mermaids made of sculpted glass in bright colors, hanging on cords of silk with tassels. The jeweller Paul Brandt contrasted rectangular and triangular patterns, and embedded pearls in lines on onyx plaques. Jean Despres made necklaces of contrasting colours by bringing together silver and black lacquer, or gold with lapis lazuli. Many of his designs looked like highly polished pieces of machines. Jean Dunand was also inspired by modern machinery, combined with bright reds and blacks contrasting with polished metal.
Glass art.
Like the Art Nouveau period before it, Art Deco was an exceptional period for fine glass and other decorative objects, designed to fit their architectural surroundings. The most famous producer of glass objects was René Lalique, whose works, from vases to hood ornaments for automobiles, became symbols of the period. He had made ventures into glass before World War I, designing bottles for the perfumes of François Coty, but he did not begin serious production of art glass until after World War I. In 1918, at the age of 58, he bought a large glass works in Combs-la-Ville and began to manufacture both artistic and practical glass objects. He treated glass as a form of sculpture, and created statuettes, vases, bowls, lamps and ornaments. He used demi-crystal rather than lead crystal, which was softer and easier to form, though not as lustrous. He sometimes used coloured glass, but more often used opalescent glass, where part or the whole of the outer surface was stained with a wash. Lalique provided the decorative glass panels, lights and illuminated glass ceilings for the ocean liners in 1927 and the SS "Normandie" in 1935, and for some of the first-class sleeping cars of the French railroads. At the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts, he had his own pavilion, designed a dining room with a table setting and matching glass ceiling for the Sèvres Pavilion, and designed a glass fountain for the courtyard of the Cours des Métiers, a slender glass column which spouted water from the sides and was illuminated at night.
Other notable Art Deco glass manufacturers included Marius-Ernest Sabino, who specialized in figurines, vases, bowls, and glass sculptures of fish, nudes, and animals. For these he often used an opalescent glass which could change from white to blue to amber, depending upon the light. His vases and bowls featured molded friezes of animals, nudes or busts of women with fruit or flowers. His work was less subtle but more colourful than that of Lalique.
Other notable Deco glass designers included Edmond Etling, who also used bright opalescent colours, often with geometric patterns and sculpted nudes; Albert Simonet, and Aristide Colotte and Maurice Marinot, who was known for his deeply etched sculptural bottles and vases. The firm of Daum from the city of Nancy, which had been famous for its Art Nouveau glass, produced a line of Deco vases and glass sculpture, solid, geometric and chunky in form. More delicate multi-coloured works were made by Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, who produced delicately shaded vases with sculpted butterflies and nymphs, and Francois Decorchemont, whose vases were streaked and marbled.
The Great Depression ruined a large part of the decorative glass industry, which depended upon wealthy clients. Some artists turned to designing stained glass windows for churches. In 1937, the Steuben glass company began the practice of commissioning famous artists to produce glassware. Louis Majorelle, famous for his Art Nouveau furniture, designed a remarkable Art Deco stained glass window portraying steel workers for the offices of the Aciéries de Longwy, a steel mill in Longwy, France.
Amiens Cathedral has a rare example of Art Deco stained glass windows in the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, made in 1932-34 by the Paris glass artist Jean Gaudin based on drawings by Jacques Le Breton.
Metal art.
Art Deco artists produced a wide variety of practical objects in the Art Deco style, made of industrial materials from traditional wrought iron to chrome-plated steel. The American artist Norman Bel Geddes designed a cocktail set resembling a skyscraper made of chrome-plated steel. Raymond Subes designed an elegant metal grille for the entrance of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the centre-piece of the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. The French sculptor Jean Dunand produced magnificent doors on the theme "The Hunt", covered with gold leaf and paint on plaster (1935).
Animation.
Art Deco visuals and imagery was used in multiple animated films including "", "Night Hood", "All's Fair at the Fair", "Merry Mannequins", "Page Miss Glory", "Fantasia" and "Sleeping Beauty". The architecture is featured in the fictitious underwater city of Rapture in the Bioshock video game series.
Art Deco architecture around the world.
Art Deco architecture began in Europe, but by 1939 there were examples in large cities on every continent and in almost every country. This is a selection of prominent buildings on each continent.
"For a comprehensive list of existing buildings by country, see: List of Art Deco architecture.
Africa.
Most Art Deco buildings in Africa were built during European colonial rule, and often designed by Italian, French and Portuguese architects.
Asia.
Many Art Deco buildings in Asia were designed by European architects. But in the Philippines, local architects such as Juan Nakpil, Juan Arellano and others were preeminent. Many Art Deco landmarks in Asia were demolished during the great economic expansion of Asia the late 20th century, but some notable enclaves of the architecture still remain, particularly in Shanghai and Mumbai.
Australia and New Zealand.
Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, have several notable Art Deco buildings, including the Manchester Unity Building and the former Russell Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne, the Castlemaine Art Museum in Castlemaine, central Victoria and the Grace Building, AWA Tower and Anzac Memorial in Sydney.
Several towns in New Zealand, including Napier and Hastings were rebuilt in Art Deco style after the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake, and many of the buildings have been protected and restored. Napier has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated. Wellington has retained a sizeable number of Art Deco buildings.
North America.
In Canada, surviving Art Deco structures are mainly in the major cities; Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Ontario, and Vancouver. They range from public buildings like Vancouver City Hall to commercial buildings (College Park) to public works (R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant).
In Mexico, the most imposing Art Deco example is interior of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), finished in 1934 with its elaborate décor and murals. Examples of Art Deco residential architecture can be found in the Condesa district, many designed by Francisco J. Serrano.
In the United States, Art Deco buildings are found from coast to coast, in all the major cities. It was most widely used for office buildings, train stations, airport terminals, and cinemas; residential buildings are rare. During the 1920s and 1930s architects in the Southwestern United States, particularly in the US state of New Mexico, combined Pueblo Revival with Territorial Style and Art Deco to create Pueblo Deco, as seen in the KiMo Theater in Albuquerque. In the 1930s, the more austere streamline style became popular. Many buildings were demolished between 1945 and the late 1960s, but then efforts began to protect the best examples. The City of Miami Beach established the Miami Beach Architectural District to preserve the fine collection of Art Deco buildings found there.
Central America and the Caribbean.
Art Deco buildings can be found throughout Central America, including in Cuba.
Europe.
The architectural style first appeared in Paris with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–13) by Auguste Perret but then spread rapidly around Europe, until examples could be found in nearly every large city, from London to Moscow. In Germany two variations of Art Deco flourished in the 1920s and 30s: The Neue Sachlichkeit style and Expressionist architecture. Notable examples include Erich Mendelsohn's Mossehaus and Schaubühne theater in Berlin, Fritz Höger's Chilehaus in Hamburg and his Kirche am Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin, the Anzeiger Tower in Hanover and the Borsig Tower in Berlin.
One of the largest Art Deco buildings in Western Europe is the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg, Brussels. In 1925, architect Albert van Huffel won the Grand Prize for Architecture with his scale model of the basilica at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.
Spain and Portugal have some striking examples of Art Deco buildings, particularly movie theaters. Examples in Portugal are the Capitólio Theater (1931) and the Éden Cine-Theatre (1937) in Lisbon, the Rivoli Theater (1937) and the Coliseu (1941) in Porto and the Rosa Damasceno Theater (1937) in Santarém. An example in Spain is the Cine Rialto in Valencia (1939).
During the 1930s, Art Deco had a noticeable effect on house design in the United Kingdom, as well as the design of various public buildings. Straight, white-rendered house frontages rising to flat roofs, sharply geometric door surrounds and tall windows, as well as convex-curved metal corner windows, were all characteristic of that period.
The London Underground is famous for many examples of Art Deco architecture, and there are a number of buildings in the style situated along the Golden Mile in Brentford. Also in West London is the Hoover Building, which was originally built for The Hoover Company and was converted into a superstore in the early 1990s.
Bucharest, Romania.
Bucharest, once known as the "Little Paris" of the 19th century, engaged in a new designs after World War I, redirected its inspiration towards New York City. The 1930s brought a new fashion which echoed in the cinema, theatre, dancing styles, art and architecture. Bucharest during the 1930s was marked by more and more art deco architecture from the bigger boulevards like Bulevardul Magheru to the private houses and smaller districts. The Telephone Palace, an early landmark of modern Bucharest, was the first skyscraper of the city. It was the tallest building between 1933 and the 1950s, with a height of . The architects were Louis Weeks and Edmond van Saanen Algi and engineer Walter Troy. The art deco monuments are a crucial part of the character of Bucharest since they describe and mark an important period from its history, the interbellic life (World War I–World War II). Most of the buildings from those years are prone to catastrophe, as Bucharest is located in an earthquake zone.
India.
The Indian Institute of Architects, founded in Mumbai in 1929, played a prominent role in propagating the Art Deco movement. In November 1937, this institute organised the 'Ideal Home Exhibition' held in the Town Hall in Mumbai which spanned over 12 days and attracted about one hundred thousand visitors. As a result, it was declared a success by the 'Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects'. The exhibits displayed the 'ideal', or better described as the most 'modern' arrangements for various parts of the house, paying close detail to avoid architectural blunders and present the most efficient and well-thought-out models. The exhibition focused on various elements of a home ranging from furniture, elements of interior decoration as well as radios and refrigerators using new and scientifically relevant materials and methods.
Guided by their desire to emulate the west, the Indian architects were fascinated by the industrial modernity that Art Deco offered. The western elites were the first to experiment with the technologically advanced facets of Art Deco, and architects began the process of transformation by the early 1930s.
Mumbai's expanding port commerce in the 1930s resulted in the growth of educated middle class population. It also saw an increase of people migrating to Mumbai in search of job opportunities. This led to the pressing need for new developments through Land Reclamation Schemes and construction of new public and residential buildings. Parallelly, the changing political climate in the country and the aspirational quality of the Art Deco aesthetics led to a whole-hearted acceptance of the building style in the city's development. Most of the buildings from this period can be seen spread throughout the city neighbourhoods in areas such as Churchgate, Colaba, Fort, Mohammed Ali Road, Cumbala Hill, Dadar, Matunga, Bandra and Chembur.
South America.
Art Deco in South America is especially present in countries which received a great wave of immigration in the first half of the 20th century, with notable works in their richest cities, like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina. The Kavanagh Building in Buenos Aires (1934), by Sánchez, Lagos and de la Torre, was the tallest reinforced-concrete structure when it was completed, and is a notable example of late Art Deco style.
Preservation and Neo Art Deco.
In many cities, efforts have been made to protect the remaining Art Deco buildings. In many U.S. cities, historic art deco cinemas have been preserved and turned into cultural centres. Even more modest art deco buildings have been preserved as part of America's architectural heritage; an art deco café and gas station along Route 66 in Shamrock, Texas is an historic monument. The Miami Beach Architectural District protects several hundred old buildings, and requires that new buildings comply with the style. In Havana, Cuba, many Art Deco buildings have badly deteriorated. Efforts are underway to bring the buildings back to their original appearance.
In the 21st century, modern variants of Art Deco, called Neo Art Deco (or Neo-Art Deco), have appeared in some American cities, inspired by the classic Art Deco buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. Examples include the NBC Tower in Chicago, inspired by 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City; and Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada, which includes art deco features from Hoover Dam, 80 km (50 miles) away.
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1884 | ASCII art | ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters (beyond the 128 characters of standard 7-bit ASCII). The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation.
Among the oldest known examples of ASCII art are the
creations by computer-art pioneer Kenneth Knowlton from around 1966, who was working for Bell Labs at the time. "Studies in Perception I" by Knowlton and Leon Harmon from 1966 shows some examples of their early ASCII art.
ASCII art was invented, in large part, because early printers often lacked graphics ability and thus, characters were used in place of graphic marks. Also, to mark divisions between different print jobs from different users, bulk printers often used ASCII art to print large banner pages, making the division easier to spot so that the results could be more easily separated by a computer operator or clerk. ASCII art was also used in early e-mail when images could not be embedded.
History.
Typewriter art.
Since 1867, typewriters have been used for creating visual art.
TTY and RTTY.
TTY stands for "TeleTYpe" or "TeleTYpewriter", and is also known as Teleprinter or Teletype.
RTTY stands for Radioteletype; character sets such as Baudot code, which predated ASCII, were used. According to a chapter in the "RTTY Handbook", text images have been sent via teletypewriter as early as 1923. However, none of the "old" RTTY art has been discovered yet. What is known is that text images appeared frequently on radioteletype in the 1960s and the 1970s.
Line-printer art.
In the 1960s, Andries van Dam published a representation of an electronic circuit produced on an IBM 1403 line printer. At the same time, Kenneth Knowlton was producing realistic images, also on line printers, by overprinting several characters on top of one another.
Note that it was not ASCII art in a sense that the 1403 was driven by an EBCDIC-coded platform and the character sets and trains available on the 1403 were derived from EBCDIC rather than ASCII, despite some glyphs commonalities.
ASCII art.
The widespread usage of ASCII art can be traced to the computer bulletin board systems of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The limitations of computers of that time period necessitated the use of text characters to represent images. Along with ASCII's use in communication, however, it also began to appear in the underground online art groups of the period. An ASCII comic is a form of webcomic which uses ASCII text to create images. In place of images in a regular comic, ASCII art is used, with the text or dialog usually placed underneath.
During the 1990s, graphical browsing and variable-width fonts became increasingly popular, leading to a decline in ASCII art. Despite this, ASCII art continued to survive through online MUDs, an acronym for "Multi-User Dungeon", (which are textual multiplayer role-playing video games), Internet Relay Chat, Email, message boards, and other forms of online communication which commonly employ the needed fixed-width.
It is seen to this day on the CLI app Neofetch, which displays the logo of the OS on which it is invoked.
ANSI.
ASCII and more importantly, ANSI were staples of the early technological era; terminal systems relied on coherent presentation using color and control signals standard in the terminal protocols.
Over the years, warez groups began to enter the ASCII art scene. Warez groups usually release .nfo files with their software, cracks or other general software reverse-engineering releases. The ASCII art will usually include the warez group's name and maybe some ASCII borders on the outsides of the release notes, etc.
BBS systems were based on ASCII and ANSI art, as were most DOS and similar console applications, and the precursor to AOL.
Uses.
ASCII art is used wherever text can be more readily printed or transmitted than graphics, or in some cases, where the transmission of pictures is not possible. This includes typewriters, teleprinters, non-graphic computer terminals, printer separators, in early computer networking (e.g., BBSes), email, and Usenet news messages. ASCII art is also used within the source code of computer programs for representation of company or product logos, and flow control or other diagrams. In some cases, the entire source code of a program is a piece of ASCII art – for instance, an entry to one of the earlier International Obfuscated C Code Contest is a program that adds numbers, but visually looks like a binary adder drawn in logic ports.
Some electronic schematic archives represent the circuits using ASCII art.
Examples of ASCII-style art predating the modern computer era can be found in the June 1939, July 1948 and October 1948 editions of Popular Mechanics.
Early computer games played on terminals frequently used ASCII art to simulate graphics, most notably the roguelike genre using ASCII art to visually represent dungeons and monsters within them. "0verkill" is a 2D platform multiplayer shooter game designed entirely in color ASCII art. MPlayer and VLC media player can display videos as ASCII art through the AAlib library. ASCII art is used in the making of DOS-based ZZT games.
Many game walkthrough guides come as part of a basic .txt file; this file often contains the name of the game in ASCII art. Such as below, word art is created using backslashes and other ASCII values in order to create the illusion of 3D.
Types and styles.
Different techniques could be used in ASCII art to obtain different artistic effects.
"Typewriter-style" lettering, made from individual letter characters:
Line art, for creating shapes:
.--. /\ ____
'--' /__\ (^._.^)~ <(o.o )>
Solid art, for creating filled objects:
.g@8g. db
'Y8@P' d88b
Shading, using symbols with various intensities for creating gradients or contrasts:
:$#$: "4b. ':.
:$#$: "4b. ':.
Combinations of the above, often used as signatures, for example, at the end of an email:
|\_/| **************************** (\_/)
/ @ @ \ * "Purrrfectly pleasant" * (='.'=)
( > º < ) * Poppy Prinz * (")_(")
`»x«´ * (pprinz@example.com) *
/ O \ ****************************
As-pixel characters use combinations of ░ , █ , ▄ and ▀ (Block Elements) to make pictures:<br>
░░▀███░░░░▀██░░░░██▀░░░░██░░
░░░░███░░░░░▀██▄█░░░░░░█░░░░
░░░░░░███░░░░▄███░░░░█▀░░░░░
░░░░░░░▀██▄█▀░░░███▄▀░░░░░░░
░░░░░░░░░▀▀░░░░░░░▀░░░░░░░░░
Emoticons and verticons.
The simplest forms of ASCII art are combinations of two or three characters for expressing emotion in text. They are commonly referred to as 'emoticon', 'smilie', or 'smiley'. There is another type of one-line ASCII art that does not require the mental rotation of pictures, which is widely known in Japan as kaomoji (literally "face characters".)
More complex examples use several lines of text to draw large symbols or more complex figures. Hundreds of different text smileys have developed over time, but only a few are generally accepted, used and understood.
ASCII comic.
An ASCII comic is a form of webcomic.
The Adventures of Nerd Boy.
The Adventures of Nerd Boy, or just Nerd Boy, was an ASCII comic, published by Joaquim Gândara between 5 August 2001 and 17 July 2007, and consisting of 600 strips. They were posted to ASCII art newsgroup alt.ascii-art and on the website. Some strips have been translated to Polish and French.
Styles of the computer underground text art scene.
Atari 400/800 ATASCII.
The Atari 400/800, which were released in 1979, did not follow the ASCII standard and had their own character set, called ATASCII. The emergence of ATASCII art coincided with the growing popularity of BBS Systems caused by availability of the acoustic couplers that were compatible with the 8-bit home computers. ATASCII text animations are also referred to as "break animations" by the Atari sceners.
C-64 PETSCII.
The Commodore 64, which was released in 1982, also did not follow the ASCII standard. The C-64 character set is called PETSCII, an extended form of ASCII-1963. As with the Atari's ATASCII art, C-64 fans developed a similar scene that used PETSCII for their creations.
"Block ASCII" / "High ASCII" style ASCII art on the IBM PC.
So-called "block ASCII" or "high ASCII" uses the extended characters of the 8-bit code page 437, which is a proprietary standard introduced by IBM in 1979 (ANSI Standard x3.16) for the IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS operating systems. "Block ASCIIs" were widely used on the PC during the 1990s until the Internet replaced BBSes as the main communication platform. Until then, "block ASCIIs" dominated the PC Text Art Scene.
The first art scene group that focused on the extended character set of the PC in their art work was called "Aces of ANSI Art" (). Some members left in 1990, and formed a group called "ANSI Creators in Demand" (ACiD). In that same year the second major underground art scene group was founded, ICE, "Insane Creators Enterprise".
There is some debate between ASCII and block ASCII artists, with "Hardcore" ASCII artists maintaining that block ASCII art is in fact not ASCII art, because it does not use the 128 characters of the original ASCII standard. On the other hand, block ASCII artists argue that if their art uses only characters of the computers character set, then it is to be called ASCII, regardless if the character set is proprietary or not.
Microsoft Windows does not support the ANSI Standard x3.16. One can view block ASCIIs with a text editor using the font "Terminal", but it will not look exactly as it was intended by the artist. With a special ASCII/ANSI viewer, such as ACiDView for Windows (see ASCII and ANSI art viewers), one can see block ASCII and ANSI files properly. An example that illustrates the difference in appearance is part of this article. Alternatively, one could look at the file using the TYPE command in the command prompt.
"Amiga"/"Oldskool" style ASCII art.
In the art scene one popular ASCII style that used the 7-bit standard ASCII character set was the so-called "Oldskool" style. It is also called "Amiga style", due to its origin and widespread use on the Commodore Amiga computers. The style uses primarily the characters: codice_1. The "oldskool" art looks more like the outlined drawings of shapes than real pictures.
This is an example of "Amiga style" (also referred to as "old school" or "oldskool" style) scene ASCII art.
The Amiga ASCII scene surfaced in 1992, seven years after the introduction of the Commodore Amiga 1000. The Commodore 64 PETSCII scene did not make the transition to the Commodore Amiga as the C64 demo and warez scenes did. Among the first Amiga ASCII art groups were ART, Epsilon Design, Upper Class, Unreal (later known as "DeZign"). This means that the text art scene on the Amiga was actually younger than the text art scene on the PC. The Amiga artists also did not call their ASCII art style "Oldskool". That term was introduced on the PC. When and by whom is unknown and lost in history.
The Amiga style ASCII artwork was most often released in the form of a single text file, which included all the artwork (usually requested), with some design parts in between, as opposed to the PC art scene where the art work was released as a ZIP archive with separate text files for each piece. Furthermore, the releases were usually called "ASCII collections" and not "art packs" like on the IBM PC.
In text editors.
This kind of ASCII art is handmade in a text editor. Popular editors used to make this kind of ASCII art include Microsoft Notepad, CygnusEditor aka. CED (Amiga), and EditPlus2 (PC).
Oldskool font example from the PC, which was taken from the ASCII editor FIGlet.
Newskool style ASCII art.
"Newskool" is a popular form of ASCII art which capitalizes on character strings like "$#Xxo". In spite of its name, the style is not "new"; on the contrary, it was very old but fell out of favor and was replaced by "Oldskool" and "Block" style ASCII art. It was dubbed "Newskool" upon its comeback and renewed popularity at the end of the 1990s.
Newskool changed significantly as the result of the introduction of extended proprietary characters. The classic 7-bit standard ASCII characters remain predominant, but the extended characters are often used for "fine tuning" and "tweaking". The style developed further after the introduction and adaptation of Unicode.
Methods for generating ASCII art.
While some prefer to use a simple text editor to produce ASCII art, specialized programs, such as JavE have been developed that often simulate the features and tools in bitmap image editors. For Block ASCII art and ANSI art the artist almost always uses a special text editor, because to generate the required characters on a standard keyboard, one needs to know the Alt code for each character. For example, + will produce ▓, + will produce ▒, and + will produce ◘.
The special text editors have sets of special characters assigned to existing keys on the keyboard. Popular DOS-based editors, such as TheDraw and ACiDDraw had multiple sets of different special characters mapped to the function keys to make the use of those characters easier for the artist who can switch between individual sets of characters via basic keyboard shortcuts. PabloDraw is one of the very few special ASCII/ANSI art editors that were developed for Windows.
Image to text conversion.
Other programs allow one to automatically convert an image to text characters, which is a special case of vector quantization. A method is to sample the image down to grayscale with less than 8-bit precision, and then assign a character for each value. Such ASCII art generators often allow users to choose the intensity and contrast of the generated image.
Three factors limit the "fidelity" of the conversion, especially of photographs:
Examples of converted images are given below.
This is one of the earliest forms of ASCII art, dating back to the early days of the 1960s minicomputers and teletypes. During the 1970s, it was popular in US malls to get a t-shirt with a photograph printed in ASCII art on it from an automated kiosk containing a computer, and London's Science Museum had a similar service to produce printed portraits. With the advent of the web, HTML and CSS, many ASCII conversion programs will now quantize to a full RGB colorspace, enabling colorized ASCII images.
Still images or movies can also be converted to ASCII on various UNIX and UNIX-like systems using the AAlib (black and white) or libcaca (colour) graphics device driver, or the VLC media player or mpv under Windows, Linux or macOS; all of which render the screen using ASCII symbols instead of pixels.
There are also a number of smartphone applications, such as ASCII cam for Android, that generate ASCII art in real-time using input from the phone's camera. These applications typically allow the ASCII art to be saved as either a text file or as an image made up of ASCII text.
Non fixed-width ASCII.
Most ASCII art is created using a monospaced font, such as Courier, where all characters are identical in width. Early computers in use when ASCII art came into vogue had monospaced fonts for screen and printer displays. Today, most of the more commonly used fonts in word processors, web browsers and other programs are proportional fonts, such as Helvetica or Times Roman, where different widths are used for different characters. ASCII art drawn for a fixed width font will usually appear distorted, or even unrecognizable when displayed in a proportional font.
Some ASCII artists have produced art for display in proportional fonts. These ASCIIs, rather than using a purely shade-based correspondence, use characters for slopes and borders and use block shading. These ASCIIs generally offer greater precision and attention to detail than fixed-width ASCIIs for a lower character count, although they are not as universally accessible since they are usually relatively font-specific.
Animated ASCII art.
Animated ASCII art started in 1970 from so-called VT100 animations produced on VT100 terminals. These animations were simply text with cursor movement instructions, deleting and erasing the characters necessary to appear animated. Usually, they represented a long hand-crafted process undertaken by a single person to tell a story.
Contemporary web browser revitalized animated ASCII art again. It became possible to display animated ASCII art via JavaScript or Java applets. Static ASCII art pictures are loaded and displayed one after another, creating the animation, very similar to how movie projectors unreel film reel and project the individual pictures on the big screen at movie theaters. A new term was born: "ASCIImation" – another name of "animated ASCII art". A seminal work in this arena is the Star Wars ASCIImation. More complicated routines in JavaScript generate more elaborate ASCIImations showing effects like Morphing effects, star field emulations, fading effects and calculated images, such as mandelbrot fractal animations.
There are now many tools and programs that can transform raster images into text symbols; some of these tools can operate on streaming video. For example, the music video for American singer Beck's song "Black Tambourine" is made up entirely of ASCII characters that approximate the original footage. VLC, a media player software, can render any video in colored ASCII through the libcaca module.
Other text-based visual art.
There are a variety of other types of art using text symbols from character sets other than ASCII and/or some form of color coding. Despite not being pure ASCII, these are still often referred to as "ASCII art". The character set portion designed specifically for drawing is known as the line drawing characters or pseudo-graphics.
ANSI art.
The IBM PC graphics hardware in text mode uses 16 bits per character. It supports a variety of configurations, but in its default mode under DOS they are used to give 256 glyphs from one of the IBM PC code pages (Code page 437 by default), 16 foreground colors, eight background colors, and a flash option. Such art can be loaded into screen memory directly. ANSI.SYS, if loaded, also allows such art to be placed on screen by outputting escape sequences that indicate movements of the screen cursor and color/flash changes. If this method is used then the art becomes known as ANSI art. The IBM PC code pages also include characters intended for simple drawing which often made this art appear much cleaner than that made with more traditional character sets. Plain text files are also seen with these characters, though they have become far less common since Windows GUI text editors (using the Windows ANSI code page) have largely replaced DOS-based ones.
Shift_JIS and Japan.
In Japan, ASCII art (AA) is mainly known as Shift_JIS art. Shift JIS offers a larger selection of characters than plain ASCII (including characters from Japanese scripts and fullwidth forms of ASCII characters), and may be used for text-based art on Japanese websites.
Often, such artwork is designed to be viewed with the default Japanese font on a platform, such as the proportional MS P Gothic.
Kaomoji.
Users on ASCII-NET, in which the word "ASCII" refers to the ASCII Corporation rather than the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, popularised a style of in which the face appears upright rather than rotated.
Unicode.
Unicode would seem to offer the ultimate flexibility in producing text based art with its huge variety of characters. However, finding a suitable fixed-width font is likely to be difficult if a significant subset of Unicode is desired. (Modern UNIX-style operating systems do provide complete fixed-width Unicode fonts, e.g. for xterm. Windows has the Courier New font, which includes characters like ┌╥─╨┐♥☺Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ). Also, the common practice of rendering Unicode with a mixture of variable width fonts is likely to make predictable display hard, if more than a tiny subset of Unicode is used. ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ is an adequate representation of a cat's face in a font with varying character widths.
Control and combining characters.
The combining characters mechanism of Unicode provides considerable ways of customizing the style, even obfuscating the text (e.g. via an online generator like Obfuscator, which focuses on the filters). Glitcher is one example of Unicode art, initiated in 2012: "These symbols, intruding up and down, are made by combining lots of diacritical marks. It’s a kind of art. There’s quite a lot of artists who use the Internet or specific social networks as their canvas." The corresponding creations are favored in web browsers (thanks to their always better support), as geekily stylized usernames for social networks. With a fair compatibility, and among different online tools, [Facebook symbols] showcases various types of Unicode art, mainly for aesthetic purpose (Ɯıḳĭƥḙȡḯả Wîkipêȡıẚ Ẉǐḳîṗȅḍȉā Ẃįḵįṗẻḑìẵ Ẉĭḵɪṕḗdïą Ẇïƙỉpểɗĭà Ẅȉḱïṕȩđĩẵ etc.). Besides, the creations can be hand-crafted (by programming), or pasted from mobile applications (e.g. the category of 'fancy text' tools on Android). The underlying technique dates back to the old systems that incorporated control characters, though. E.g. the German composite codice_2 would be imitated on ZX Spectrum by overwriting codice_3 after backspace and codice_4.
Overprinting (surprint).
In the 1970s and early 1980s it was popular to produce a kind of text art that relied on overprinting. This could be produced either on a screen or on a printer by typing a character, backing up, and then typing another character, just as on a typewriter. This developed into sophisticated graphics in some cases, such as the PLATO system (circa 1973), where superscript and subscript allowed a wide variety of graphic effects. A common use was for emoticons, with WOBTAX and VICTORY both producing convincing smiley faces. Overprinting had previously been used on typewriters, but the low-resolution pixelation of characters on video terminals meant that overprinting here produced seamless pixel graphics, rather than visibly overstruck combinations of letters on paper.
Beyond pixel graphics, this was also used for printing photographs, as the overall darkness of a particular character space dependent on how many characters, as well as the choice of character, were printed in a particular place. Thanks to the increased granularity of tone, photographs were often converted to this type of printout. Even manual typewriters or daisy wheel printers could be used. The technique has fallen from popularity since all cheap printers can easily print photographs, and a normal text file (or an e-mail message or Usenet posting) cannot represent overprinted text. However, something similar has emerged to replace it: shaded or colored ASCII art, using ANSI video terminal markup or color codes (such as those found in HTML, IRC, and many internet message boards) to add a bit more tone variation. In this way, it is possible to create ASCII art where the characters only differ in color.
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1887 | Alexius | Alexius is the Latinized form of the given name Alexios (, polytonic , "defender", cf. Alexander), especially common in the Byzantine Empire. The female form is Alexia () and its variants such as Alessia (the masculine form of which is Alessio) in Italian.
The name belongs to the most ancient attested Greek names (a-re-ke-se-u in the Linear B tablets KN Df 1229 and MY Fu 718).
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1890 | American English | American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances is the "de facto" common language used in government, education and commerce. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.
American English varieties include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around the world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American, a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. and associated nationally with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent. The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in the 20th century.
History.
The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to the diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased.
Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages.
Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in the influence of the Scotch-Irish immigration in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers.
Phonology.
Any phonologically unmarked North American accent is known as "General American" (akin to Received Pronunciation in British English, which has been referred to as "General British"). This section mostly refers to such General American features.
Conservative phonology.
Studies on historical usage of English in both the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that spoken American English did not simply deviate away from period British English, but is conservative in some ways, preserving certain features contemporary British English has since lost.
Full rhoticity (or R-fulness) is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme (corresponding to the letter ) in all environments, including after vowels, such as in "pearl", "car" and "court". Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce except before a vowel, such as some Eastern New England, New York, a specific few (often older) Southern, and African American vernacular accents, are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived to sound especially ethnic, regional or "old-fashioned".
Rhoticity is common in most American accents, although it is now rare in England because during the 17th-century British colonization nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during the following two centuries) when the Scotch-Irish eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. The pronunciation of is a postalveolar approximant or retroflex approximant , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant "r" sound is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South.
American accents that have not undergone the "cot–caught" merger (the lexical sets and ) have instead retained a – split: a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the lexical set) separated away from the set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent set into a merger with the ("caught") set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the "cot" vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the vowel in the following environments: before many instances of , , and particularly (as in "Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often," etc.), a few instances before (as in "strong, long, wrong"), and variably by region or speaker in "gone", "on", and certain other words.
The standard accent of southern England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved in other ways compared to which General American has remained relatively conservative. Examples include the modern RP features of a " trap–bath" split and the fronting of , neither of which is typical of General American accents. Moreover, American dialects do not participate in H-dropping, an innovative feature that now characterizes perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England.
Innovative phonology.
However, General American is also innovative in a number of ways:
Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include the following:
Vocabulary.
The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are "opossum, raccoon, squash", "moose" (from Algonquian), "wigwam", and "moccasin". American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, "en masse", from French; "cookie", from Dutch; "kindergarten" from German, and "rodeo" from Spanish. Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and the word "corn", used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S.
Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West, like "ranch" (now a common house style). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms "(lot, waterfront)" and types of homes like "log cabin, adobe" in the 18th century; "apartment, " in the 19th century; "project, condominium, townhouse, mobile home" in the 20th century; and parts thereof "(driveway, breezeway, backyard)". Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ("dirt roads", "freeways") to infrastructure "(parking lot, overpass, rest area)," to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as "store, shop, lumber"—underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in the U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ("merger, downsize, bottom line"), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball. The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ("elevator" [except in the aeronautical sense], "gasoline") as did certain automotive terms ("truck", "trunk").
New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish "(chutzpah, schmooze, bupkis, glitch") and German ("hamburger, wiener"). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from "OK" and "cool" to "nerd" and "24/7)," while others have not "(have a nice day, for sure);" many are now distinctly old-fashioned "(swell, groovy)." Some English words now in general use, such as "hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze" and "jazz," originated as American slang.
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs. Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are "interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation, major," and many others. Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance "foothill, landslide" (in all senses), ", teenager," "brainstorm, , hitchhike, smalltime," and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in England). Some are euphemistic "(human resources, affirmative action, correctional facility)." Many compound nouns have the verb-and-preposition combination: "stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover," and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ("win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to" and many others).
Noun endings such as "-ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster)" and "-cian (beautician)" are also particularly productive in the U.S. Several verbs ending in "-ize" are of U.S. origin; for example, "fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize," etc.; and so are some back-formations "(locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster" and "enthuse)." Among syntactical constructions that arose are "outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of," etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably "pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay" and "kitty-corner." Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are, for example, "lengthy, bossy, cute" and "cutesy, punk" (in all senses), "sticky" (of the weather), "through" (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as "peppy" or "wacky".
A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as "fall" ("autumn"), "faucet" ("tap"), "diaper" ("nappy"; itself unused in the U.S.), "candy" ("sweets"), "skillet", "eyeglasses", and "obligate" are often regarded as Americanisms. "Fall" for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." "Gotten" (past participle of "get") is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from the U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include "hire" ("to employ"), "I guess" (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler), "baggage", "hit" (a place), and the adverbs "overly" and "presently" ("currently"). Some of these, for example, "monkey wrench" and "wastebasket", originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives "mad" meaning "angry", "smart" meaning "intelligent", and "sick" meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English.
Linguist Bert Vaux created a survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term "sub" for a long sandwich, "soda" (but "pop" in the Great Lakes region and generic "coke" in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink, "you" or "you guys" for the plural of "you" (but "y'all" in the South), "sneakers" for athletic shoes (but often "tennis shoes" outside the Northeast), and "shopping cart" for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods.
Differences between American and British English.
American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, "An American Dictionary of the English Language", known as Webster's Dictionary, was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings.
Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs "he ran quick"/"he ran quickly"; different use of some auxiliary verbs; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: "learned"/"learnt", "burned"/"burnt", "snuck/sneaked", "dove/dived") although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE "in school," BrE "at school"); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE "to the hospital", BrE "to hospital"; contrast, however, AmE "actress Elizabeth Taylor", BrE "the actress Elizabeth Taylor"). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects.
Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as "flavor" for British "flavour", "fiber" for "fibre", "defense" for "defence", "analyze" for "analyse", "license" for "licence", "catalog" for "catalogue" and "traveling" for "travelling". Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to the francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred "programme" for "program", "manoeuvre" for "maneuver", "cheque" for "check", etc.). AmE almost always uses "-ize" in words like "realize". BrE prefers "-ise", but also uses "-ize" on occasion (see: Oxford spelling).
There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences, called "comma splices" in American English, and American English requires that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors the double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here').
Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, "autumn" is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas "fall" is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation.
AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE "transportation" and BrE "transport" or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE "burglarize" and BrE "burgle" (from "burglar"). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems.
Varieties.
While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions.
Regional accents.
The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in a complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling, while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another.
Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England, the Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent), and the South. As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area, Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the vowel in the mouth toward and tensing of the vowel wholesale to . These sound changes have triggered a series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the "Inland North". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents) a backer tongue positioning of the vowel (to ) and the vowel (to ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker is the variable fronting of before , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth "Park the car in Harvard Yard".
Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston, Pittsburgh, Upper Midwestern, and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the vowel with the vowel ( and , respectively): a "cot–caught" merger, which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older "cot–caught" distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the vowel is particularly marked, as depicted in humorous spellings, like in "tawk" and "cawfee" ("talk" and "coffee"), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal: . A split of into two separate phonemes, using different "a" pronunciations for example in "gap" versus "gas" , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents.
Most Americans preserve all historical sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent. The only traditional "r"-dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England, New York City, and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across the country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its "r" pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's "r"-dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from the late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like "car" sound like "cah" or "source" like "sauce".
New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas, is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the vowel losing its gliding quality: , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a "Southern drawl" that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels. The fronting of the vowels of , , , and tends to also define Southern accents as well as the accents spoken in the "Midland": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum.
Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds:
General American.
In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since the mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in the Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity, the "father–bother" merger, "Mary–marry–merry" merger, pre-nasal "short "a"" tensing, and other particular vowel sounds. General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in the most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents.
Other varieties.
Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English, which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture. Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English, spoken in the West and Midwest, and New York Latino English, spoken in the New York metropolitan area. Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and "Yinglish" are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews, Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana, and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii, though primarily English-speaking, is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin, and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English, beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands; Thomasites first established a variation of American English in these islands.
Statistics on usage.
In 2020, about 243 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. Thirty-one of the fifty states, in some cases as part of what has been called the English-only movement, have adopted legislation granting official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which a language other than English – Spanish – is the common language at home, in public, and in government.
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1893 | Albert Spalding |
Albert Goodwill Spalding (September 2, 1849 – September 9, 1915) was an American pitcher, manager, and executive in the early years of professional baseball, and the co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company. He was born and raised in Byron, Illinois, yet graduated from Rockford Central High School in Rockford, Illinois. He played major league baseball between 1871 and 1878. Spalding set a trend when he started wearing a baseball glove.
After his retirement as a player, Spalding remained active with the Chicago White Stockings as president and part-owner. In the 1880s, he took players on the first world tour of baseball. With William Hulbert, Spalding organized the National League. He later called for the commission that investigated the origins of baseball and falsely credited Abner Doubleday with creating the game.
He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.
Baseball career.
Player.
Having played baseball throughout his youth, Spalding first played competitively with the Rockford Pioneers, a youth team, which he joined in 1865. After pitching his team to a 26–2 victory over a local men's amateur team (the Mercantiles), he was approached at the age of 15 by the Rockford Forest Citys, for whom he played for five years. Following the formation of baseball's first professional organization, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (which became known as the National Association, the Association, or NA) in 1871, Spalding joined the Boston Red Stockings (precursor club to the modern Atlanta Braves) and was highly successful; winning 206 games (and losing only 53) as a pitcher and batting .323 as a hitter.
William Hulbert, principal owner of the Chicago White Stockings, did not like the loose organization of the National Association and the gambling element that influenced it, so he decided to create a new organization, which he dubbed the National League of Baseball Clubs. To aid him in this venture, Hulbert enlisted the help of Spalding. Playing to the pitcher's desire to return to his Midwestern roots and challenging Spalding's integrity, Hulbert convinced Spalding to sign a contract to play for the White Stockings (now known as the Chicago Cubs) in 1876. Spalding then coaxed teammates Deacon White, Ross Barnes and Cal McVey, as well as Philadelphia Athletics players Cap Anson and Bob Addy, to sign with Chicago. This was all done under complete secrecy during the playing season because players were all free agents in those days and they did not want their current club and especially the fans to know they were leaving to play elsewhere the next year. News of the signings by the Boston and Philadelphia players leaked to the press before the season ended and all of them faced verbal abuse and physical threats from the fans of those cities.
He was "the premier pitcher of the 1870s", leading the league in victories for each of his six full seasons as a professional. During each of those years he was his team's only pitcher. In 1876, Spalding won 47 games as the prime pitcher for the White Stockings and led them to win the first-ever National League pennant by a wide margin.
In 1877, Spalding began to use a glove to protect his catching hand. People had used gloves previously, but they were not popular, and Spalding himself was skeptical of wearing one at first. However, once he began donning gloves, he influenced other players to do so.
Spalding retired from playing baseball in 1878 at the age of 27, although he continued as president and part owner of the White Stockings and a major influence on the National League. Spalding's .796 career winning percentage (from an era when teams played about once or twice a week) is the highest ever by a baseball pitcher, .058 ahead of Negro league star Dave Brown's .738. Spalding was the first pitcher to reach 200 wins.
Organizer and executive.
In the months after signing for Chicago, Hulbert and Spalding organized the National League by enlisting the two major teams in the East and the four other top teams in what was then considered to be the West, also known as the jungle. Joining Chicago initially were the leading teams from Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. The owners of these western clubs accompanied Hulbert and Spalding to New York where they secretly met with owners from New York City, Philadelphia, Hartford, and Boston. Each signed the league's constitution, and the National League was officially born. "Spalding was thus involved in the transformation of baseball from a game of gentlemen athletes into a business and a professional sport." Although the National Association held on for a few more seasons, it was no longer recognized as the premier organization for professional baseball. Gradually, it faded out of existence and was replaced by myriad minor leagues and associations around the country.
In 1886, with Spalding as president of the franchise, the Chicago White Stockings (today's Chicago Cubs), began holding spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which subsequently has been called the "birthplace" of spring training baseball. The location and the training concept was the brainchild of Spalding and his player/manager Cap Anson, who saw that the city and the natural springs created positives for their players. They first played in an area called the Hot Springs Baseball Grounds. Many other teams followed the concept and began training in Hot Springs and other locations.
In 1905, after Henry Chadwick wrote an article saying that baseball grew from the British sports of cricket and rounders, Spalding called for a commission to find out the real source of baseball. The commission called for citizens who knew anything about the founding of baseball to send in letters. After three years of searching, on December 30, 1907, Spalding received a letter that (erroneously) declared baseball to be the invention of Abner Doubleday. The commission was biased, as Spalding would not appoint anyone to the commission if they believed the sport was somewhat related to rounders or cricket. Just before the commission issued its findings, in a letter to sportswriter Tim Murnane, Spalding noted, "Our good old American game of baseball must have an American Dad." The project, later called the Mills Commission, concluded that "Base Ball had its origins in the United States" and "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence available to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1839."
Receiving the archives of Henry Chadwick in 1908, Spalding combined these records with his own memories (and biases) to write "America's National Game" (published 1911) which, despite its flaws, was probably the first scholarly account of the history of baseball.
In 1912, Spalding wrote "Neither our wives, our sisters, our daughters, our sweethearts, may play Base Ball on the field... they may play Basket Ball, and achieve laurels; they may play Golf, and receive trophies, but Base Ball is too strenuous for womankind, except as she may take part in grandstands, with applause for the brilliant play, with waiving kerchief to the hero of the three-bagger."
Businessman.
In 1876 while Spalding was playing and organizing the league, Spalding and his brother Walter began a sporting goods store in Chicago, which grew rapidly (14 stores by 1901) and expanded into a manufacturer and distributor of all kinds of sporting equipment. The company became "synonymous with sporting goods" and is still a going concern.
Spalding Athletic Library.
Spalding, from 1892.
to 1941.
sold books under the name Spalding Athletic Library on many different sports.
Tour.
In 1888–1889, Spalding took a group of major league players around the world to promote baseball and Spalding sporting goods. This was the first-ever world baseball tour. Playing across the western U.S., the tour made stops in Hawaii (although no game was played), New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, Italy, France, and England. The tour returned to grand receptions in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The tour included future Hall of Famers Cap Anson and John Montgomery Ward.
The tour was also touted by Spalding as a launching point for baseball to reach the global stage. At a celebratory dinner in Manhattan, he celebrated the tour – perhaps prematurely – for establishing “our national game throughout the world.” Following Spalding's statements, Mark Twain proclaimed that the tour “carried the American name to the outermost parts of the earth, and covered it with glory every time.”
While Spalding and company gushed about their schlep around the world, waxing lyrical about baseball’s future as a global sport, in reality, the tour had very little impact on the sport’s hold overseas. Sports like soccer, rugby, and cricket had already been established in many other countries due to the presence of European imperialism so baseball had a difficult time gaining popularity in these regions. While baseball did reach a wider global audience, it was due to a larger scale diffusion of the sport rather than the efforts of one magnate, like Spalding envisioned.
While the players were on the tour, the National League instituted new rules regarding player pay that led to a revolt of players, led by Ward, who started the Players' League the following season (1890). The league lasted one year, partially due to the anti-competitive tactics of Spalding to limit its success. The tour and formation of the Player's League is depicted in the 2015 movie "Deadball".
1900 Olympics.
In 1900 Spalding was appointed by President McKinley as the USA's Commissioner at that year's Summer Olympic Games.
Other activities.
Spalding had been a prominent member of the Theosophical Society under William Quan Judge. In 1900, Spalding moved to San Diego with his newly acquired second wife, Elizabeth and became a prominent member and supporter of the Theosophical community Lomaland, which was being developed on Point Loma by Katherine Tingley. He built an estate in the Sunset Cliffs area of Point Loma where he lived with Elizabeth for the rest of his life. The Spaldings raised race horses and collected Chinese fine furniture and art.
The Spaldings had an extensive library which included many volumes on Theosophy, art, and literature. In 1907–1909 he was the driving force behind the development of a paved road, known as the "Point Loma boulevard," from downtown San Diego to Point Loma and Ocean Beach; the road also provided good access to Lomaland. It later provided the basis for California State Route 209. He proposed the project, supervised it on behalf of the city, and paid a portion of the cost out of his own pocket. He joined with George Marston and other civic-minded businessmen to purchase the site of the original Presidio of San Diego, which they developed as a historic park and eventually donated to the city of San Diego. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 1910 as a Republican, but lost to eventual winner John D. Works by a vote of 92–21 in the California legislature. He helped to organize the 1915 Panama–California Exposition, serving as second vice-president.
Death.
He died of a stroke on September 9, 1915, in San Diego, one week after his 66th birthday. His ashes were scattered at his request.
Legacy.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1939, as one of the first inductees from the 19th century at that summer's opening ceremonies. His plaque in the Hall of Fame reads "Albert Goodwill Spalding. Organizational genius of baseball's pioneer days. Star pitcher of Forest City Club in late 1860s, 4-year champion Bostons 1871–75 and manager-pitcher of champion Chicagos in National League's first year. Chicago president for 10 years. Organizer of baseball's first round-the-world tour in 1888."
His nephew, also named Albert Spalding, was a renowned violinist.
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1894 | Africa Alphabet | The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) is a set of letters designed as the basis for Latin alphabets for the languages of Africa. It was initially developed in 1928 by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures from a combination of the English alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Development was assisted by native speakers of African languages and led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann, who served as director of the organization from 1926 to 1939. The aim of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, later renamed the International African Institute (IAI), was to enable people to write for practical and scientific purposes in all African languages without the need of diacritics.
The Africa Alphabet influenced the development of orthographies of many African languages, serving "as the basis for the transcription" of about 60 by one count. Discussion of how to harmonize these with other systems led to several largely abortive proposals such as the African reference alphabet and the World Orthography.
Overview.
The Africa Alphabet was built from the consonant letters of the English alphabet and the vowel letters, and any additional consonants, of the IPA. Capital forms of IPA letters were invented as necessary. Thus J and Y are pronounced and as in English, while Ɔ, Ɛ and Ŋ are pronounced , and as in the IPA.
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1896 | Acquire | Acquire is a board game published by 3M in 1964 that involves multi-player mergers and acquisitions. It was one of the most popular games in the 3M Bookshelf games series published in the 1960s, and the only one still published in the United States.
Description.
"Acquire" is a board game for 2–6 players in which players attempt to earn the most money by developing and merging hotel chains. When a chain in which a player owns stock is acquired by a larger chain, players earn money based on the size of the acquired chain. At the end of the game, all players liquidate their stock in order to determine which player has the most money. It is played with play money, stock certificates, and tiles representing hotels that are arranged on the board. The components of the game have varied over the years. In particular, the tiles have been made from wood, plastic, and cardboard in various editions of the game.
Set up.
Before play begins, the players must decide whether the numbers of players' shares will be public or private information. Keeping this information private can greatly extend the game since players will be less certain of their status, and therefore less willing to end the game.
Each player receives play cash and a small random set of playing tiles and becomes the founder of a nascent hotel chain by drawing and placing a tile representing a hotel on the board. Tiles are ordered, and correspond to spaces on the board. Position of the starting tiles determines order of play.
Gameplay.
Play consists of placing a tile on the board and optionally buying stock. The placed tile may found a new hotel chain, grow an existing one or merge two or more chains. Chains are sets of edge-wise adjacent tiles. Founders receive a share of stock in new chains. A chain can become "safe", immune to acquisition, by attaining a specified size. Following placement of a tile, the player may then buy a limited number of shares of stock in existing chains. Shares have a market value determined by the size and stature of the hotel chain. At the end of his or her turn, the player receives a new tile to replace the one played.
When mergers occur, the smaller chain becomes defunct, and its tiles are then part of the acquiring chain. The two largest shareholders in the acquired chain receive cash bonuses; players may sell their shares in the defunct chain, trade them in for shares of the acquiring chain, or keep them. Mergers between 3 or more chains are handled in order from larger to smaller.
Ending the game.
A player during their turn may declare the game at an end if the largest chain exceeds a specified size (about 40% of the board), or all chains on the board are too large to be acquired. When the game ends, shareholder bonuses
are paid to the two largest shareholders of each chain, and players cash out their shares at market price (shares in any defunct chains are worthless). The player with the most money wins.
Publication history.
When Sid Sackson was a child, he played a Milton Bradley gambling-themed board game titled "Lotto". When he became a game designer, Sackson reworked the game into a wargame he called "Lotto War". In 1962, Sackson and Alex Randolph were commissioned by 3M to start a new games division. When Sackson submitted "Lotto War" to 3M the following year, he retitled the game "Vacation". 3M suggested changing the name to "Acquire", and Sackson agreed. The game was test marketed in several U.S. cities in 1963, and production began in 1964 as a part of the 3M Bookshelf games series.
In 1976, the 3M game division was sold to Avalon Hill and "Acquire" became part of their bookcase game series. Four years later, Avalon Hill published the computer game "Computer Acquire" for the PET, Apple II and TRS-80.
In 1998, Avalon Hill became part of Hasbro. The new owners reissued a slightly revised version of "Acquire" in 2000, in which the hotel chains were replaced by fictitious corporations, though the actual gameplay was unchanged. Hasbro soon thereafter discontinued it. In the mid-2000s, the game was transferred to a Hasbro subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast (WotC). In 2008, WotC celebrated "50 years of Avalon Hill Games" with the release of a new edition of "Acquire", although the game was not yet 50 years old. In 2016, the game was transferred back to the Hasbro games division and republished in 2016 under the Avalon label, with hotels chains reinstated.
Reception.
"Games" magazine included "Acquire" in their "Top 100 Games of 1980", praising it as a "classic game of getting in on the ground floor" and "proof that you need money to make money", noting that "a delicate sense of timing is important, but greed and a lust for power also help."
"Games" magazine included "Acquire" in their "Top 100 Games of 1981", noting that it "combines the flavors of Monopoly and the stock market" and cautioned that "Since the object is to acquire cash, careful timing of investments (and raids on competitors' chains!) is critical to winning".
"Games" magazine included "Acquire" in their "Top 100 Games of 1982", noting that "Among family games, this is one of the most strategic."
In the December 1993 edition of "Dragon" (Issue 200), Allen Varney advised readers to ignore the hotel theme: "Supposedly a game of hotel acquisitions and mergers, this is actually a superb abstract game of strategy and capital." Varney called the game "An early masterpiece from [Sid] Sackson, game historian and one of the great designers of our time."
Awards.
The game was short-listed for the first Spiel des Jahres board game awards in 1979.
"GAMES" magazine has inducted "Acquire" into their buyers' guide Hall of Fame. The magazine's stated criteria for the Hall of Fame encompasses "games that have met or exceeded the highest standards of quality and play value and have been continuously in production for at least 10 years; i.e., classics."
"Acquire" was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design's Hall of Fame, along with game designer Sid Sackson, in 2011. It is also one of the Mind Sports Olympiad games.
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1897 | Australian English | Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and "de facto" national language; while Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the "de facto" national language since British settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians. It is also the main language used in compulsory education, as well as federal, state and territorial legislatures and courts.
Australian English began to diverge from British and Irish English after the First Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales in 1788. Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England. By the 1820s, the native-born colonists' speech was recognisably distinct from speakers in Britain and Ireland.
Australian English differs from other varieties in its phonology, pronunciation, lexicon, idiom, grammar and spelling. Australian English is relatively consistent across the continent, although it encompasses numerous regional and sociocultural varieties. "General Australian" describes the "de facto" standard dialect, which is perceived to be free of pronounced regional or sociocultural markers and is often used in the media.
History.
The earliest Australian English was spoken by the first generation of native-born colonists in the Colony of New South Wales from the end of the 18th century. These native-born children were exposed to a wide range of dialects from across the British Isles. Similar to early American English, the process of dialect levelling and koineisation which ensued produced a relatively homogeneous new variety of English which was easily understood by all. Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book "Two Years in New South Wales" described the distinctive accent and vocabulary that had developed among the native-born colonists.
The dialects of South East England, including most notably the traditional Cockney dialect of London, were particularly influential on the development of the new variety and constituted "the major input of the various sounds that went into constructing" Australian English. All the other regions of England were represented among the early colonists. A large proportion of early convicts and colonists were from Ireland, and spoke Irish as a sole or first language. They were joined by other non-native speakers of English from Scotland and Wales.
The first of the Australian gold rushes in the 1850s began a large wave of immigration, during which about two percent of the population of the United Kingdom emigrated to the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. The Gold Rushes brought immigrants and linguistic influences from many parts of the world. An example was the introduction of vocabulary from American English, including some terms later considered to be typically Australian, such as "bushwhacker" and "squatter". This American influence was continued with the popularity of American films from the early 20th century and the influx of American military personnel during World War II; seen in the enduring persistence of such universally-accepted terms as "okay" and "guys".
The publication of Edward Ellis Morris's "Austral English: A Dictionary Of Australasian Words, Phrases And Usages" in 1898, which extensively catalogued Australian English vocabulary, started a wave of academic interest and codification during the 20th century which resulted in Australian English becoming established as an endonormative variety with its own internal norms and standards. This culminated in publications such as the 1981 first edition of the Macquarie Dictionary, a major English language dictionary based on Australian usage, and the 1988 first edition of The Australian National Dictionary, a historical dictionary documenting the history of Australian English vocabulary and idiom.
Phonology and pronunciation.
The most obvious way in which Australian English is distinctive from other varieties of English is through its unique pronunciation. It shares most similarity with New Zealand English. Like most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by the phonetic quality of its vowels.
Vowels.
The vowels of Australian English can be divided according to length. The long vowels, which include monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to the tense vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centring diphthongs. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, correspond to the RP lax vowels.
There exist pairs of long and short vowels with overlapping vowel quality giving Australian English phonemic length distinction, which is also present in some regional south-eastern dialects of the UK and eastern seaboard dialects in the US. An example of this feature is the distinction between "ferry" and "fairy" .
As with New Zealand English and General American English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed is merged into (schwa), unless it is followed by a velar consonant. Examples of this feature are the following pairings, which are pronounced identically in Australian English: "Rosa's" and "roses", as well as "Lennon" and "Lenin". Other examples are the following pairs, which rhyme in Australian English: "abbott" with "rabbit", and "dig it" with "bigot".
Most varieties of Australian English exhibit only a partial trap-bath split. The words "bath", "grass" and "can't" are always pronounced with the "long" of "father". Throughout the majority of the country, the "flat" of "man" is the dominant pronunciation for the "a" vowel in the following words: "dance", "advance", "plant", "example" and "answer". The exception is the state of South Australia, where a more advanced trap-bath split has taken place, and where the dominant pronunciation of all the preceding words incorporates the "long" of "father".
Consonants.
There is little variation in the sets of consonants used in different English dialects but there are variations in how these consonants are used. Australian English is no exception.
Australian English is uniformly non-rhotic; that is, the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. As with many non-rhotic dialects, linking can occur when a word that has a final in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have in the spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel and after word final . This can be heard in "law-r-and order", where an intrusive R is voiced between the AW and the A.
As with North American English, Intervocalic alveolar flapping is a feature of Australian English: prevocalic and surface as the alveolar tap after sonorants other than as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel in the same breath group. Examples of this feature are that the following pairs are pronounced similarly or identically: "latter" and "ladder", as well as "rated" and "raided".
"Yod"-dropping generally occurs after , , , but not after , and . Accordingly, "suit" is pronounced as , "lute" as , "Zeus" as and "enthusiasm" as . Other cases of and , as well as and , have coalesced to , , and respectively for many speakers. is generally retained in other consonant clusters.
In common with most varieties of Scottish English and American English, the phoneme is pronounced by older Australians as a "dark" (velarised) "l" () in almost all positions, unlike other dialects such as Received Pronunciation, Hiberno (Irish) English and most Australians from the Millennial generation onwards, where a light "l" (i.e. a non-velarised "l") is used in many positions.
The wine–whine merger is complete in Australian English.
Pronunciation.
Differences in stress, weak forms and standard pronunciation of isolated words occur between Australian English and other forms of English, which while noticeable do not impair intelligibility.
The affixes "-ary", "-ery", "-ory", "-bury", "-berry" and "-mony" (seen in words such as "necessary, mulberry" and "matrimony") can be pronounced either with a full vowel () or a schwa (). Although some words like "necessary" are almost universally pronounced with the full vowel, older generations of Australians are relatively likely to pronounce these affixes with a schwa while younger generations are relatively likely to use a full vowel, which is similar to the situation in British English.
Words ending in unstressed "-ile" derived from Latin adjectives ending in "-ilis" are pronounced with a full vowel, so that "fertile" sounds like "fur tile" rather than rhyming with "turtle" .
In addition, miscellaneous pronunciation differences exist when compared with other varieties of English in relation to various isolated words, with some of those pronunciations being unique to Australian English. For example:
Variation.
Relative to many other national dialect groupings, Australian English is relatively homogeneous across the country. Some relatively minor regional differences in pronunciation exist. A limited range of word choices is strongly regional in nature. Consequently, the geographical background of individuals may be inferred if they use words that are peculiar to particular Australian states or territories and, in some cases, even smaller regions. In addition, some Australians speak creole languages derived from Australian English, such as Australian Kriol, Torres Strait Creole and Norfuk.
Academic research has also identified notable sociocultural variation within Australian English, which is mostly evident in phonology.
Regional variation.
Although Australian English is relatively homogeneous, there are some regional variations. The dialects of English spoken in the various states and territories of Australia differ slightly in vocabulary and phonology.
Most regional differences are in word usage. Swimming clothes are known as "cossies" or "swimmers" in New South Wales, "togs" in Queensland, and "bathers" in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. What Queensland calls a "stroller" is usually called a "pram" in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales, and Tasmania.
Preference for some synonymous words also differ between states. "Garbage" (i.e., garbage bin, garbage truck) dominates over "rubbish" in New South Wales and Queensland, while "rubbish" is more popular in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.
Additionally, the word "footy" generally refers to the most popular football code in an area; that is, rugby league or rugby union depending on the local area, in most of New South Wales and Queensland, and Australian rules football elsewhere. In some pockets of Melbourne & Western Sydney 'football' and more rarely 'footy' will refer to Association football. Beer glasses are also named differently in different states. Distinctive grammatical patterns exist such as the use of the interrogative "eh" (also spelled "ay" or "aye"), which is particularly associated with Queensland. "Secret Santa" () and "Kris Kringle" are used in all states, with the former being more common in Queensland.
The most pronounced variation in phonology is between South Australia and the other states and territories. The trap–bath split is more complete in South Australia, in contrast to the other states. Accordingly, words such as "dance", "advance", "plant", "example" and "answer" are pronounced with (as in "father") far more frequently in South Australia while the older (as in "mad") is dominant elsewhere in Australia. "L"-vocalisation is also more common in South Australia than other states.
In Western Australian and Queensland English, the vowels in "near" and "square" are typically realised as centring diphthongs (), whereas in the other states they may also be realised as monophthongs: .
A feature common in Victorian English is salary–celery merger, whereby a Victorian pronunciation of "Ellen" may sound like "Alan" and Victoria's capital city "Melbourne" may sound like "Malbourne" to speakers from other states. There is also regional variation in before (as in "school" and "pool").
In most of Australia a fully backed allophone of , transcribed is common before . As a result, the pairs full/fool and pull/pool differ phonetically only in vowel length for those speakers. The usual allophone for is further forward in Queensland and New South Wales than Victoria.
Sociocultural variation.
The General Australian accent serves as the standard variety of English across the country. According to linguists, it emerged during the 19th century. General Australian is the dominant variety across the continent, and is particularly so in urban areas. The increasing dominance of General Australian reflects its prominence on radio and television since the latter half of the 20th century.
Recent generations have seen a comparatively smaller proportion of the population speaking with the "Broad" sociocultural variant, which differs from General Australian in its phonology. The Broad variant is found across the continent and is relatively more prominent in rural and outer-suburban areas.
A largely historical "Cultivated" sociocultural variant, which adopted features of British Received Pronunciation and which was commonplace in official media during the early 20th century, had become largely extinct by the onset of the 21st century.
Australian Aboriginal English is made up of a range of forms which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and are said to vary along a continuum, from forms close to Standard Australian English to more non-standard forms. There are distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use.
Academics have noted the emergence of numerous ethnocultural dialects of Australian English that are spoken by people from some minority non-English speaking backgrounds. These ethnocultural varieties contain features of General Australian English as adopted by the children of immigrants blended with some non-English language features, such as Afro-Asiatic languages and languages of Asia. Samoan English is also influencing Australian English. Other ethnolects include those of Lebanese and Vietnamese Australians.
A high rising terminal in Australian English was noted and studied earlier than in other varieties of English. The feature is sometimes called "Australian questioning intonation". Research published in 1986, regarding vernacular speech in Sydney, suggested that high rising terminal was initially spread by young people in the 1960s. It found that the high rising terminal was used more than twice as often by young people than older people, and is more common among women than men. In the United Kingdom, it has occasionally been considered one of the variety's stereotypical features, and its spread there is attributed to the popularity of Australian soap operas.
Vocabulary.
Intrinsic traits.
Australian English has many words and idioms which are unique to the dialect and have been written on extensively.
Internationally well-known examples of Australian terminology include "outback", meaning a remote, sparsely populated area, "the bush", meaning either a native forest or a country area in general, and "g'day", a greeting. "Dinkum", or "fair dinkum" means "true" or "is that true?", among other things, depending on context and inflection. The derivative "dinky-di" means "true" or devoted: a "dinky-di Aussie" is a "true Australian".
Australian poetry, such as "The Man from Snowy River", as well as folk songs such as "Waltzing Matilda", contain many historical Australian words and phrases that are understood by Australians even though some are not in common usage today.
Australian English, in common with British English, uses the word "mate" to mean "friend", as well as the word "bloody" as a mild expletive or intensifier. "Bloody" is taken to be milder in Australia than it is in the UK, where the word is considered profanity.
Several words used by Australians were at one time used in the United Kingdom but have since fallen out of usage or changed in meaning there. For example, "creek" in Australia, as in North America, means a stream or small river, whereas in the UK it is typically a watercourse in a marshy area; "paddock" in Australia means field, whereas in the UK it means a small enclosure for livestock; "bush" or "scrub" in Australia, as in North America, means a wooded area, whereas in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs).
Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been adopted by Australian English—mainly as names for places, flora and fauna (for example dingo) and local culture. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as "kangaroo", "boomerang", "budgerigar", "wallaby" and so on have become international. Other examples are "cooee" and "hard yakka". The former is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, (pronounced ) which travels long distances. "Cooee" is also a notional distance: "if he's within "cooee", we'll spot him". "Hard yakka" means "hard work" and is derived from "yakka", from the Jagera/Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region. Also of Aboriginal origin is the word "bung", from the Sydney pidgin English (and ultimately from the Sydney Aboriginal language), meaning "dead", with some extension to "broken" or "useless". Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also been influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra, named after a local Ngunnawal language word thought to mean "women's breasts" or "meeting place".
Litotes, such as "not bad", "not much" and "you're not wrong", are also used. Diminutives and hypocorisms are common and are often used to indicate familiarity. Some common examples are "arvo" (afternoon), "barbie" (barbecue), "smoko" (cigarette break), "Aussie" (Australian) and "Straya" (Australia). This may also be done with people's names to create nicknames (other English speaking countries create similar diminutives). For example, "Gazza" from Gary, or "Smitty" from John Smith. The use of the suffix "-o" originates in , which is both a postclitic and a suffix with much the same meaning as in Australian English.
In informal speech, incomplete comparisons are sometimes used, such as "sweet as" (as in "That car is sweet as."). "Full", "fully" or "heaps" may precede a word to act as an intensifier (as in "The waves at the beach were heaps good."). This was more common in regional Australia and South Australia but has been in common usage in urban Australia for decades. The suffix "-ly" is sometimes omitted in broader Australian English. For instance, "really good" can become "real good".
Australia's switch to the metric system in the 1970s changed most of the country's vocabulary of measurement from imperial to metric measures. Since the switch to metric, heights of individuals are listed in centimetres on official documents and distances by road on signs are listed in terms of kilometres and metres.
Comparison with other varieties.
Where British and American English vocabulary differs, sometimes Australian English shares a usage with one of those varieties, as with "petrol" (AmE: "gasoline") and "mobile phone" (AmE: "cellular phone") which are shared with British English, or "truck" (BrE: "lorry") and "eggplant" (BrE: "aubergine") which are shared with American English.
In other circumstances, Australian English sometimes favours a usage which is different from both British and American English as with:
Differences exist between Australian English and other varieties of English, where different terms can be used for the same subject or the same term can be ascribed different meanings. Non-exhaustive examples of terminology associated with food, transport and clothing is used below to demonstrate the variations which exist between Australian English and other varieties:
Food – capsicum (BrE: "(red/green) pepper"; AmE: "bell pepper"); (potato) chips (refers both to BrE "crisps" and AmE "French fries"); chook (sanga) (BrE and AmE: "chicken (sandwich)"); coriander (shared with BrE. AmE: "cilantro"); entree (refers to AmE "appetizer" whereas AmE "entree" is referred to in AusE as "main course"); eggplant (shared with AmE. BrE: "aubergine"); fairy floss (BrE: "candy floss"; AmE: "cotton candy"); ice block or icy pole (BrE: "ice lolly"; AmE: "popsicle"); jelly (refers to AmE "Jell-o" whereas AmE "jelly" refers to AusE "jam"); lollies (BrE: "sweets"; AmE: "candy"); marinara (sauce) (refers to a tomato-based sauce in AmE and BrE but a seafood sauce in AusE); mince or minced meat (shared with BrE. AmE: "ground meat"); prawn (which in BrE refers to large crustaceans only, with small crustaceans referred to as "shrimp". AmE universally: "shrimp"); snow pea (shared with AmE. BrE "mangetout"); pumpkin (AmE: "squash", except for the large orange variety - AusE "squash" refers only to a small number of uncommon species; BrE: "marrow"); tomato sauce (also used in BrE. AmE: "ketchup"); zucchini (shared with AmE. BrE: "courgette")
Transport – aeroplane (shared with BrE. AmE: "airplane"); bonnet (shared with BrE. AmE: "hood"); bumper (shared with BrE. AmE: "fender"); car park (shared with BrE. AmE: "parking lot"); convertible (shared with AmE. BrE: "cabriolet"); footpath (BrE: "pavement"; AmE: "sidewalk"); horse float (BrE: "horsebox"; AmE: "horse trailer"); indicator (shared with BrE. AmE: "turn signal"); peak hour (BrE and AmE: "rush hour"); petrol (shared with BrE. AmE: "gasoline"); railway (shared with BrE. AmE: "railroad"); sedan (car) (shared with AmE. BrE: "saloon (car)"); semitrailer (shared with AmE. BrE: "artic" or "articulated lorry"); station wagon (shared with AmE. BrE: "estate car"); truck (shared with AmE. BrE: "lorry"); ute (BrE and AmE: "pickup truck"); windscreen (shared with BrE. AmE: "windshield")
Clothing – gumboots (BrE: "Wellington boots" or "Wellies"; AmE: "rubber boots" or "galoshes"); jumper (shared with BrE. AmE: "sweater"); nappy (shared with BrE. AmE: "diaper"); overalls (shared with AmE. BrE: "dungarees"); raincoat (shared with AmE. BrE: "mackintosh" or "mac"); runners (footwear) (BrE: "trainers". AmE: "sneakers"); sandshoe (BrE: "pump" or "plimsoll". AmE: "tennis shoe"); singlet (BrE: "vest". AmE: "tank top" or "wifebeater"); skivvy (BrE: "polo neck"; AmE: "turtleneck"); swimmers or togs or bathers (BrE: "swimming costume". AmE: "bathing suit" or "swimsuit"); thongs (refers to BrE and AmE "flip-flops (footwear)". In BrE and AmE refers to "g-string (underwear)")
Terms with different meanings in Australian English.
There also exist words which in Australian English are ascribed different meanings from those ascribed in other varieties of English, for instance:
Idioms taking different forms in Australian English.
In addition to the large number of uniquely Australian idioms in common use, there are instances of idioms taking different forms in Australian English than in other varieties, for instance:
British and American English terms not commonly used in Australian English.
There are extensive terms used in other varieties of English which are not widely used in Australian English. These terms usually do not result in Australian English speakers failing to comprehend speakers of other varieties of English, as Australian English speakers will often be familiar with such terms through exposure to media or may ascertain the meaning using context.
Non-exhaustive selections of British English and American English terms not commonly used in Australian English together with their definitions or Australian English equivalents are found in the collapsible table below:
British English terms not widely used in Australian English
American English terms not widely used in Australian English
Grammar.
The general rules of English Grammar which apply to Australian English are described at English grammar. Grammatical differences between varieties of English are minor relative to differences in phonology and vocabulary and do not generally affect intelligibility. Examples of grammatical differences between Australian English and other varieties include:
Spelling and style.
As in all English-speaking countries, there is no central authority that prescribes official usage with respect to matters of spelling, grammar, punctuation or style.
Spelling.
There are several dictionaries of Australian English which adopt a descriptive approach. The "Macquarie Dictionary" is most commonly used by universities, governments and courts as the standard for Australian English spelling. The "Australian Oxford Dictionary" is another commonly-used dictionary of Australian English.
Australian spelling is significantly closer to British than American spelling, as it did not adopt the systematic reforms promulgated in Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary. Notwithstanding, the Macquarie Dictionary often lists most American spellings as acceptable secondary variants.
The minor systematic differences which occur between Australian and American spelling are summarised below:
Minor systematic difference which occur between Australian and British spelling are as follows:
Other examples of individual words where the preferred spelling is listed by the "Macquarie Dictionary" as being different from current British spellings include "analog as opposed to "analogue, "guerilla" as opposed to "guerrilla", "verandah as opposed to "veranda, "burqa" as opposed to "burka", "pastie (noun) as opposed to "pasty, "neuron as opposed to "neurone, "hicup as opposed to "hicough, "annex as opposed to "annexe, "raccoon" as opposed to "racoon" etc. Unspaced forms such as "onto", "anytime", "alright" and "anymore" are also listed as being equally as acceptable as their spaced counterparts.
There is variation between and within varieties of English in the treatment of -t and -ed endings for past tense verbs. The Macquarie Dictionary does not favour either, but it suggests that "leaped, "leaned or "learned (with -ed endings) are more common but "spelt and "burnt" (with -t endings) are more common.
Different spellings have existed throughout Australia's history. What are today regarded as American spellings were popular in Australia throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the Victorian Department of Education endorsing them into the 1970s and "The Age" newspaper until the 1990s. This influence can be seen in the spelling of the Australian Labor Party and also in some place names such as Victor Harbor. The "Concise Oxford English Dictionary" has been attributed with re-establishing the dominance of the British spellings in the 1920s and 1930s. For a short time during the late 20th century, Harry Lindgren's 1969 spelling reform proposal ("Spelling Reform 1" or "SR1") gained some support in Australia and was adopted by the Australian Teachers' Federation.
Punctuation and style.
Prominent general style guides for Australian English include the "Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage", the "Australian Government Style Manual" (formerly the ""), the "Australian Handbook for Writers and Editors" and the "Complete Guide to English Usage for Australian Students".
Both single and double quotation marks are in use, with single quotation marks preferred for use in the first instance, with double quotation marks reserved for quotes of speech within speech. Logical (as opposed to typesetter's) punctuation is preferred for punctuation marks at the end of quotations. For instance, "Sam said he 'wasn't happy when Jane told David to "go away"'." is used in preference to "Sam said he "wasn't happy when Jane told David to 'go away.'""
The DD/MM/YYYY date format is followed and the 12-hour clock is generally used in everyday life (as opposed to service, police, and airline applications).
With the exception of screen sizes, metric units are used in everyday life, having supplanted imperial units upon the country's switch to the metric system in the 1970s, although imperial units persist in casual references to a person's height. Tyre and bolt sizes (for example) are defined in imperial units where appropriate for technical reasons.
In betting, decimal odds are used in preference to fractional odds, as used in the United Kingdom, or moneyline odds in the United States.
Keyboard layout.
There are two major English language keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout. Keyboards and keyboard software for the Australian market universally uses the US keyboard layout, which lacks the pound (£), euro and negation symbols and uses a different layout for punctuation symbols from the UK keyboard layout.
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1902 | American Airlines Flight 77 | American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport in California. The Boeing 757-223 aircraft serving the flight was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, killing all 64 aboard and another 125 in the building.
Flight 77 became airborne at 08:20. Thirty-one minutes after takeoff, the attackers stormed the cockpit and forced the passengers and crew to the rear of the cabin, threatening the hostages but initially sparing all of them. Lead hijacker Hani Hanjour assumed control of the aircraft after having undergone extensive flight training as part of his preparation for the mission, while, in the meantime, two people aboard discreetly made phone calls to family members and relayed information on the situation without the knowledge of their assailants.
Hanjour flew the airplane into the west side of the Pentagon at 09:37 ET. Many people witnessed the impact, and news sources began reporting on the incident within minutes, but no clear footage of the crash itself is available to the public. The 757 severely damaged an area of the Pentagon and caused a large fire that took several days to extinguish. By 10:10 a.m., the damage inflicted by the plane as well as the ignited jet fuel led to a localized collapse of the Pentagon's western flank, followed forty minutes later by another five stories of the structure. Flight 77 was the third of four passenger jets to be commandeered by terrorists that morning, and the last to reach a target intended by al-Qaeda. The hijacking was to be coordinated with that of United Airlines Flight 93, which was flown in the direction of Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital. The terrorists on Flight 93 had their sights set on a federal government building not far from the Pentagon, but were forced to crash the plane in a Pennsylvania field when the passengers fought for control after being alerted to the previous suicide attacks, including Flight 77's.
The damaged sections of the Pentagon were rebuilt in 2002, with occupants moving back into the completed areas that August. The 184 victims of the attack are memorialized in the Pentagon Memorial adjacent to the crash site. The park contains a bench for each of the victims, arranged according to their year of birth.
Background.
The flight was commandeered as part of the September 11 attacks. The attacks themselves cost somewhere in the region of $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, but the source of this financial support remains unknown. Led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was described as being the "principal architect" of the attacks in the 9/11 Commission Report, al-Qaeda was motivated by several factors, not least of which was anti-Americanism and anti-Western sentiment. Because al-Qaeda only had the resources to commandeer four passenger jets, there was disagreement between Mohammed and bin Laden over which targets should be prioritized. Mohammed favored striking the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, while bin-Laden was bent on toppling the United States federal government, a goal he believed could be accomplished by destroying the Pentagon, the White House and the United States Capitol. Though bin Laden himself expressed a preference for the destruction of the White House over the Capitol, his subordinates disagreed, citing its difficulty in striking from the air. Hani Hanjour―likely while in the presence of fellow Flight 77 accomplice Nawaf al-Hazmi―scoped out the DMV on July 20, 2001 by renting a plane and taking a practice flight from Fairfield, New Jersey to Gaithersburg, Maryland in order to determine the feasibility of each of the possible candidates.
In the end, 19 terrorists participated in the attacks against the United States, consisting of three groups of five men each and one group of four. The nine hijackers on Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93 were assigned the task of striking governmental structures in or near the national capital of Washington, D.C., and as such, the objective was for the two hijackings to be coordinated insofar as both planes being aimed towards targets in the Washington metropolitan area. Significant complications faced by the four terrorists on Flight 93 ensured that Flight 77 was the only one to successfully attack a target intended by al-Qaeda when it struck the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia at 09:37, while a passenger uprising forced the hijackers aboard Flight 93 to crash the plane in rural Pennsylvania.
Regardless, the degree of coordination between Flight 77 and Flight 93 was evidently less than that of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, the two airliners that were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart in a joint attack on New York City. Flights 11 and 175 both departed from Logan International Airport in Boston for Los Angeles International Airport, and crashed into targets that stood next to each other, in contrast to the Pentagon and the federal government building Flight 93 was set to crash into, which were simply located in the same general area.
One noteworthy difference between the attacks in the National Capital Region and those in New York is that the teams on Flights 77 and 93 did not follow suit with their counterparts on Flights 11 and 175 by booking planes from the same airport with the same California destination in mind. Flight 77's group hijacked a plane out of Dulles International Airport in Virginia, conveniently situated near the Pentagon and consequently the capital, on a flight path destined for LAX. Conversely, Flight 93 departed from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, nearly 200 miles northeast of D.C., bound for San Francisco International Airport. There was also no contact between Hanjour and Flight 93 hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah on the day of the attacks, whereas Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi spoke over the phone while preparing to board their respective flights, apparently to confirm the attacks were ready to begin.
The reason why al-Qaeda selected four planes from three airports instead of two airports remains unknown, but it is believed that the act of hijacking two planes on the same flight path would have enabled better coordination between the teams on Flight 11 and Flight 175, both of which clearly succeeded, unlike Flight 77 and Flight 93’s only partially successful attack on the U.S. government.
Hijackers.
The hijackers on American Airlines Flight77 were five Saudi men between the ages of 20 and 29. They were led by Hanjour, who piloted the aircraft into the Pentagon. Hanjour first arrived in the United States in 1990.
Hanjour trained at the CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, earning his FAA commercial pilot's certificate in April 1999. He had wanted to be a commercial pilot for Saudia but was rejected when he applied to the civil aviation school in Jeddah in 1999. Hanjour's brother later explained that, frustrated at not finding a job, Hanjour "increasingly turned his attention toward religious texts and cassette tapes of militant Islamic preachers." Hanjour returned to Saudi Arabia after being certified as a pilot, but left again in late 1999, telling his family he was going to the United Arab Emirates to work for an airline. Hanjour likely went to Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda recruits were screened for special skills they might have. Already having selected the Hamburg cell members, Al Qaeda leaders selected Hanjour to lead the fourth team of hijackers.
In December 2000, Hanjour arrived in San Diego, joining "muscle" hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who had been there since January of that year. Alec Station, the CIA's unit dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden, had discovered that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had multiple-entry visas to the United States. An FBI agent inside the unit and his supervisor Mark Rossini (Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Supervisory Agent) sought to alert FBI headquarters, but the CIA officer supervising Rossini at Alec Station rebuffed him on the grounds that the FBI lacked jurisdiction.
Soon after arriving in San Diego, Hanjour and Hazmi left for Mesa, Arizona, where Hanjour began refresher training at Arizona Aviation. In April 2001, they relocated to Falls Church, Virginia, where they awaited the arrival of the remaining "muscle" hijackers. One of these men, Majed Moqed, arrived on May 2, 2001, with Flight175 hijacker Ahmed al-Ghamdi from Dubai at Dulles International Airport. They moved into an apartment with Hazmi and Hanjour.
On May 21, 2001, Hanjour rented a room in Paterson, New Jersey, where he stayed with other hijackers through the end of August. The last Flight77 "muscle" hijacker, Salem al-Hazmi, arrived on June 29, 2001, with Abdulaziz al-Omari (a hijacker of Flight11) at John F. Kennedy International Airport from the United Arab Emirates. They stayed with Hanjour.
Hanjour received ground instruction and did practice flights at Air Fleet Training Systems in Teterboro, New Jersey, and at Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey. Hanjour moved out of the room in Paterson and arrived at the Valencia Motel in Laurel, Maryland, on September 2, 2001. While in Maryland, Hanjour and fellow hijackers trained at Gold's Gym in Greenbelt. On September 10, he completed a certification flight, using a terrain recognition system for navigation, at Congressional Air Charters in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
On September 10 Nawaf al-Hazmi, accompanied by other hijackers, checked into the Marriott in Herndon, Virginia, near Dulles Airport.
Suspected accomplices.
According to a U.S. State Department cable leaked in the WikiLeaks dump in February 2010, the FBI has investigated another suspect, Mohammed al-Mansoori. He had associated with three Qatari citizens who flew from Los Angeles to London (via Washington) and Qatar on the eve of the attacks, after allegedly surveying the World Trade Center and the White House. U.S. law enforcement officials said the data about the four men was "just one of many leads that were thoroughly investigated at the time and never led to terrorism charges." An official added that the three Qatari citizens had never been questioned by the FBI. Eleanor Hill, the former staff director for the congressional joint inquiry on the September 11 attacks, said the cable reinforces questions about the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation. She also said that the inquiry concluded the hijackers had a support network that helped them in different ways.
The three Qatari men were booked to fly from Los Angeles to Washington on September 10, 2001, on the same plane that was hijacked and piloted into the Pentagon on the following day. Instead, they flew from Los Angeles to Qatar, via Washington and London. While the cable said Mansoori was currently under investigation, U.S. law enforcement officials said there was no active investigation of him or of the Qatari citizens mentioned in the cable.
Flight.
The aircraft involved in the hijacking was a Boeing 757-223 (registration The aircraft had its first flight on April 25, 1991 and was delivered to American Airlines on May 8, 1991. The crew included Captain Charles Burlingame (51) (a Naval Academy graduate and former fighter pilot), First Officer David Charlebois (39), purser Renee May and flight attendants Michele Heidenberger, Jennifer Lewis and Kenneth Lewis. The capacity of the aircraft was 188 passengers, but with 58 passengers on September 11, the load factor was 33 percent. American Airlines said Tuesdays were the least-traveled day of the week, with the same load factor seen on Tuesdays in the previous three months for Flight77. Passenger Barbara Olson, whose husband Theodore Olson served as the 42nd Solicitor General of the United States, was en route to a recording of the TV show "Politically Incorrect". A group of three 11-year-old children, their chaperones, and two National Geographic Society staff members were also on board, embarking on an educational trip west to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California. Former Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson had originally booked a ticket on Flight77. As he would tell the story many times in the following years, including a September 12, 2011 interview on Jim Rome's radio show, he had been scheduled to appear on that show on September 12, 2001. Thompson was planning to be in Las Vegas for a friend's birthday on September 13, and initially insisted on traveling to Rome's Los Angeles studio on the 11th. However, this did not work for the show, which wanted him to travel on the day of the show. After a Rome staffer personally assured Thompson he would be able to travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas immediately after the show, Thompson changed his travel plans. He would later feel the impact from the crash at his home near the Pentagon.
Boarding and departure.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the five hijackers arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport. At 07:15 AM ET, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Majed Moqed checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter for Flight77, arriving at the passenger security checkpoint a few minutes later at 07:18. Both men set off the metal detector and were put through secondary screening. Moqed continued to set off the alarm, so he was searched with a hand wand. The Hazmi brothers checked in together at the ticket counter at 07:29. Hani Hanjour checked in separately and arrived at the passenger security checkpoint at 07:35. Hanjour was followed minutes later at the checkpoint by Salem and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who also set off the metal detector's alarm. The screener at the checkpoint never resolved what set off the alarm. As seen in security footage later released, Nawaf al-Hazmi appeared to have an unidentified item in his back pocket. Utility knives up to four inches were permitted at the time by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as carry-on items. The passenger security checkpoint at Dulles International Airport was operated by Argenbright Security, under contract with United Airlines.
The hijackers were all selected for extra screening of their checked bags. Hanjour, al-Mihdhar, and Moqed were chosen by the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) criteria, while the brothers Nawaf and Salem al-Hazmi were selected because they did not provide adequate identification and were deemed suspicious by the airline check-in agent. Hanjour, Mihdhar, and Nawaf al-Hazmi did not check any bags for the flight. Checked bags belonging to Moqed and Salem al-Hazmi were held until they boarded the aircraft.
Flight 77 was scheduled to depart for Los Angeles at 08:10; 58 passengers boarded through Gate D26, including the five hijackers. The 53 other passengers on board excluding the hijackers were 26 men, 22 women, and five children ranging in age from three to eleven. On the flight, Hani Hanjour was seated up front in 1B, while Salem and Nawaf al-Hazmi were likewise seated in first class, in seats 5E and 5F. Majed Moqed and Khalid al-Mihdhar were seated farther back in 12A and 12B, in economy class. Flight77 left the gate on time and took off from Runway 30 at Dulles at 08:20. The attacks were already underway by this point, as American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked six minutes earlier. Shortly after Flight 77 became airborne, FAA flight controller Danielle O'Brien made a routine handoff of the flight to a colleague at the FAA's Indianapolis Center. For reasons she couldn't explain and would never fully understand, O'Brien didn't use one of her normal sendoffs to the pilots: "Good day," or "Have a nice flight." Instead, she wished them, "Good luck."
Flight 77 reached its assigned cruising altitude of at 8:46 a.m., four minutes after the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 175 commenced and the very same minute Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The final communication between Flight 77 and controllers on the ground occurred four minutes later at 08:50:51, as Hanjour and his team prepared to strike.
Hijacking.
The terrorists launched their assault at 08:51, by which point the North Tower had been on fire for around five minutes and Flight 175 was within 12 minutes of striking the South Tower. Flight 93 had also become airborne from Newark at 08:42, but had been delayed on the runway for as long as 42 minutes and would not be seized until 09:28, ruining al-Qaeda's plan to harmonize its takeover with Flight 77's. Three minutes after the hijacking began, according to the commission, the attackers on Flight 77 were in full control of the aircraft. The modus operandi of Hanjour’s group was in stark contrast to the other three teams, in that while the victims were threatened with knives and box cutters, there were no reports of any injuries or deaths prior to the crash; both pilots were spared when the cockpit was breached, and the use of chemical weapons or bomb threats was not reported by either of the two people who made phone calls from the rear of the cabin. At 08:54, as the plane flew in the vicinity over Pike County, Ohio, it began deviating from its normal assigned flight path and turned south. Two minutes later, the plane's transponder was switched off. The flight's autopilot was promptly engaged and set on a course heading eastbound towards Washington, D.C.
The FAA was aware at this point there was an emergency on board the airplane. After learning of a second hijacking involving an American Airlines aircraft and the hijacking of a United Airlines jet, American Airlines' executive vice president Gerard Arpey ordered a nationwide ground stop for the airline. For several minutes, Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center and dispatchers for American Airlines made several failed attempts to contact the hijacked airliner, giving up just as Flight 175 flew into the World Trade Center's South Tower at 09:03. The plane had been flying over an area of limited radar coverage at the time of its hijacking. With air controllers unable to contact the flight by radio, an Indianapolis official declared that it had possibly crashed at 09:09, twenty-eight minutes before it actually did. Sometime between 09:17 and 09:22, Hanjour broadcast a deceptive announcement via the cabin’s public address system, advising those aboard that the plane was being hijacked and that their best chance of survival was by not resisting. This tactic was used on Flight 11 and on Flight 93 with the aim of deceiving the passengers and crew into believing the plan was to land the plane after securing a ransom; in both cases, however, the terrorists’ understanding of the internal communication systems used aboard aircraft was evidently not as good as Hanjour's, as they keyed the wrong microphone and unintentionally allowed controllers on the ground to eavesdrop.
Calls.
Two people on board the aircraft made a total of three phone calls to contacts on the ground. At 09:12, flight attendant Renee May made a phone call lasting just under two minutes to her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. During the phone call, she made the erroneous claim that "six persons" had forced "us" to the rear of the airplane, but did not explain whether the people crowded together were crew members, passengers, or both. May asked her mother to contact American Airlines, which she and her husband promptly did, although the company was well-aware of the hijacking by this point.
At 09:16, Barbara Olson made a call to her husband Ted, quietly explaining that the plane had been hijacked and that those responsible were armed with knives and box cutters. She revealed that everyone, including the pilots, had been moved to the back of the cabin and that the call was being made without the knowledge of the hostage takers. The connection dropped a minute into the conversation. Theodore Olson contacted the command center at the Department of Justice, and tried unsuccessfully to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft. Barbara Olson called again five minutes later, informing her husband of the announcement Hanjour―"the pilot"―made over the loudspeaker, and asked him, "What do I tell the pilot to do?" Inquired of her whereabouts, Barbara replied saying that they were flying low over a residential area. In the background, Ted overheard another passenger mentioning that the plane was flying northeast. He then made his wife aware of the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center, causing her to go quiet; Ted wondered if this meant she had been shocked into silence. After expressing their feelings and reassuring one another, the call cut off for the last time, at 9:26 a.m.
Crash.
At 9:29 a.m., one minute after Flight 93 was hijacked, the terrorists aboard Flight 77 disengaged the autopilot and took manual control of the plane. Turning and descending rapidly as it made its final approach toward Washington, the airplane was detected again on radar screens by controllers at Dulles, who mistook it for a military fighter at first glance due to its high speed and maneuvering.
While Flight77 was west-southwest of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, it made a 330-degree spiral turn clockwise. By the end of the revolution, the 757 was descending , pointed toward the Pentagon and downtown Washington. Advancing the throttles to full power, Hanjour rapidly began diving toward his target. The wings clipped five street lights as the plane flew level above the ground, while the right wing in particular struck a portable generator, creating a smoke trail seconds before smashing into the Pentagon.
Flying at a speed of over the Navy Annex Building adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery, Flight77 crashed into the Pentagon's western flank at 09:37:46. The plane struck the establishment at the first-floor level and was rolled slightly to the left, with the right wing elevated as it crashed. The front part of the fuselage immediately disintegrated upon impact, while the mid and tail sections continued moving for another fraction of a second, with tail section debris penetrating farthest into the building. In total, the aircraft took eight-tenths of a second to pass through the three outermost of the structure's five rings and unleashed a fireball that rose above the building. The 64 people aboard the flight were killed instantly, while a further 125 people in the Pentagon were either killed outright or fatally injured.
In the minutes leading up to the crash, Reagan Airport controllers had asked a passing Air National Guard Lockheed C-130 Hercules to identify and follow the aircraft. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Steven O'Brien, told them he believed it was either a Boeing757 or 767, observing that its silver fuselage meant it was most likely an American Airlines jet. O'Brien mentioned having difficulty picking out the airplane in the "East Coast haze", but moments later reported seeing a "huge" fireball. His initial assumption as he approached the crash site was that the plane had simply hit the ground, but upon closer inspection he saw the damage done to the Pentagon's west side and relayed to Reagan control, "Looks like that aircraft crashed into the Pentagon, sir."
At the time of the attacks, approximately 18,000 people worked in the Pentagon, 4,000 fewer than before renovations began in 1998. The section of the Pentagon that was struck, which had recently been renovated at a cost of $250million, housed the Naval Command Center.
The fatalities in the Pentagon included 55 military personnel and 70 civilians. Of those 125 killed, 92 were on the first floor, 31 were on the second floor, and two were on the third. Seven Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employees were killed while the Office of the Secretary of Defense lost one contractor. The U.S. Army suffered 75 fatalities53 civilians (47 employees and six contractors) and 22 soldierswhile the U.S. Navy suffered 42 fatalitiesnine civilians (six employees and three contractors) and 33 sailors. Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, an Army deputy chief of staff, was the highest-ranking military officer killed at the Pentagon; also killed was retired Rear Admiral Wilson Flagg, a passenger on the plane. LT Mari-Rae Sopper, JAGC, USNR, was also on board the flight, and was the first Navy Judge Advocate ever to be killed in action. Another 106 were injured on the ground and were treated at area hospitals.
On the side where the plane hit, the Pentagon is bordered by Interstate 395 and Washington Boulevard. Motorist Mary Lyman, who was on I-395, saw the airplane pass over at a "steep angle toward the ground and going fast" and then saw the cloud of smoke from the Pentagon. Omar Campo, another witness, was on the other side of the road:
Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work and stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the airplane flew over. "There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in." Daryl Donley witnessed the crash and took some of the first photographs of the site.
"USA Today" reporter Mike Walter was driving on Washington Boulevard when he witnessed the crash:
Terrance Kean, who lived in a nearby apartment building, heard the noise of loud jet engines, glanced out his window, and saw a "very, very large passenger jet". He watched "it just plow right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire and smoke everywhere." Tim Timmerman, who is a pilot himself, noticed American Airlines markings on the aircraft as he saw it hit the Pentagon. Other drivers on Washington Boulevard, Interstate 395, and Columbia Pike witnessed the crash, as did people in Pentagon City, Crystal City, and other nearby locations.
Rescue and recovery.
Rescue efforts began immediately after the crash. Almost all the successful rescues of survivors occurred within half an hour of the impact. Initially, rescue efforts were led by the military and civilian employees within the building. Within minutes, the first fire companies arrived and found these volunteers searching near the impact site. The firemen ordered them to leave as they were not properly equipped or trained to deal with the hazards.
The Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) assumed command of the immediate rescue operation within ten minutes of the crash. ACFD Assistant Chief James Schwartz implemented an incident command system (ICS) to coordinate response efforts among multiple agencies. It took about an hour for the ICS structure to become fully operational. Firefighters from Fort Myer and Reagan National Airport arrived within minutes. Rescue and firefighting efforts were impeded by rumors of additional incoming planes. Chief Schwartz ordered two evacuations during the day in response to these rumors.
As firefighters attempted to extinguish the fires, they watched the building in fear of a structural collapse. One firefighter remarked that they "pretty much knew the building was going to collapse because it started making weird sounds and creaking." Officials saw a cornice of the building move and ordered an evacuation. Minutes later, at 10:10, the upper floors of the damaged area of the Pentagon collapsed. The collapsed area was about at its widest point and at its deepest. The amount of time between impact and collapse allowed everyone on the fourth and fifth levels to evacuate safely before the structure collapsed. After 11:00, firefighters mounted a two-pronged attack against the fires. Officials estimated temperatures of up to . While progress was made against the interior fires by late afternoon, firefighters realized a flammable layer of wood under the Pentagon's slate roof had caught fire and begun to spread. Typical firefighting tactics were rendered useless by the reinforced structure as firefighters were unable to reach the fire to extinguish it. Firefighters instead made firebreaks in the roof on September 12 to prevent further spreading. At 18:00 on the 12th, Arlington County issued a press release stating the fire was "controlled" but not fully "extinguished". Firefighters continued to put out smaller fires that ignited in the succeeding days.
Various pieces of aircraft debris were found within the wreckage at the Pentagon. While on fire and escaping from the Navy Command Center, Lt. Kevin Shaeffer observed a chunk of the aircraft's nose cone and the nose landing gear in the service road between rings B and C. Early in the morning on Friday, September 14, Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team members Carlton Burkhammer and Brian Moravitz came across an "intact seat from the plane's cockpit", while paramedics and firefighters located the two black boxes near the punch out hole in the A–E drive, nearly into the building. The cockpit voice recorder was to retrieve any information, though the flight data recorder yielded useful information. Investigators also found a part of Nawaf al-Hazmi's driver's license in the North Parking Lot rubble pile. Personal effects belonging to victims were found and taken to Fort Myer.
Remains.
Army engineers determined by 17:30 on the first day that no survivors remained in the damaged section of the building. In the days after the crash, news reports emerged that up to 800 people had died. Army soldiers from Fort Belvoir were the first teams to survey the interior of the crash site and noted the presence of human remains. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue teams, including Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue assisted the search for remains, working through the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS). Kevin Rimrodt, a Navy photographer surveying the Navy Command Center after the attacks, remarked that "there were so many bodies, I'd almost step on them. So I'd have to really take care to look backwards as I'm backing up in the dark, looking with a flashlight, making sure I'm not stepping on somebody." Debris from the Pentagon was taken to the Pentagon's north parking lot for more detailed search for remains and evidence.
Remains recovered from the Pentagon were photographed, and turned over to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner office, located at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The medical examiner's office was able to identify remains belonging to 179 of the victims. Investigators eventually identified 184 of the 189 people who died in the attack. The remains of the five hijackers were identified through a process of elimination, and were turned over as evidence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). On September 21, the ACFD relinquished control of the crime scene to the FBI. The Washington Field Office, National Capital Response Squad (NCRS), and the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) led the crime scene investigation at the Pentagon.
By October 2, 2001, the search for evidence and remains was complete and the site was turned over to Pentagon officials. In 2002, the remains of 25 victims were buried collectively at Arlington National Cemetery, with a five-sided granite marker inscribed with the names of all the victims in the Pentagon. The ceremony also honored the five victims whose remains were never found.
Flight recorders.
About 03:40 on September 14, a paramedic and a firefighter who were searching through the debris of the impact site found two dark boxes, about long. They called for an FBI agent, who in turn called for someone from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB employee confirmed that these were the flight recorders ("black boxes") from American Airlines Flight77. Dick Bridges, deputy manager for Arlington County, Virginia, said the cockpit voice recorder was damaged on the outside and the flight data recorder was charred. Bridges said the recorders were found "right where the plane came into the building".
The cockpit voice recorder was transported to the NTSB lab in Washington, D.C., to see what data was salvageable. In its report, the NTSB identified the unit as an L-3 Communications, Fairchild Aviation Recorders model A-100A cockpit voice recordera device which records on magnetic tape. No usable segments of tape were found inside the recorder; according to the NTSB's report, "[t]he majority of the recording tape was fused into a solid block of charred plastic". On the other hand, all the data from the flight data recorder, which used a solid-state drive, was recovered.
Continuity of operations.
At the moment of impact, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in his office on the other side of the Pentagon, away from the crash site. He ran to the site and assisted the injured. Rumsfeld returned to his office, and went to a conference room in the Executive Support Center where he joined a secure videoteleconference with Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials. On the day of the attacks, DoD officials considered moving their command operations to Site R, a backup facility in Pennsylvania. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld insisted he remain at the Pentagon, and sent Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to Site R. The National Military Command Center (NMCC) continued to operate at the Pentagon, even as smoke entered the facility. Engineers and building managers manipulated the ventilation and other building systems that still functioned to draw smoke out of the NMCC and bring in fresh air.
During a press conference held inside the Pentagon at 18:42, Rumsfeld announced, "The Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow." Pentagon employees returned the next day to offices in mostly unaffected areas of the building. By the end of September, more workers returned to the lightly damaged areas of the Pentagon.
Aftermath.
Early estimates on rebuilding the damaged section of the Pentagon were that it would take three years to complete. However, the project moved forward at an accelerated pace and was completed by the first anniversary of the attack. The rebuilt section of the Pentagon includes a small indoor memorial and chapel at the point of impact. An outdoor memorial, commissioned by the Pentagon and designed by Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, was completed on schedule for its dedication on September 11, 2008. Since September 11, American Airlines continued to fly from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport until 2020, when flights were permanently suspended. As of 2022, American Airlines operates the flight from Washington to LAX from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as Flight 1275 departing at 08:55 using an Airbus A321neo.
Security camera videos.
The Department of Defense released filmed footage on May 16, 2006, that was recorded by a security camera of American Airlines Flight77 crashing into the Pentagon, with a plane visible in one frame, as a "thin white blur" and an explosion following. The images were made public in response to a December 2004 Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch. Some still images from the video had previously been released and publicly circulated, but this was the first official release of the edited video of the crash.
A nearby Citgo service station also had security cameras, but a video released on September 15, 2006, did not show the crash because the camera was pointed away from the crash site.
The Doubletree Hotel, located nearby in Crystal City, Virginia, also had a security camera video. The FBI released the video on December 4, 2006, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by Scott Bingham. The footage is "grainy and the focus is soft, but a rapidly growing tower of smoke is visible in the distance on the upper edge of the frame as the plane crashes into the building."
Memorials.
On September 12, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dedicated the Victims of Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial specifically honors the five individuals for whom no identifiable remains were found. This included Dana Falkenberg, age three, who was aboard American Airlines Flight77 with her parents and older sister. A portion of the remains of 25 other victims are also buried at the site. The memorial is a pentagonal granite marker high. On five sides of the memorial along the top are inscribed the words "Victims of Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon September 11, 2001". Aluminum plaques, painted black, are inscribed with the names of the 184 victims of the terrorist attack. The site is located in Section 64, on a slight rise, which gives it a view of the Pentagon.
At the National September 11 Memorial, the names of the Pentagon victims are inscribed on six panels at the South Pool.
The Pentagon Memorial, located just southwest of The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, is a permanent outdoor memorial to the 184 people who died as victims in the building and on American Airlines Flight77 during the September11 attacks. Designed by Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman of the architectural firm of Kaseman Beckman Advanced Strategies with engineers Buro Happold, the memorial opened on September 11, 2008, seven years after the attack.
Nationalities of victims on the aircraft.
The 53 passengers (excluding the hijackers) and six crew were from:
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1905 | Ambush | An ambush is a surprise attack by people lying in wait in a concealed position. Ambushes have been used consistently throughout history, from ancient to modern warfare. In the 20th century, an ambush might involve thousands of soldiers on a large scale, such as over a choke point such as a mountain pass, or a small irregulars band or insurgent group attacking a regular armed force patrols. Theoretically, a single well-armed and concealed soldier could ambush other troops in a surprise attack. Sometimes an ambush can involve the exclusive or combined use of improvised explosive devices, that allow the attackers to hit enemy convoys or patrols while minimizing the risk of being exposed to return fire.
History.
This use by early people of ambushing may date as far back as two million years when anthropologists have recently suggested that ambush techniques were used to hunt large game.
One example from ancient times is the Battle of the Trebia river. Hannibal encamped within striking distance of the Romans with the Trebia River between them, and placed a strong force of cavalry and infantry in concealment, near the battle zone. He had noticed, says Polybius, a "place between the two camps, flat indeed and treeless, but well adapted for an ambuscade, as it was traversed by a water-course with steep banks, densely overgrown with brambles and other thorny plants, and here he proposed to lay a stratagem to surprise the enemy". When the Roman infantry became entangled in combat with his army, the hidden ambush force attacked the Roman infantry in the rear. The result was slaughter and defeat for the Romans. Nevertheless, the battle also displays the effects of good tactical discipline on the part of the ambushed force. Although most of the legions were lost, about 10,000 Romans cut their way through to safety, maintaining unit cohesion. This ability to maintain discipline and break out or maneuver away from a kill zone is a hallmark of good troops and training in any ambush situation.
Ambushes were widely utilized by the Lusitanians, in particular by their chieftain Viriathus. Their usual tactic, called "concursare", involved repeatedly charging and retreating, forcing the enemy to eventually give them chase, in order to set up ambushes in difficult terrain where allied forces would be awaiting. In his first victory, he eluded the siege of Roman praetor Gaius Vetilius and attracted him to a narrow pass next to the Barbesuda river, where he destroyed his army and killed the praetor. Viriathus's ability to turn chases into ambushes would grant him victories over a number of Roman generals. Another famous Lusitanian ambush was performed by Curius and Apuleius on Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, who led a numerically superior army complete with war elephants and Numidian cavalry. The ambush allowed Curius and Apuleius to steal Servilianus's loot train, although a tactic error in their retreat led to the Romans retaking the train and putting the Lusitanians to flight. Viriathus later defeated Servilianus with a surprise attack.
Possibly the most famous ambush in ancient warfare was that sprung by Germanic warchief Arminius against the Romans at Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This particular ambush was to affect the course of Western history. The Germanic forces demonstrated several principles needed for a successful ambush. They took cover in difficult forested terrain, allowing the warriors time and space to mass without detection. They had the element of surprise, and this was also aided by the defection of Arminius from Roman ranks prior to the battle. They sprang the attack when the Romans were most vulnerable; when they had left their fortified camp, and were on the march in a pounding rainstorm.
The Germans did not dawdle at the hour of decision but attacked quickly, using a massive series of short, rapid, vicious charges against the length of the whole Roman line, with charging units sometimes withdrawing to the forest to regroup while others took their place. The Germans also used blocking obstacles, erecting a trench and earthen wall to hinder Roman movement along the route of the killing zone. The result was mass slaughter of the Romans, and the destruction of three legions. The Germanic victory caused a limit on Roman expansion in the West. Ultimately, it established the Rhine as the boundary of the Roman Empire for the next four hundred years, until the decline of the Roman influence in the West. The Roman Empire made no further concerted attempts to conquer Germania beyond the Rhine.
There are many notable examples of ambushes during the Roman-Persian Wars. A year after their victory at Carrhae, the Parthians invaded Syria but were driven back after a Roman ambush near Antigonia. Roman Emperor Julian was mortally wounded in an ambush near Samarra in 363 during the retreat from his Persian campaign. A Byzantine invasion of Persian Armenia was repelled by a small force at Anglon who performed a meticulous ambush by using the rough terrain as force multiplier and concealing in houses. Heraclius' discovery of a planned ambush by Shahrbaraz in 622 was a decisive factor in his campaign.
Arabia during Muhammad's era.
According to Muslim tradition, Islamic Prophet Muhammad used ambush tactics in his military campaigns. His first such use was during the Caravan raids. In the Kharrar caravan raid, Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas was ordered to lead a raid against the Quraysh. His group consisted of about twenty Muhajirs. This raid was about a month after the previous one. Sa'd, with his soldiers, set up an ambush in the valley of Kharrar on the road to Mecca and waited to raid a Meccan caravan returning from Syria. However, the caravan had already passed and the Muslims returned to Medina without any loot.
Arab tribes during Muhammad's era also used ambush tactics. One example retold in Muslim tradition is said to have taken place during the First Raid on Banu Thalabah. The Banu Thalabah tribe were already aware of the impending attack; so they lay in wait for the Muslims, and when Muhammad ibn Maslama arrived at the site, the Banu Thalabah with 100 men ambushed the Muslims while they were making preparation to sleep and, after a brief resistance, killed them all except for Muhammad ibn Maslama, who feigned death. A Muslim who happened to pass that way found him and assisted him to return to Medina. The raid was unsuccessful.
Procedure.
In modern warfare, an ambush is most often employed by ground troops up to platoon size against enemy targets, which may be other ground troops, or possibly vehicles. However, in some situations, especially when deep behind enemy lines, the actual attack will be carried out by a platoon, a company-sized unit will be deployed to support the attack group, setting up and maintaining a forward patrol harbour from which the attacking force will deploy, and to which they will retire after the attack.
Planning.
Ambushes are complex multi-phase operations and are therefore usually planned in some detail. First, a suitable killing zone is identified. This is the place where the ambush will be laid. It is generally a place where enemy units are expected to pass, and which gives reasonable cover for the deployment, execution and extraction phases of the ambush patrol. A path along a wooded valley floor would be a typical example.
Ambush can be described geometrically as:
Viet Cong ambush techniques.
Ambush criteria: The terrain for the ambush had to meet strict criteria:
One important feature of the ambush was that the target units should 'pile up' after being attacked, thus preventing them any easy means of withdrawal from the kill zone and hindering their use of heavy weapons and supporting fire. Terrain was usually selected which would facilitate this and slow down the enemy. Any terrain around the ambush site which was not favorable to the ambushing force, or which offered some protection to the target, was heavily mined and booby trapped or pre-registered for mortars.
Ambush units: The NVA/VC ambush formations consisted of:
Other elements might also be included if the situation demanded, such as a sniper screen along a nearby avenue of approach to delay enemy reinforcements.
Command posts: When deploying into an ambush site, the NVA first occupied several observation posts, placed to detect the enemy as early as possible and to report on the formation it was using, its strength and firepower, as well as to provide early warning to the unit commander. Usually one main OP and several secondary OPs were established. Runners and occasionally radios were used to communicate between the OPs and the main command post. The OPs were located so that they could observe enemy movement into the ambush and often they would remain in position throughout the ambush in order to report routes of reinforcement and withdrawal by the enemy as well as his maneuver options. Frequently the OPs were reinforced to squad size and served as flank security. The command post was situated in a central location, often on terrain which afforded it a vantage point overlooking the ambush site.
Recon methods: Reconnaissance elements observing a potential ambush target on the move generally stayed 300–500 meters away. Sometimes a "leapfrogging" recon technique was used. Surveillance units were echeloned one behind the other. As the enemy drew close to the first, it fell back behind the last recon team, leaving an advance group in its place. This one in turn fell back as the enemy again closed the gap, and the cycle rotated. This method helped keep the enemy under continuous observation from a variety of vantage points, and allowed the recon groups to cover one another.
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1908 | Abzyme | An abzyme (from antibody and enzyme), also called catmab (from catalytic monoclonal antibody), and most often called catalytic antibody or sometimes catab, is a monoclonal antibody with catalytic activity. Abzymes are usually raised in lab animals immunized against synthetic haptens, but some natural abzymes can be found in normal humans (anti-vasoactive intestinal peptide autoantibodies) and in patients with autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, where they can bind to and hydrolyze DNA. To date abzymes display only weak, modest catalytic activity and have not proved to be of any practical use. They are, however, subjects of considerable academic interest. Studying them has yielded important insights into reaction mechanisms, enzyme structure and function, catalysis, and the immune system itself.
Enzymes function by lowering the activation energy of the transition state of a chemical reaction, thereby enabling the formation of an otherwise less-favorable molecular intermediate between the reactant(s) and the product(s). If an antibody is developed to bind to a molecule that is structurally and electronically similar to the transition state of a given chemical reaction, the developed antibody will bind to, and stabilize, the transition state, just like a natural enzyme, lowering the activation energy of the reaction, and thus catalyzing the reaction. By raising an antibody to bind to a stable transition-state analog, a new and unique type of enzyme is produced.
So far, all catalytic antibodies produced have displayed only modest, weak catalytic activity. The reasons for low catalytic activity for these molecules have been widely discussed. Possibilities indicate that factors beyond the binding site may play an important role, in particular through protein dynamics. Some abzymes have been engineered to use metal ions and other cofactors to improve their catalytic activity.
History.
The possibility of catalyzing a reaction by means of an antibody which binds the transition state was first suggested by William P. Jencks in 1969. In 1994 Peter G. Schultz and Richard A. Lerner received the prestigious Wolf Prize in Chemistry for developing catalytic antibodies for many reactions and popularizing their study into a significant sub-field of enzymology.
Abzymes in Human healthy Breast Milk.
There are a broad range of abzymes in healthy human mothers with DNAse, RNAse, and protease activity.
Potential HIV treatment.
In a June 2008 issue of the journal Autoimmunity Review, researchers S. Planque, Sudhir Paul, Ph.D, and Yasuhiro Nishiyama, Ph.D of the University Of Texas Medical School at Houston announced that they have engineered an abzyme that degrades the superantigenic region of the gp120 CD4 binding site. This is the one part of the HIV virus outer coating that does not change, because it is the attachment point to T lymphocytes, the key cell in cell-mediated immunity. Once infected by HIV, patients produce antibodies to the more changeable parts of the viral coat. The antibodies are ineffective because of the virus' ability to change their coats rapidly. Because this protein gp120 is necessary for HIV to attach, it does not change across different strains and is a point of vulnerability across the entire range of the HIV variant population.
The abzyme does more than bind to the site: it catalytically destroys the site, rendering the virus inert, and then can attack other HIV viruses. A single abzyme molecule can destroy thousands of HIV viruses.
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1909 | Adaptive radiation | In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, alters biotic interactions or opens new environmental niches. Starting with a single ancestor, this process results in the speciation and phenotypic adaptation of an array of species exhibiting different morphological and physiological traits. The prototypical example of adaptive radiation is finch speciation on the Galapagos ("Darwin's finches"), but examples are known from around the world.
Characteristics.
Four features can be used to identify an adaptive radiation:
Conditions.
Adaptive radiations are thought to be triggered by an ecological opportunity or a new adaptive zone. Sources of ecological opportunity can be the loss of antagonists (competitors or predators), the evolution of a key innovation or dispersal to a new environment. Any one of these ecological opportunities has the potential to result in an increase in population size and relaxed stabilizing (constraining) selection. As genetic diversity is positively correlated with population size the expanded population will have more genetic diversity compared to the ancestral population. With reduced stabilizing selection phenotypic diversity can also increase. In addition, intraspecific competition will increase, promoting divergent selection to use a wider range of resources. This ecological release provides the potential for ecological speciation and thus adaptive radiation.
Occupying a new environment might take place under the following conditions:
Relationship between mass-extinctions and mass adaptive radiations.
A 2020 study found there to be no direct causal relationship between the proportionally most comparable mass radiations and extinctions in terms of "co-occurrence of species", substantially challenging the hypothesis of "creative mass extinctions".
Examples.
Darwin's finches.
Darwin's finches are an often-used textbook example of adaptive radiation. Today represented by approximately 15 species, Darwin's finches are Galapagos endemics famously adapted for a specialized feeding behavior (although one species, the Cocos finch ("Pinaroloxias inornata"), is not found in the Galapagos but on the island of Cocos south of Costa Rica). Darwin's finches are not actually finches in the true sense, but are members of the tanager family Thraupidae, and are derived from a single ancestor that arrived in the Galapagos from mainland South America perhaps just 3 million years ago. Excluding the Cocos finch, each species of Darwin's finch is generally widely distributed in the Galapagos and fills the same niche on each island. For the ground finches, this niche is a diet of seeds, and they have thick bills to facilitate the consumption of these hard materials. The ground finches are further specialized to eat seeds of a particular size: the large ground finch ("Geospiza magnirostris") is the largest species of Darwin's finch and has the thickest beak for breaking open the toughest seeds, the small ground finch ("Geospiza fuliginosa") has a smaller beak for eating smaller seeds, and the medium ground finch ("Geospiza fortis") has a beak of intermediate size for optimal consumption of intermediately sized seeds (relative to "G. magnirostris" and "G. fuliginosa"). There is some overlap: for example, the most robust medium ground finches could have beaks larger than those of the smallest large ground finches. Because of this overlap, it can be difficult to tell the species apart by eye, though their songs differ. These three species often occur sympatrically, and during the rainy season in the Galapagos when food is plentiful, they specialize little and eat the same, easily accessible foods. It was not well-understood why their beaks were so adapted until Peter and Rosemary Grant studied their feeding behavior in the long dry season, and discovered that when food is scarce, the ground finches use their specialized beaks to eat the seeds that they are best suited to eat and thus avoid starvation.
The other finches in the Galapagos are similarly uniquely adapted for their particular niche. The cactus finches ("Geospiza" sp.) have somewhat longer beaks than the ground finches that serve the dual purpose of allowing them to feed on Opuntia cactus nectar and pollen while these plants are flowering, but on seeds during the rest of the year. The warbler-finches ("Certhidea" sp.) have short, pointed beaks for eating insects. The woodpecker finch ("Camarhynchus pallidus") has a slender beak which it uses to pick at wood in search of insects; it also uses small sticks to reach insect prey inside the wood, making it one of the few animals that use tools.
The mechanism by which the finches initially diversified is still an area of active research. One proposition is that the finches were able to have a non-adaptive, allopatric speciation event on separate islands in the archipelago, such that when they reconverged on some islands, they were able to maintain reproductive isolation. Once they occurred in sympatry, niche specialization was favored so that the different species competed less directly for resources. This second, sympatric event was adaptive radiation.
Cichlids of the African Great Lakes.
The haplochromine cichlid fishes in the Great Lakes of the East African Rift (particularly in Lake Tanganyika, Lake Malawi, and Lake Victoria) form the most speciose modern example of adaptive radiation. These lakes are believed to be home to about 2,000 different species of cichlid, spanning a wide range of ecological roles and morphological characteristics. Cichlids in these lakes fill nearly all of the roles typically filled by many fish families, including those of predators, scavengers, and herbivores, with varying dentitions and head shapes to match their dietary habits. In each case, the radiation events are only a few million years old, making the high level of speciation particularly remarkable. Several factors could be responsible for this diversity: the availability of a multitude of niches probably favored specialization, as few other fish taxa are present in the lakes (meaning that sympatric speciation was the most probable mechanism for initial specialization). Also, continual changes in the water level of the lakes during the Pleistocene (which often turned the largest lakes into several smaller ones) could have created the conditions for secondary allopatric speciation.
Tanganyika cichlids.
Lake Tanganyika is the site from which nearly all the cichlid lineages of East Africa (including both riverine and lake species) originated. Thus, the species in the lake constitute a single adaptive radiation event but do not form a single monophyletic clade. Lake Tanganyika is also the least speciose of the three largest African Great Lakes, with only around 200 species of cichlid; however, these cichlids are more morphologically divergent and ecologically distinct than their counterparts in lakes Malawi and Victoria, an artifact of Lake Tanganyika's older cichlid fauna. Lake Tanganyika itself is believed to have formed 9–12 million years ago, putting a recent cap on the age of the lake's cichlid fauna. Many of Tanganyika's cichlids live very specialized lifestyles. The giant or emperor cichlid ("Boulengerochromis microlepis") is a piscivore often ranked the largest of all cichlids (though it competes for this title with South America's "Cichla temensis", the speckled peacock bass). It is thought that giant cichlids spawn only a single time, breeding in their third year and defending their young until they reach a large size, before dying of starvation some time thereafter. The three species of "Altolamprologus" are also piscivores, but with laterally compressed bodies and thick scales enabling them to chase prey into thin cracks in rocks without damaging their skin. "Plecodus straeleni" has evolved large, strangely curved teeth that are designed to scrape scales off of the sides of other fish, scales being its main source of food. "Gnathochromis permaxillaris" possesses a large mouth with a protruding upper lip, and feeds by opening this mouth downward onto the sandy lake bottom, sucking in small invertebrates. A number of Tanganyika's cichlids are shell-brooders, meaning that mating pairs lay and fertilize their eggs inside of empty shells on the lake bottom. "Lamprologus callipterus" is a unique egg-brooding species, with 15 cm-long males amassing collections of shells and guarding them in the hopes of attracting females (about 6 cm in length) to lay eggs in these shells. These dominant males must defend their territories from three types of rival: (1) other dominant males looking to steal shells; (2) younger, "sneaker" males looking to fertilize eggs in a dominant male's territory; and (3) tiny, 2–4 cm "parasitic dwarf" males that also attempt to rush in and fertilize eggs in the dominant male's territory. These parasitic dwarf males never grow to the size of dominant males, and the male offspring of dominant and parasitic dwarf males grow with 100% fidelity into the form of their fathers. A number of other highly specialized Tanganyika cichlids exist aside from these examples, including those adapted for life in open lake water up to 200m deep.
Malawi cichlids.
The cichlids of Lake Malawi constitute a "species flock" of up to 1000 endemic species. Only seven cichlid species in Lake Malawi are not a part of the species flock: the Eastern happy ("Astatotilapia calliptera"), the sungwa ("Serranochromis robustus"), and five tilapia species (genera "Oreochromis" and "Coptodon"). All of the other cichlid species in the lake are descendants of a single original colonist species, which itself was descended from Tanganyikan ancestors. The common ancestor of Malawi's species flock is believed to have reached the lake 3.4 million years ago at the earliest, making Malawi cichlids' diversification into their present numbers particularly rapid. Malawi's cichlids span a similarly range of feeding behaviors to those of Tanganyika, but also show signs of a much more recent origin. For example, all members of the Malawi species flock are mouth-brooders, meaning the female keeps her eggs in her mouth until they hatch; in almost all species, the eggs are also fertilized in the female's mouth, and in a few species, the females continue to guard their fry in their mouth after they hatch. Males of most species display predominantly blue coloration when mating. However, a number of particularly divergent species are known from Malawi, including the piscivorous "Nimbochromis livingtonii", which lies on its side in the substrate until small cichlids, perhaps drawn to its broken white patterning, come to inspect the predator - at which point they are swiftly eaten.
Victoria cichlids.
Lake Victoria's cichlids are also a species flock, once composed of some 500 or more species. The deliberate introduction of the Nile Perch ("Lates niloticus") in the 1950s proved disastrous for Victoria cichlids, and the collective biomass of the Victoria cichlid species flock has decreased substantially and an unknown number of species have become extinct. However, the original range of morphological and behavioral diversity seen in the lake's cichlid fauna is still mostly present today, if endangered. These again include cichlids specialized for niches across the trophic spectrum, as in Tanganyika and Malawi, but again, there are standouts. Victoria is famously home to many piscivorous cichlid species, some of which feed by sucking the contents out of mouthbrooding females' mouths. Victoria's cichlids constitute a far younger radiation than even that of Lake Malawi, with estimates of the age of the flock ranging from 200,000 years to as little as 14,000.
Adaptive radiation in Hawaii.
Hawaii has served as the site of a number of adaptive radiation events, owing to its isolation, recent origin, and large land area. The three most famous examples of these radiations are presented below, though insects like the Hawaiian drosophilid flies and "Hyposmocoma" moths have also undergone adaptive radiation.
Hawaiian honeycreepers.
The Hawaiian honeycreepers form a large, highly morphologically diverse species group of birds that began radiating in the early days of the Hawaiian archipelago. While today only 17 species are known to persist in Hawaii (3 more may or may not be extinct), there were more than 50 species prior to Polynesian colonization of the archipelago (between 18 and 21 species have gone extinct since the discovery of the islands by westerners). The Hawaiian honeycreepers are known for their beaks, which are specialized to satisfy a wide range of dietary needs: for example, the beak of the ʻakiapōlāʻau ("Hemignathus wilsoni") is characterized by a short, sharp lower mandible for scraping bark off of trees, and the much longer, curved upper mandible is used to probe the wood underneath for insects. Meanwhile, the ʻiʻiwi ("Drepanis coccinea") has a very long curved beak for reaching nectar deep in "Lobelia" flowers. An entire clade of Hawaiian honeycreepers, the tribe Psittirostrini, is composed of thick-billed, mostly seed-eating birds, like the Laysan finch ("Telespiza cantans"). In at least some cases, similar morphologies and behaviors appear to have evolved convergently among the Hawaiian honeycreepers; for example, the short, pointed beaks of "Loxops" and "Oreomystis" evolved separately despite once forming the justification for lumping the two genera together. The Hawaiian honeycreepers are believed to have descended from a single common ancestor some 15 to 20 million years ago, though estimates range as low as 3.5 million years.
Hawaiian silverswords.
Adaptive radiation is not a strictly vertebrate phenomenon, and examples are also known from among plants. The most famous example of adaptive radiation in plants is quite possibly the Hawaiian silverswords, named for alpine desert-dwelling "Argyroxiphium" species with long, silvery leaves that live for up to 20 years before growing a single flowering stalk and then dying. The Hawaiian silversword alliance consists of twenty-eight species of Hawaiian plants which, aside from the namesake silverswords, includes trees, shrubs, vines, cushion plants, and more. The silversword alliance is believed to have originated in Hawaii no more than 6 million years ago, making this one of Hawaii's youngest adaptive radiation events. This means that the silverswords evolved on Hawaii's modern high islands, and descended from a single common ancestor that arrived on Kauai from western North America. The closest modern relatives of the silverswords today are California tarweeds of the family Asteraceae.
Hawaiian lobelioids.
Hawaii is also the site of a separate major floral adaptive radiation event: the Hawaiian lobelioids. The Hawaiian lobelioids are significantly more speciose than the silverswords, perhaps because they have been present in Hawaii for so much longer: they descended from a single common ancestor who arrived in the archipelago up to 15 million years ago. Today the Hawaiian lobelioids form a clade of over 125 species, including succulents, trees, shrubs, epiphytes, etc. Many species have been lost to extinction and many of the surviving species endangered.
Caribbean anoles.
Anole lizards are distributed broadly in the New World, from the Southeastern US to South America. With over 400 species currently recognized, often placed in a single genus ("Anolis"), they constitute one of the largest radiation events among all lizards. Anole radiation on the mainland has largely been a process of speciation, and is not adaptive to any great degree, but anoles on each of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) have adaptively radiated in separate, convergent ways. On each of these islands, anoles have evolved with such a consistent set of morphological adaptations that each species can be assigned to one of six "ecomorphs": trunk–ground, trunk–crown, grass–bush, crown–giant, twig, and trunk. Take, for example, crown–giants from each of these islands: the Cuban "Anolis luteogularis", Hispaniola's "Anolis ricordii", Puerto Rico's "Anolis cuvieri", and Jamaica's "Anolis garmani" (Cuba and Hispaniola are both home to more than one species of crown–giant). These anoles are all large, canopy-dwelling species with large heads and large lamellae (scales on the undersides of the fingers and toes that are important for traction in climbing), and yet none of these species are particularly closely related and appear to have evolved these similar traits independently. The same can be said of the other five ecomorphs across the Caribbean's four largest islands. Much like in the case of the cichlids of the three largest African Great Lakes, each of these islands is home to its own convergent "Anolis" adaptive radiation event.
Other examples.
Presented above are the most well-documented examples of modern adaptive radiation, but other examples are known. Populations of three-spined sticklebacks have repeatedly diverged and evolved into distinct ecotypes. On Madagascar, birds of the family Vangidae are marked by very distinct beak shapes to suit their ecological roles. Madagascan mantellid frogs have radiated into forms that mirror other tropical frog faunas, with the brightly colored mantellas ("Mantella") having evolved convergently with the Neotropical poison dart frogs of Dendrobatidae, while the arboreal "Boophis" species are the Madagascan equivalent of tree frogs and glass frogs. The pseudoxyrhophiine snakes of Madagascar have evolved into fossorial, arboreal, terrestrial, and semi-aquatic forms that converge with the colubroid faunas in the rest of the world. These Madagascan examples are significantly older than most of the other examples presented here: Madagascar's fauna has been evolving in isolation since the island split from India some 88 million years ago, and the Mantellidae originated around 50 mya. Older examples are known: the K-Pg extinction event, which caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs and most other reptilian megafauna 65 million years ago, is seen as having triggered a global adaptive radiation event that created the mammal diversity that exists today.
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1910 | Agarose gel electrophoresis | Agarose gel electrophoresis is a method of gel electrophoresis used in biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and clinical chemistry to separate a mixed population of macromolecules such as DNA or proteins in a matrix of agarose, one of the two main components of agar. The proteins may be separated by charge and/or size (isoelectric focusing agarose electrophoresis is essentially size independent), and the DNA and RNA fragments by length. Biomolecules are separated by applying an electric field to move the charged molecules through an agarose matrix, and the biomolecules are separated by size in the agarose gel matrix.
Agarose gel is easy to cast, has relatively fewer charged groups, and is particularly suitable for separating DNA of size range most often encountered in laboratories, which accounts for the popularity of its use. The separated DNA may be viewed with stain, most commonly under UV light, and the DNA fragments can be extracted from the gel with relative ease. Most agarose gels used are between 0.7–2% dissolved in a suitable electrophoresis buffer.
Properties of agarose gel.
Agarose gel is a three-dimensional matrix formed of helical agarose molecules in supercoiled bundles that are aggregated into three-dimensional structures with channels and pores through which biomolecules can pass. The 3-D structure is held together with hydrogen bonds and can therefore be disrupted by heating back to a liquid state. The melting temperature is different from the gelling temperature, depending on the sources, agarose gel has a gelling temperature of 35–42 °C and a melting temperature of 85–95 °C. Low-melting and low-gelling agaroses made through chemical modifications are also available.
Agarose gel has large pore size and good gel strength, making it suitable as an anticonvection medium for the electrophoresis of DNA and large protein molecules. The pore size of a 1% gel has been estimated from 100 nm to 200–500 nm, and its gel strength allows gels as dilute as 0.15% to form a slab for gel electrophoresis. Low-concentration gels (0.1–0.2%) however are fragile and therefore hard to handle. Agarose gel has lower resolving power than polyacrylamide gel for DNA but has a greater range of separation, and is therefore used for DNA fragments of usually 50–20,000 bp in size. The limit of resolution for standard agarose gel electrophoresis is around 750 kb, but resolution of over 6 Mb is possible with pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). It can also be used to separate large proteins, and it is the preferred matrix for the gel electrophoresis of particles with effective radii larger than 5–10 nm. A 0.9% agarose gel has pores large enough for the entry of bacteriophage T4.
The agarose polymer contains charged groups, in particular pyruvate and sulphate. These negatively charged groups create a flow of water in the opposite direction to the movement of DNA in a process called electroendosmosis (EEO), and can therefore retard the movement of DNA and cause blurring of bands. Higher concentration gels would have higher electroendosmotic flow. Low EEO agarose is therefore generally preferred for use in agarose gel electrophoresis of nucleic acids, but high EEO agarose may be used for other purposes. The lower sulphate content of low EEO agarose, particularly low-melting point (LMP) agarose, is also beneficial in cases where the DNA extracted from gel is to be used for further manipulation as the presence of contaminating sulphates may affect some subsequent procedures, such as ligation and PCR. Zero EEO agaroses however are undesirable for some applications as they may be made by adding positively charged groups and such groups can affect subsequent enzyme reactions. Electroendosmosis is a reason agarose is used in preference to agar as the agaropectin component in agar contains a significant amount of negatively charged sulphate and carboxyl groups. The removal of agaropectin in agarose substantially reduces the EEO, as well as reducing the non-specific adsorption of biomolecules to the gel matrix. However, for some applications such as the electrophoresis of serum proteins, a high EEO may be desirable, and agaropectin may be added in the gel used.
Migration of nucleic acids in agarose gel.
Factors affecting migration of nucleic acid in gel.
A number of factors can affect the migration of nucleic acids: the dimension of the gel pores (gel concentration), size of DNA being electrophoresed, the voltage used, the ionic strength of the buffer, and the concentration of intercalating dye such as ethidium bromide if used during electrophoresis.
Smaller molecules travel faster than larger molecules in gel, and double-stranded DNA moves at a rate that is inversely proportional to the logarithm of the number of base pairs. This relationship however breaks down with very large DNA fragments, and separation of very large DNA fragments requires the use of pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), which applies alternating current from different directions and the large DNA fragments are separated as they reorient themselves with the changing field.
For standard agarose gel electrophoresis, larger molecules are resolved better using a low concentration gel while smaller molecules separate better at high concentration gel. Higher concentration gels, however, require longer run times (sometimes days).
The movement of the DNA may be affected by the conformation of the DNA molecule, for example, supercoiled DNA usually moves faster than relaxed DNA because it is tightly coiled and hence more compact. In a normal plasmid DNA preparation, multiple forms of DNA may be present. Gel electrophoresis of the plasmids would normally show the negatively supercoiled form as the main band, while nicked DNA (open circular form) and the relaxed closed circular form appears as minor bands. The rate at which the various forms move however can change using different electrophoresis conditions, and the mobility of larger circular DNA may be more strongly affected than linear DNA by the pore size of the gel.
Ethidium bromide which intercalates into circular DNA can change the charge, length, as well as the superhelicity of the DNA molecule, therefore its presence in gel during electrophoresis can affect its movement. For example, the positive charge of ethidium bromide can reduce the DNA movement by 15%. Agarose gel electrophoresis can be used to resolve circular DNA with different supercoiling topology.
DNA damage due to increased cross-linking will also reduce electrophoretic DNA migration in a dose-dependent way.
The rate of migration of the DNA is proportional to the voltage applied, i.e. the higher the voltage, the faster the DNA moves. The resolution of large DNA fragments however is lower at high voltage. The mobility of DNA may also change in an unsteady field – in a field that is periodically reversed, the mobility of DNA of a particular size may drop significantly at a particular cycling frequency. This phenomenon can result in band inversion in field inversion gel electrophoresis (FIGE), whereby larger DNA fragments move faster than smaller ones.
Mechanism of migration and separation.
The negative charge of its phosphate backbone moves the DNA towards the positively charged anode during electrophoresis. However, the migration of DNA molecules in solution, in the absence of a gel matrix, is independent of molecular weight during electrophoresis. The gel matrix is therefore responsible for the separation of DNA by size during electrophoresis, and a number of models exist to explain the mechanism of separation of biomolecules in gel matrix. A widely accepted one is the Ogston model which treats the polymer matrix as a sieve. A globular protein or a random coil DNA moves through the interconnected pores, and the movement of larger molecules is more likely to be impeded and slowed down by collisions with the gel matrix, and the molecules of different sizes can therefore be separated in this sieving process.
The Ogston model however breaks down for large molecules whereby the pores are significantly smaller than size of the molecule. For DNA molecules of size greater than 1 kb, a reptation model (or its variants) is most commonly used. This model assumes that the DNA can crawl in a "snake-like" fashion (hence "reptation") through the pores as an elongated molecule. A biased reptation model applies at higher electric field strength, whereby the leading end of the molecule become strongly biased in the forward direction and pulls the rest of the molecule along. Real-time fluorescence microscopy of stained molecules, however, showed more subtle dynamics during electrophoresis, with the DNA showing considerable elasticity as it alternately stretching in the direction of the applied field and then contracting into a ball, or becoming hooked into a U-shape when it gets caught on the polymer fibres.
General procedure.
The details of an agarose gel electrophoresis experiment may vary depending on methods, but most follow a general procedure.
Casting of gel.
The gel is prepared by dissolving the agarose powder in an appropriate buffer, such as TAE or TBE, to be used in electrophoresis. The agarose is dispersed in the buffer before heating it to near-boiling point, but avoid boiling. The melted agarose is allowed to cool sufficiently before pouring the solution into a cast as the cast may warp or crack if the agarose solution is too hot. A comb is placed in the cast to create wells for loading sample, and the gel should be completely set before use.
The concentration of gel affects the resolution of DNA separation. The agarose gel is composed of microscopic pores through which the molecules travel, and there is an inverse relationship between the pore size of the agarose gel and the concentration – pore size decreases as the density of agarose fibers increases. High gel concentration improves separation of smaller DNA molecules, while lowering gel concentration permits large DNA molecules to be separated. The process allows fragments ranging from 50 base pairs to several mega bases to be separated depending on the gel concentration used. The concentration is measured in weight of agarose over volume of buffer used (g/ml). For a standard agarose gel electrophoresis, a 0.8% gel gives good separation or resolution of large 5–10kb DNA fragments, while 2% gel gives good resolution for small 0.2–1kb fragments. 1% gels is often used for a standard electrophoresis. High percentage gels are often brittle and may not set evenly, while low percentage gels (0.1-0.2%) are fragile and not easy to handle. Low-melting-point (LMP) agarose gels are also more fragile than normal agarose gel. Low-melting point agarose may be used on its own or simultaneously with standard agarose for the separation and isolation of DNA. PFGE and FIGE are often done with high percentage agarose gels.
Loading of samples.
Once the gel has set, the comb is removed, leaving wells where DNA samples can be loaded. Loading buffer is mixed with the DNA sample before the mixture is loaded into the wells. The loading buffer contains a dense compound, which may be glycerol, sucrose, or Ficoll, that raises the density of the sample so that the DNA sample may sink to the bottom of the well. If the DNA sample contains residual ethanol after its preparation, it may float out of the well. The loading buffer also includes colored dyes such as xylene cyanol and bromophenol blue used to monitor the progress of the electrophoresis. The DNA samples are loaded using a pipette.
Electrophoresis.
Agarose gel electrophoresis is most commonly done horizontally in a subaquaeous mode whereby the slab gel is completely submerged in buffer during electrophoresis. It is also possible, but less common, to perform the electrophoresis vertically, as well as horizontally with the gel raised on agarose legs using an appropriate apparatus. The buffer used in the gel is the same as the running buffer in the electrophoresis tank, which is why electrophoresis in the subaquaeous mode is possible with agarose gel.
For optimal resolution of DNA greater than 2kb in size in standard gel electrophoresis, 5 to 8 V/cm is recommended (the distance in cm refers to the distance between electrodes, therefore this recommended voltage would be 5 to 8 multiplied by the distance between the electrodes in cm). Voltage may also be limited by the fact that it heats the gel and may cause the gel to melt if it is run at high voltage for a prolonged period, especially if the gel used is LMP agarose gel. Too high a voltage may also reduce resolution, as well as causing band streaking for large DNA molecules. Too low a voltage may lead to broadening of band for small DNA fragments due to dispersion and diffusion.
Since DNA is not visible in natural light, the progress of the electrophoresis is monitored using colored dyes. Xylene cyanol (light blue color) comigrates large DNA fragments, while Bromophenol blue (dark blue) comigrates with the smaller fragments. Less commonly used dyes include Cresol Red and Orange G which migrate ahead of bromophenol blue. A DNA marker is also run together for the estimation of the molecular weight of the DNA fragments. Note however that the size of a circular DNA like plasmids cannot be accurately gauged using standard markers unless it has been linearized by restriction digest, alternatively a supercoiled DNA marker may be used.
Staining and visualization.
DNA as well as RNA are normally visualized by staining with ethidium bromide, which intercalates into the major grooves of the DNA and fluoresces under UV light. The intercalation depends on the concentration of DNA and thus, a band with high intensity will indicate a higher amount of DNA compared to a band of less intensity. The ethidium bromide may be added to the agarose solution before it gels, or the DNA gel may be stained later after electrophoresis. Destaining of the gel is not necessary but may produce better images. Other methods of staining are available; examples are SYBR Green, GelRed, methylene blue, brilliant cresyl blue, Nile blue sulphate, and crystal violet. SYBR Green, GelRed and other similar commercial products are sold as safer alternatives to ethidium bromide as it has been shown to be mutagenic in Ames test, although the carcinogenicity of ethidium bromide has not actually been established. SYBR Green requires the use of a blue-light transilluminator. DNA stained with crystal violet can be viewed under natural light without the use of a UV transilluminator which is an advantage, however it may not produce a strong band.
When stained with ethidium bromide, the gel is viewed with an ultraviolet (UV) transilluminator. The UV light excites the electrons within the aromatic ring of ethidium bromide, and once they return to the ground state, light is released, making the DNA and ethidium bromide complex fluoresce. Standard transilluminators use wavelengths of 302/312-nm (UV-B), however exposure of DNA to UV radiation for as little as 45 seconds can produce damage to DNA and affect subsequent procedures, for example reducing the efficiency of transformation, "in vitro" transcription, and PCR. Exposure of DNA to UV radiation therefore should be limited. Using a higher wavelength of 365 nm (UV-A range) causes less damage to the DNA but also produces much weaker fluorescence with ethidium bromide. Where multiple wavelengths can be selected in the transilluminator, shorter wavelength can be used to capture images, while longer wavelength should be used if it is necessary to work on the gel for any extended period of time.
The transilluminator apparatus may also contain image capture devices, such as a digital or polaroid camera, that allow an image of the gel to be taken or printed.
For gel electrophoresis of protein, the bands may be visualised with Coomassie or silver stains.
Downstream procedures.
The separated DNA bands are often used for further procedures, and a DNA band may be cut out of the gel as a slice, dissolved and purified. Contaminants however may affect some downstream procedures such as PCR, and low melting point agarose may be preferred in some cases as it contains fewer of the sulphates that can affect some enzymatic reactions. The gels may also be used for blotting techniques.
Buffers.
In general, the ideal buffer should have good conductivity, produce less heat and have a long life. There are a number of buffers used for agarose electrophoresis; common ones for nucleic acids include Tris/Acetate/EDTA (TAE) and Tris/Borate/EDTA (TBE). The buffers used contain EDTA to inactivate many nucleases which require divalent cation for their function. The borate in TBE buffer can be problematic as borate can polymerize, and/or interact with cis diols such as those found in RNA. TAE has the lowest buffering capacity, but it provides the best resolution for larger DNA. This means a lower voltage and more time, but a better product.
Many other buffers have been proposed, e.g. lithium borate (LB), iso electric histidine, pK matched goods buffers, etc.; in most cases the purported rationale is lower current (less heat) and or matched ion mobilities, which leads to longer buffer life. Tris-phosphate buffer has high buffering capacity but cannot be used if DNA extracted is to be used in phosphate sensitive reaction. LB is relatively new and is ineffective in resolving fragments larger than 5 kbp; However, with its low conductivity, a much higher voltage could be used (up to 35 V/cm), which means a shorter analysis time for routine electrophoresis. As low as one base pair size difference could be resolved in 3% agarose gel with an extremely low conductivity medium (1 mM lithium borate).
Other buffering system may be used in specific applications, for example, barbituric acid-sodium barbiturate or Tris-barbiturate buffers may be used for in agarose gel electrophoresis of proteins, for example in the detection of abnormal distribution of proteins.
Applications.
Agarose gels are easily cast and handled compared to other matrices and nucleic acids are not chemically altered during electrophoresis. Samples are also easily recovered. After the experiment is finished, the resulting gel can be stored in a plastic bag in a refrigerator.
Electrophoresis is performed in buffer solutions to reduce pH changes due to the electric field, which is important because the charge of DNA and RNA depends on pH, but running for too long can exhaust the buffering capacity of the solution. Further, different preparations of genetic material may not migrate consistently with each other, for morphological or other reasons.
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1911 | Allele | An allele (, ; ; modern formation from Greek ἄλλος "állos", "other") is a variation of the same sequence of nucleotides at the same place on a long DNA molecule, as described in leading textbooks on genetics and evolution. The word is a short form of "allelomorph".
"The chromosomal or genomic location of a gene or any other genetic element is called a locus (plural: loci) and alternative DNA sequences at a locus are called alleles."
The simplest alleles are single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), but they can also be insertions and deletions of up to several thousand base pairs.
Popular definitions of 'allele' typically refer only to different alleles within genes. For example, the ABO blood grouping is controlled by the ABO gene, which has six common alleles (variants). In population genetics, nearly every living human's phenotype for the ABO gene is some combination of just these six alleles.
Most alleles observed result in little or no change in the function of the gene product it codes for. However, sometimes, different alleles can result in different observable phenotypic traits, such as different pigmentation. A notable example of this is Gregor Mendel's discovery that the white and purple flower colors in pea plants were the result of a single gene with two alleles.
Nearly all multicellular organisms have two sets of chromosomes at some point in their biological life cycle; that is, they are diploid. In this case, the chromosomes can be paired. Each chromosome in the pair contains the same genes in the same order, and place, along the length of the chromosome. For a given gene, if the two chromosomes contain the same allele, they, and the organism, are homozygous with respect to that gene. If the alleles are different, they, and the organism, are heterozygous with respect to that gene.
Etymology.
The word "allele" is a short form of allelomorph ("other form", a word coined by British geneticists William Bateson and Edith Rebecca Saunders), which was used in the early days of genetics to describe variant forms of a gene detected as different phenotypes. It derives from the Greek prefix ἀλληλο-, "allelo-", meaning "mutual", "reciprocal", or "each other", which itself is related to the Greek adjective ἄλλος, "allos" (cognate with Latin "alius"), meaning "other".
Alleles that lead to dominant or recessive phenotypes.
In many cases, genotypic interactions between the two alleles at a locus can be described as dominant or recessive, according to which of the two homozygous phenotypes the heterozygote most resembles. Where the heterozygote is indistinguishable from one of the homozygotes, the allele expressed is the one that leads to the "dominant" phenotype, and the other allele is said to be "recessive". The degree and pattern of dominance varies among loci. This type of interaction was first formally-described by Gregor Mendel. However, many traits defy this simple categorization and the phenotypes are modeled by co-dominance and polygenic inheritance
The term "wild type" allele is sometimes used to describe an allele that is thought to contribute to the typical phenotypic character as seen in "wild" populations of organisms, such as fruit flies ("Drosophila melanogaster"). Such a "wild type" allele was historically regarded as leading to a dominant (overpowering – always expressed), common, and normal phenotype, in contrast to "mutant" alleles that lead to recessive, rare, and frequently deleterious phenotypes. It was formerly thought that most individuals were homozygous for the "wild type" allele at most gene loci, and that any alternative "mutant" allele was found in homozygous form in a small minority of "affected" individuals, often as genetic diseases, and more frequently in heterozygous form in "carriers" for the mutant allele. It is now appreciated that most or all gene loci are highly polymorphic, with multiple alleles, whose frequencies vary from population to population, and that a great deal of genetic variation is hidden in the form of alleles that do not produce obvious phenotypic differences.
Multiple alleles.
A population or species of organisms typically includes multiple alleles at each locus among various individuals. Allelic variation at a locus is measurable as the number of alleles (polymorphism) present, or the proportion of heterozygotes in the population. A null allele is a gene variant that lacks the gene's normal function because it either is not expressed, or the expressed protein is inactive.
For example, at the gene locus for the ABO blood type carbohydrate antigens in humans, classical genetics recognizes three alleles, IA, IB, and i, which determine compatibility of blood transfusions. Any individual has one of six possible genotypes (IAIA, IAi, IBIB, IBi, IAIB, and ii) which produce one of four possible phenotypes: "Type A" (produced by IAIA homozygous and IAi heterozygous genotypes), "Type B" (produced by IBIB homozygous and IBi heterozygous genotypes), "Type AB" produced by IAIB heterozygous genotype, and "Type O" produced by ii homozygous genotype. (It is now known that each of the A, B, and O alleles is actually a class of multiple alleles with different DNA sequences that produce proteins with identical properties: more than 70 alleles are known at the ABO locus. Hence an individual with "Type A" blood may be an AO heterozygote, an AA homozygote, or an AA heterozygote with two different "A" alleles.)
Genotype frequencies.
The frequency of alleles in a diploid population can be used to predict the frequencies of the corresponding genotypes (see Hardy–Weinberg principle). For a simple model, with two alleles;
where "p" is the frequency of one allele and "q" is the frequency of the alternative allele, which necessarily sum to unity. Then, "p"2 is the fraction of the population homozygous for the first allele, 2"pq" is the fraction of heterozygotes, and "q"2 is the fraction homozygous for the alternative allele. If the first allele is dominant to the second then the fraction of the population that will show the dominant phenotype is "p"2 + 2"pq", and the fraction with the recessive phenotype is "q"2.
With three alleles:
In the case of multiple alleles at a diploid locus, the number of possible genotypes (G) with a number of alleles (a) is given by the expression:
Allelic dominance in genetic disorders.
A number of genetic disorders are caused when an individual inherits two recessive alleles for a single-gene trait. Recessive genetic disorders include albinism, cystic fibrosis, galactosemia, phenylketonuria (PKU), and Tay–Sachs disease. Other disorders are also due to recessive alleles, but because the gene locus is located on the X chromosome, so that males have only one copy (that is, they are hemizygous), they are more frequent in males than in females. Examples include red-green color blindness and fragile X syndrome.
Other disorders, such as Huntington's disease, occur when an individual inherits only one dominant allele.
Epialleles.
While heritable traits are typically studied in terms of genetic alleles, epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation can be inherited at specific genomic regions in certain species, a process termed transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The term "epiallele" is used to distinguish these heritable marks from traditional alleles, which are defined by nucleotide sequence. A specific class of epiallele, the metastable epialleles, has been discovered in mice and in humans which is characterized by stochastic (probabilistic) establishment of epigenetic state that can be mitotically inherited.
Idiomorph.
The term “idiomorph”, from Greek ‘morphos’ (form) and ‘idio’ (singular, unique), was introduced in 1990 in place of “allele” to denote sequences at the same locus in different strains that have no sequence similarity and probably do not share a common phylogenetic relationship. It is used mainly in the genetic research of mycology.
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1912 | Ampicillin | Ampicillin is an antibiotic used to prevent and treat a number of bacterial infections, such as respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections, meningitis, salmonellosis, and endocarditis. It may also be used to prevent group B streptococcal infection in newborns. It is used by mouth, by injection into a muscle, or intravenously.
Common side effects include rash, nausea, and diarrhea. It should not be used in people who are allergic to penicillin. Serious side effects may include "Clostridium difficile" colitis or anaphylaxis. While usable in those with kidney problems, the dose may need to be decreased. Its use during pregnancy and breastfeeding appears to be generally safe.
Ampicillin was discovered in 1958 and came into commercial use in 1961. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies ampicillin as critically important for human medicine. It is available as a generic medication.
Medical uses.
Diseases.
Ampicillin used to also be used to treat gonorrhea, but there are now too many strains resistant to penicillins.
Bacteria.
Ampicillin is used to treat infections by many gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. It was the first "broad spectrum" penicillin with activity against gram-positive bacteria, including "Streptococcus pneumoniae", "Streptococcus pyogenes", some isolates of "Staphylococcus aureus" (but not penicillin-resistant or methicillin-resistant strains), "Trueperella", and some "Enterococcus". It is one of the few antibiotics that works against multidrug resistant "Enterococcus faecalis" and "E. faecium". Activity against gram-negative bacteria includes "Neisseria meningitidis", some "Haemophilus influenzae", and some of the Enterobacteriaceae (though most Enterobacteriaceae and "Pseudomonas" are resistant). Its spectrum of activity is enhanced by co-administration of sulbactam, a drug that inhibits beta lactamase, an enzyme produced by bacteria to inactivate ampicillin and related antibiotics. It is sometimes used in combination with other antibiotics that have different mechanisms of action, like vancomycin, linezolid, daptomycin, and tigecycline.
Available forms.
Ampicillin can be administered by mouth, an intramuscular injection (shot) or by intravenous infusion. The oral form, available as capsules or oral suspensions, is not given as an initial treatment for severe infections, but rather as a follow-up to an IM or IV injection. For IV and IM injections, ampicillin is kept as a powder that must be reconstituted.
IV injections must be given slowly, as rapid IV injections can lead to convulsive seizures.
Specific populations.
Ampicillin is one of the most used drugs in pregnancy, and has been found to be generally harmless both by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. (which classified it as category B) and the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia (which classified it as category A). It is the drug of choice for treating "Listeria monocytogenes" in pregnant women, either alone or combined with an aminoglycoside. Pregnancy increases the clearance of ampicillin by up to 50%, and a higher dose is thus needed to reach therapeutic levels.
Ampicillin crosses the placenta and remains in the amniotic fluid at 50–100% of the concentration in maternal plasma; this can lead to high concentrations of ampicillin in the newborn.
While lactating mothers secrete some ampicillin into their breast milk, the amount is minimal.
In newborns, ampicillin has a longer half-life and lower plasma protein binding. The clearance by the kidneys is lower, as kidney function has not fully developed.
Contraindications.
Ampicillin is contraindicated in those with a hypersensitivity to penicillins, as they can cause fatal anaphylactic reactions. Hypersensitivity reactions can include frequent skin rashes and hives, exfoliative dermatitis, erythema multiforme, and a temporary decrease in both red and white blood cells.
Ampicillin is not recommended in people with concurrent mononucleosis, as over 40% of patients develop a skin rash.
Side effects.
Ampicillin is comparatively less toxic than other antibiotics, and side effects are more likely in those who are sensitive to penicillins and those with a history of asthma or allergies. In very rare cases, it causes severe side effects such as angioedema, anaphylaxis, and "C. difficile" infection (that can range from mild diarrhea to serious pseudomembranous colitis). Some develop black "furry" tongue. Serious adverse effects also include seizures and serum sickness. The most common side effects, experienced by about 10% of users are diarrhea and rash. Less common side effects can be nausea, vomiting, itching, and blood dyscrasias. The gastrointestinal effects, such as hairy tongue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and colitis, are more common with the oral form of penicillin. Other conditions may develop up several weeks after treatment.
Overdose.
Ampicillin overdose can cause behavioral changes, confusion, blackouts, and convulsions, as well as neuromuscular hypersensitivity, electrolyte imbalance, and kidney failure.
Interactions.
Ampicillin reacts with probenecid and methotrexate to decrease renal excretion. Large doses of ampicillin can increase the risk of bleeding with concurrent use of warfarin and other oral anticoagulants, possibly by inhibiting platelet aggregation. Ampicillin has been said to make oral contraceptives less effective, but this has been disputed. It can be made less effective by other antibiotic, such as chloramphenicol, erythromycin, cephalosporins, and tetracyclines. For example, tetracyclines inhibit protein synthesis in bacteria, reducing the target against which ampicillin acts. If given at the same time as aminoglycosides, it can bind to it and inactivate it. When administered separately, aminoglycosides and ampicillin can potentiate each other instead.
Ampicillin causes skin rashes more often when given with allopurinol.
Both the live cholera vaccine and live typhoid vaccine can be made ineffective if given with ampicillin. Ampicillin is normally used to treat cholera and typhoid fever, lowering the immunological response that the body has to mount.
Pharmacology.
Mechanism of action.
Ampicillin is in the penicillin group of beta-lactam antibiotics and is part of the aminopenicillin family. It is roughly equivalent to amoxicillin in terms of activity. Ampicillin is able to penetrate gram-positive and some gram-negative bacteria. It differs from penicillin G, or benzylpenicillin, only by the presence of an amino group. This amino group, present on both ampicillin and amoxicillin, helps these antibiotics pass through the pores of the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria, such as "E. coli", "Proteus mirabilis", "Salmonella enterica", and "Shigella".
Ampicillin acts as an irreversible inhibitor of the enzyme transpeptidase, which is needed by bacteria to make the cell wall. It inhibits the third and final stage of bacterial cell wall synthesis in binary fission, which ultimately leads to cell lysis; therefore, ampicillin is usually bacteriolytic.
Pharmacokinetics.
Ampicillin is well-absorbed from the GI tract (though food reduces its absorption), and reaches peak concentrations in one to two hours. The bioavailability is around 62% for parenteral routes. Unlike other penicillins, which usually bind 60–90% to plasma proteins, ampicillin binds to only 15–20%.
Ampicillin is distributed through most tissues, though it is concentrated in the liver and kidneys. It can also be found in the cerebrospinal fluid when the meninges become inflamed (such as, for example, meningitis). Some ampicillin is metabolized by hydrolyzing the beta-lactam ring to penicilloic acid, though most of it is excreted unchanged. In the kidneys, it is filtered out mostly by tubular secretion; some also undergoes glomerular filtration, and the rest is excreted in the feces and bile.
Hetacillin and pivampicillin are ampicillin esters that have been developed to increase bioavailability.
History.
Ampicillin has been used extensively to treat bacterial infections since 1961. Until the introduction of ampicillin by the British company Beecham, penicillin therapies had only been effective against gram-positive organisms such as staphylococci and streptococci. Ampicillin (originally branded as "Penbritin") also demonstrated activity against gram-negative organisms such as "H. influenzae", coliforms, and "Proteus" spp.
Cost.
Ampicillin is relatively inexpensive. In the United States, it is available as a generic medication.
Veterinary use.
In veterinary medicine, ampicillin is used in cats, dogs, and farm animals to treat:
Horses are generally not treated with oral ampicillin, as they have low bioavailability of beta-lactams.
The half-life in animals is around that same of that in humans (just over an hour). Oral absorption is less than 50% in cats and dogs, and less than 4% in horses.
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1913 | Annealing | Annealing may refer to:
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1914 | Antimicrobial resistance | Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microbes evolve mechanisms that protect them from the effects of antimicrobials (drugs used to treat infections). All classes of microbes can evolve resistance where the drugs are no longer effective. Fungi evolve antifungal resistance. Viruses evolve antiviral resistance. Protozoa evolve antiprotozoal resistance, and bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance. Together all of these come under the umbrella of antimicrobial resistance. Microbes resistant to multiple antimicrobials are called multidrug resistant (MDR) and are sometimes referred to as a superbugs. Although antimicrobial resistance is a naturally occurring process, it is often the result of improper usage of the drugs and management of the infections.
Antibiotic resistance is a major subset of AMR, that applies specifically to bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics. Resistance in bacteria can arise naturally by genetic mutation, or by one species acquiring resistance from another. Resistance can appear spontaneously because of random mutations, but also arises through spreading of resistant genes through horizontal gene transfer. However, extended use of antibiotics appears to encourage selection for mutations which can render antibiotics ineffective. Antifungal resistance is a subset of AMR, that specifically applies to fungi that have become resistant to antifungals. Resistance to antifungals can arise naturally, for example by genetic mutation or through aneuploidy. Extended use of antifungals leads to development of antifungal resistance through various mechanisms.
Clinical conditions due to infections caused by microbes containing AMR cause millions of deaths each year. In 2019 there were around 1.27 million deaths globally caused by bacterial AMR. Infections caused by resistant microbes are more difficult to treat, requiring higher doses of antimicrobial drugs, more expensive antibiotics, or alternative medications which may prove more toxic. These approaches may also cost more.
The prevention of antibiotic misuse, which can lead to antibiotic resistance, includes taking antibiotics only when prescribed. Narrow-spectrum antibiotics are preferred over broad-spectrum antibiotics when possible, as effectively and accurately targeting specific organisms is less likely to cause resistance, as well as side effects. For people who take these medications at home, education about proper use is essential. Health care providers can minimize spread of resistant infections by use of proper sanitation and hygiene, including handwashing and disinfecting between patients, and should encourage the same of the patient, visitors, and family members.
Rising drug resistance is caused mainly by use of antimicrobials in humans and other animals, and spread of resistant strains between the two. Growing resistance has also been linked to releasing inadequately treated effluents from the pharmaceutical industry, especially in countries where bulk drugs are manufactured. Antibiotics increase selective pressure in bacterial populations, killing vulnerable bacteria; this increases the percentage of resistant bacteria which continue growing. Even at very low levels of antibiotic, resistant bacteria can have a growth advantage and grow faster than vulnerable bacteria. Similarly, the use of antifungals in agriculture increases selective pressure in fungal populations which triggers the emergence of antifungal resistance. As resistance to antimicrobials becomes more common there is greater need for alternative treatments. Calls for new antimicrobial therapies have been issued, but there is very little development of new drugs which would lead to an improved research process.
Antimicrobial resistance is increasing globally due to increased prescription and dispensing of antibiotic drugs in developing countries. Estimates are that 700,000 to several million deaths result per year and continues to pose a major public health threat worldwide. Each year in the United States, at least 2.8 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 35,000 people die and US$55 billion is spent on increased health care costs and lost productivity. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, 350 million deaths could be caused by AMR by 2050. By then, the yearly death toll will be 10 million, according to a United Nations report.
There are public calls for global collective action to address the threat that include proposals for international treaties on antimicrobial resistance. The burden of worldwide antibiotic resistance is not completely identified, but low-and middle- income countries with weaker healthcare systems are more affected, with mortality being the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. During the COVID-19 pandemic, priorities changed with action against antimicrobial resistance slowing due to scientists and governments focusing more on SARS-CoV-2 research. At the same time the threat of AMR has increased during the pandemic.
Definition.
The WHO defines antimicrobial resistance as a microorganism's resistance to an antimicrobial drug that was once able to treat an infection by that microorganism. A person cannot become resistant to antibiotics. Resistance is a property of the microbe, not a person or other organism infected by a microbe. All types of microbes can develop drug resistance. Thus, there are antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral and antiparasitic resistance.
Antibiotic resistance is a subset of antimicrobial resistance. This more specific resistance is linked to bacteria and thus broken down into two further subsets, microbiological and clinical. Microbiological resistance is the most common and occurs from genes, mutated or inherited, that allow the bacteria to resist the mechanism to kill the microbe associated with certain antibiotics. Clinical resistance is shown through the failure of many therapeutic techniques where the bacteria that are normally susceptible to a treatment become resistant after surviving the outcome of the treatment. In both cases of acquired resistance, the bacteria can pass the genetic catalyst for resistance through horizontal gene transfer: conjugation, transduction, or transformation. This allows the resistance to spread across the same species of pathogen or even similar bacterial pathogens.
Overview.
WHO report released April 2014 stated, "this serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country. Antibiotic resistance—when bacteria change so antibiotics no longer work in people who need them to treat infections—is now a major threat to public health."
Global deaths attributable to AMR numbered 1.27 million in 2019. That year, AMR may have contributed to 5 million deaths and one in five people who died due to AMR were children under five years old.
In 2018, WHO considered antibiotic resistance to be one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development. Deaths attributable to AMR vary by area:
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control calculated that in 2015 there were 671,689 infections in the EU and European Economic Area caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, resulting in 33,110 deaths. Most were acquired in healthcare settings. In 2019 there were 133,000 deaths caused by AMR.
Causes.
Antimicrobial resistance is mainly caused by the overuse/misuse of antimicrobials. This leads to microbes either evolving a defense against drugs used to treat them, or certain strains of microbes that have a natural resistance to antimicrobials becoming much more prevalent than the ones that are easily defeated with medication. While antimicrobial resistance does occur naturally over time, the use of antimicrobial agents in a variety of settings both within the healthcare industry and outside of has led to antimicrobial resistance becoming increasingly more prevalent.
Although many microbes develop resistance to antibiotics over time though natural mutation, overprescribing and inappropriate prescription of antibiotics have accelerated the problem. It is possible that as many as 1 in 3 prescriptions written for antibiotics are unnecessary. Every year, approximately 154 million prescriptions for antibiotics are written. Of these, up to 46 million are unnecessary or inappropriate for the condition that the patient has. Microbes may naturally develop resistance through genetic mutations that occur during cell division, and although random mutations are rare, many microbes reproduce frequently and rapidly, increasing the chances of members of the population acquiring a mutation that increases resistance. Many individuals stop taking antibiotics when they begin to feel better. When this occurs, it is possible that the microbes that are less susceptible to treatment still remain in the body. If these microbes are able to continue to reproduce, this can lead to an infection by bacteria that are less susceptible or even resistant to an antibiotic.
Natural occurrence.
Antimicrobial resistance can evolve naturally due to continued exposure to antimicrobials. Natural selection means that organisms that are able to adapt to their environment, survive, and continue to produce offspring. As a result, the types of microorganisms that are able to survive over time with continued attack by certain antimicrobial agents will naturally become more prevalent in the environment, and those without this resistance will become obsolete.
Some contemporary antimicrobial resistances have also evolved naturally before the use of antimicrobials of human clinical uses. For instance, methicillin-resistance evolved as a pathogen of hedgehogs, possibly as a co-evolutionary adaptation of the pathogen to hedgehogs that are infected by a dermatophyte that naturally produces antibiotics. Also, many soil fungi and bacteria are natural competitors and the original antibiotic Penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming rapidly lost clinical effectiveness in treating humans and, furthermore, none of the other natural penicillins (F, K, N, X, O, U1 or U6) are currently in clinical use.
Antimicrobial resistance can be acquired from other microbes through swapping genes in a process termed horizontal gene transfer. This means that once a gene for resistance to an antibiotic appears in a microbial community, it can then spread to other microbes in the community, potentially moving from a non-disease causing microbe to a disease-causing microbe. This process is heavily driven by the “natural selection” processes that happen during antibiotic use or misuse.
Over time, most of the strains of bacteria and infections present will be the type resistant to the antimicrobial agent being used to treat them, making this agent now ineffective to defeat most microbes. With the increased use of antimicrobial agents, there is a speeding up of this natural process.
Self-medication.
In 89% of countries, antibiotics can only be prescribed by a doctor and supplied by a pharmacy. Self-medication by consumers is defined as "the taking of medicines on one's own initiative or on another person's suggestion, who is not a certified medical professional", and it has been identified as one of the primary reasons for the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Self-medication with antibiotics is an unsuitable way of using them but a common practice in resource-constrained countries. The practice exposes individuals to the risk of bacteria that have developed antimicrobial resistance. Many people resort to this out of necessity, when access to a physician is unavailable due to lockdowns and GP surgery closures, or when the patients have a limited amount of time or money to see a prescribing doctor. This increased access makes it extremely easy to obtain antimicrobials and an example is India, where in the state of Punjab 73% of the population resorted to treating their minor health issues and chronic illnesses through self-medication.
Self-medication is higher outside the hospital environment, and this is linked to higher use of antibiotics, with the majority of antibiotics being used in the community rather than hospitals. The prevalence of self-medication in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) ranges from 8.1% to very high at 93%. Accessibility, affordability, and conditions of health facilities, as well as the health-seeking behavior, are factors that influence self-medication in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Two significant issues with self-medication are the lack of knowledge of the public on, firstly, the dangerous effects of certain antimicrobials (for example ciprofloxacin which can cause tendonitis, tendon rupture and aortic dissection) and, secondly, broad microbial resistance and when to seek medical care if the infection is not clearing. In order to determine the public's knowledge and preconceived notions on antibiotic resistance, a screening of 3,537 articles published in Europe, Asia, and North America was done. Of the 55,225 total people surveyed in the articles, 70% had heard of antibiotic resistance previously, but 88% of those people thought it referred to some type of physical change in the human body. With so many people around the world with the ability to self-medicate using antibiotics, and a vast majority unaware of what antimicrobial resistance is, it makes the increase of antimicrobial resistance and it's global negative impact much more likely.
Clinical misuse.
Clinical misuse by healthcare professionals is another contributor to increased antimicrobial resistance. Studies done in the US show that the indication for treatment of antibiotics, choice of the agent used, and the duration of therapy was incorrect in up to 50% of the cases studied. In 2010 and 2011 about a third of antibiotic prescriptions in outpatient settings in the United States were not necessary. Another study in an intensive care unit in a major hospital in France has shown that 30% to 60% of prescribed antibiotics were unnecessary. These inappropriate uses of antimicrobial agents promote the evolution of antimicrobial resistance by supporting the bacteria in developing genetic alterations that lead to resistance.
According to research conducted in the USA that aimed to evaluate physicians' attitudes and knowledge on antimicrobial resistance in ambulatory settings, only 63% of those surveyed reported antibiotic resistance as a problem in their local practices, while 23% reported the aggressive prescription of antibiotics as necessary to avoid failing to provide adequate care. This demonstrates how a majority of doctors underestimate the impact that their own prescribing habits have on antimicrobial resistance as a whole. It also confirms that some physicians may be overly cautious and prescribe antibiotics for both medical or legal reasons, even when clinical indications for use of these medications are not always confirmed. This can lead to unnecessary antimicrobial use, a pattern which may have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Studies have shown that common misconceptions about the effectiveness and necessity of antibiotics to treat common mild illnesses contribute to their overuse.
Pandemics, disinfectants and healthcare systems.
Increased antibiotic use during the early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate this global health challenge. Moreover, pandemic burdens on some healthcare systems may contribute to antibiotic-resistant infections. On the other hand, "increased hand hygiene, decreased international travel, and decreased elective hospital procedures may have reduced AMR pathogen selection and spread in the short term" during the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of disinfectants such as alcohol-based hand sanitizers, and antiseptic hand wash may also have the potential to increase antimicrobial resistance. Extensive use of disinfectants can lead to mutations that induce antimicrobial resistance.
Environmental pollution.
Untreated effluents from pharmaceutical manufacturing industries, hospitals and clinics, and inappropriate disposal of unused or expired medication can expose microbes in the environment to antibiotics and trigger the evolution of resistance.
Food production.
Livestock.
The antimicrobial resistance crisis also extends to the food industry, specifically with food producing animals. With an ever-increasing human population, there is constant pressure to intensify productivity in many agricultural sectors, including the production of meat as a source of protein. Antibiotics are fed to livestock to act as growth supplements, and a preventative measure to decrease the likelihood of infections.
This can result in the transfer of resistant bacterial strains into the food that humans eat, causing potentially fatal transfer of disease. While the practice of using antibiotics as growth promoters does result in better yields and meat products, it is a major issue and needs to be decreased in order to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Though the evidence linking antimicrobial usage in livestock to antimicrobial resistance is limited, the World Health Organization Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance strongly recommended the reduction of use of medically important antimicrobials in livestock. Additionally, the Advisory Group stated that such antimicrobials should be expressly prohibited for both growth promotion and disease prevention in food producing animals.
By mapping antimicrobial consumption in livestock globally, it was predicted that in 228 countries there would be a total 67% increase in consumption of antibiotics by livestock by 2030. In some countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa it is predicted that a 99% increase will occur. Several countries have restricted the use of antibiotics in livestock, including Canada, China, Japan, and the US. These restrictions are sometimes associated with a reduction of the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in humans.
Pesticides.
Most pesticides protect crops against insects and plants, but in some cases antimicrobial pesticides are used to protect against various microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, algae, and protozoa. The overuse of many pesticides in an effort to have a higher yield of crops has resulted in many of these microbes evolving a tolerance against these antimicrobial agents. Currently there are over 4000 antimicrobial pesticides registered with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and sold to market, showing the widespread use of these agents. It is estimated that for every single meal a person consumes, 0.3 g of pesticides is used, as 90% of all pesticide use is in agriculture. A majority of these products are used to help defend against the spread of infectious diseases, and hopefully protect public health. But out of the large amount of pesticides used, it is also estimated that less than 0.1% of those antimicrobial agents, actually reach their targets. That leaves over 99% of all pesticides used available to contaminate other resources. In soil, air, and water these antimicrobial agents are able to spread, coming in contact with more microorganisms and leading to these microbes evolving mechanisms to tolerate and further resist pesticides. The use of antifungal azole pesticides that drive environmental azole resistance have been linked to azole resistance cases in the clinical setting. The same issues confront the novel antifungal classes (e.g. orotomides) which are again being used in both the clinic and agriculture.
Prevention.
There have been increasing public calls for global collective action to address the threat, including a proposal for an international treaty on antimicrobial resistance. Further detail and attention is still needed in order to recognize and measure trends in resistance on the international level; the idea of a global tracking system has been suggested but implementation has yet to occur. A system of this nature would provide insight to areas of high resistance as well as information necessary for evaluating programs, introducing interventions and other changes made to fight or reverse antibiotic resistance.
Duration of antimicrobials.
Antimicrobial treatment duration should be based on the infection and other health problems a person may have. For many infections once a person has improved there is little evidence that stopping treatment causes more resistance. Some, therefore, feel that stopping early may be reasonable in some cases. Other infections, however, do require long courses regardless of whether a person feels better.
Monitoring and mapping.
There are multiple national and international monitoring programs for drug-resistant threats, including methicillin-resistant "Staphylococcus aureus" (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant "S. aureus" (VRSA), extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing Enterobacterales, vancomycin-resistant "Enterococcus" (VRE), and multidrug-resistant "Acinetobacter baumannii" (MRAB).
ResistanceOpen is an online global map of antimicrobial resistance developed by HealthMap which displays aggregated data on antimicrobial resistance from publicly available and user submitted data. The website can display data for a radius from a location. Users may submit data from antibiograms for individual hospitals or laboratories. European data is from the EARS-Net (European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network), part of the ECDC. ResistanceMap is a website by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy and provides data on antimicrobial resistance on a global level.
By comparison there is a lack of national and international monitoring programs for antifungal resistance.
Limiting antimicrobial use in humans.
Antimicrobial stewardship programmes appear useful in reducing rates of antimicrobial resistance. The antimicrobial stewardship program will also provide pharmacists with the knowledge to educate patients that antibiotics will not work for a virus for example.
Excessive antimicrobial use has become one of the top contributors to the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Since the beginning of the antimicrobial era, antimicrobials have been used to treat a wide range of infectious diseases. Overuse of antimicrobials has become the primary cause of rising levels of antimicrobial resistance. The main problem is that doctors are willing to prescribe antimicrobials to ill-informed individuals who believe that antimicrobials can cure nearly all illnesses, including viral infections like the common cold. In an analysis of drug prescriptions, 36% of individuals with a cold or an upper respiratory infection (both usually viral in origin) were given prescriptions for antibiotics. These prescriptions accomplished nothing other than increasing the risk of further evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Using antimicrobials without prescription is another driving force leading to the overuse of antibiotics to self-treat diseases like the common cold, cough, fever, and dysentery resulting in an epidemic of antibiotic resistance in countries like Bangladesh, risking its spread around the globe. Introducing strict antibiotic stewardship in the outpatient setting to reduce inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics may reduce the emerging bacterial resistance.
The WHO AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) antibiotic book has been introduced to guide antibiotic choice for the 30 most common infections in adults and children to reduce inappropriate prescribing in primary care and hospitals. Narrow spectrum antibiotics are preferred due to their lower resistance potential and broad-spectrum antibiotics are only recommended for people with more severe symptoms. Some antibiotics are more likely to confer resistance, so are kept as reserve antibiotics in the AWaRe book.
Various diagnostic strategies have been employed to prevent the overuse of antifungal therapy in the clinic, proving a safe alternative to empirical antifungal therapy, and thus underpinning antifungal stewardship schemes.
At the hospital level.
Antimicrobial stewardship teams in hospitals are encouraging optimal use of antimicrobials. The goals of antimicrobial stewardship are to help practitioners pick the right drug at the right dose and duration of therapy while preventing misuse and minimizing the development of resistance. Stewardship interventions may reduce the length of stay by an average of slightly over 1 day while not increasing the risk of death.
At the primary care level.
Given the volume of care provided in primary care (general practice), recent strategies have focused on reducing unnecessary antimicrobial prescribing in this setting. Simple interventions, such as written information explaining when taking antibiotics is not necessary, for example in common infections of the upper respiratory tract, have been shown to reduce antibiotic prescribing. Various tools are also available to help professionals decide if prescribing antimicrobials is necessary.
Parental expectations, driven by the worry for their children's health, can influence how often children are prescribed antibiotics. Parents often rely on their clinician for advice and reassurance. However a lack of plain language information and not having adequate time for consultation negatively impacts this relationship. In effect parents often rely on past experiences in their expectations rather than reassurance from the clinician. Adequate time for consultation and plain language information can help parents make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary antibiotic use.
The prescriber should closely adhere to the five rights of drug administration: the right patient, the right drug, the right dose, the right route, and the right time. Microbiological samples should be taken for culture and sensitivity testing before treatment when indicated and treatment potentially changed based on the susceptibility report.
Health workers and pharmacists can help tackle antibiotic resistance by: enhancing infection prevention and control; only prescribing and dispensing antibiotics when they are truly needed; prescribing and dispensing the right antibiotic(s) to treat the illness.
At the individual level.
People can help tackle resistance by using antibiotics only when prescribed by a doctor; completing the full prescription, never sharing antibiotics with others or using leftover prescriptions.
Water, sanitation, hygiene.
Infectious disease control through improved water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure needs to be included in the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) agenda. The "Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance" stated in 2018 that "the spread of pathogens through unsafe water results in a high burden of gastrointestinal disease, increasing even further the need for antibiotic treatment." This is particularly a problem in developing countries where the spread of infectious diseases caused by inadequate WASH standards is a major driver of antibiotic demand. Growing usage of antibiotics together with persistent infectious disease levels have led to a dangerous cycle in which reliance on antimicrobials increases while the efficacy of drugs diminishes. The proper use of infrastructure for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) can result in a 47–72 percent decrease of diarrhea cases treated with antibiotics depending on the type of intervention and its effectiveness. A reduction of the diarrhea disease burden through improved infrastructure would result in large decreases in the number of diarrhea cases treated with antibiotics. This was estimated as ranging from 5 million in Brazil to up to 590 million in India by the year 2030. The strong link between increased consumption and resistance indicates that this will directly mitigate the accelerating spread of AMR. Sanitation and water for all by 2030 is Goal Number 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
An increase in hand washing compliance by hospital staff results in decreased rates of resistant organisms.
Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in health facilities offer significant co-benefits for combatting AMR, and investment should be increased. There is much room for improvement: WHO and UNICEF estimated in 2015 that globally 38% of health facilities did not have a source of water, nearly 19% had no toilets and 35% had no water and soap or alcohol-based hand rub for handwashing.
Industrial wastewater treatment.
Manufacturers of antimicrobials need to improve the treatment of their wastewater (by using industrial wastewater treatment processes) to reduce the release of residues into the environment.
Limiting antimicrobial use in animals and farming.
It is established that the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry can give rise to AMR resistances in bacteria found in food animals to the antibiotics being administered (through injections or medicated feeds). For this reason only antimicrobials that are deemed "not-clinically relevant" are used in these practices.
Unlike resistance to antibacterials, antifungal resistance can be driven by arable farming, currently there is no regulation on the use of similar antifungal classes in agriculture and the clinic.
Recent studies have shown that the prophylactic use of "non-priority" or "non-clinically relevant" antimicrobials in feeds can potentially, under certain conditions, lead to co-selection of environmental AMR bacteria with resistance to medically important antibiotics. The possibility for co-selection of AMR resistances in the food chain pipeline may have far-reaching implications for human health.
Country examples.
Europe.
In 1997, European Union health ministers voted to ban avoparcin and four additional antibiotics used to promote animal growth in 1999. In 2006 a ban on the use of antibiotics in European feed, with the exception of two antibiotics in poultry feeds, became effective. In Scandinavia, there is evidence that the ban has led to a lower prevalence of antibiotic resistance in (nonhazardous) animal bacterial populations. As of 2004, several European countries established a decline of antimicrobial resistance in humans through limiting the use of antimicrobials in agriculture and food industries without jeopardizing animal health or economic cost.
United States.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) collect data on antibiotic use in humans and in a more limited fashion in animals. The FDA first determined in 1977 that there is evidence of emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in livestock. The long-established practice of permitting OTC sales of antibiotics (including penicillin and other drugs) to lay animal owners for administration to their own animals nonetheless continued in all states.
In 2000, the FDA announced their intention to revoke approval of fluoroquinolone use in poultry production because of substantial evidence linking it to the emergence of fluoroquinolone-resistant "Campylobacter" infections in humans. Legal challenges from the food animal and pharmaceutical industries delayed the final decision to do so until 2006. Fluroquinolones have been banned from extra-label use in food animals in the USA since 2007. However, they remain widely used in companion and exotic animals.
Global action plans and awareness.
The increasing interconnectedness of the world and the fact that new classes of antibiotics have not been developed and approved for more than 25 years highlight the extent to which antimicrobial resistance is a global health challenge. A global action plan to tackle the growing problem of resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines was endorsed at the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015. One of the key objectives of the plan is to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance through effective communication, education and training. This global action plan developed by the World Health Organization was created to combat the issue of antimicrobial resistance and was guided by the advice of countries and key stakeholders. The WHO's global action plan is composed of five key objectives that can be targeted through different means, and represents countries coming together to solve a major problem that can have future health consequences. These objectives are as follows:
Steps towards progress
Antibiotic Awareness Week.
The World Health Organization has promoted the first World Antibiotic Awareness Week running from 16 to 22 November 2015. The aim of the week is to increase global awareness of antibiotic resistance. It also wants to promote the correct usage of antibiotics across all fields in order to prevent further instances of antibiotic resistance.
World Antibiotic Awareness Week has been held every November since 2015. For 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) are together calling for responsible use of antibiotics in humans and animals to reduce the emergence of antibiotic resistance.
United Nations
In 2016 the Secretary-General of the United Nations convened the Interagency Coordination Group (IACG) on Antimicrobial Resistance. The IACG worked with international organizations and experts in human, animal, and plant health to create a plan to fight antimicrobial resistance. Their report released in April 2019 highlights the seriousness of antimicrobial resistance and the threat it poses to world health. It suggests five recommendations for member states to follow in order to tackle this increasing threat. The IACG recommendations are as follows:
Mechanisms and organisms.
Bacteria.
The five main mechanisms by which bacteria exhibit resistance to antibiotics are:
There are several different types of germs that have developed a resistance over time.
The six pathogens causing most deaths associated with resistance are "Escherichia coli", "Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii", and "Pseudomonas aeruginosa". They were responsible for 929,000 deaths attributable to resistance and 3.57 million deaths associated with resistance in 2019.
Penicillinase-producing "Neisseria gonorrhoeae" developed a resistance to penicillin in 1976. Another example is Azithromycin-resistant "Neisseria gonorrhoeae", which developed a resistance to azithromycin in 2011.
In gram-negative bacteria, plasmid-mediated resistance genes produce proteins that can bind to DNA gyrase, protecting it from the action of quinolones. Finally, mutations at key sites in DNA gyrase or topoisomerase IV can decrease their binding affinity to quinolones, decreasing the drug's effectiveness.
Some bacteria are naturally resistant to certain antibiotics; for example, gram-negative bacteria are resistant to most β-lactam antibiotics due to the presence of β-lactamase. Antibiotic resistance can also be acquired as a result of either genetic mutation or horizontal gene transfer. Although mutations are rare, with spontaneous mutations in the pathogen genome occurring at a rate of about 1 in 105 to 1 in 108 per chromosomal replication, the fact that bacteria reproduce at a high rate allows for the effect to be significant. Given that lifespans and production of new generations can be on a timescale of mere hours, a new (de novo) mutation in a parent cell can quickly become an inherited mutation of widespread prevalence, resulting in the microevolution of a fully resistant colony. However, chromosomal mutations also confer a cost of fitness. For example, a ribosomal mutation may protect a bacterial cell by changing the binding site of an antibiotic but may result in slower growth rate. Moreover, some adaptive mutations can propagate not only through inheritance but also through horizontal gene transfer. The most common mechanism of horizontal gene transfer is the transferring of plasmids carrying antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria of the same or different species via conjugation. However, bacteria can also acquire resistance through transformation, as in "Streptococcus pneumoniae" uptaking of naked fragments of extracellular DNA that contain antibiotic resistance genes to streptomycin, through transduction, as in the bacteriophage-mediated transfer of tetracycline resistance genes between strains of "S. pyogenes", or through gene transfer agents, which are particles produced by the host cell that resemble bacteriophage structures and are capable of transferring DNA.
Antibiotic resistance can be introduced artificially into a microorganism through laboratory protocols, sometimes used as a selectable marker to examine the mechanisms of gene transfer or to identify individuals that absorbed a piece of DNA that included the resistance gene and another gene of interest.
Recent findings show no necessity of large populations of bacteria for the appearance of antibiotic resistance. Small populations of "Escherichia coli" in an antibiotic gradient can become resistant. Any heterogeneous environment with respect to nutrient and antibiotic gradients may facilitate antibiotic resistance in small bacterial populations. Researchers hypothesize that the mechanism of resistance evolution is based on four SNP mutations in the genome of "E. coli" produced by the gradient of antibiotic.
In one study, which has implications for space microbiology, a non-pathogenic strain "E. coli" MG1655 was exposed to trace levels of the broad spectrum antibiotic chloramphenicol, under simulated microgravity (LSMMG, or Low Shear Modeled Microgravity) over 1000 generations. The adapted strain acquired resistance to not only chloramphenicol, but also cross-resistance to other antibiotics; this was in contrast to the observation on the same strain, which was adapted to over 1000 generations under LSMMG, but without any antibiotic exposure; the strain in this case did not acquire any such resistance. Thus, irrespective of where they are used, the use of an antibiotic would likely result in persistent resistance to that antibiotic, as well as cross-resistance to other antimicrobials.
In recent years, the emergence and spread of β-lactamases called carbapenemases has become a major health crisis. One such carbapenemase is New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1 (NDM-1), an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to a broad range of beta-lactam antibiotics. The most common bacteria that make this enzyme are gram-negative such as "E. coli" and "Klebsiella pneumoniae", but the gene for NDM-1 can spread from one strain of bacteria to another by horizontal gene transfer.
Viruses.
Specific antiviral drugs are used to treat some viral infections. These drugs prevent viruses from reproducing by inhibiting essential stages of the virus's replication cycle in infected cells. Antivirals are used to treat HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, herpes viruses including varicella zoster virus, cytomegalovirus and Epstein–Barr virus. With each virus, some strains have become resistant to the administered drugs.
Antiviral drugs typically target key components of viral reproduction; for example, oseltamivir targets influenza neuraminidase, while guanosine analogs inhibit viral DNA polymerase. Resistance to antivirals is thus acquired through mutations in the genes that encode the protein targets of the drugs.
Resistance to HIV antivirals is problematic, and even multi-drug resistant strains have evolved. One source of resistance is that many current HIV drugs, including NRTIs and NNRTIs, target reverse transcriptase; however, HIV-1 reverse transcriptase is highly error prone and thus mutations conferring resistance arise rapidly. Resistant strains of the HIV virus emerge rapidly if only one antiviral drug is used. Using three or more drugs together, termed combination therapy, has helped to control this problem, but new drugs are needed because of the continuing emergence of drug-resistant HIV strains.
Fungi.
Infections by fungi are a cause of high morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised persons, such as those with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis or receiving chemotherapy. The fungi "Candida", "Cryptococcus neoformans" and "Aspergillus fumigatus" cause most of these infections and antifungal resistance occurs in all of them. Multidrug resistance in fungi is increasing because of the widespread use of antifungal drugs to treat infections in immunocompromised individuals and the use of some agricultural antifungals. Antifungal resistant disease is associated with increased mortality.
Some fungi (e.g. Candida krusei and fluconazole) exhibit intrinsic resistance to certain antifungal drugs or classes, whereas some species develop antifungal resistance to external pressures. Antifungal resistance is a One Health concern, driven by multiple extrinsic factors, including extensive fungicidal use, overuse of clinical antifungals, environmental change and host factors.
In the USA fluconazole-resistant Candida species and azole resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus have been highlighted as a growing threat.
More than 20 species of "Candida" can cause candidiasis infection, the most common of which is "Candida albicans". "Candida" yeasts normally inhabit the skin and mucous membranes without causing infection. However, overgrowth of "Candida" can lead to candidiasis. Some "Candida" species (e.g. "Candida glabrata)" are becoming resistant to first-line and second-line antifungal agents such as echinocandins and azoles.
The emergence of "Candida auris" as a potential human pathogen that sometimes exhibits multi-class antifungal drug resistance is concerning and has been associated with several outbreaks globally. The WHO has released a priority fungal pathogen list, including pathogens with antifungal resistance.
The identification of antifungal resistance is undermined by limited classical diagnosis of infection, where a culture is lacking, preventing susceptibility testing. National and international surveillance schemes for fungal disease and antifungal resistance are limited, hampering the understanding of the disease burden and associated resistance. The application of molecular testing to identify genetic markers associating with resistance may improve the identification of antifungal resistance, but the diversity of mutations associated with resistance is increasing across the fungal species causing infection. In addition, a number of resistance mechanisms depend on up-regulation of selected genes (for instance reflux pumps) rather than defined mutations that are amenable to molecular detection.
Due to the limited number of antifungals in clinical use and the increasing global incidence of antifungal resistance, using the existing antifungals in combination might be beneficial in some cases but further research is needed. Similarly, other approaches that might help to combat the emergence of antifungal resistance could rely on the development of host-directed therapies such as immunotherapy or vaccines.
Parasites.
The protozoan parasites that cause the diseases malaria, trypanosomiasis, toxoplasmosis, cryptosporidiosis and leishmaniasis are important human pathogens.
Malarial parasites that are resistant to the drugs that are currently available to infections are common and this has led to increased efforts to develop new drugs. Resistance to recently developed drugs such as artemisinin has also been reported. The problem of drug resistance in malaria has driven efforts to develop vaccines.
Trypanosomes are parasitic protozoa that cause African trypanosomiasis and Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis). There are no vaccines to prevent these infections so drugs such as pentamidine and suramin, benznidazole and nifurtimox are used to treat infections. These drugs are effective but infections caused by resistant parasites have been reported.
Leishmaniasis is caused by protozoa and is an important public health problem worldwide, especially in sub-tropical and tropical countries. Drug resistance has "become a major concern".
Global and genomic data.
In 2022, genomic epidemiologists reported results from a global survey of antimicrobial resistance via genomic wastewater-based epidemiology, finding large regional variations, providing maps, and suggesting resistance genes are also passed on between microbial species that are not closely related.<ref name="10.1038/s41467-022-34312-7"></ref> The WHO provides the Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) reports which summarize annual (e.g. 2020's) data on international AMR, also including an interactive dashboard.
Epidemiology.
United Kingdom.
Public Health England reported that the total number of antibiotic resistant infections in England rose by 9% from 55,812 in 2017 to 60,788 in 2018, but antibiotic consumption had fallen by 9% from 20.0 to 18.2 defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants per day between 2014 and 2018.
History.
The 1950s to 1970s represented the golden age of antibiotic discovery, where countless new classes of antibiotics were discovered to treat previously incurable diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis. However, since that time the discovery of new classes of antibiotics has been almost nonexistent, and represents a situation that is especially problematic considering the resiliency of bacteria shown over time and the continued misuse and overuse of antibiotics in treatment.
The phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance caused by overuse of antibiotics was predicted as early as 1945 by Alexander Fleming who said "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily under-dose himself and by exposing his microbes to nonlethal quantities of the drug make them resistant." Without the creation of new and stronger antibiotics an era where common infections and minor injuries can kill, and where complex procedures such as surgery and chemotherapy become too risky, is a very real possibility. Antimicrobial resistance can lead to epidemics of enormous proportions if preventive actions are not taken. In this day and age current antimicrobial resistance leads to longer hospital stays, higher medical costs, and increased mortality.
Society and culture.
Innovation policy.
Since the mid-1980s pharmaceutical companies have invested in medications for cancer or chronic disease that have greater potential to make money and have "de-emphasized or dropped development of antibiotics". On 20 January 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, more than "80 pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies" from around the world called for "transformational commercial models" at a global level to spur research and development on antibiotics and on the "enhanced use of diagnostic tests that can rapidly identify the infecting organism". A number of countries are considering or implementing delinked payment models for new antimicrobials whereby payment is based on value rather than volume of drug sales. This offers the opportunity to pay for valuable new drugs even if they are reserved for use in relatively rare drug resistant infections.
Legal frameworks.
Some global health scholars have argued that a global, legal framework is needed to prevent and control antimicrobial resistance. For instance, binding global policies could be used to create antimicrobial use standards, regulate antibiotic marketing, and strengthen global surveillance systems. Ensuring compliance of involved parties is a challenge. Global antimicrobial resistance policies could take lessons from the environmental sector by adopting strategies that have made international environmental agreements successful in the past such as: sanctions for non-compliance, assistance for implementation, majority vote decision-making rules, an independent scientific panel, and specific commitments.
United States.
For the United States 2016 budget, U.S. president Barack Obama proposed to nearly double the amount of federal funding to "combat and prevent" antibiotic resistance to more than $1.2 billion. Many international funding agencies like USAID, DFID, SIDA and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have pledged money for developing strategies to counter antimicrobial resistance.
On 27 March 2015, the White House released a comprehensive plan to address the increasing need for agencies to combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria developed "The National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria" with the intent of providing a roadmap to guide the US in the antibiotic resistance challenge and with hopes of saving many lives. This plan outlines steps taken by the Federal government over the next five years needed in order to prevent and contain outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections; maintain the efficacy of antibiotics already on the market; and to help to develop future diagnostics, antibiotics, and vaccines.
The Action Plan was developed around five goals with focuses on strengthening health care, public health veterinary medicine, agriculture, food safety and research, and manufacturing. These goals, as listed by the White House, are as follows:
The following are goals set to meet by 2020:
Policies.
According to World Health Organization, policymakers can help tackle resistance by strengthening resistance-tracking and laboratory capacity and by regulating and promoting the appropriate use of medicines. Policymakers and industry can help tackle resistance by: fostering innovation and research and development of new tools; and promoting cooperation and information sharing among all stakeholders.
Policy evaluation.
Measuring the costs and benefits of strategies to combat AMR is difficult and policies may only have effects in the distant future. In other infectious diseases this problem has been addressed by using mathematical models. More research is needed to understand how AMR develops and spreads so that mathematical modelling can be used to anticipate the likely effects of different policies.
Further research.
Rapid testing and diagnostics.
Distinguishing infections requiring antibiotics from self-limiting ones is clinically challenging. In order to guide appropriate use of antibiotics and prevent the evolution and spread of antimicrobial resistance, diagnostic tests that provide clinicians with timely, actionable results are needed.
Acute febrile illness is a common reason for seeking medical care worldwide and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. In areas with decreasing malaria incidence, many febrile patients are inappropriately treated for malaria, and in the absence of a simple diagnostic test to identify alternative causes of fever, clinicians presume that a non-malarial febrile illness is most likely a bacterial infection, leading to inappropriate use of antibiotics. Multiple studies have shown that the use of malaria rapid diagnostic tests without reliable tools to distinguish other fever causes has resulted in increased antibiotic use.
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) can facilitate a precision medicine approach to treatment by helping clinicians to prescribe more effective and targeted antimicrobial therapy. At the same time with traditional phenotypic AST it can take 12 to 48 hours to obtain a result due to the time taken for organisms to grow on/in culture media. Rapid testing, possible from molecular diagnostics innovations, is defined as "being feasible within an 8-h working shift". There are several commercial Food and Drug Administration-approved assays available which can detect AMR genes from a variety of specimen types. Progress has been slow due to a range of reasons including cost and regulation. Genotypic AMR characterisation methods are, however, being increasingly used in combination with machine learning algorithms in research to help better predict phenotypic AMR from organism genotype.
Optical techniques such as phase contrast microscopy in combination with single-cell analysis are another powerful method to monitor bacterial growth. In 2017, scientists from Sweden published a method that applies principles of microfluidics and cell tracking, to monitor bacterial response to antibiotics in less than 30 minutes overall manipulation time. Recently, this platform has been advanced by coupling microfluidic chip with optical tweezing in order to isolate bacteria with altered phenotype directly from the analytical matrix.
Rapid diagnostic methods have also been trialled as antimicrobial stewardship interventions to influence the healthcare drivers of AMR. Serum procalcitonin measurement has been shown to reduce mortality rate, antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial-related side-effects in patients with respiratory infections, but impact on AMR has not yet been demonstrated. Similarly, point of care serum testing of the inflammatory biomarker C-reactive protein has been shown to influence antimicrobial prescribing rates in this patient cohort, but further research is required to demonstrate an effect on rates of AMR. Clinical investigation to rule out bacterial infections are often done for patients with pediatric acute respiratory infections. Currently it is unclear if rapid viral testing affects antibiotic use in children.
Vaccines.
Microorganisms usually do not develop resistance to vaccines because vaccines reduce the spread of the infection and target the pathogen in multiple ways in the same host and possibly in different ways between different hosts. Furthermore, if the use of vaccines increases, there is evidence that antibiotic resistant strains of pathogens will decrease; the need for antibiotics will naturally decrease as vaccines prevent infection before it occurs. However, there are well documented cases of vaccine resistance, although these are usually much less of a problem than antimicrobial resistance.
While theoretically promising, antistaphylococcal vaccines have shown limited efficacy, because of immunological variation between "Staphylococcus" species, and the limited duration of effectiveness of the antibodies produced. Development and testing of more effective vaccines is underway.
Two registrational trials have evaluated vaccine candidates in active immunization strategies against "S. aureus" infection. In a phase II trial, a bivalent vaccine of capsular proteins 5 & 8 was tested in 1804 hemodialysis patients with a primary fistula or synthetic graft vascular access. After 40 weeks following vaccination a protective effect was seen against "S. aureus" bacteremia, but not at 54 weeks following vaccination. Based on these results, a second trial was conducted which failed to show efficacy.
Merck tested V710, a vaccine targeting IsdB, in a blinded randomized trial in patients undergoing median sternotomy. The trial was terminated after a higher rate of multiorgan system failure–related deaths was found in the V710 recipients. Vaccine recipients who developed "S. aureus" infection were five times more likely to die than control recipients who developed "S. aureus" infection.
Numerous investigators have suggested that a multiple-antigen vaccine would be more effective, but a lack of biomarkers defining human protective immunity keep these proposals in the logical, but strictly hypothetical arena.
Alternating therapy.
Alternating therapy is a proposed method in which two or three antibiotics are taken in a rotation versus taking just one antibiotic such that bacteria resistant to one antibiotic are killed when the next antibiotic is taken. Studies have found that this method reduces the rate at which antibiotic resistant bacteria emerge in vitro relative to a single drug for the entire duration.
Studies have found that bacteria that evolve antibiotic resistance towards one group of antibiotic may become more sensitive to others. This phenomenon can be used to select against resistant bacteria using an approach termed collateral sensitivity cycling, which has recently been found to be relevant in developing treatment strategies for chronic infections caused by "Pseudomonas aeruginosa". Despite its promise, large-scale clinical and experimental studies revealed limited evidence of susceptibility to antibiotic cycling across various pathogens.
Development of new drugs.
Since the discovery of antibiotics, research and development (R&D) efforts have provided new drugs in time to treat bacteria that became resistant to older antibiotics, but in the 2000s there has been concern that development has slowed enough that seriously ill people may run out of treatment options. Another concern is that practitioners may become reluctant to perform routine surgeries because of the increased risk of harmful infection. Backup treatments can have serious side-effects; for example, antibiotics like aminoglycosides (such as amikacin, gentamicin, kanamycin, streptomycin, etc.) used for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis can cause respiratory disorders, deafness and kidney failure.
The potential crisis at hand is the result of a marked decrease in industry research and development. Poor financial investment in antibiotic research has exacerbated the situation. The pharmaceutical industry has little incentive to invest in antibiotics because of the high risk and because the potential financial returns are less likely to cover the cost of development than for other pharmaceuticals. In 2011, Pfizer, one of the last major pharmaceutical companies developing new antibiotics, shut down its primary research effort, citing poor shareholder returns relative to drugs for chronic illnesses. However, small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies are still active in antibiotic drug research. In particular, apart from classical synthetic chemistry methodologies, researchers have developed a combinatorial synthetic biology platform on single cell level in a high-throughput screening manner to diversify novel lanthipeptides.
In the 5–10 years since 2010, there has been a significant change in the ways new antimicrobial agents are discovered and developed – principally via the formation of public-private funding initiatives. These include CARB-X, which focuses on nonclinical and early phase development of novel antibiotics, vaccines, rapid diagnostics; Novel Gram Negative Antibiotic (GNA-NOW), which is part of the EU's Innovative Medicines Initiative; and Replenishing and Enabling the Pipeline for Anti-infective Resistance Impact Fund (REPAIR). Later stage clinical development is supported by the AMR Action Fund, which in turn is supported by multiple investors with the aim of developing 2-4 new antimicrobial agents by 2030. The delivery of these trials is facilitated by national and international networks supported by the Clinical Research Network of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), European Clinical Research Alliance in Infectious Diseases (ECRAID) and the recently formed ADVANCE-ID, which is a clinical research network based in Asia. The Global Antimicrobial Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) is generating new evidence for global AMR threats such as neonatal sepsis, treatment of serious bacterial infections and sexually transmitted infections as well as addressing global access to new and strategically important antibacterial drugs.
The discovery and development of new antimicrobial agents has been facilitated by regulatory advances, which have been principally led by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These processes are increasingly aligned although important differences remain and drug developers must prepare separate documents. New development pathways have been developed to help with the approval of new antimicrobial agents that address unmet needs such as the Limited Population Pathway for Antibacterial and Antifungal Drugs (LPAD). These new pathways are required because of difficulties in conducting large definitive phase III clinical trials in a timely way.
Some of the economic impediments to the development of new antimicrobial agents have been addressed by innovative reimbursement schemes that delink payment of antimicrobials from volume-based sales. In the UK, a market entry reward scheme has been pioneered by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) whereby an annual subscription fee is paid for use of strategically valuable antimicrobial agents – cefiderocol and ceftazidime-aviabactam are the first agents to be used in this manner and the scheme is potential blueprint for comparable programs in other countries.
The available classes of antifungal drugs are still limited but as of 2021 novel classes of antifungals are being developed and are undergoing various stages of clinical trials to assess performance.
Scientists have started using advanced computational approaches with supercomputers for the development of new antibiotic derivatives to deal with antimicrobial resistance.
Biomaterials.
Using antibiotic-free alternatives in bone infection treatment may help decrease the use of antibiotics and thus antimicrobial resistance. The bone regeneration material bioactive glass S53P4 has shown to effectively inhibit the bacterial growth of up to 50 clinically relevant bacteria including MRSA and MRSE.
Nanomaterials.
During the last decades, copper and silver nanomaterials have demonstrated appealing features for the development of a new family of antimicrobial agents.
Rediscovery of ancient treatments.
Similar to the situation in malaria therapy, where successful treatments based on ancient recipes have been found, there has already been some success in finding and testing ancient drugs and other treatments that are effective against AMR bacteria.
Computational community surveillance.
One of the key tools identified by the WHO and others for the fight against rising antimicrobial resistance is improved surveillance of the spread and movement of AMR genes through different communities and regions. Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing as a result of the Human Genome Project have resulted in the ability to determine the individual microbial genes in a sample. Along with the availability of databases of known antimicrobial resistance genes, such as the Comprehensive Antimicrobial Resistance Database (CARD) and ResFinder, this allows the identification of all the antimicrobial resistance genes within the sample - the so-called “resistome”. In doing so, a profile of these genes within a community or environment can be determined, providing insights into how antimicrobial resistance is spreading through a population and allowing for the identification of resistance that is of concern.
Phage therapy.
Phage therapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Phage therapy has many potential applications in human medicine as well as dentistry, veterinary science, and agriculture.
Phage therapy relies on the use of naturally occurring bacteriophages to infect and lyse bacteria at the site of infection in a host. Due to current advances in genetics and biotechnology these bacteriophages can possibly be manufactured to treat specific infections. Phages can be bioengineered to target multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, and their use involves the added benefit of preventing the elimination of beneficial bacteria in the human body. Phages destroy bacterial cell walls and membrane through the use of lytic proteins which kill bacteria by making many holes from the inside out. Bacteriophages can even possess the ability to digest the biofilm that many bacteria develop that protect them from antibiotics in order to effectively infect and kill bacteria. Bioengineering can play a role in creating successful bacteriophages.
Understanding the mutual interactions and evolutions of bacterial and phage populations in the environment of a human or animal body is essential for rational phage therapy.
Bacteriophagics are used against antibiotic resistant bacteria in Georgia (George Eliava Institute) and in one institute in Wrocław, Poland. Bacteriophage cocktails are common drugs sold over the counter in pharmacies in eastern countries. In Belgium, four patients with severe musculoskeletal infections received bacteriophage therapy with concomitant antibiotics. After a single course of phage therapy, no recurrence of infection occurred and no severe side-effects related to the therapy were detected.
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1915 | Antigen | In immunology, an antigen (Ag) is a molecule, moiety, foreign particulate matter, or an allergen, such as pollen, that can bind to a specific antibody or T-cell receptor. The presence of antigens in the body may trigger an immune response.
Antigens can be proteins, peptides (amino acid chains), polysaccharides (chains of simple sugars), lipids, or nucleic acids. Antigens exist on normal cells, cancer cells, parasites, viruses, fungi, and bacteria.
Antigens are recognized by antigen receptors, including antibodies and T-cell receptors. Diverse antigen receptors are made by cells of the immune system so that each cell has a specificity for a single antigen. Upon exposure to an antigen, only the lymphocytes that recognize that antigen are activated and expanded, a process known as clonal selection. In most cases, antibodies are "antigen-specific", meaning that an antibody can only react to and bind one specific antigen; in some instances, however, antibodies may cross-react to bind more than one antigen. The reaction between an antigen and an antibody is called the antigen-antibody reaction.
Antigen can also originate from within the body ("self-protein" or "self antigens") or from the external environment ("non-self"). The immune system identifies and attacks "non-self" external antigens. Antibodies usually do not react with self-antigens due to negative selection of T cells in the thymus and B cells in the bone marrow. The diseases in which antibodies react which self antigens and damage the body's own cells are called autoimmune diseases.
Vaccines are examples of antigens in an immunogenic form, which are intentionally administered to a recipient to induce the memory function of the adaptive immune system towards antigens of the pathogen invading that recipient. The vaccine for seasonal influenza is a common example.
Etymology.
Paul Ehrlich coined the term "antibody" () in his side-chain theory at the end of the 19th century. In 1899, Ladislas Deutsch (László Detre) named the hypothetical substances halfway between bacterial constituents and antibodies "antigenic or immunogenic substances" (). He originally believed those substances to be precursors of antibodies, just as a zymogen is a precursor of an enzyme. But, by 1903, he understood that an antigen induces the production of immune bodies (antibodies) and wrote that the word "antigen" is a contraction of antisomatogen (). The "Oxford English Dictionary" indicates that the logical construction should be "anti(body)-gen".
The term originally referred to a substance that acts as an antibody generator.
Terminology.
Antigen-presenting cells present antigens in the form of peptides on histocompatibility molecules. The T cells selectively recognize the antigens; depending on the antigen and the type of the histocompatibility molecule, different types of T cells will be activated. For T-cell receptor (TCR) recognition, the peptide must be processed into small fragments inside the cell and presented by a major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The antigen cannot elicit the immune response without the help of an immunologic adjuvant. Similarly, the adjuvant component of vaccines plays an essential role in the activation of the innate immune system.
An immunogen is an antigen substance (or adduct) that is able to trigger a humoral (innate) or cell-mediated immune response. It first initiates an innate immune response, which then causes the activation of the adaptive immune response. An antigen binds the highly variable immunoreceptor products (B-cell receptor or T-cell receptor) once these have been generated. Immunogens are those antigens, termed immunogenic, capable of inducing an immune response.
At the molecular level, an antigen can be characterized by its ability to bind to an antibody's paratopes. Different antibodies have the potential to discriminate among specific epitopes present on the antigen surface. A hapten is a small molecule that can only induce an immune response when attached to a larger carrier molecule, such as a protein. Antigens can be proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, nucleic acids or other biomolecules. This includes parts (coats, capsules, cell walls, flagella, fimbriae, and toxins) of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms. Non-microbial non-self antigens can include pollen, egg white, and proteins from transplanted tissues and organs or on the surface of transfused blood cells.
Sources.
Antigens can be classified according to their source.
Exogenous antigens.
Exogenous antigens are antigens that have entered the body from the outside, for example, by inhalation, ingestion or injection. The immune system's response to exogenous antigens is often subclinical. By endocytosis or phagocytosis, exogenous antigens are taken into the antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and processed into fragments. APCs then present the fragments to T helper cells (CD4+) by the use of class II histocompatibility molecules on their surface. Some T cells are specific for the peptide:MHC complex. They become activated and start to secrete cytokines, substances that activate cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL), antibody-secreting B cells, macrophages and other particles.
Some antigens start out as exogenous and later become endogenous (for example, intracellular viruses). Intracellular antigens can be returned to circulation upon the destruction of the infected cell.
Endogenous antigens.
Endogenous antigens are generated within normal cells as a result of normal cell metabolism, or because of viral or intracellular bacterial infection. The fragments are then presented on the cell surface in the complex with MHC class I molecules. If activated cytotoxic CD8+ T cells recognize them, the T cells secrete various toxins that cause the lysis or apoptosis of the infected cell. In order to keep the cytotoxic cells from killing cells just for presenting self-proteins, the cytotoxic cells (self-reactive T cells) are deleted as a result of tolerance (negative selection). Endogenous antigens include xenogenic (heterologous), autologous and idiotypic or allogenic (homologous) antigens. Sometimes antigens are part of the host itself in an autoimmune disease.
Autoantigens.
An autoantigen is usually a self-protein or protein complex (and sometimes DNA or RNA) that is recognized by the immune system of patients with a specific autoimmune disease. Under normal conditions, these self-proteins should not be the target of the immune system, but in autoimmune diseases, their associated T cells are not deleted and instead attack.
Neoantigens.
Neoantigens are those that are entirely absent from the normal human genome. As compared with nonmutated self-proteins, neoantigens are of relevance to tumor control, as the quality of the T cell pool that is available for these antigens is not affected by central T cell tolerance. Technology to systematically analyze T cell reactivity against neoantigens became available only recently. Neoantigens can be directly detected and quantified.
Viral antigens.
For virus-associated tumors, such as cervical cancer and a subset of head and neck cancers, epitopes derived from viral open reading frames contribute to the pool of neoantigens.
Tumor antigens.
"Tumor antigens" are those antigens that are presented by MHC class I or MHC class II molecules on the surface of tumor cells. Antigens found only on such cells are called tumor-specific antigens (TSAs) and generally result from a tumor-specific mutation. More common are antigens that are presented by tumor cells and normal cells, called tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). Cytotoxic T lymphocytes that recognize these antigens may be able to destroy tumor cells.
Tumor antigens can appear on the surface of the tumor in the form of, for example, a mutated receptor, in which case they are recognized by B cells.
For human tumors without a viral etiology, novel peptides (neo-epitopes) are created by tumor-specific DNA alterations.
Process.
A large fraction of human tumor mutations are effectively patient-specific. Therefore, neoantigens may also be based on individual tumor genomes. Deep-sequencing technologies can identify mutations within the protein-coding part of the genome (the exome) and predict potential neoantigens. In mice models, for all novel protein sequences, potential MHC-binding peptides were predicted. The resulting set of potential neoantigens was used to assess T cell reactivity. Exome–based analyses were exploited in a clinical setting, to assess reactivity in patients treated by either tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) cell therapy or checkpoint blockade. Neoantigen identification was successful for multiple experimental model systems and human malignancies.
The false-negative rate of cancer exome sequencing is low—i.e.: the majority of neoantigens occur within exonic sequence with sufficient coverage. However, the vast majority of mutations within expressed genes do not produce neoantigens that are recognized by autologous T cells.
As of 2015 mass spectrometry resolution is insufficient to exclude many false positives from the pool of peptides that may be presented by MHC molecules. Instead, algorithms are used to identify the most likely candidates. These algorithms consider factors such as the likelihood of proteasomal processing, transport into the endoplasmic reticulum, affinity for the relevant MHC class I alleles and gene expression or protein translation levels.
The majority of human neoantigens identified in unbiased screens display a high predicted MHC binding affinity. Minor histocompatibility antigens, a conceptually similar antigen class are also correctly identified by MHC binding algorithms. Another potential filter examines whether the mutation is expected to improve MHC binding. The nature of the central TCR-exposed residues of MHC-bound peptides is associated with peptide immunogenicity.
Nativity.
A native antigen is an antigen that is not yet processed by an APC to smaller parts. T cells cannot bind native antigens, but require that they be processed by APCs, whereas B cells can be activated by native ones.
Antigenic specificity.
Antigenic specificity is the ability of the host cells to recognize an antigen specifically as a unique molecular entity and distinguish it from another with exquisite precision. Antigen specificity is due primarily to the side-chain conformations of the antigen. It is measurable and need not be linear or of a rate-limited step or equation. Both T cells and B cells are cellular components of adaptive immunity.
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1916 | Autosome | An autosome is any chromosome that is not a sex chromosome. The members of an autosome pair in a diploid cell have the same morphology, unlike those in allosomal (sex chromosome) pairs, which may have different structures. The DNA in autosomes is collectively known as atDNA or auDNA.
For example, humans have a diploid genome that usually contains 22 pairs of autosomes and one allosome pair (46 chromosomes total). The autosome pairs are labeled with numbers (1–22 in humans) roughly in order of their sizes in base pairs, while allosomes are labelled with their letters. By contrast, the allosome pair consists of two X chromosomes in females or one X and one Y chromosome in males. Unusual combinations of XYY, XXY, XXX, XXXX, XXXXX or XXYY, among other Salome combinations, are known to occur and usually cause developmental abnormalities.
Autosomes still contain sexual determination genes even though they are not sex chromosomes. For example, the SRY gene on the Y chromosome encodes the transcription factor TDF and is vital for male sex determination during development. TDF functions by activating the SOX9 gene on chromosome 17, so mutations of the SOX9 gene can cause humans with an ordinary Y chromosome to develop as females.
All human autosomes have been identified and mapped by extracting the chromosomes from a cell arrested in metaphase or prometaphase and then staining them with a type of dye (most commonly, Giemsa). These chromosomes are typically viewed as karyograms for easy comparison. Clinical geneticists can compare the karyogram of an individual to a reference karyogram to discover the cytogenetic basis of certain phenotypes. For example, the karyogram of someone with Patau Syndrome would show that they possess three copies of chromosome 13. Karyograms and staining techniques can only detect large-scale disruptions to chromosomes—chromosomal aberrations smaller than a few million base pairs generally cannot be seen on a karyogram.
Autosomal genetic disorders.
Autosomal genetic disorders can arise due to a number of causes, some of the most common being nondisjunction in parental germ cells or Mendelian inheritance of deleterious alleles from parents. Autosomal genetic disorders which exhibit Mendelian inheritance can be inherited either in an autosomal dominant or recessive fashion. These disorders manifest in and are passed on by either sex with equal frequency. Autosomal dominant disorders are often present in both parent and child, as the child needs to inherit only one copy of the deleterious allele to manifest the disease. Autosomal recessive diseases, however, require two copies of the deleterious allele for the disease to manifest. Because it is possible to possess one copy of a deleterious allele without presenting a disease phenotype, two phenotypically normal parents can have a child with the disease if both parents are carriers (also known as heterozygotes) for the condition.
Autosomal aneuploidy can also result in disease conditions. Aneuploidy of autosomes is not well tolerated and usually results in miscarriage of the developing fetus. Fetuses with aneuploidy of gene-rich chromosomes—such as chromosome 1—never survive to term, and fetuses with aneuploidy of gene-poor chromosomes—such as chromosome 21— are still miscarried over 23% of the time. Possessing a single copy of an autosome (known as a monosomy) is nearly always incompatible with life, though very rarely some monosomies can survive past birth. Having three copies of an autosome (known as a trisomy) is far more compatible with life, however. A common example is Down syndrome, which is caused by possessing three copies of chromosome 21 instead of the usual two.
Partial aneuploidy can also occur as a result of unbalanced translocations during meiosis. Deletions of part of a chromosome cause partial monosomies, while duplications can cause partial trisomies. If the duplication or deletion is large enough, it can be discovered by analyzing a karyogram of the individual. Autosomal translocations can be responsible for a number of diseases, ranging from cancer to schizophrenia. Unlike single gene disorders, diseases caused by aneuploidy are the result of improper gene dosage, not nonfunctional gene product.
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1921 | Al-Qaeda | Al-Qaeda is a Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization led by Salafi jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Caliphate. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings and the September 11 attacks; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries around the world.
The organization was founded in a series of meetings held in Peshawar during 1988, attended by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Muhammad Atef, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War. Building upon the networks of "Maktab al-Khidamat", the founding members decided to create an organization named "Al-Qaeda" to serve as a "vanguard" for "jihad". Following the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989, bin Laden offered "mujahideen" support to Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War in 1990–1991. His offer was rebuffed by the Saudi government, which instead sought the aid of the United States. The stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia prompted bin Laden to declare a "jihad" against the House of Saud, whom he condemned as "takfir" (apostates from Islam), and against the US. During 1992–1996, Al-Qaeda established its headquarters in Sudan until it was expelled in 1996. It shifted its base to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and later expanded to other parts of the world, primarily in the Middle East and South Asia.
In 1996 and 1998, bin Laden issued two fatāwā calling for U.S. troops to leave Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda conducted the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. The U.S. retaliated by launching Operation Infinite Reach, against al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In 2001, Al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, resulting in nearly 3,000 fatalities, substantial long-term health consequences and damaging global economic markets. The U.S. launched the war on terror in response and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. In 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, overthrowing the Ba'athist regime which it
wrongly accused of having ties with al-Qaeda. In 2004, al-Qaeda launched its Iraqi regional branch. After pursuing him for almost a decade, the U.S. military killed bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.
Al-Qaeda members believe a Judeo-Christian alliance (led by the United States) is conspiring to be at war against Islam and destroy Islam. As Salafist jihadists, members of Al-Qaeda believe that killing non-combatants is religiously sanctioned. Al-Qaeda also opposes what it regards as man-made laws, and wants to replace them exclusively with a strict form of "sharīʿa" (Islamic religious law, which is perceived as divine law). It characteristically deploys tactics such as suicide attacks (Inghimasi and Istishhadi operations) involving simultaneous bombing of several targets in battle-zones. Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, which later morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, was responsible for numerous sectarian attacks against Shias during its Iraqi insurgency. Al-Qaeda ideologues envision the violent removal of all foreign and secular influences in Muslim countries, which it denounces as corrupt deviations. Following the death of bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda vowed to avenge his killing. The group was then led by Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri until his death in 2022. , it has reportedly suffered from a deterioration of central command over its regional operations.
Organization.
Al-Qaeda only indirectly controls its day-to-day operations. Its philosophy calls for the centralization of decision making, while allowing for the decentralization of execution. The top leaders of Al-Qaeda have defined the organization's ideology and guiding strategy, and they have also articulated simple and easy-to-receive messages. At the same time, mid-level organizations were given autonomy, but they had to consult with top management before large-scale attacks and assassinations. Top management included the shura council as well as committees on military operations, finance, and information sharing. Through the information committees of Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri placed special emphasis on communicating with his groups. However, after the war on terror, Al-Qaeda's leadership has become isolated. As a result, the leadership has become decentralized, and the organization has become regionalized into several Al-Qaeda groups.
Many terrorism experts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by Al-Qaeda's leadership. However, bin Laden held considerable ideological sway over some Muslim extremists before his death. Experts argue that Al-Qaeda has fragmented into a number of disparate regional movements, and that these groups bear little connection with one another.
This view mirrors the account given by Osama bin Laden in his October 2001 interview with Tayseer Allouni:
however, Bruce Hoffman saw Al-Qaeda as a cohesive network that was strongly led from the Pakistani tribal areas.
Affiliates.
Al-Qaeda has the following direct affiliates:
The following are presently believed to be indirect affiliates of Al-Qaeda:
Al-Qaeda's former affiliates include the following:
Leadership.
Osama bin Laden (1988–May 2011).
Osama bin Laden served as the emir of Al-Qaeda from the organization's founding in 1988 until his assassination by US forces on May 1, 2011. Atiyah Abd al-Rahman was alleged to be second in command prior to his death on August 22, 2011.
Bin Laden was advised by a Shura Council, which consists of senior Al-Qaeda members. The group was estimated to consist of 20–30 people.
After May 2011.
Ayman al-Zawahiri had been Al-Qaeda's deputy emir and assumed the role of emir following bin Laden's death. Al-Zawahiri replaced Saif al-Adel, who had served as interim commander.
On June 5, 2012, Pakistani intelligence officials announced that al-Rahman's alleged successor as second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, had been killed in Pakistan.
Nasir al-Wuhayshi was alleged to have become Al-Qaeda's overall second in command and general manager in 2013. He was concurrently the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) until he was killed by a US airstrike in Yemen in June 2015. Abu Khayr al-Masri, Wuhayshi's alleged successor as the deputy to Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a US airstrike in Syria in February 2017. Al Qaeda's next alleged number two leader, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, was killed by Israeli agents. His pseudonym was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, who was killed in November 2020 in Iran. He was involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Al-Qaeda's network was built from scratch as a conspiratorial network which drew upon the leadership of a number of regional nodes. The organization divided itself into several committees, which include:
After Al-Zawahiri (2022 - present).
Al-Zawahiri was killed on July 31, 2022 in a drone strike in Afghanistan. In February 2023, a report from the United Nations, based on member state intelligence, concluded that de-facto leadership of Al-Qaeda had passed to Saif al-Adel, who was operating out of Iran. Adel, a former Egyptian army officer, became a military instructor in Al-Qaeda camps in the 1990s and was known for his involvement in the Battle of Mogadishu. The report stated that al-Adel's leadership could not officially be declared by al-Qaeda because of "political sensitivities" of Afghan government in acknowledging the death of Al-Zawahiri as well as due to "theological and operational" challenges posed by the location of al-Adel in Iran.
Command structure.
Most of Al Qaeda's top leaders and operational directors were veterans who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were the leaders who were considered the operational commanders of the organization. Nevertheless, Al-Qaeda is not operationally managed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Several operational groups exist, which consult with the leadership in situations where attacks are in preparation. Al-Qaeda central (AQC) is a conglomerate of expert committees, each in supervision of distinct tasks and objectives. Its membership is mostly composed of Egyptian Islamist leaders who participiated in the anti-communist Afghan Jihad. Assisting them are hundreds of Islamic field operatives and commanders, based in various regions of the Muslim World. The central leadership assumes control of the doctrinal approach and overall propaganda campaign; while the regional commanders were empowered with independence in military strategy and political maneuvering. This novel hierarchy made it possible for the organisation to launch wide-range offensives.
When asked in 2005 about the possibility of Al-Qaeda's connection to the July 7, 2005 London bombings, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said: "Al-Qaeda is not an organization. Al-Qaeda is a way of working... but this has the hallmark of that approach... Al-Qaeda clearly has the ability to provide training... to provide expertise... and I think that is what has occurred here." On August 13, 2005, "The Independent" newspaper, reported that the July7 bombers had acted independently of an Al-Qaeda mastermind.
Nasser al-Bahri, who was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard for four years in the run-up to 9/11 wrote in his memoir a highly detailed description of how the group functioned at that time. Al-Bahri described Al-Qaeda's formal administrative structure and vast arsenal. However, the author Adam Curtis argued that the idea of Al-Qaeda as a formal organization is primarily an American invention. Curtis contended the name "Al-Qaeda" was first brought to the attention of the public in the 2001 trial of bin Laden and the four men accused of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. Curtis wrote:
During the 2001 trial, the US Department of Justice needed to show that bin Laden was the leader of a criminal organization in order to charge him "in absentia" under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The name of the organization and details of its structure were provided in the testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, who said he was a founding member of the group and a former employee of bin Laden. Questions about the reliability of al-Fadl's testimony have been raised by a number of sources because of his history of dishonesty, and because he was delivering it as part of a plea bargain agreement after being convicted of conspiring to attack US military establishments. Sam Schmidt, a defense attorney who defended al-Fadl said:
Field operatives.
The number of individuals in the group who have undergone proper military training, and are capable of commanding insurgent forces, is largely unknown. Documents captured in the raid on bin Laden's compound in 2011 show that the core Al-Qaeda membership in 2002 was 170. In 2006, it was estimated that Al-Qaeda had several thousand commanders embedded in 40 countries. , it was believed that no more than 200–300 members were still active commanders.
According to the 2004 BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares", Al-Qaeda was so weakly linked together that it was hard to say it existed apart from bin Laden and a small clique of close associates. The lack of any significant numbers of convicted Al-Qaeda members, despite a large number of arrests on terrorism charges, was cited by the documentary as a reason to doubt whether a widespread entity that met the description of Al-Qaeda existed. Al-Qaeda's commanders, as well as its sleeping agents, are hiding in different parts of the world to this day. They are mainly hunted by the American and Israeli secret services.
Insurgent forces.
According to author Robert Cassidy, Al-Qaeda maintains two separate forces which are deployed alongside insurgents in Iraq and Pakistan. The first, numbering in the tens of thousands, was "organized, trained, and equipped as insurgent combat forces" in the Soviet–Afghan war. The force was composed primarily of foreign "mujahideen" from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many of these fighters went on to fight in Bosnia and Somalia for global "jihad". Another group, which numbered 10,000 in 2006, live in the West and have received rudimentary combat training.
Other analysts have described Al-Qaeda's rank and file as being "predominantly Arab" in its first years of operation, but that the organization also includes "other peoples" . It has been estimated that 62 percent of Al-Qaeda members have a university education. In 2011 and the following year, the Americans successfully settled accounts with Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, the organization's chief propagandist, and Abu Yahya al-Libi's deputy commander. The optimistic voices were already saying it was over for Al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, it was around this time that the Arab Spring greeted the region, the turmoil of which came great to Al-Qaeda's regional forces. Seven years later, Ayman al-Zawahiri became arguably the number one leader in the organization, implementing his strategy with systematic consistency. Tens of thousands loyal to Al-Qaeda and related organizations were able to challenge local and regional stability and ruthlessly attack their enemies in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and Russia alike. In fact, from Northwest Africa to South Asia, Al-Qaeda had more than two dozen "franchise-based" allies. The number of Al-Qaeda militants was set at 20,000 in Syria alone, and they had 4,000 members in Yemen and about 7,000 in Somalia. The war was not over.
In 2001, Al-Qaeda had around 20 functioning cells and 70,000 insurgents spread over sixty nations. According to latest estimates, the number of active-duty soldiers under its command and allied militias have risen to approximately 250,000 by 2018.
Financing.
Al-Qaeda usually does not disburse funds for attacks, and very rarely makes wire transfers. In the 1990s, financing came partly from the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden. Other sources of income included the heroin trade and donations from supporters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic Gulf states. A WikiLeaks-released 2009 internal US government cable stated that "terrorist funding emanating from Saudi Arabia remains a serious concern."
Among the first pieces of evidence regarding Saudi Arabia's support for Al-Qaeda was the so-called "Golden Chain", a list of early Al-Qaeda funders seized during a 2002 raid in Sarajevo by Bosnian police. The hand-written list was validated by Al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl, and included the names of both donors and beneficiaries. Osama bin-Laden's name appeared seven times among the beneficiaries, while 20 Saudi and Gulf-based businessmen and politicians were listed among the donors. Notable donors included Adel Batterjee, and Wael Hamza Julaidan. Batterjee was designated as a terror financier by the US Department of the Treasury in 2004, and Julaidan is recognized as one of Al-Qaeda's founders.
Documents seized during the 2002 Bosnia raid showed that Al-Qaeda widely exploited charities to channel financial and material support to its operatives across the globe. Notably, this activity exploited the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League (MWL). The IIRO had ties with Al-Qaeda associates worldwide, including Al-Qaeda's deputy Ayman al Zawahiri. Zawahiri's brother worked for the IIRO in Albania and had actively recruited on behalf of Al-Qaeda. The MWL was openly identified by Al-Qaeda's leader as one of the three charities Al-Qaeda primarily relied upon for funding sources.
Allegations of Qatari support.
Several Qatari citizens have been accused of funding Al-Qaeda. This includes Abd Al-Rahman al-Nuaimi, a Qatari citizen and a human-rights activist who founded the Swiss-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Alkarama. On December 18, 2013, the US Treasury designated Nuaimi as a terrorist for his activities supporting Al-Qaeda. The US Treasury has said Nuaimi "has facilitated significant financial support to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and served as an interlocutor between Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Qatar-based donors".
Nuaimi was accused of overseeing a $2million monthly transfer to Al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of his role as mediator between Iraq-based Al-Qaeda senior officers and Qatari citizens. Nuaimi allegedly entertained relationships with Abu-Khalid al-Suri, Al-Qaeda's top envoy in Syria, who processed a $600,000 transfer to Al-Qaeda in 2013. Nuaimi is also known to be associated with Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad 'Abd al-Rahman al-Humayqani, a Yemeni politician and founding member of Alkarama, who was listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the US Treasury in 2013. The US authorities claimed that Humayqani exploited his role in Alkarama to fundraise on behalf of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A prominent figure in AQAP, Nuaimi was also reported to have facilitated the flow of funding to AQAP affiliates based in Yemen. Nuaimi was also accused of investing funds in the charity directed by Humayqani to ultimately fund AQAP. About ten months after being sanctioned by the US Treasury, Nuaimi was also restrained from doing business in the UK.
Another Qatari citizen, Kalifa Mohammed Turki Subayi, was sanctioned by the US Treasury on June 5, 2008, for his activities as a "Gulf-based Al-Qaeda financier". Subayi's name was added to the UN Security Council's Sanctions List in 2008 on charges of providing financial and material support to Al-Qaeda senior leadership. Subayi allegedly moved Al-Qaeda recruits to South Asia-based training camps. He also financially supported Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national and senior Al-Qaeda officer who is believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11 attack according to the "9/11 Commission Report".
Qataris provided support to al-Qaeda through the country's largest NGO, the Qatar Charity. Al-Qaeda defector al-Fadl, who was a former member of Qatar Charity, testified in court that Abdullah Mohammed Yusef, who served as Qatar Charity's director, was affiliated to Al-Qaeda and simultaneously to the National Islamic Front, a political group that gave al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden harbor in Sudan in the early 1990s.
It was alleged that in 1993 Osama bin Laden was using Middle East based Sunni charities to channel financial support to Al-Qaeda operatives overseas. The same documents also report Bin Laden's complaint that the failed assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had compromised the ability of Al-Qaeda to exploit charities to support its operatives to the extent it was capable of before 1995.
Qatar financed Al-Qaeda's enterprises through Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. The funding was primarily channeled through kidnapping for ransom. The Consortium Against Terrorist Finance (CATF) reported that the Gulf country has funded al-Nusra since 2013. In 2017, "Asharq Al-Awsat" estimated that Qatar had disbursed $25million in support of al-Nusra through kidnapping for ransom. In addition, Qatar has launched fundraising campaigns on behalf of al-Nusra. Al-Nusra acknowledged a Qatar-sponsored campaign "as one of the preferred conduits for donations intended for the group".
Strategy.
In the disagreement over whether Al-Qaeda's objectives are religious or political, Mark Sedgwick describes Al-Qaeda's strategy as political in the immediate term but with ultimate aims that are religious.
On March 11, 2005, "Al-Quds Al-Arabi" published extracts from Saif al-Adel's document "Al Qaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020". Abdel Bari Atwan summarizes this strategy as comprising five stages to rid the Ummah from all forms of oppression:
Atwan noted that, while the plan is unrealistic, "it is sobering to consider that this virtually describes the downfall of the Soviet Union."
According to Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist and author who has spent time in prison with Al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's strategy consists of seven phases and is similar to the plan described in Al Qaeda's Strategy to the year 2020. These phases include:
According to the seven-phase strategy, the war is projected to last less than two years.
According to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute and Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute, the new model of Al-Qaeda is to "socialize communities" and build a broad territorial base of operations with the support of local communities, also gaining income independent of the funding of sheiks.
Name.
The English name of the organization is a simplified transliteration of the Arabic noun "" (), which means "the foundation" or "the base". The initial "al-" is the Arabic definite article "the", hence "the base". In Arabic, "Al-Qaeda" has four syllables (). However, since two of the Arabic consonants in the name are not phones found in the English language, the common naturalized English pronunciations include , and . Al-Qaeda's name can also be transliterated as "al-Qaida", "al-Qa'ida", or "el-Qaida".
The doctrinal concept of "Al-Qaeda" was first coined by the Palestinian Islamist scholar and Jihadist leader Abdullah Azzam in an April 1988 issue of "Al-Jihad" magazine to describe a religiously committed vanguard of Muslims who wage armed "Jihad" globally to liberate oppressed Muslims from foreign invaders, establish "sharia" (Islamic law) across the Islamic World by overthrowing the ruling secular governments; and thus restore the past Islamic prowess. This was to be implemented by establishing an Islamic state that would nurture generations of Muslim soldiers that would perpetually attack United States and its allied governments in the Muslim World. Numerous historical models were cited by Azzam as successful examples of his call; starting from the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century to the recent anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad of 1980s. According to Azzam's world-view: "It is about time to think about a state that would be a solid base for the distribution of the (Islamic) creed, and a fortress to host the preachers from the hell of the "Jahiliyyah" [the pre-Islamic period]."
Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001:
It has been argued that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation prove the name was not simply adopted by the "mujahideen" movement and that a group called Al-Qaeda was established in August 1988. Both of these documents contain minutes of meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "Al-Qaeda".
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word Al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", because it originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of "mujahideen" militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians. In April 2002, the group assumed the name "Qa'idat al-Jihad" ( ""), which means "the base of Jihad". According to Diaa Rashwan, this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad, which was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s."
Ideology.
The militant Islamist Salafist movement of Al-Qaeda developed during the Islamic revival and the rise of the Islamist movement after the Iranian Revolution (1978–1979) and the Afghan Jihad (1979-1989). Many scholars have argued that the writings of Islamic author and thinker Sayyid Qutb inspired the Al-Qaeda organization. In the 1950s and 1960s, Qutb preached that because of the lack of "sharia" law, the Muslim world was no longer Muslim, and had reverted to the pre-Islamic ignorance known as "jahiliyyah". To restore Islam, Qutb argued that a vanguard of righteous Muslims was needed in order to establish "true Islamic states", implement "sharia", and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences. In Qutb's view, the enemies of Islam included "world Jewry", which "plotted conspiracies" and opposed Islam. Qutb envisioned this vanguard to march forward to wage armed "Jihad" against tyrannical regimes after purifying from the wider "Jahili" societies and organising themselves under a righteous Islamic leadership; which he viewed as the model of early Muslims in the Islamic state of Medina under the leadership of Islamic Prophet Muhammad. This idea would directly influence many Islamist figures such as Abdullah Azzam and Usama Bin Laden; and became the core rationale for the formulation of "Al-Qaeda" concept in the near future. Outlining his strategy to topple the existing secular orders, Qutb argued in "Milestones": "[It is necessary that] a Muslim community to come into existence which believes that ‘"there is no deity except God",’ which commits itself to obey none but God, denying all other authority, and which challenges the legality of any law which is not based on this belief.. . It should come into the battlefield with the determination that its strategy, its social organization, and the relationship between its individuals should be firmer and more powerful than the existing "jahili" system."
In the words of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a close college friend of bin Laden:
Qutb also influenced Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri's uncle and maternal family patriarch, Mafouz Azzam, was Qutb's student, protégé, personal lawyer, and an executor of his estate. Azzam was one of the last people to see Qutb alive before his execution. Zawahiri paid homage to Qutb in his work "Knights under the Prophet's Banner".
Qutb argued that many Muslims were not true Muslims. Some Muslims, Qutb argued, were apostates. These alleged apostates included leaders of Muslim countries, since they failed to enforce "sharia" law. He also alleged that the West approaches the Muslim World with a "crusading spirit"; in spite of the decline of religious values in the 20th century Europe. According to Qutb; the hostile and imperialist attitudes exhibited by Europeans and Americans towards Muslim countries, their support for Zionism, etc. reflected hatred amplified over a millennia of wars such as the Crusades and was born out of Roman materialist and utilitarian outlooks that viewed the world in monetary terms.
Formation.
The Afghan jihad against the pro-Soviet government further developed the Salafist Jihadist movement which inspired Al-Qaeda. During this period, Al-Qaeda embraced the ideals of the South Asian militant revivalist Sayyid Ahmad Shahid (d. 1831/1246 A.H) who led a Jihad movement against British India from the frontiers of Afghanistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkwa in the early 19th century. Al-Qaeda readily adopted Sayyid Ahmad's doctrines such as returning to the purity of early generations ("Salaf as-Salih"), antipathy towards Western influences and restoration of Islamic political power. According to Pakistani journalist Hussain Haqqani,
Objectives.
The long-term objective of Al-Qaeda is to unite the Muslim World under a supra-national Islamic state known as the "Khilafah" (Caliphate), headed by an elected Caliph descended from the "Ahl al-Bayt" (Prophetic family). The immediate objectives include the expulsion of American troops from the Arabian Peninsula, waging armed Jihad to topple US-allied governments in the region, etc.
The following are the goals and some of the general policies outlined in Al-Qaeda's Founding Charter "Al-Qaeda's Structure and Bylaws" issued in the meetings in Peshawar in 1988.:
Theory of Islamic State.
Al-Qaeda aims to establish an Islamic state in the Arab World, modelled after the Rashidun Caliphate, by initiating a global Jihad against the "International Jewish-Crusader Alliance" led by the United States, which it sees as the "external enemy" and against the secular governments in Muslim countries, that are described as "the apostate domestic enemy". Once foreign influences and the secular ruling authorities are removed from Muslim countries through Jihad; al-Qaeda supports elections to choose the rulers of its proposed Islamic states. This is to be done through representatives of leadership councils ("Shura") that would ensure the implementation of "Shari'a" (Islamic law). However, it opposes elections that institute parliaments which empower Muslim and non-Muslim legislators to collaborate in making laws of their own choosing. In the second edition of his book "Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet", Ayman Al Zawahiri writes:
Grievances.
A recurring theme in al-Qaeda's ideology is the perpetual grievance over the violent subjugation of Islamic dissidents by the authoritarian, secularist regimes allied to the West. Al-Qaeda denounces these post-colonial governments as a system led by Westernised elites designed to advance neo-colonialism and maintain Western hegemony over the Muslim World. The most prominent topic of grievance is over the American foreign policy in the Arab World; especially over its strong economic and military support to Israel. Other concerns of resentment include presence of NATO troops to support allied regimes; injustices committed against Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.
Religious compatibility.
Abdel Bari Atwan wrote that:
On the other hand, Professor Peter Mandaville states that Al-Qaeda follows a pragmatic policy in forming its local affiliates, with various cells being sub-contracted to Shia Muslim and non-Muslim members. The top-down chain of command means that each unit is answerable directly to central leadership, while they remain ignorant of their counterparts' presence or activities. These transnational networks of autonomous supply chains, financiers, underground militias and political supporters were set up during the 1990s, when Bin Laden's immediate aim was the expulsion of American troops from the Arabian Peninsula.
Attacks on civilians.
Following its 9/11 attack and in response to its condemnation by Islamic scholars, al-Qaeda provided a justification for the killing of non-combatants/civilians, entitled, "A Statement from Qaidat al-Jihad Regarding the Mandates of the Heroes and the Legality of the Operations in New York and Washington". According to a couple of critics, Quintan Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner, it provides "ample theological justification for killing civilians in almost any imaginable situation."
Among these justifications are that America is leading the west in waging a War on Islam so that attacks on America are a defense of Islam and any treaties and agreements between Muslim majority states and Western countries that would be violated by attacks are null and void. According to the tract, several conditions allow for the killing of civilians including:
History.
"The Guardian" in 2009 described five distinct phases in the development of Al-Qaeda: its beginnings in the late 1980s, a "wilderness" period in 1990–1996, its "heyday" in 1996–2001, a network period from 2001 to 2005, and a period of fragmentation from 2005 to 2009.
Jihad in Afghanistan.
The origins of al-Qaeda can be traced to the Soviet War in Afghanistan (December 1979February 1989). The United States viewed the conflict in Afghanistan in terms of the Cold War, with Marxists on one side and the native Afghan "mujahideen" on the other. This view led to a CIA program called Operation Cyclone, which channeled funds through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency to the Afghan Mujahideen. The US government provided substantial financial support to the Afghan Islamic militants. Aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan "mujahideen" leader and founder of the Hezb-e Islami, amounted to more than $600million. In addition to American aid, Hekmatyar was the recipient of Saudi aid. In the early 1990s, after the US had withdrawn support, Hekmatyar "worked closely" with bin Laden.
At the same time, a growing number of Arab "mujahideen" joined the "jihad" against the Afghan Marxist regime, which was facilitated by international Muslim organizations, particularly the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), also known as the "Services Bureau". Muslim Brotherhood networks affiliated with the Egyptian Islamist Kamal al-Sananiri (d. 1981) played the major role in raising finances and Arab recruits for the Afghan Mujahidin. These networks included Mujahidin groups affiliated with Afghan commander Abd al-Rasul Sayyaf and Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, Palestinian Islamist scholar and major figure in the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Following the detention and death of Sananiri in an Egyptian security prison in 1981, Abdullah Azzam became the chief arbitrator between the Afghan Arabs and Afghan mujahideen.
As part of providing weaponry and supplies for the cause of Afghan Jihad, Usama Bin Laden was sent to Pakistan as a Muslim Brotherhood representative to the Islamist organisation Jamaat-e-Islami. While in Peshawar, Bin Laden met Abdullah Azzam and the two of them jointly established the "Maktab al-Khidamat" (MAK) in 1984; with objective of raising funds and recruits for Afghan Jihad across the world. MAK organized guest houses in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, and gathered supplies for the construction of paramilitary training camps to prepare foreign recruits for the Afghan war front. MAK was funded by the Saudi government as well as by individual Muslims including Saudi businessmen. Bin Laden also became a major financier of the "mujahideen", spending his own money and using his connections to influence public opinion about the war. Many disgruntled members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood like Abu Mussab al-Suri also began joining these MAK networks; following the crushing of Islamic revolt in Syria in 1982.
From 1986, MAK began to set up a network of recruiting offices in the US, the hub of which was the Al Kifah Refugee Center at the Farouq Mosque on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. Among notable figures at the Brooklyn center were "double agent" Ali Mohamed, whom FBI special agent Jack Cloonan called "bin Laden's first trainer", and "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, a leading recruiter of "mujahideen" for Afghanistan. Azzam and bin Laden began to establish camps in Afghanistan in 1987.
MAK and foreign "mujahideen" volunteers, or "Afghan Arabs", did not play a major role in the war. While over 250,000 Afghan "mujahideen" fought the Soviets and the communist Afghan government, it is estimated that there were never more than two thousand foreign "mujahideen" on the field at any one time. Nonetheless, foreign "mujahideen" volunteers came from 43 countries, and the total number who participated in the Afghan movement between 1982 and 1992 is reported to have been 35,000. Bin Laden played a central role in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers.
The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Mohammad Najibullah's Communist Afghan government lasted for three more years, before it was overrun by elements of the "mujahideen".
Expanding operations.
Toward the end of the Soviet military mission in Afghanistan, some foreign "mujahideen" wanted to expand their operations to include Islamist struggles in other parts of the world, such as Palestine and Kashmir. A number of overlapping and interrelated organizations were formed, to further those aspirations. One of these was the organization that would eventually be called Al-Qaeda.
Research suggests that al-Qaeda was formed on August 11, 1988, when a meeting in Afghanistan between leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden took place. The network was founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and other Arab volunteers during the Soviet–Afghan War. An agreement was reached to link bin Laden's money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. After fighting the "holy" war, the group aimed to expand such operations to other parts of the world, setting up bases in parts of Africa, the Arab world and elsewhere, carrying out many attacks on people whom it considers "kāfir".
Notes indicate Al-Qaeda was a formal group by August 20, 1988. A list of requirements for membership itemized the following: listening ability, good manners, obedience, and making a pledge ("Bay'at") to follow one's superiors. In his memoir, bin Laden's former bodyguard, Nasser al-Bahri, gives the only publicly available description of the ritual of giving "bay'at" when he swore his allegiance to the Al-Qaeda chief. According to Wright, the group's real name was not used in public pronouncements because "its existence was still a closely held secret."
After Azzam was assassinated in 1989 and MAK broke up, significant numbers of MAK followers joined bin Laden's new organization.
In November 1989, Ali Mohamed, a former special forces sergeant stationed at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, left military service and moved to California. He traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and became "deeply involved with bin Laden's plans." In 1991, Ali Mohammed is said to have helped orchestrate bin Laden's relocation to Sudan.
Gulf War and the start of US enmity.
Following the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. Thrilled by his successes in Afghan Jihad, Bin Laden turned his anti-communist posture towards South Yemen and requested Saudi authorities to lead an armed Jihad against communist South Yemen. However, the Saudi intelligence chief Turki bin Faisal rebuffed Bin Laden's offers, insisting on waiting for the collapse of the unstable communist regime. This led to the first major dispute of Bin Laden with the Saudi monarchy.
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 had put the Kingdom and its ruling House of Saud at risk. The world's most valuable oil fields were within striking distance of Iraqi forces in Kuwait, and Saddam's call to Pan-Arabism could potentially rally internal dissent. In the face of a seemingly massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's own forces were outnumbered. Bin Laden offered the services of his "mujahideen" to King Fahd to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army. The Saudi monarch refused bin Laden's offer, opting instead to allow US and allied forces to deploy troops into Saudi territory. The arrival of American troops to the Kingdom in August 1990 was heavily condemned by Bin Laden.
The deployment angered bin Laden, as he believed the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and Medina) profaned sacred soil. King Fahd's refusal of Bin Laden's offer to train the Mujahidin; instead giving permission for American soldiers to enter Saudi territory in order to repel Saddam Hussein's forces would greatly anger Bin Laden. The entry of American troops into Saudi Arabia was denounced by Bin Laden as a "Crusader Attack on Islam" that defiled the sacred lands of Islam. He asserted that the Arabian Peninsula has been "occupied" by foreign invaders and excommunicated the Saudi regime due to its complicity with United States. After relentless criticism of the Saudi government for harboring American troops and rejecting their legitimacy, he was banished in 1991 and forced to live in exile in Sudan. Bin Laden also vehemently denounced the elder Wahhabi scholarship; most notably Grand Mufti Abd al-Azeez Ibn Baz, accusing him of partnering with infidel forces due to his "fatwa" that permitted the entry of US troops.
Sudan.
From around 1992 to 1996, Al-Qaeda and bin Laden based themselves in Sudan at the invitation of Islamist theoretician Hassan al-Turabi. The move followed an Islamist coup d'état in Sudan, led by Colonel Omar al-Bashir, who professed a commitment to reordering Muslim political values. During this time, bin Laden assisted the Sudanese government, bought or set up various business enterprises, and established training camps.
A key turning point for bin Laden occurred in 1993 when Saudi Arabia gave support for the Oslo Accords, which set a path for peace between Israel and Palestinians. Due to bin Laden's continuous verbal assault on King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Fahd sent an emissary to Sudan on March 5, 1994, demanding bin Laden's passport. Bin Laden's Saudi citizenship was also revoked. His family was persuaded to cut off his stipend, $7million a year, and his Saudi assets were frozen. His family publicly disowned him. There is controversy as to what extent bin Laden continued to garner support from members afterwards.
In 1993, a young schoolgirl was killed in an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Egyptian prime minister, Atef Sedki. Egyptian public opinion turned against Islamist bombings, and the police arrested 280 of al-Jihad's members and executed 6. In a document published in June 1994, Bin Laden accused Saudi Arabia of propping up the ex-communist Yemeni Socialist Party, the ruling party of Marxist South Yemen, by using it as a separatist force in Yemen to "forestall Islamic unity and keep the people of the region cowering". In June 1995, an attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Mubarak led to the expulsion of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), and in May 1996, of bin Laden from Sudan.
According to Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, the Sudanese government offered the Clinton Administration numerous opportunities to arrest bin Laden. Ijaz's claims appeared in numerous op-ed pieces, including one in the "Los Angeles Times" and one in "The Washington Post" co-written with former Ambassador to Sudan Timothy M. Carney. Similar allegations have been made by "Vanity Fair" contributing editor David Rose, and Richard Miniter, author of "Losing bin Laden", in a November 2003 interview with "World".
Several sources dispute Ijaz's claim, including the 9/11 Commission, which concluded in part:
Refuge in Afghanistan.
After the fall of the Afghan communist regime in 1992, Afghanistan was effectively ungoverned for four years and plagued by constant infighting between various "mujahideen" groups. This situation allowed the Taliban to organize. The Taliban also garnered support from graduates of Islamic schools, which are called "madrassa". According to Ahmed Rashid, five leaders of the Taliban were graduates of Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassa in the small town of Akora Khattak. The town is situated near Peshawar in Pakistan, but the school is largely attended by Afghan refugees. This institution reflected Salafi beliefs in its teachings, and much of its funding came from private donations from wealthy Arabs. Four of the Taliban's leaders attended a similarly funded and influenced madrassa in Kandahar. Bin Laden's contacts were laundering donations to these schools, and Islamic banks were used to transfer money to an "array" of charities which served as front groups for Al-Qaeda.
Many of the "mujahideen" who later joined the Taliban fought alongside Afghan warlord Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi's Harkat i Inqilabi group at the time of the Russian invasion. This group also enjoyed the loyalty of most Afghan Arab fighters.
The continuing lawlessness enabled the growing and well-disciplined Taliban to expand their control over territory in Afghanistan, and it came to establish an enclave which it called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In 1994, it captured the regional center of Kandahar, and after making rapid territorial gains thereafter, the Taliban captured the capital city Kabul in September 1996.
In 1996, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provided a perfect staging ground for Al-Qaeda. While not officially working together, Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and supported the regime in such a strong symbiotic relationship that many Western observers dubbed the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as, "the world's first terrorist-sponsored state." However, at this time, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. In 1996, Osama Bin Laden officially issued the "Declaration of Struggle against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" which called upon Muslims all over the world to take up arms against American soldiers. In an interview with the English journalist Robert Fisk; Bin Laden criticised American imperialism and its support for Zionism as the biggest sources of tyranny in the Arab World. He vehemently denounced the US-allied Gulf monarchies; especially the Saudi government for westernising the country, removing Islamic laws and hosting American, British and French troops. Bin Laden asserted that he planned to foment an armed rebellion to overthrow the Saudi regime with the help of his "Mujahidin" soldiers and establish an Islamic Emirate in Arabian Peninsula that properly upholds "Sharia" (Islamic law). Upon questioned whether he sought to launch a war against the Western world; Bin Laden replied: "It is not a declaration of war - it's a real description of the situation. This doesn't mean declaring war against the West and Western people - but against the American regime which is against every Muslim."
In response to the 1998 United States embassy bombings, an Al-Qaeda base in Khost Province was attacked by the United States during Operation Infinite Reach.
While in Afghanistan, the Taliban government tasked Al-Qaeda with the training of Brigade 055, an elite element of the Taliban's army. The Brigade mostly consisted of foreign fighters, veterans from the Soviet Invasion, and adherents to the ideology of the mujahideen. In November 2001, as Operation Enduring Freedom had toppled the Taliban government, many Brigade 055 fighters were captured or killed, and those who survived were thought to have escaped into Pakistan along with bin Laden.
By the end of 2008, some sources reported that the Taliban had severed any remaining ties with Al-Qaeda, however, there is reason to doubt this. According to senior US military intelligence officials, there were fewer than 100 members of Al-Qaeda remaining in Afghanistan in 2009.
Al Qaeda chief, Asim Omar was killed in Afghanistan's Musa Qala district after a joint US–Afghanistan commando airstrike on September 23, Afghan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) confirmed in October 2019.
In a report released May 27, 2020, the United Nations' Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team stated that the Taliban-Al Qaeda relations remain strong to this day and additionally, Al Qaeda itself has admitted that it operates inside Afghanistan.
On July 26, 2020, a United Nations report stated that the Al Qaeda group is still active in twelve provinces in Afghanistan and its leader al-Zawahiri is still based in the country.<ref name="https://www.daijiworld.com"></ref> and that the UN Monitoring Team estimated that the total number of Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan were "between 400 and 600".
Call for global Salafi jihadism.
In 1994, the Salafi groups waging Salafi jihadism in Bosnia entered into decline, and groups such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad began to drift away from the Salafi cause in Europe. Al-Qaeda stepped in and assumed control of around 80% of non-state armed cells in Bosnia in late 1995. At the same time, Al-Qaeda ideologues instructed the network's recruiters to look for "Jihadi international" Muslims who believed that extremist-"jihad" must be fought on a global level. Al-Qaeda also sought to open the "offensive phase" of the global Salafi "jihad". Bosnian Islamists in 2006 called for "solidarity with Islamic causes around the world", supporting the insurgents in Kashmir and Iraq as well as the groups fighting for a Palestinian state.
Fatwas.
In 1996, Al-Qaeda announced its "jihad" to expel foreign troops and interests from what they considered Islamic lands. Bin Laden issued a "fatwa", which amounted to a public declaration of war against the US and its allies, and began to refocus Al-Qaeda's resources on large-scale, propagandist strikes.
On February 23, 1998, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with three other Islamist leaders, co-signed and issued a "fatwa" calling on Muslims to kill Americans and their allies. Under the banner of the World Islamic Front for Combat Against the Jews and Crusaders, they declared:
Neither bin Laden nor al-Zawahiri possessed the traditional Islamic scholarly qualifications to issue a "fatwa". However, they rejected the authority of the contemporary "ulema" (which they saw as the paid servants of "jahiliyya" rulers), and took it upon themselves.
Philippines.
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 of Abu Sayyaf to Al-Qaeda. Abu Sayyaf is known for a series of kidnappings from tourists in both the Philippines and Malaysia that netted them large sums of money through ransoms. The leader of Abu Sayyaf, Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, was also a veteran fighting in the Soviet-Afghan War. In 2014, Abu Sayyaf pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Iraq.
Al-Qaeda has launched attacks against the Iraqi Shia majority in an attempt to incite sectarian violence. Al-Zarqawi purportedly declared an all-out war on Shiites while claiming responsibility for Shiite mosque bombings. The same month, a statement claiming to be from Al-Qaeda in Iraq was rejected as a "fake". In a December 2007 video, al-Zawahiri defended the Islamic State in Iraq, but distanced himself from the attacks against civilians, which he deemed to be perpetrated by "hypocrites and traitors existing among the ranks".
US and Iraqi officials accused Al-Qaeda in Iraq of trying to slide Iraq into a full-scale civil war between Iraq's Shiite population and Sunni Arabs. This was done through an orchestrated campaign of civilian massacres and a number of provocative attacks against high-profile religious targets. With attacks including the 2003 Imam Ali Mosque bombing, the 2004 Day of Ashura and Karbala and Najaf bombings, the 2006 first al-Askari Mosque bombing in Samarra, the deadly single-day series of bombings in which at least 215 people were killed in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, and the second al-Askari bombing in 2007, Al-Qaeda in Iraq provoked Shiite militias to unleash a wave of retaliatory attacks, resulting in death squad-style killings and further sectarian violence which escalated in 2006. In 2008, sectarian bombings blamed on Al-Qaeda in Iraq killed at least 42 people at the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala in March, and at least 51 people at a bus stop in Baghdad in June.
In February 2014, after a prolonged dispute with Al-Qaeda in Iraq's successor organisation, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Al-Qaeda publicly announced it was cutting all ties with the group, reportedly for its brutality and "notorious intractability".
Somalia and Yemen.
In Somalia, Al-Qaeda agents had been collaborating closely with its Somali wing, which was created from the al-Shabaab group. In February 2012, al-Shabaab officially joined Al-Qaeda, declaring loyalty in a video. Somali Al-Qaeda recruited children for suicide-bomber training and recruited young people to participate in militant actions against Americans.
The percentage of attacks in the First World originating from the Afghanistan–Pakistan (AfPak) border declined starting in 2007, as Al-Qaeda shifted to Somalia and Yemen. While Al-Qaeda leaders were hiding in the tribal areas along the AfPak border, middle-tier leaders heightened activity in Somalia and Yemen.
In January 2009, Al-Qaeda's division in Saudi Arabia merged with its Yemeni wing to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Centered in Yemen, the group takes advantage of the country's poor economy, demography and domestic security. In August 2009, the group made an assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi royal family. President Obama asked Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure closer cooperation with the US in the struggle against the growing activity of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and promised to send additional aid. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drew US attention from Somalia and Yemen. In December 2011, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the US operations against Al-Qaeda "are now concentrating on key groups in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa." Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the 2009 bombing attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The AQAP declared the Al-Qaeda Emirate in Yemen on March 31, 2011, after capturing the most of the Abyan Governorate.
As the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen escalated in July 2015, fifty civilians had been killed and twenty million needed aid. In February 2016, Al-Qaeda forces and Saudi Arabian-led coalition forces were both seen fighting Houthi rebels in the same battle. In August 2018, "Al Jazeera" reported that "A military coalition battling Houthi rebels secured secret deals with Al-Qaeda in Yemen and recruited hundreds of the group's fighters... Key figures in the deal-making said the United States was aware of the arrangements and held off on drone attacks against the armed group, which was created by Osama bin Laden in 1988."
United States operations.
In December 1998, the Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center reported to President Bill Clinton that Al-Qaeda was preparing to launch attacks in the United States, and the group was training personnel to hijack aircraft. On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked the United States, hijacking four airliners within the country and deliberately crashing two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The third plane crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane was crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, the attackers killed 2,977 victims and injured more than 6,000 others.
US officials noted that Anwar al-Awlaki had considerable reach within the US. A former FBI agent identified Awlaki as a known "senior recruiter for Al-Qaeda", and a spiritual motivator. Awlaki's sermons in the US were attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers, and accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. US intelligence intercepted emails from Hasan to Awlaki between December 2008 and early 2009. On his website, Awlaki has praised Hasan's actions in the Fort Hood shooting.
An unnamed official claimed there was good reason to believe Awlaki "has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the US [in 2002], including plotting attacks against America and our allies." US President Barack Obama approved the targeted killing of al-Awlaki by April 2010, making al-Awlaki the first US citizen ever placed on the CIA target list. That required the consent of the US National Security Council, and officials argued that the attack was appropriate because the individual posed an imminent danger to national security. In May 2010, Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty to the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt, told interrogators he was "inspired by" al-Awlaki, and sources said Shahzad had made contact with al-Awlaki over the Internet. Representative Jane Harman called him "terrorist number one", and "Investor's Business Daily" called him "the world's most dangerous man". In July 2010, the US Treasury Department added him to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and the UN added him to its list of individuals associated with Al-Qaeda. In August 2010, al-Awlaki's father initiated a lawsuit against the US government with the American Civil Liberties Union, challenging its order to kill al-Awlaki. In October 2010, US and UK officials linked al-Awlaki to the 2010 cargo plane bomb plot. In September 2011, al-Awlaki was killed in a targeted killing drone attack in Yemen. On March 16, 2012, it was reported that Osama bin Laden plotted to kill US President Barack Obama.
Killing of Osama bin Laden.
On May 1, 2011, US President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by "a small team of Americans" acting under direct orders, in a covert operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The action took place north of Islamabad. According to US officials, a team of 20–25 US Navy SEALs under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command stormed bin Laden's compound with two helicopters. Bin Laden and those with him were killed during a firefight in which US forces experienced no casualties. According to one US official the attack was carried out without the knowledge or consent of the Pakistani authorities. In Pakistan some people were reported to be shocked at the unauthorized incursion by US armed forces. The site is a few miles from the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul. In his broadcast announcement President Obama said that US forces "took care to avoid civilian casualties".
Details soon emerged that three men and a woman were killed along with bin Laden, the woman being killed when she was "used as a shield by a male combatant". DNA from bin Laden's body, compared with DNA samples on record from his dead sister, confirmed bin Laden's identity. The body was recovered by the US military and was in its custody until, according to one US official, his body was buried at sea according to Islamic traditions. One US official said that "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult." US State Department issued a "Worldwide caution" for Americans following bin Laden's death and US diplomatic facilities everywhere were placed on high alert, a senior US official said. Crowds gathered outside the White House and in New York City's Times Square to celebrate bin Laden's death.
Syria.
In 2003, President Bashar al-Assad revealed in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that he doubted Al-Qaeda even existed. He was quoted as saying, "Is there really an entity called Al-Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?" He went on further to remark about bin Laden, commenting "[he] cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world? This is illogical."
Following the mass protests that took place in 2011, which demanded the resignation of al-Assad, Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and Sunni sympathizers soon began to constitute an effective fighting force against al-Assad. Before the Syrian Civil War, Al-Qaeda's presence in Syria was negligible, but its growth thereafter was rapid. Groups such as the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have recruited many foreign Mujahideen to train and fight in what has gradually become a highly sectarian war. Ideologically, the Syrian Civil War has served the interests of Al-Qaeda as it pits a mainly Sunni opposition against a secular government. Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist Sunni militant groups have invested heavily in the civil conflict, at times actively backing and supporting the mainstream Syrian Opposition.
On February 2, 2014, Al-Qaeda distanced itself from ISIS and its actions in Syria; however, during 2014–15, ISIS and the Al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front were still able to occasionally cooperate in their fight against the Syrian government. Al-Nusra (backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey as part of the Army of Conquest during 2015–2017) launched many attacks and bombings, mostly against targets affiliated with or supportive of the Syrian government. From October 2015, Russian air strikes targeted positions held by al-Nusra Front, as well as other Islamist and non-Islamist rebels, while the US also targeted al-Nusra with airstrikes. In early 2016, a leading ISIL ideologue described Al-Qaeda as the "Jews of jihad".
India.
In September 2014, al-Zawahiri announced Al-Qaeda was establishing a front in India to "wage jihad against its enemies, to liberate its land, to restore its sovereignty, and to revive its Caliphate." Al-Zawahiri nominated India as a beachhead for regional jihad taking in neighboring countries such as Myanmar and Bangladesh. The motivation for the video was questioned, as it appeared the militant group was struggling to remain relevant in light of the emerging prominence of ISIS. The new wing was to be known as "Qaedat al-Jihad fi'shibhi al-qarrat al-Hindiya" or al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Leaders of several Indian Muslim organizations rejected al-Zawahiri's pronouncement, saying they could see no good coming from it, and viewed it as a threat to Muslim youth in the country.
In 2014, "Zee News" reported that Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official for South Asia, had accused the Pakistani military intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of organising and assisting Al-Qaeda to organise in India, that Pakistan ought to be warned that it will be placed on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, and that "Zawahiri made the tape in his hideout in Pakistan, no doubt, and many Indians suspect the ISI is helping to protect him."
In September 2021, after the success of 2021 Taliban offensive, Al-Qaeda congratulated Taliban and called for liberation of Kashmir from the "clutches of the enemies of Islam".
Attacks.
Al-Qaeda has carried out a total of six major attacks, four of them in its jihad against America. In each case the leadership planned the attack years in advance, arranging for the shipment of weapons and explosives and using its businesses to provide operatives with safehouses and false identities.
1991.
To prevent the former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah from coming back from exile and possibly becoming head of a new government, bin Laden instructed a Portuguese convert to Islam, Paulo Jose de Almeida Santos, to assassinate Zahir Shah. On November 4, 1991, Santos entered the king's villa in Rome posing as a journalist and tried to stab him with a dagger. A tin of cigarillos in the king's breast pocket deflected the blade and saved Zahir Shah's life. Santos was apprehended and jailed for 10 years in Italy.
1992.
On December 29, 1992, Al-Qaeda launched the 1992 Yemen hotel bombings. Two bombs were detonated in Aden, Yemen. The first target was the Movenpick Hotel and the second was the parking lot of the Goldmohur Hotel.
The bombings were an attempt to eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia to take part in the international famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope. Internally, Al-Qaeda considered the bombing a victory that frightened the Americans away, but in the US, the attack was barely noticed. No American soldiers were killed because no soldiers were staying in the hotel which was bombed. However, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker were killed in the bombing. Seven others, mostly Yemenis, were severely injured. Two fatwas are said to have been appointed by Al-Qaeda's members, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, to justify the killings according to Islamic law. Salim referred to a famous fatwa appointed by Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th-century scholar much admired by Wahhabis, which sanctioned resistance by any means during the Mongol invasions.
Late 1990s.
In 1996, bin Laden personally engineered a plot to assassinate United States President Bill Clinton while the president was in Manila for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. However, intelligence agents intercepted a message before the motorcade was to leave, and alerted the US Secret Service. Agents later discovered a bomb planted under a bridge.
On August 7, 1998, Al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans. In retaliation, a barrage of cruise missiles launched by the US military devastated an Al-Qaeda base in Khost, Afghanistan. The network's capacity was unharmed. In late 1999 and 2000, Al-Qaeda planned attacks to coincide with the millennium, masterminded by Abu Zubaydah and involving Abu Qatada, which would include the bombing of Christian holy sites in Jordan, the bombing of Los Angeles International Airport by Ahmed Ressam, and the bombing of the .
On October 12, 2000, Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen bombed the missile destroyer "USS Cole" in a suicide attack, killing 17 US servicemen and damaging the vessel while it lay offshore. Inspired by the success of such a brazen attack, Al-Qaeda's command core began to prepare for an attack on the US itself.
September 11 attacks.
The September 11 attacks on America by Al-Qaeda killed 2,996 people2,507 civilians, 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, 55 military personnel as well as 19 hijackers who committed murder-suicide. Two commercial airliners were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth, originally intended to target either the United States Capitol or the White House, crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was the deadliest foreign attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and to this day remains the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
The attacks were conducted by Al-Qaeda, acting in accord with the 1998 "fatwa" issued against the US and its allies by persons under the command of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and others. Evidence points to suicide squads led by Al-Qaeda military commander Mohamed Atta as the culprits of the attacks, with bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Hambali as the key planners and part of the political and military command.
Messages issued by bin Laden after September 11, 2001, praised the attacks, and explained their motivation while denying any involvement. Bin Laden legitimized the attacks by identifying grievances felt by both mainstream and Islamist Muslims, such as the general perception that the US was actively oppressing Muslims.
Bin Laden asserted that America was massacring Muslims in "Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq" and Muslims should retain the "right to attack in reprisal". He also claimed the 9/11 attacks were not targeted at people, but "America's icons of military and economic power", despite the fact he planned to attack in the morning when most of the people in the intended targets were present and thus generating the maximum number of human casualties.
Evidence later came to light that the original targets for the attack may have been nuclear power stations on the US East Coast. The targets were later altered by Al-Qaeda, as it was feared that such an attack "might get out of hand".
Designation as a terrorist group.
Al-Qaeda is deemed a designated terrorist group by the following countries and international organizations:
War on terror.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the US government responded, and began to prepare its armed forces to overthrow the Taliban, which it believed was harboring Al-Qaeda. The US offered Taliban leader Mullah Omar a chance to surrender bin Laden and his top associates. The first forces to be inserted into Afghanistan were paramilitary officers from the CIA's elite Special Activities Division (SAD).
The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks. US President George W. Bush responded by saying: "We know he's guilty. Turn him over", and British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the Taliban regime: "Surrender bin Laden, or surrender power."
Soon thereafter the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan, and together with the Afghan Northern Alliance removed the Taliban government as part of the war in Afghanistan. As a result of the US special forces and air support for the Northern Alliance ground forces, a number of Taliban and Al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed, and much of the operating structure of Al-Qaeda is believed to have been disrupted. After being driven from their key positions in the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan, many Al-Qaeda fighters tried to regroup in the rugged Gardez region of the nation.
By early 2002, Al-Qaeda had been dealt a serious blow to its operational capacity, and the Afghan invasion appeared to be a success. Nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remained in Afghanistan.
Debate continued regarding the nature of Al-Qaeda's role in the 9/11 attacks. The US State Department released a videotape showing bin Laden speaking with a small group of associates somewhere in Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban was removed from power. Although its authenticity has been questioned by a couple of people, the tape definitively implicates bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. The tape was aired on many television channels, with an accompanying English translation provided by the US Defense Department.
In September 2004, the 9/11 Commission officially concluded that the attacks were conceived and implemented by al-Qaeda operatives. In October 2004, bin Laden appeared to claim responsibility for the attacks in a videotape released through Al Jazeera, saying he was inspired by Israeli attacks on high-rises in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon: "As I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children."
By the end of 2004, the US government proclaimed that two-thirds of the most senior Al-Qaeda figures from 2001 had been captured and interrogated by the CIA: Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003; and Saif al Islam el Masry in 2004. Mohammed Atef and several others were killed. The West was criticized for not being able to handle Al-Qaida despite a decade of the war.
Activities.
Africa.
Al-Qaeda involvement in Africa has included a number of bombing attacks in North Africa, while supporting parties in civil wars in Eritrea and Somalia. From 1991 to 1996, bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders were based in Sudan.
Islamist rebels in the Sahara calling themselves Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have stepped up their violence in recent years. French officials say the rebels have no real links to the Al-Qaeda leadership, but this has been disputed. It seems likely that bin Laden approved the group's name in late 2006, and the rebels "took on the al Qaeda franchise label", almost a year before the violence began to escalate.
In Mali, the Ansar Dine faction was also reported as an ally of Al-Qaeda in 2013. The Ansar al Dine faction aligned themselves with the AQIM.
In 2011, Al-Qaeda's North African wing condemned Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and declared support for the Anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Following the Libyan Civil War, the removal of Gaddafi and the ensuing period of post-civil war violence in Libya, various Islamist militant groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda were able to expand their operations in the region. The 2012 Benghazi attack, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, is suspected of having been carried out by various Jihadist networks, such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar al-Sharia and several other Al-Qaeda affiliated groups. The capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, a senior Al-Qaeda operative wanted by the United States for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, on October 5, 2013, by US Navy Seals, FBI and CIA agents illustrates the importance the US and other Western allies have placed on North Africa.
Europe.
Prior to the September 11 attacks, Al-Qaeda was present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its members were mostly veterans of the El Mudžahid detachment of the Bosnian Muslim Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Three Al-Qaeda operatives carried out the Mostar car bombing in 1997. The operatives were closely linked to and financed by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina founded by then-prince King Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Before the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, westerners who had been recruits at Al-Qaeda training camps were sought after by Al-Qaeda's military wing. Language skills and knowledge of Western culture were generally found among recruits from Europe, such was the case with Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian national studying in Germany at the time of his training, and other members of the Hamburg Cell. Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atef would later designate Atta as the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. Following the attacks, Western intelligence agencies determined that Al-Qaeda cells operating in Europe had aided the hijackers with financing and communications with the central leadership based in Afghanistan.
In 2003, Islamists carried out a series of bombings in Istanbul killing fifty-seven people and injuring seven hundred. Seventy-four people were charged by the Turkish authorities. Some had previously met bin Laden, and though they specifically declined to pledge allegiance to Al-Qaeda they asked for its blessing and help.
In 2009, three Londoners, Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar and Ahmed Abdullah Ali, were convicted of conspiring to detonate bombs disguised as soft drinks on seven airplanes bound for Canada and the US The MI5 investigation regarding the plot involved more than a year of surveillance work conducted by over two hundred officers. British and US officials said the plotunlike many similar homegrown European Islamic militant plotswas directly linked to Al-Qaeda and guided by senior Al-Qaeda members in Pakistan.
In 2012, Russian Intelligence indicated that Al-Qaeda had given a call for "forest jihad" and has been starting massive forest fires as part of a strategy of "thousand cuts".
Arab world.
Following Yemeni unification in 1990, Wahhabi networks began moving missionaries into the country. Although it is unlikely bin Laden or Saudi Al-Qaeda were directly involved, the personal connections they made would be established over the next decade and used in the USS "Cole" bombing. Concerns grew over al-Qaeda's group in Yemen.
In Iraq, al-Qaeda forces loosely associated with the leadership were embedded in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Specializing in suicide operations, they have been a "key driver" of the Sunni insurgency. Although they played a small part in the overall insurgency, between 30% and 42% of all suicide bombings which took place in the early years were claimed by Zarqawi's group. Reports have indicated that oversights such as the failure to control access to the Qa'qaa munitions factory in Yusufiyah have allowed large quantities of munitions to fall into the hands of al-Qaida. In November 2010, the militant group Islamic State of Iraq, which is linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, threatened to "exterminate all Iraqi Christians".
Al-Qaeda did not begin training Palestinians until the late 1990s. Large groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have rejected an alliance with al-Qaeda, fearing that al-Qaeda will co-opt their cells. This may have changed recently. The Israeli security and intelligence services believe al-Qaeda has managed to infiltrate operatives from the Occupied Territories into Israel, and is waiting for an opportunity to attack.
, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are openly supporting the Army of Conquest, an umbrella rebel group fighting in the Syrian Civil War against the Syrian government that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar al-Sham.
Kashmir.
Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri consider India to be a part of an alleged Crusader-Zionist-Hindu conspiracy against the Islamic world. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, bin Laden was involved in training militants for Jihad in Kashmir while living in Sudan in the early 1990s. By 2001, Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had become a part of the al-Qaeda coalition. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), al-Qaeda was thought to have established bases in Pakistan administered Kashmir (in Azad Kashmir, and to some extent in Gilgit–Baltistan) during the 1999 Kargil War and continued to operate there with tacit approval of Pakistan's Intelligence services.
Many of the militants active in Kashmir were trained in the same madrasahs as Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Fazlur Rehman Khalil of Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was a signatory of al-Qaeda's 1998 declaration of Jihad against America and its allies. In a 'Letter to American People' (2002), bin Laden wrote that one of the reasons he was fighting America was because of its support to India on the Kashmir issue. In November 2001, Kathmandu airport went on high alert after threats that bin Laden planned to hijack a plane and crash it into a target in New Delhi. In 2002, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on a trip to Delhi, suggested that Al-Qaeda was active in Kashmir though he did not have any evidence. Rumsfeld proposed hi-tech ground sensors along the Line of Control to prevent militants from infiltrating into Indian-administered Kashmir.
An investigation in 2002 found evidence that al-Qaeda and its affiliates were prospering in Pakistan-administered Kashmir with tacit approval of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. In 2002, a special team of Special Air Service and Delta Force was sent into Indian-Administered Kashmir to hunt for bin Laden after receiving reports that he was being sheltered by Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which had been responsible for kidnapping western tourists in Kashmir in 1995. Britain's highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative Rangzieb Ahmed had previously fought in Kashmir with the group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and spent time in Indian prison after being captured in Kashmir.
US officials believe al-Qaeda was helping organize attacks in Kashmir in order to provoke conflict between India and Pakistan. Their strategy was to force Pakistan to move its troops to the border with India, thereby relieving pressure on al-Qaeda elements hiding in northwestern Pakistan. In 2006 al-Qaeda claimed they had established a wing in Kashmir. However Indian Army General H. S. Panag argued that the army had ruled out the presence of al-Qaeda in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Panag also said al-Qaeda had strong ties with Kashmiri militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed based in Pakistan. It has been noted that Waziristan has become a battlefield for Kashmiri militants fighting NATO in support of al-Qaeda and Taliban. Dhiren Barot, who wrote the "Army of Madinah in Kashmir" and was an al-Qaeda operative convicted for involvement in the 2004 financial buildings plot, had received training in weapons and explosives at a militant training camp in Kashmir.
Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of Kashmiri group Jaish-e-Mohammed, is believed to have met bin Laden several times and received funding from him. In 2002, Jaish-e-Mohammed organized the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl in an operation run in conjunction with al-Qaeda and funded by bin Laden. According to American counter-terrorism expert Bruce Riedel, al-Qaeda and Taliban were closely involved in the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 to Kandahar which led to the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh from an Indian prison. This hijacking, Riedel said, was rightly described by then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh as a 'dress rehearsal' for September 11 attacks. Bin Laden personally welcomed Azhar and threw a lavish party in his honor after his release. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who had been in prison for his role in the 1994 kidnappings of Western tourists in India, went on to murder Daniel Pearl and was sentenced to death in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf, who was one of the accused in 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, was related to Maulana Masood Azhar by marriage.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri militant group which is thought to be behind 2008 Mumbai attacks, is also known to have strong ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders living in Pakistan. In late 2002, top Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was arrested while being sheltered by Lashkar-e-Taiba in a safe house in Faisalabad. The FBI believes al-Qaeda and Lashkar have been 'intertwined' for a long time while the CIA has said that al-Qaeda funds Lashkar-e-Taiba. Jean-Louis Bruguière told Reuters in 2009 that "Lashkar-e-Taiba is no longer a Pakistani movement with only a Kashmir political or military agenda. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al-Qaeda."
In a video released in 2008, American-born senior al-Qaeda operative Adam Yahiye Gadahn said that "victory in Kashmir has been delayed for years; it is the liberation of the jihad there from this interference which, Allah willing, will be the first step towards victory over the Hindu occupiers of that Islam land."
In September 2009, a US drone strike reportedly killed Ilyas Kashmiri who was the chief of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, a Kashmiri militant group associated with al-Qaeda. Kashmiri was described by Bruce Riedel as a 'prominent' Al-Qaeda member while others have described him as head of military operations for al-Qaeda. Kashmiri was also charged by the US in a plot against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which was at the center of Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. US officials also believe that Kashmiri was involved in the Camp Chapman attack against the CIA. In January 2010, Indian authorities notified Britain of an al-Qaeda plot to hijack an Indian airlines or Air India plane and crash it into a British city. This information was uncovered from interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, an operative of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, who had been arrested in India.
In January 2010, US Defense secretary Robert Gates, while on a visit to Pakistan, said that al-Qaeda was seeking to destabilize the region and planning to provoke a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
Internet.
Al-Qaeda and its successors have migrated online to escape detection in an atmosphere of increased international vigilance. The group's use of the Internet has grown more sophisticated, with online activities that include financing, recruitment, networking, mobilization, publicity, and information dissemination, gathering and sharing.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri's al-Qaeda movement in Iraq regularly releases short videos glorifying the activity of jihadist suicide bombers. In addition, both before and after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq), the umbrella organization to which Al-Qaeda in Iraq belongs, the Mujahideen Shura Council, has a regular presence on the Web.
The range of multimedia content includes guerrilla training clips, stills of victims about to be murdered, testimonials of suicide bombers, and videos that show participation in jihad through stylized portraits of mosques and musical scores. A website associated with Al-Qaeda posted a video of captured American entrepreneur Nick Berg being decapitated in Iraq. Other decapitation videos and pictures, including those of Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, and Daniel Pearl, were first posted on jihadist websites.
In December 2004 an audio message claiming to be from bin Laden was posted directly to a website, rather than sending a copy to al Jazeera as he had done in the past. Al-Qaeda turned to the Internet for release of its videos in order to be certain they would be available unedited, rather than risk the possibility of al Jazeera editing out anything critical of the Saudi royal family.
Alneda.com and Jehad.net were perhaps the most significant al-Qaeda websites. Alneda was initially taken down by American Jon Messner, but the operators resisted by shifting the site to various servers and strategically shifting content.
The US government charged a British information technology specialist, Babar Ahmad, with terrorist offences related to his operating a network of English-language al-Qaeda websites, such as Azzam.com. He was convicted and sentenced to years in prison.
Online communications.
In 2007, al-Qaeda released "Mujahedeen Secrets", encryption software used for online and cellular communications. A later version, "Mujahideen Secrets 2", was released in 2008.
Aviation network.
al-Qaeda is believed to be operating a clandestine aviation network including "several Boeing 727 aircraft", turboprops and executive jets, according to a 2010 Reuters story. Based on a US Department of Homeland Security report, the story said al-Qaeda is possibly using aircraft to transport drugs and weapons from South America to various unstable countries in West Africa. A Boeing 727 can carry up to ten tons of cargo. The drugs eventually are smuggled to Europe for distribution and sale, and the weapons are used in conflicts in Africa and possibly elsewhere. Gunmen with links to al-Qaeda have been increasingly kidnapping Europeans for ransom. The profits from the drug and weapon sales, and kidnappings can, in turn, fund more militant activities.
Involvement in military conflicts.
The following is a list of military conflicts in which al-Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken part militarily.
Alleged CIA involvement.
Experts debate the notion that al-Qaeda attacks were an indirect result from the American CIA's Operation Cyclone program to help the Afghan mujahideen. Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, has written that al-Qaeda and bin Laden were "a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies", and that "Al-Qaida, literally 'the database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."
Munir Akram, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations from 2002 to 2008, wrote in a letter published in "The New York Times" on January 19, 2008:
CNN journalist Peter Bergen, Pakistani ISI Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, and CIA operatives involved in the Afghan program, such as Vincent Cannistraro, deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the foreign "mujahideen" or bin Laden, or that they armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. In his 2004 book "Ghost Wars", Steve Coll writes that the CIA had contemplated providing direct support to the foreign "mujahideen", but that the idea never moved beyond discussions.
Bergen and others argue that there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land since there were a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight. Bergen further argues that foreign "mujahideen" had no need for American funds since they received several million dollars per year from internal sources. Lastly, he argues that Americans could not have trained the foreign "mujahideen" because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan, and the Afghan Arabs were almost invariably militant Islamists reflexively hostile to Westerners whether or not the Westerners were helping the Muslim Afghans.
According to Bergen, who conducted the first television interview with bin Laden in 1997: the idea that "the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden... [is] a folk myth. There's no evidence of this... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."
Jason Burke also wrote:
Broader influence.
Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, was inspired by al-Qaeda, calling it "the most successful revolutionary movement in the world." While admitting different aims, he sought to "create a European version of Al-Qaida."
The appropriate response to offshoots is a subject of debate. A journalist reported in 2012 that a senior US military planner had asked: "Should we resort to drones and Special Operations raids every time some group raises the black banner of al Qaeda? How long can we continue to chase offshoots of offshoots around the world?"
Criticism.
Islamic extremism dates back to the early history of Islam with the emergence of the Kharijites in the 7th century CE. From their essentially political position, the Kharijites developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shiʿa Muslims. The original schism between Kharijites, Sunnis, and Shiʿas among Muslims was disputed over the political and religious succession to the guidance of the Muslim community ("Ummah") after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Shiʿas believe Ali ibn Abi Talib is the true successor to Muhammad, while Sunnis consider Abu Bakr to hold that position. The Kharijites broke away from both the Shiʿas and the Sunnis during the First Fitna (the first Islamic Civil War); they were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to "takfīr" (excommunication), whereby they declared both Sunni and Shiʿa Muslims to be either infidels ("kuffār") or false Muslims ("munāfiḳūn"), and therefore deemed them worthy of death for their perceived apostasy ("ridda").
According to a number of sources, a "wave of revulsion" has been expressed against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates by "religious scholars, former fighters and militants" who are alarmed by Al-Qaeda's takfir and its killing of Muslims in Muslim countries, especially in Iraq.
Noman Benotman, a former militant member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), went public with an open letter of criticism to Ayman al-Zawahiri in November 2007, after persuading the imprisoned senior leaders of his former group to enter into peace negotiations with the Libyan regime. While Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the affiliation of the group with Al-Qaeda in November 2007, the Libyan government released 90 members of the group from prison several months after "they were said to have renounced violence."
In 2007, on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Saudi sheikh Salman al-Ouda delivered a personal rebuke to bin Laden. Al-Ouda, a religious scholar and one of the fathers of the Sahwa, the fundamentalist awakening movement that swept through Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, is a widely respected critic of jihadism. Al-Ouda addressed Al-Qaeda's leader on television asking him:
According to Pew polls, support for Al-Qaeda had dropped in the Muslim world in the years before 2008. Support of suicide bombings in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, dropped by half or more in the last five years. In Saudi Arabia, only ten percent had a favorable view of Al-Qaeda, according to a December 2017 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank.
In 2007, the imprisoned Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, an influential Afghan Arab, "ideological godfather of Al-Qaeda", and former supporter of takfir, withdrew his support from Al-Qaeda with a book "Wathiqat Tarshid Al-'Aml Al-Jihadi fi Misr w'Al-'Alam" ().
Although once associated with Al-Qaeda, in September 2009 LIFG completed a new "code" for jihad, a 417-page religious document entitled "Corrective Studies". Given its credibility and the fact that several other prominent Jihadists in the Middle East have turned against Al-Qaeda, the LIFG's reversal may be an important step toward staunching Al-Qaeda's recruitment.
Other criticisms.
Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist based in Syria created a documentary about al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia. The documentary included interviews with former members of the group who stated their reasons for leaving al-Shabab. The members made accusations of segregation, lack of religious awareness and internal corruption and favoritism. In response to Kareem, the Global Islamic Media Front condemned Kareem, called him a liar, and denied the accusations from the former fighters.
In mid-2014 after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared that they had restored the Caliphate, an audio statement was released by the then-spokesman of the group Abu Muhammad al-Adnani claiming that "the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the Caliphate's authority." The speech included a religious refutation of Al-Qaeda for being too lenient regarding Shiites and their refusal to recognize the authority Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Adnani specifically noting: "It is not suitable for a state to give allegiance to an organization." He also recalled a past instance in which Osama bin Laden called on Al-Qaeda members and supporters to give allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi when the group was still solely operating in Iraq, as the Islamic State of Iraq, and condemned Ayman al-Zawahiri for not making this same claim for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Zawahiri was encouraging factionalism and division between former allies of ISIL such as the al-Nusra Front.
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1923 | Alessandro Volta | Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (, ; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
Volta also drew admiration from Napoleon Bonaparte for his invention, and was invited to the Institute of France to demonstrate his invention to the members of the institute. Volta enjoyed a certain amount of closeness with the emperor throughout his life and he was conferred numerous honours by him. Volta held the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia for nearly 40 years and was widely idolised by his students.
Despite his professional success, Volta tended to be a person inclined towards domestic life and this was more apparent in his later years. At this time he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family until his eventual death in 1827 from a series of illnesses which began in 1823. The SI unit of electric potential is named in his honour as the volt.
Early life and works.
Volta was born in Como, a town in northern Italy, on 18 February 1745. In 1794, Volta married an aristocratic lady also from Como, Teresa Peregrini, with whom he raised three sons: Zanino, Flaminio, and Luigi. His father, Filippo Volta, was of noble lineage. His mother, Donna Maddalena, came from the family of the Inzaghis.
In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularised the electrophorus, a device that produced static electricity. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by the Swedish experimenter Johan Wilcke. In 1777, he travelled through Switzerland, where he befriended H. B. de Saussure.
In the years between 1776 and 1778, Volta studied the chemistry of gases. He researched and discovered methane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin of the United States on "flammable air". In November 1776, he found methane in the marshes of Angera on Lake Maggiore, and by 1778 he managed to isolate methane. He devised experiments such as the ignition of methane by an electric spark in a closed vessel.
Volta also studied what we now call electrical capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential difference ("V") and charge ("Q"), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional. This is called Volta's Law of Capacitance, and for this work the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.
In 1779, he became a professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, a chair that he occupied for almost 40 years.
Volta's lectures were so crowded with students that the subsequent emperor Joseph II ordered the construction (based on a project by Leopold Pollack) of a new "physical theater", today the "Aula Volta". Furthermore, the emperor granted Volta substantial funding to equip the physics cabinet with instruments, purchased by Volta in England and France. At the University History Museum of the University of Pavia there are 150 of them, used by Alessandro Volta.
Volta and Galvani.
Luigi Galvani, an Italian physicist, discovered something he named, "animal electricity" when two different metals were connected in series with a frog's leg and to one another. Volta realised that the frog's leg served as both a conductor of electricity (what we would now call an electrolyte) and as a detector of electricity. He also understood that the frog's legs were irrelevant to the electric current, which was caused by the two differing metals. He replaced the frog's leg with brine-soaked paper, and detected the flow of electricity by other means familiar to him from his previous studies.
In this way he discovered the electrochemical series, and the law that the electromotive force (emf) of a galvanic cell, consisting of a pair of metal electrodes separated by electrolyte, is the difference between their two electrode potentials (thus, two identical electrodes and a common electrolyte give zero net emf). This may be called Volta's Law of the electrochemical series.
In 1800, as the result of a professional disagreement over the galvanic response advocated by Galvani, Volta invented the voltaic pile, an early electric battery, which produced a steady electric current. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was zinc and copper. Initially he experimented with individual cells in series, each cell being a wine goblet filled with brine into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped. The voltaic pile replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine.
Early battery.
In announcing his discovery of the voltaic pile, Volta paid tribute to the influences of William Nicholson, Tiberius Cavallo, and Abraham Bennet.
The battery made by Volta is credited as one of the first electrochemical cells. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is either sulfuric acid mixed with water or a form of saltwater brine. The electrolyte exists in the form and . Zinc metal, which is higher in the electrochemical series than both copper and hydrogen, is oxidized to zinc cations (Zn2+) and creates electrons that move to the copper electrode. The positively charged hydrogen ions (protons) capture electrons from the copper electrode, forming bubbles of hydrogen gas, H2. This makes the zinc rod the negative electrode and the copper rod the positive electrode.
Thus, there are two terminals, and an electric current will flow if they are connected. The chemical reactions in this voltaic cell are as follows:
Copper metal does not react, but rather it functions as a catalyst for the hydrogen-gas formation and an electrode for the electric current. The sulfate anion () does not undergo any chemical reaction either, but migrates to the zinc anode to compensate for the charge of the zinc cations formed there.
However, this cell also has some disadvantages. It is unsafe to handle, since sulfuric acid, even if diluted, can be hazardous. Also, the power of the cell diminishes over time because the hydrogen gas is not released. Instead, it accumulates on the surface of the copper electrode and forms a barrier between the metal and the electrolyte solution.
Last years and retirement.
In 1809, Volta became associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. In honour of his work, Volta was made a count by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810.
Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago, a frazione of Como, Italy, now named "Camnago Volta" in his honour. He died there on 5 March 1827, just after his 82nd birthday. Volta's remains were buried in Camnago Volta.
Legacy.
Volta's legacy is celebrated by the Tempio Voltiano memorial located in the public gardens by the lake. There is also a museum that has been built in his honour, which exhibits some of the equipment that Volta used to conduct experiments. Nearby stands the Villa Olmo, which houses the Voltian Foundation, an organization promoting scientific activities. Volta carried out his experimental studies and produced his first inventions near Como.
In the Old Campus of the University of Pavia there is the classroom (Aula Volta) commissioned by Emperor Joseph II to Leopoldo Pollack in 1787 for the lectures of Alessandro Volta, while in the University History Museum there are many scientific instruments that belonged to Volta and his chair and his blackboard.
His image was depicted on the Italian Lire 10,000 note (1990–1997) along with a sketch of his voltaic pile.
In late 2017, Nvidia announced a new workstation-focused GPU microarchitecture called Volta.
The electric eel species "Electrophorus voltai", described in 2019 and the strongest bioelectricity producer in nature, was named after Volta.
Religious beliefs.
Volta was raised as a Catholic and for all of his life continued to maintain his belief. Because he was not ordained a clergyman as his family expected, he was sometimes accused of being irreligious and some people have speculated about his possible unbelief, stressing that "he did not join the Church", or that he virtually "ignored the church's call". Nevertheless, he cast out doubts in a declaration of faith in which he said:
I do not understand how anyone can doubt the sincerity and constancy of my attachment to the religion which I profess, the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic religion in which I was born and brought up, and of which I have always made confession, externally and internally. I have, indeed, and only too often, failed in the performance of those good works which are the mark of a Catholic Christian, and I have been guilty of many sins: but through the special mercy of God I have never, as far as I know, wavered in my faith... In this faith I recognise a pure gift of God, a supernatural grace; but I have not neglected those human means which confirm belief, and overthrow the doubts which at times arise. I studied attentively the grounds and basis of religion, the works of apologists and assailants, the reasons for and against, and I can say that the result of such study is to clothe religion with such a degree of probability, even for the merely natural reason, that every spirit unperverted by sin and passion, every naturally noble spirit must love and accept it. May this confession which has been asked from me and which I willingly give, written and subscribed by my own hand, with authority to show it to whomsoever you will, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, may it produce some good fruit!
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1924 | Argo Navis | Argo Navis (the Ship Argo), or simply Argo, is one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations, now a grouping of three IAU constellations. It is formerly a single large constellation in the southern sky. The genitive is "Argus Navis", abbreviated "Arg". Flamsteed and other early modern astronomers called it Navis (the Ship), genitive "Navis", abbreviated "Nav".
The constellation proved to be of unwieldy size, as it was 28% larger than the next largest constellation and had more than 160 easily visible stars. The 1755 catalogue of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille divided it into the three modern constellations that occupy much of the same area: Carina (the keel), Puppis (the poop deck) and Vela (the sails).
Argo derived from the ship "Argo" in Greek mythology, sailed by Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Some stars of Puppis and Vela can be seen from Mediterranean latitudes in winter and spring, the ship appearing to skim along the "river of the Milky Way." Due to precession of the equinoxes, the position of the stars from Earth's viewpoint has shifted southward, and though most of the constellation was visible in Classical times, the constellation is now not easily visible from most of the northern hemisphere. All the stars of Argo Navis are easily visible from the tropics southward, and pass near zenith from southern temperate latitudes. The brightest of these is Canopus (α Carinae), the second-brightest night-time star, now assigned to Carina.
History.
Development of the Greek constellation.
Argo Navis is known from Greek texts, which derived it from Egypt around 1000 BC. Plutarch attributed it to the Egyptian "Boat of Osiris." Some academics theorized a Sumerian origin related to the Epic of Gilgamesh, a hypothesis rejected for lack of evidence that Mesopotamian cultures considered these stars, or any portion of them, to form a boat.
Over time, Argo became identified exclusively with ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts. In Ptolemy's "Almagest", Argo Navis occupies the portion of the Milky Way between Canis Major and Centaurus, with stars marking such details as the "little shield", the "steering-oar", the "mast-holder", and the "stern-ornament", which continued to be reflected in cartographic representations in celestial atlases into the nineteenth century (see below). The ship appeared to rotate about the pole sternwards, so nautically in reverse. Aratus, the Greek poet / historian living in the third century BCE, noted this backward progression writing, "Argo by the "Great Dog's" [Canis Major's] tail is drawn; for hers is not a usual course, but backward turned she comes ...".
The constituent modern constellations.
In modern times, Argo Navis was considered unwieldy due to its enormous size (28% larger than Hydra, the largest modern constellation). In his 1763 star catalogue, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille explained that there were more than a hundred and sixty stars clearly visible to the naked eye in Navis, and so he used the set of lowercase and uppercase Latin letters three times on portions of the constellation referred to as ""Argûs in carina" (Carina, the keel), "Argûs in puppi" (Puppis, the poop deck or stern), and "Argûs in velis"" (Vela, the sails). Lacaille replaced Bayer's designations with new ones that followed stellar magnitudes more closely, but used only a single Greek-letter sequence and described the constellation for those stars as "Argûs". Similarly, faint unlettered stars were listed only as in "Argûs".
The final breakup and abolition of Argo Navis was proposed by Sir John Herschel in 1841 and again in 1844. Despite this, the constellation remained in use in parallel with its constituent parts into the 20th century. In 1922, along with the other constellations, it received a three-letter abbreviation: "Arg". The breakup and relegation to a former constellation occurred in 1930 when the IAU defined the 88 modern constellations, formally instituting "Carina", "Puppis", and "Vela", and declaring "Argo" obsolete. Lacaille's designations were kept in the offspring, so "Carina" has α, β, and ε; "Vela" has γ and δ; "Puppis" has ζ; and so on. As a result of this breakup, Argo Navis is the only one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations that is no longer officially recognized as a single constellation.
In addition, the constellation "Pyxis" (the mariner's compass) occupies an area near what in antiquity was considered part of Argo's mast. Some recent authors state that the compass was part of the ship, but magnetic compasses were unknown in ancient Greek times. Lacaille considered it a separate constellation representing a modern scientific instrument (like "Microscopium" and "Telescopium"), that he created for maps of the stars of the southern hemisphere. Pyxis was listed among his 14 new constellations. In 1844, John Herschel suggested formalizing the mast as a new constellation, "Malus", to replace Lacaille's "Pyxis", but the idea did not catch on. Similarly, an effort by Edmond Halley to detach the "cloud of mist" at the prow of Argo Navis to form a new constellation named "Robur Carolinum" (Charles' Oak) in honor of King Charles II, his patron, was unsuccessful.
Representations in other cultures.
In Vedic period astronomy, which drew its zodiac signs and many constellations from the period of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, Indian observers saw the asterism as a boat.
The Māori had several names for the constellation, including "Te Waka-o-Tamarereti" (the canoe of Tamarereti), "Te Kohi-a-Autahi" (an expression meaning "cold of autumn settling down on land and water"), and "Te Kohi".
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1925 | Andromeda (mythology) | In Greek mythology, Andromeda (; or ) is the daughter of Cepheus, the king of Aethiopia, and his wife, Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia as divine punishment. Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but is saved from death by Perseus, who marries her and takes her to Greece to reign as his queen.
As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical times; rescued by a Greek hero, Andromeda's narration is considered the forerunner to the "princess and dragon" motif. From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived from Ovid's "Metamorphoses". The story has appeared many times in such diverse media as plays, poetry, novels, operas, classical and popular music, film, and paintings. The Andromeda constellation is named after her.
The Andromeda tradition, from classical times onwards, has incorporated elements of other stories, including Saint George and the Dragon, introducing a horse for the hero, and the tale of Pegasus, Bellerophon's winged horse. Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem , which tells a similar story, has introduced further confusion. The tradition has been criticized for depicting the princess of Aethiopia as white; few artists have chosen to portray her as dark-skinned, despite Ovid's account of her. Others have noted that Perseus's liberation of Andromeda was a popular choice of subject among male artists, reinforcing a narrative of male superiority with its powerful male hero and its submissive female in bondage.
Etymology.
The name Andromeda is from the Greek , perhaps meaning 'mindful of her husband'. The name is from the noun meaning 'man', and a verb, whether , , or , all related to , the likely origin of the name of Medea, the sorceress.
Classical mythology.
Central story.
In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of ancient Aethiopia. Her mother Cassiopeia foolishly boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, a display of hubris by a human that is unacceptable to the gods. To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon floods the Ethiopian coast and sends a sea monster named Cetus to ravage the kingdom's inhabitants. In desperation, King Cepheus consults the oracle of Ammon, who announces that no respite can be found until the king sacrifices his daughter, Andromeda, to the monster. She is thus stripped naked and chained to a rock in Jaffa by the sea to await her death. Perseus is just then flying near the coast of Ethiopia on his winged sandals or on Pegasus the winged horse, having slain the Gorgon Medusa and carrying her severed head, which instantly turns to stone any who look at it. Upon seeing Andromeda bound to the rock, Perseus falls in love with her, and he secures Cepheus' promise of her hand in marriage if he can save her. Perseus kills the monster with the magical sword he had used against Medusa, saving Andromeda. Preparations are then made for their marriage, in spite of her having been previously promised to her uncle, Phineus. At the wedding, a quarrel between the rivals ends when Perseus shows Medusa's head to Phineus and his allies, turning them to stone.
Andromeda follows her husband to his native island of Serifos, where he rescues his mother, Danaë. They next go to Argos, where Perseus is the rightful heir to the throne. However, after accidentally killing his grandfather Acrisius, the king of Argos, Perseus chooses to become king of neighboring Tiryns instead. The mythographer Apollodorus states that Perseus and Andromeda have six sons: Perses, Alcaeus, Heleus, Mestor, Sthenelus, Electryon, and a daughter, Gorgophone. Their descendants rule Mycenae from Electryon down to Eurystheus, after whom Atreus attains the kingdom. The Greek hero Heracles is also a descendant, as his mother Alcmene is the daughter of Electryon.
According to the "Catasterismi", Andromeda is placed in the sky by Athena as the constellation Andromeda, in a pose with her limbs outstretched, similar to when she was chained to the rock, in commemoration of Perseus' bravery in fighting the sea monster.
In classical art.
The myth of Andromeda was represented in the art of ancient Greece and of Rome in media including red-figure pottery such as pelike jars, frescoes, and mosaics. Depictions range from straightforward representations of scenes from the myth, such as of Andromeda being tied up for sacrifice, to more ambiguous portrayals with different events depicted in the same painting, as at the Roman villa in Boscotrecase, where Perseus is shown twice, space standing in for time. Favoured scenes changed with time: until the 4th century BC, Perseus was shown decapitating Medusa, while after that, and in Roman portrayals, he was shown rescuing Andromeda.
Variants.
There are several variants of the legend. In Hyginus's account, Perseus does not ask for Andromeda's hand in marriage before saving her, and when he afterwards intends to keep her for his wife, both her father Cepheus and her uncle Phineas plot against him, and Perseus resorts to using Medusa's head to turn them to stone. In contrast, Ovid states that Perseus kills Cetus with his magical sword, even though he also carries Medusa's head, which could easily turn the monster to stone (and Perseus does use Medusa's head for this purpose in other situations). The earliest straightforward account of Perseus using Medusa's head against Cetus, however, is from the later 2nd-century AD satirist Lucian.
The 12th-century Byzantine writer John Tzetzes says that Cetus swallows Perseus, who kills the monster by hacking his way out with his sword. Conon places the story in Joppa (Iope or Jaffa, on the coast of modern Israel), and makes Andromeda's uncles Phineus and Phoinix rivals for her hand in marriage; her father Cepheus contrives to have Phoinix abduct her in a ship named "Cetos" from a small island she visits to make sacrifices to Aphrodite, and Perseus, sailing nearby, intercepts and destroys "Cetos" and its crew, who are "petrified by shock" at his bravery.
Constellations.
Andromeda is represented in the Northern sky by the constellation Andromeda, mentioned by the astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century, which contains the Andromeda Galaxy. Several constellations are associated with the myth. Viewing the fainter stars visible to the naked eye, the constellations are rendered as a maiden (Andromeda) chained up, facing or turning away from the ecliptic; a warrior (Perseus), often depicted holding the head of Medusa, next to Andromeda; a huge man (Cepheus) wearing a crown, upside down with respect to the ecliptic; a smaller figure (Cassiopeia) next to the man, sitting on a chair; a whale or sea monster (Cetus) just beyond Pisces, to the south-east; the flying horse Pegasus, who was born from the stump of Medusa's neck after Perseus had decapitated her; the paired fish of the constellation Pisces, that in myth were caught by Dictys the fisherman who was brother of Polydectes, king of Seriphos, the place where Perseus and his mother Danaë were stranded.
In literature.
In poetry.
George Chapman's poem in heroic couplets "Andromeda liberata, Or the nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda", was written for the 1614 wedding of Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset and Frances Howard. The wedding, which led to a "train of intrigue and murder and executions, was the scandal of the age." Scholars have been surprised that Chapman should have celebrated such a marriage, and his choice of an allegory of the Perseus-Andromeda myth for the purpose. The poem infuriated both Carr and the Earl of Essex, causing Chapman to publish a "justification" of his approach. Chapman's poem sees human nature as chaotic and disorderly, like the sea monster, opposed by Andromeda's beauty and Perseus's balanced nature; their union brings about an astrological harmony of Venus and Mars which perfects the character of Perseus, since Venus was thought always to dominate Mars. Unfortunately for Chapman, Essex supposed that he was represented by the "barraine rocke" that Andromeda was chained up to: Howard had divorced Essex on the grounds that he could not consummate their marriage, and she had married Carr with her hair untied, indicating that she was a virgin. Further, the poem could be read as having dangerous political implications, involving King James.
Ludovico Ariosto's influential epic poem (1516–1532) features a pagan princess named Angelica who at one point is in exactly the same situation as Andromeda, chained naked to a rock on the sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and is saved at the last minute by the Saracen knight Ruggiero. Images of Angelica and Ruggiero are often hard to distinguish from those of Andromeda and Perseus.
John Keats's 1819 sonnet "On the Sonnet" compares the restricted sonnet form to the bound Andromeda as being "Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness". William Morris retells the story of Perseus and Andromeda in his epic 1868 poem "The Earthly Paradise", in the section "April: The Doom of King Acrisius". Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnet "Andromeda" (1879) has invited many interpretations. Charles Kingsley's free verse poem retelling the myth, "Andromeda" (1858), was set to music by Cyril Rootham in his "Andromeda" (1905).
In novels.
In the 1851 novel "Moby-Dick", Herman Melville's narrator Ishmael discusses the Perseus and Andromeda myth in two chapters. Chapter 55, "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales," mentions depictions of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from Cetus in artwork by Guido Reni and William Hogarth. In Chapter 82, "The Honor and Glory of Whaling," Ishmael recounts the myth and says that the Romans found a giant whale skeleton in Joppa that they believed to be the skeleton of Cetus. Jules Laforgue included what Knutson calls "a remarkable satirical adaptation", , in his 1887 . All the traditional elements are present, along with elements of fantasy and lyricism, but only to allow Laforgue to parody them. The romance, crime, and thriller writer Carlton Dawe's 1909 novel "The New Andromeda" (published in America as "The Woman, the Man, and the Monster") offers what was called at the time a "wholly unconventional" retelling of the Andromeda story in a modern setting. Robert Nichols's 1923 short story "Perseus and Andromeda" satirically retells the story in contrasting styles. In her 1978 novel "The Sea, the Sea", Iris Murdoch uses the Andromeda myth, as presented in a reproduction of Titian's painting "Perseus and Andromeda" in the Wallace Collection in London, to reflect the character and motives of her characters. Charles has an LSD-fuelled vision of a serpent; when he returns to London, he becomes ill on seeing Titian's painting, whereupon his cousin James comes to his rescue.
In the performing arts.
In theatre.
The theme, well suited to the stage, was introduced to theatre by Sophocles in his lost tragedy "Andromeda" (5th century BC), which survives only in fragments. Euripides took up the theme in his play of the same name (412 BC), also now lost, but parodied by Aristophanes in his comedy (411 BC) and influential in the ancient world. In the parody, Mnesilochus is shaved and dressed as a woman to gain entrance to the women's secret rites, held in honour of the fertility goddess Demeter. Euripides swoops mock-heroically across the stage as Perseus on a theatrical crane, trying and failing to rescue Mnesilochus, who responds by acting out the role of Andromeda.
The legend of Perseus and Andromeda became popular among playwrights in the 17th century, including Lope de Vega's 1621 , and Pierre Corneille's famous 1650 verse play , with dramatic stage machinery effects, including Perseus astride Pegasus as he battles the sea monster. The play, a , presented to King Louis XIV of France and performed by the , the royal troupe, had enormous and lasting success, continuing in production until 1660, to Corneille's surprise. The production was a radical departure from the tradition of French theatre, based in part on the Italian tradition of operas about Andromeda; it was semi-operatic, with many songs, set to music by D'Assouci, alongside the stage scenery by the Italian painter Giacomo Torelli. Corneille chose to present Andromeda fully-clothed, supposing that her nakedness had been merely a painterly tradition; Knutson comments that in so doing, "he unintentionally broke the last link with the early erotic myth."
Pedro Calderón de la Barca's 1653 was also inspired by Corneille, and like was heavily embellished with the playwrights' inventions and traditional additions.
The Andromeda theme was explored later in works such as Muriel Stuart's closet drama "Andromeda Unfettered" (1922), featuring: Andromeda, "the spirit of woman"; Perseus, "the new spirit of man"; a chorus of "women who desire the old thrall"; and a chorus of "women who crave the new freedom".
In music and opera.
The Andromeda theme has been popular in classical music since the 17th century. It became a theme for opera from the 16th century, with an "Andromeda" in Italy in 1587. This was followed by Claudio Monteverdi's "Andromeda" (1618-1620). Benedetto Ferrari's "Andromeda", with music by Francesco Manelli, was the first opera performed in a public theatre, Venice's Teatro San Cassiano, in 1637. This set the pattern for Italian opera for several centuries.
Jean-Baptiste Lully's (1682), a tragédie lyrique in 5 acts, was inspired by the popularity of Corneille's play. The libretto was by Philippe Quinault, and a real horse appeared on stage as Pegasus. saw an initial run of 33 consecutive performances, 45 in total, exceptional at that time. Written for King Louis XIV, it has been described as Lully's "greatest creation[...] considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre. Filled with dancing, fight scenes, monsters and special effects[...] [a] truly spectacular opera". Michael Haydn wrote the music for another in 1797. A total of seventeen Andromeda operas were created in Italy in the 18th century.
Other classical works have taken a variety of forms including (1726), a pasticcio-serenata on the subject of Perseus freeing Andromeda, by a team of composers including Vivaldi, and Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf's Symphony in F ("Perseus' Rescue of Andromeda") and Symphony in D ("The Petrification of Phineus and his Friends"), Nos. 4 and 5 of his "Symphonies after Ovid's Metamorphoses" ().
In the 19th century, Augusta Holmès composed the symphonic poem (1883). In 2019, Caroline Mallonée wrote her "Portraits of Andromeda" for cello and string orchestra.
In popular music, the theme is employed in tracks on Weyes Blood's 2019 album "Titanic Rising" and on Ensiferum's 2020 album "Thalassic".
In film.
The 1981 film "Clash of the Titans" is loosely based on the story of Perseus, Andromeda, and Cassiopeia. In the film the monster is a kraken, a giant squid-like sea monster in Norse mythology, rather than the whale-like Cetos of Greek mythology. Perseus defeats the sea monster by showing it Medusa's face to turn it into stone, rather than by using his magical sword, and rides Pegasus.
The 2010 remake with the same title, adapts the original story. Andromeda is set to be sacrificed to the kraken but is saved by Perseus. The historian and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. criticizes both the original film and its remake for using white actresses to portray the Ethiopian princess Andromeda.
In art.
Merged traditions.
The legend of Saint George and the Dragon, in which a courageous knight rescues a princess from a monster (with clear parallels to the Andromeda myth), became a popular subject for art in the Late Middle Ages, and artists drew from both traditions. One result is that Perseus is often shown with the flying horse Pegasus when fighting the sea monster, even though classical sources consistently state that he flew using winged sandals.
Idealized beauty to realism.
Andromeda, and her role in the popular myth of Perseus, has been the subject of numerous ancient and modern works of art, where she is represented as a bound and helpless, typically beautiful, young woman placed in terrible danger, who must be saved through the unswerving courage of a hero who loves her. She is often shown, as by Rubens, with Perseus and the flying horse Pegasus at the moment she is freed. Rembrandt, in contrast, shows a suffering Andromeda, frightened and alone. She is depicted naturalistically, exemplifying the painter's rejection of idealized beauty. Frederic, Lord Leighton's Gothic style 1891 "Perseus and Andromeda" painting presents the white body of Andromeda in pure and untouched innocence, indicating an unfair sacrifice for a divine punishment that was not directed towards her, but to her mother. Pegasus and Perseus are surrounded by a halo of light that connects them visually to the white body of the princess.
Varied materials and approaches.
Apart from oil on canvas, artists have used a variety of materials to depict the myth of Andromeda, including the sculptor Domenico Guidi's marble, and François Boucher's etching. In modern art of the 20th century, artists moved to depict the myth in new ways. Félix Vallotton's 1910 "Perseus Killing the Dragon" is one of several paintings, such as his 1908 "The Rape of Europa", in which the artist depicts human bodies using a harsh light which makes them appear brutal.
Alexander Liberman's 1962 "Andromeda" is a black circle on a white field, transected by purple and dark green crescent arcs.
Analysis.
Ethnicity.
Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of Aethiopia, which ancient Greeks located at the edge of the world in Nubia, the lands south of Egypt. The term "Aithiops" was applied to peoples who dwelt above the equator, between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Homer says the Ethiopians live "at the world's end, and lie in two halves, the one looking West and the other East". The 5th-century BC historian Herodotus writes that "Where south inclines westwards, the part of the world stretching farthest towards the sunset is Ethiopia", and also included a plan by Cambyses II of Persia to invade Ethiopia (Kush).
By the 1st century BC a rival location for Andromeda's story had been established, however: an outcrop of rocks near the ancient port city of Joppa, as reported by Pomponius Mela, the traveller Pausanias, the geographer Strabo, and the historian Josephus. A case has been made that this new version of the myth was exploited to enhance the fame and serve the local tourist trade of Joppa, which also became connected with the biblical story of Jonah and yet another huge sea creature. This was at odds with Andromeda's African origins, adding to the confusion already surrounding her ethnicity, as reflected in 5th-century Greek vase images showing Andromeda attended by dark-skinned African servants and wearing clothing that would have looked foreign to Greeks, yet with light skin.
In the "Greek Anthology", Philodemus (1st century BC) wrote about the "Indian Andromeda".
The art historian Elizabeth McGrath discusses the tradition, as promoted by the influential Roman poet Ovid, that Andromeda was a dark-skinned woman of either Ethiopian or Indian origin. In his "Heroides", Ovid has Sappho explain to Phaon: "If I’m not pale, Andromeda pleased Perseus, dark with the colour of her father Cepheus’s land. And often white pigeons mate with other hues, and the dark turtledove’s loved by emerald birds"; the Latin word Ovid uses here for 'dark Andromeda' refers to the colour black or brown. Elsewhere he says that Perseus brought Andromeda from "darkest" India and declares "Nor was Andromeda's colour any problem to her wing-footed aerial lover" adding that "White suits dark girls; you looked so attractive in white, Andromeda". Ovid's account of Andromeda's story follows Euripides' play "Andromeda" in having Perseus initially mistake the chained Andromeda for a statue of marble, which has been taken to mean she was light-skinned; but since statues in Ovid's time were commonly painted to look like living people, her skin could have been of any colour. The ambiguity is reflected in a description by the 2nd-century AD sophist Philostratus of a painting depicting Perseus and Andromeda. He emphasizes the painting's Ethiopian setting, and notes that Andromeda "is charming in that she is fair of skin though in Ethiopia," in clear contrast to the other "charming Ethiopians with their strange coloring and their grim smiles" who have assembled to cheer Perseus in this picture.
Artworks in the modern era continue to portray Andromeda as fair-skinned, regardless of her stated origins; only a small minority of artists, such as an engraving after Abraham van Diepenbeeck, have chosen to show her as dark. The journalist Patricia Yaker Ekall comments that even this work depicts Andromeda with "European features". She suggests that the "narrative" of white superiority took precedence, and that "the visual of a white man rescuing a chained up black woman would have been too much of a trigger".
Bondage and rescue.
The imagery of Perseus and Andromeda was depicted by many artists of the Victorian era. Adrienne Munich states that most of these choose the moment after the hero Perseus has killed Medusa and is preparing to "slay the dragon and unbind the maiden". In her view, this transitional moment just precedes "the hero's final test of manhood before entering adult sexuality". Andromeda, on the other hand, "has no story, but she has a role and a lineage", being a princess, and having "attributes: chains, nakedness, flowing hair, beauty, virginity. Without a voice in her fate, she neither defies the gods nor chooses her mate." Munich comments that given that most of the artists were men, "it can be thought of as a male myth", providing convenient gender roles. She cites Catherine MacKinnon's description of the gender differences as "the erotization of dominance and submission": the male gets the power and the female is submissive. Further, the rescue myth provides a "veneer of charity" over the themes of aggression and possession.
Munich likens the effect to John Everett Millais's 1870 painting "The Knight Errant", where the knight, "errant like Oedipus", finds a man sexually assaulting a bound and naked woman, which she calls a Freudian "primal scene". The knight kills the man and frees the woman. She asks whether Millais's knight is hiding from the woman's body, or demonstrating self-control, or whether he has "killed his own more aggressive self". She states that similar psychological themes are implied by the story of Perseus and Andromeda: Perseus makes Andromeda into a mother, thus Oedipally "conflating the purpose of his quest with the goal of finding a wife."
As for the bondage, Munich notes that the Victorian critic John Ruskin attacked male exploitation of what she calls "suffering nudes as subjects for titillating pictures." "Andromeda" is, she writes, the name of a type of "debased" imagery. She gives as example Gustave Doré's drawing of the voluptuously chained-up Angelica for , where "torment combines with an artistic pose, giving a new meaning to the concept of the 'pin-up'." She notes Ruskin's assertion that the image linked nude prostitutes to the naked Christ, both perverting the meaning of Andromeda's suffering and "blasphem[ing] Christ's sacrifice".
Further, Munich writes, Andromeda's name means 'Ruler of Men', hinting at her power; and indeed, she can be seen as "the good sister" of the monstrous female, the Medusa who turns men to stone. In psychological terms, she comments, "by slaying the Medusa and freeing Andromeda, the hero tames the chaotic female, the very sign of nature, simultaneously choosing and constructing the socially defined and acceptable female behavior."
The scholar of literature Harold Knutson describes the story as having a "disturbing sensuality", which together with the evident injustice of Andromeda's "undeserved sacrifice, create a curiously ambiguous effect". He suggests that in the earlier Palestinian version, the woman was the object of desire, Aphrodite/Ishtar/Astarte, and the hero was the sun god Marduk. The monster was woman in evil form, so chaining her human form would keep her from further evil. Knutson comments that the myth illustrates "the ambiguous male view of the eternal female principle."
Knutson writes that a similar pattern is seen in several other myths, including Heracles' rescue of Hesione; Jason's rescue of Medea from the hundred-eyed dragon; Cadmus's rescue of Harmonia from a dragon; and in an early version of another tale, Theseus's rescue of Ariadne from the Minotaur. He comments that all of this points to "the richness of the [story's] archetypal model", citing Hudo Hetzner's analysis of the many stories that involve a hero rescuing a maiden from a monster. The beast may be a sea-monster, or it may be a dragon that lives in a cave and terrifies a whole country, or the monstrous Count Dracula who lives in a castle.
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1926 | Antlia | Antlia (; from Ancient Greek "ἀντλία") is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means "pump" in Latin and Greek; it represents an air pump. Originally Antlia Pneumatica, the constellation was established by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. Its non-specific (single-word) name, already in limited use, was preferred by John Herschel then welcomed by the astronomic community which officially accepted this. North of stars forming some of the sails of the ship Argo Navis (the constellation Vela), Antlia is completely visible from latitudes south of 49 degrees north.
Antlia is a faint constellation; its brightest star is Alpha Antliae, an orange giant that is a suspected variable star, ranging between apparent magnitudes 4.22 and 4.29. S Antliae is an eclipsing binary star system, changing in brightness as one star passes in front of the other. Sharing a common envelope, the stars are so close they will one day merge to form a single star. Two star systems with known exoplanets, HD 93083 and WASP-66, lie within Antlia, as do NGC 2997, a spiral galaxy, and the Antlia Dwarf Galaxy.
History.
The French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation in French as "la Machine Pneumatique" (the Pneumatic Machine) in 1751–52, commemorating the air pump invented by the French physicist Denis Papin. De Lacaille had observed and catalogued almost 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope, devising fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe. He named all but one in honour of instruments that symbolised the Age of Enlightenment. Lacaille depicted Antlia as a single-cylinder vacuum pump used in Papin's initial experiments, while German astronomer Johann Bode chose the more advanced double-cylinder version. Lacaille Latinised the name to "Antlia pneumatica" on his 1763 chart. English astronomer John Herschel proposed shrinking the name to one word in 1844, noting that Lacaille himself had abbreviated his constellations thus on occasion. This was universally adopted. The International Astronomical Union adopted it as one of the 88 modern constellations in 1922.
Although visible to the Ancient Greeks, Antlia's stars were too faint to have been commonly recognised as a figurative object, or part of one, in ancient asterisms. The stars that now comprise Antlia are in a zone of the sky associated with the asterism/old constellation Argo Navis, the ship, "the Argo", of the Argonauts, in its latter centuries. This, due to its immense size, was split into hull, poop deck and sails by Lacaille in 1763. Ridpath reports that due to their faintness, the stars of Antlia did not make up part of the classical depiction of Argo Navis.
In non-Western astronomy.
Chinese astronomers were able to view what is modern Antlia from their latitudes, and incorporated its stars into two different constellations. Several stars in the southern part of Antlia were a portion of "Dong'ou", which represented an area in southern China. Furthermore, Epsilon, Eta, and Theta Antliae were incorporated into the celestial temple, which also contained stars from modern Pyxis.
Characteristics.
Covering 238.9 square degrees and hence 0.579% of the sky, Antlia ranks 62nd of the 88 modern constellations by area. Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 49°N. Hydra the sea snake runs along the length of its northern border, while Pyxis the compass, Vela the sails, and Centaurus the centaur line it to the west, south and east respectively. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union, is "Ant". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon with an east side, south side and ten other sides (facing the two other cardinal compass points) ("illustrated in infobox at top-right"). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −24.54° and −40.42°.
Features.
Stars.
Lacaille gave nine stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Theta, combining two stars next to each other as Zeta. Gould later added a tenth, Iota Antliae. Beta and Gamma Antliae (now HR 4339 and HD 90156) ended up in the neighbouring constellation Hydra once the constellation boundaries were delineated in 1930. Within the constellation's borders, there are 42 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
The constellation's two brightest stars—Alpha and Epsilon Antliae—shine with a reddish tinge. Alpha is an orange giant of spectral type K4III that is a suspected variable star, ranging between apparent magnitudes 4.22 and 4.29. It is located 320 ± 10 light-years away from Earth. Estimated to be shining with around 480 to 555 times the luminosity of the Sun, it is most likely an ageing star that is brightening and on its way to becoming a Mira variable star, having converted all its core fuel into carbon. Located 590 ± 30 light-years from Earth, Epsilon Antliae is an evolved orange giant star of spectral type K3 IIIa, that has swollen to have a diameter about 69 times that of the Sun, and a luminosity of around 1279 Suns. It is slightly variable. At the other end of Antlia, Iota Antliae is likewise an orange giant of spectral type K1 III. It is 202 ± 2 light-years distant.
Located near Alpha is Delta Antliae, a binary star, 450 ± 10 light-years distant from Earth. The primary is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B9.5V and magnitude 5.6, and the secondary is a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F9Ve and magnitude 9.6. Zeta Antliae is a wide optical double star. The brighter star—Zeta1 Antliae—is 410 ± 40 light-years distant and has a magnitude of 5.74, though it is a true binary star system composed of two white main sequence stars of magnitudes 6.20 and 7.01 that are separated by 8.042 arcseconds. The fainter star—Zeta2 Antliae—is 386 ± 5 light-years distant and of magnitude 5.9. Eta Antliae is another double composed of a yellow white star of spectral type F1V and magnitude 5.31, with a companion of magnitude 11.3. Theta Antliae is likewise double, most likely composed of an A-type main sequence star and a yellow giant. S Antliae is an eclipsing binary star system that varies in apparent magnitude from 6.27 to 6.83 over a period of 15.6 hours. The system is classed as a W Ursae Majoris variable—the primary is hotter than the secondary and the drop in magnitude is caused by the latter passing in front of the former. Calculating the properties of the component stars from the orbital period indicates that the primary star has a mass 1.94 times and a diameter 2.026 times that of the Sun, and the secondary has a mass 0.76 times and a diameter 1.322 times that of the Sun. The two stars have similar luminosity and spectral type as they have a common envelope and share stellar material. The system is thought to be around 5–6 billion years old. The two stars will eventually merge to form a single fast-spinning star.
T Antliae is a yellow-white supergiant of spectral type F6Iab and Classical Cepheid variable ranging between magnitude 8.88 and 9.82 over 5.9 days. U Antliae is a red C-type carbon star and is an irregular variable that ranges between magnitudes 5.27 and 6.04. At 910 ± 50 light-years distant, it is around 5819 times as luminous as the Sun. BF Antliae is a Delta Scuti variable that varies by 0.01 of a magnitude. HR 4049, also known as AG Antliae, is an unusual hot variable ageing star of spectral type B9.5Ib-II. It is undergoing intense loss of mass and is a unique variable that does not belong to any class of known variable star, ranging between magnitudes 5.29 and 5.83 with a period of 429 days. It is around 6000 light-years away from Earth. UX Antliae is an R Coronae Borealis variable with a baseline apparent magnitude of around 11.85, with irregular dimmings down to below magnitude 18.0. A luminous and remote star, it is a supergiant with a spectrum resembling that of a yellow-white F-type star but it has almost no hydrogen.
HD 93083 is an orange dwarf star of spectral type K3V that is smaller and cooler than the Sun. It has a planet that was discovered by the radial velocity method with the HARPS spectrograph in 2005. About as massive as Saturn, the planet orbits its star with a period of 143 days at a mean distance of 0.477 AU. WASP-66 is a sunlike star of spectral type F4V. A planet with 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter orbits it every 4 days, discovered by the transit method in 2012. DEN 1048-3956 is a brown dwarf of spectral type M8 located around 13 light-years distant from Earth. At magnitude 17 it is much too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. It has a surface temperature of about 2500 K. Two powerful flares lasting 4–5 minutes each were detected in 2002. 2MASS 0939-2448 is a system of two cool and faint brown dwarfs, probably with effective temperatures of about 500 and 700 K and masses of about 25 and 40 times that of Jupiter, though it is also possible that both objects have temperatures of 600 K and 30 Jupiter masses.
Deep-sky objects.
Antlia contains many faint galaxies, the brightest of which is NGC 2997 at magnitude 10.6. It is a loosely wound face-on spiral galaxy of type Sc. Though nondescript in most amateur telescopes, it presents bright clusters of young stars and many dark dust lanes in photographs. Discovered in 1997, the Antlia Dwarf is a 14.8m dwarf spheroidal galaxy that belongs to the Local Group of galaxies. In 2018 the discovery was announced of a very low surface brightness galaxy near Epsilon Antliae, Antlia 2, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The Antlia Cluster, also known as Abell S0636, is a cluster of galaxies located in the Hydra–Centaurus Supercluster. It is the third nearest to the Local Group after the Virgo Cluster and the Fornax Cluster. The cluster's distance from earth is Located in the southeastern corner of the constellation, it boasts the giant elliptical galaxies NGC 3268 and NGC 3258 as the main members of a southern and northern subgroup respectively, and contains around 234 galaxies in total.
Antlia is home to the huge Antlia Supernova Remnant, one of the largest supernova remnants in the sky.
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1927 | Ara (constellation) | Ara (Latin for "the Altar") is a southern constellation between Scorpius, Telescopium, Triangulum Australe, and Norma. It was (as ) one of the Greek bulk (namely 48) described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union.
The orange supergiant Beta Arae, to us its brightest star measured with near-constant apparent magnitude of 2.85, is marginally brighter than blue-white Alpha Arae. Seven star systems are known to host planets. Sunlike Mu Arae hosts four known planets. Gliese 676 is a (gravity-paired) binary red dwarf system with four known planets.
The Milky Way crosses the northwestern part of Ara. Within the constellation is Westerlund 1, a super star cluster that contains the red supergiant Westerlund 1-26, one of the largest stars known.
History.
In ancient Greek mythology, Ara was identified as the altar where the gods first made offerings and formed an alliance before defeating the Titans. One of the southernmost constellations depicted by Ptolemy, it had been recorded by Aratus in 270 BC as lying close to the horizon, and the Almagest portrays stars as far south as Gamma Arae. Professor Bradley Schaefer proposes such Ancients must have been able to see as far south as Zeta Arae, for a pattern that looked like an altar.
In illustrations, Ara is usually depicted as compact classical altar with its smoke 'rising' southward. However, depictions often vary. In the early days of printing, a 1482 woodcut of Gaius Julius Hyginus's classic "Poeticon Astronomicon" depicts the altar as surrounded by demons. Johann Bayer in 1603 depicted Ara as an altar with burning incense. Hyginus depicted the same though his featured devils on either side of the flames. Willem Blaeu, a Dutch uranographer of the 16th and 17th centuries, drew Ara as an altar for sacrifices, with a burning animal offering unusually whose smoke rises northward, represented by Alpha Arae.
"The Castle of Knowledge" by Robert Record of 1556 lists the constellation stating that "Under the Scorpions tayle, standeth the Altar."; a decade later a translation of a fairly recent mainly astrological work by Marcellus Palingenius of 1565, by Barnabe Googe states "Here mayst thou both the Altar, and the myghty Cup beholde."
Equivalents.
In Chinese astronomy, the stars of the constellation Ara lie within "The Azure Dragon of the East" (東方青龍, "Dōng Fāng Qīng Lóng"). Five stars of Ara formed Guī (龜), a tortoise, while another three formed Chǔ (杵), a pestle.
The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory in Australia saw the stars of Ara and the neighbouring constellation Pavo as flying foxes.
Characteristics.
Covering 237.1 square degrees and hence 0.575% of the sky, Ara ranks 63rd of the 88 modern constellations by area. Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 22°N. Scorpius runs along the length of its northern border, while Norma and Triangulum Australe border it to the west, Apus to the south, and Pavo and Telescopium to the east respectively. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union, is "Ara". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of twelve segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −45.49° and −67.69°.
Features.
Stars.
Bayer gave eight stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Theta, though he had never seen the constellation directly as it never rises above the horizon in Germany. After charting the southern constellations, French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille recharted the stars of Ara from Alpha though to Sigma, including three pairs of stars next to each other as Epsilon, Kappa and Nu.
Ara contains part of the Milky Way to the south of Scorpius and thus has rich star fields. Within the constellation's borders, there are 71 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
Just shading Alpha Arae, Beta Arae is the brightest star in the constellation. It is an orange-hued star of spectral type K3Ib-IIa that has been classified as a supergiant or bright giant, that is around 650 light-years from Earth. It is around 8.21 times as massive and 5,636 times as luminous as the Sun. At apparent magnitude 2.85, this difference in brightness between the two is undetectable by the unaided eye. Close to Beta Arae is Gamma Arae, a blue-hued supergiant of spectral type B1Ib. Of apparent magnitude 3.3, it is 1110 ± 60 light-years from Earth. It has been estimated to be between 12.5 and 25 times as massive as the Sun, and have around 120,000 times its luminosity.
Alpha Arae is a blue-white main sequence star of magnitude 2.95, that is 270 ± 20 light-years from Earth. This star is around 9.6 times as massive as the Sun, and has an average of 4.5 times its radius. It is 5,800 times as luminous as the Sun, its energy emitted from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of 18,044 K. A Be star, Alpha Arae is surrounded by a dense equatorial disk of material in Keplerian (rather than uniform) rotation. The star is losing mass by a polar stellar wind with a terminal velocity of approximately 1,000 km/s.
The third brightest star in Ara at magnitude 3.13 is Zeta Arae, an orange giant of spectral type K3III that is located 490 ± 10 light-years from Earth. Around 7–8 times as massive as the Sun, it has swollen to a diameter around 114 times that of the Sun and is 3800 times as luminous. Were it not dimmer by intervening interstellar dust, it would be significantly brighter at magnitude 2.11.
Delta Arae is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B8Vn and magnitude 3.6, 198 ± 4 light-years from Earth. It is around 3.56 times as massive as the Sun.
Epsilon1 Arae is an orange giant of apparent magnitude 4.1, 360 ± 10 light-years distant from Earth. It is around 74% more massive than the Sun. At an age of about 1.7 billion years, the outer envelope of the star has expanded to almost 34 times the Sun's radius.
Eta Arae is an orange giant of apparent magnitude 3.76, located 299 ± 5 light-years distant from Earth. Estimated to be around five billion years old, it has reached the giant star stage of its evolution. With 1.12 times the mass of the Sun, it has an outer envelope that has expanded to 40 times the Sun's radius. The star is now spinning so slowly that it takes more than eleven years to complete a single rotation.
GX 339-4 (V821 Arae) is a moderately strong variable galactic low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) source and black-hole candidate that flares from time to time. From spectroscopic measurements, the mass of the black-hole was found to be at least of 5.8 solar masses.
Exoplanets have been discovered in seven star systems in the constellation. Mu Arae (Cervantes) is a sunlike star that hosts four planets. HD 152079 is a sunlike star with a jupiter-like planet with an orbital period of 2097 ± 930 days. HD 154672 is an ageing sunlike star with a Hot Jupiter. HD 154857 is a sunlike star with one confirmed and one suspected planet. HD 156411 is a star hotter and larger than the sun with a gas giant planet in orbit. Gliese 674 is a nearby red dwarf star with a planet. Gliese 676 is a binary star system composed of two red dwarves with four planets.
Deep-sky objects.
The northwest corner of Ara is crossed by the galactic plane of the Milky Way and contains several open clusters (notably NGC 6200) and diffuse nebulae (including the bright cluster/nebula pair NGC 6188 and NGC 6193). The brightest of the globular clusters, sixth magnitude NGC 6397, lies at a distance of just , making it one of the closest globular clusters to the Solar System.
Ara also contains Westerlund 1, a super star cluster containing itself the possible red supergiant Westerlund 1-237 and the red supergiant Westerlund 1-26. The latter is one of the largest stars known with an estimate varying between and .
Although Ara lies close to the heart of the Milky Way, two spiral galaxies (NGC 6215 and NGC 6221) are visible near star Eta Arae.
Bibliography.
Online sources
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1928 | Auriga | Auriga or AURIGA can refer to:
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1930 | Arkansas | Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the south-central region of the Southern United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage language, a Dhegiha Siouan language, and referred to their relatives, the Quapaw people. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.
Arkansas is the 29th largest by area and the 34th most populous state, with a population of just over 3 million at the 2020 census. The capital and most populous city is Little Rock, in the central part of the state, a hub for transportation, business, culture, and government. The northwestern corner of the state, including the Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Area and Fort Smith metropolitan area, is a population, education, and economic center. The largest city in the state's eastern part is Jonesboro. The largest city in the state's southeastern part is Pine Bluff.
Previously part of French Louisiana and the Louisiana Purchase, the Territory of Arkansas was admitted to the Union as the 25th state on June 15, 1836. Much of the Delta had been developed for cotton plantations, and landowners there largely depended on enslaved African Americans' labor. In 1861, Arkansas seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. On returning to the Union in 1868, Arkansas continued to suffer economically, due to its overreliance on the large-scale plantation economy. Cotton remained the leading commodity crop, and the cotton market declined. Because farmers and businessmen did not diversify and there was little industrial investment, the state fell behind in economic opportunity. In the late 19th century, the state instituted various Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise and segregate the African-American population. White interests dominated Arkansas's politics, with disfranchisement of African Americans and refusal to reapportion the legislature; only after the federal legislation passed were more African Americans able to vote. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Arkansas and particularly Little Rock were major battlegrounds for efforts to integrate schools.
Following World War II in the 1940s, Arkansas began to diversify its economy and see prosperity. During the 1960s, the state became the base of the Walmart corporation, the world's largest company by revenue, headquartered in Bentonville. In the 21st century, Arkansas's economy is based on service industries, aircraft, poultry, steel, and tourism, along with important commodity crops of cotton, soybeans and rice.
Arkansas's culture is observable in museums, theaters, novels, television shows, restaurants, and athletic venues across the state. Notable people from the state include politician and educational advocate William Fulbright; former president Bill Clinton, who also served as the 40th and 42nd governor of Arkansas; general Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander; Walmart founder and magnate Sam Walton; singer-songwriters Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich, Jimmy Driftwood, and Glen Campbell; actor-filmmaker Billy Bob Thornton; poet C. D. Wright; physicist William L. McMillan, a pioneer in superconductor research; poet laureate Maya Angelou; Douglas MacArthur; musician Al Green; actor Alan Ladd; basketball player Scottie Pippen; singer Ne-Yo; Chelsea Clinton; actress Sheryl Underwood; and author John Grisham.
Etymology.
The name "Arkansas" initially applied to the Arkansas River. It derives from a French term, "Arcansas", their plural term for their transliteration of "akansa", an Algonquian term for the Quapaw people. These were a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century. "Kansa" is likely also the root term for Kansas, which was named after the related Kaw people.
The name has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of ways. In 1881, the state legislature defined the official pronunciation of Arkansas as having the final "s" be silent (as it would be in French). A dispute had arisen between the state's two senators over the pronunciation issue. One favored (), the other ().
In 2007, the state legislature passed a non-binding resolution declaring that the possessive form of the state's name is "Arkansas's", which the state government has increasingly followed.
History.
Early history.
Before European settlement of North America, Arkansas, was inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The Caddo, Osage, and Quapaw peoples encountered European explorers. The first of these Europeans was Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1541, who crossed the Mississippi and marched across central Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains. After finding nothing he considered of value and encountering native resistance the entire way, he and his men returned to the Mississippi River where de Soto fell ill. From his deathbed he ordered his men to massacre all the men of the nearby village of Anilco, who he feared had been plotting with a powerful polity down the Mississippi River, "Quigualtam". His men obeyed and did not stop with the men, but were said to have massacred women and children as well. He died the following day in what is believed to be the vicinity of modern-day McArthur, Arkansas, in May 1542. His body was weighted down with sand and he was consigned to a watery grave in the Mississippi River under cover of darkness by his men. De Soto had attempted to deceive the native population into thinking he was an immortal deity, sun of the sun, in order to forestall attack by outraged Native Americans on his by then weakened and bedraggled army. In order to keep the ruse up, his men informed the locals that de Soto had ascended into the sky. His will at the time of his death listed "four Indian slaves, three horses and 700 hogs" which were auctioned off. The starving men, who had been living off maize stolen from natives, immediately started butchering the hogs and later, commanded by former aide-de-camp Moscoso, attempted an overland return to Mexico. They made it as far as Texas before running into territory too dry for maize farming and too thinly populated to sustain themselves by stealing food from the locals. The expedition promptly backtracked to Arkansas. After building a small fleet of boats they then headed down the Mississippi River and eventually on to Mexico by water.
Later explorers included the French Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet in 1673, and Frenchmen Robert La Salle and Henri de Tonti in 1681. Tonti established Arkansas Post at a Quapaw village in 1686, making it the first European settlement in the territory. The early Spanish or French explorers of the state gave it its name, which is probably a phonetic spelling of the Illinois tribe's name for the Quapaw people, who lived downriver from them. The name Arkansas has been pronounced and spelled in a variety of fashions. The region was organized as the Territory of Arkansaw on July 4, 1819, with the territory admitted to the United States as the state of Arkansas on June 15, 1836. The name was historically , , and several other variants. Historically and modernly, the people of Arkansas call themselves either "Arkansans" or "Arkansawyers". In 1881, the Arkansas General Assembly passed Arkansas Code 1-4-105 (official text):
Whereas, confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings.
And, whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State Historical Society and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history, and the early usage of the American immigrants.
Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final "s" silent, the "a" in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of "a" in "man" and the sounding of the terminal "s" is an innovation to be discouraged.
Citizens of the state of Kansas often pronounce the Arkansas River as , in a manner similar to the common pronunciation of the name of their state.
Settlers, such as fur trappers, moved to Arkansas in the early 18th century. These people used Arkansas Post as a home base and entrepôt. During the colonial period, Arkansas changed hands between France and Spain following the Seven Years' War, although neither showed interest in the remote settlement of Arkansas Post. In April 1783, Arkansas saw its only battle of the American Revolutionary War, a brief siege of the post by British Captain James Colbert with the assistance of the Choctaw and Chickasaw.
Purchase and statehood.
Napoleon Bonaparte sold French Louisiana to the United States in 1803, including all of Arkansas, in a transaction known today as the Louisiana Purchase. French soldiers remained as a garrison at Arkansas Post. Following the purchase, the balanced give-and-take relationship between settlers and Native Americans began to change all along the frontier, including in Arkansas. Following a controversy over allowing slavery in the territory, the Territory of Arkansas was organized on July 4, 1819. Gradual emancipation in Arkansas was struck down by one vote, the Speaker of the House Henry Clay, allowing Arkansas to organize as a slave territory.
Slavery became a wedge issue in Arkansas, forming a geographic divide that remained for decades. Owners and operators of the cotton plantation economy in southeast Arkansas firmly supported slavery, as they perceived slave labor as the best or "only" economically viable method of harvesting their commodity crops. The "hill country" of northwest Arkansas was unable to grow cotton and relied on a cash-scarce, subsistence farming economy.
As European Americans settled throughout the East Coast and into the Midwest, in the 1830s the United States government forced the removal of many Native American tribes to Arkansas and Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
Additional Native American removals began in earnest during the territorial period, with final Quapaw removal complete by 1833 as they were pushed into Indian Territory. The capital was relocated from Arkansas Post to Little Rock in 1821, during the territorial period.
When Arkansas applied for statehood, the slavery issue was again raised in Washington, D.C. Congress eventually approved the Arkansas Constitution after a 25-hour session, admitting Arkansas on June 15, 1836, as the 25th state and the 13th slave state, having a population of about 60,000. Arkansas struggled with taxation to support its new state government, a problem made worse by a state banking scandal and worse yet by the Panic of 1837.
Civil War and Reconstruction.
In early antebellum Arkansas, the southeast Arkansas slave-based economy developed rapidly. On the eve of the American Civil War in 1860, enslaved African Americans numbered 111,115 people, just over 25% of the state's population. A plantation system based largely on cotton agriculture developed that, after the war, kept the state and region behind the nation for decades. The wealth developed among planters of southeast Arkansas caused a political rift between the northwest and southeast.
Many politicians were elected to office from the Family, the Southern rights political force in antebellum Arkansas. Residents generally wanted to avoid a civil war. When the Gulf states seceded in early 1861, delegates to a convention called to determine whether Arkansas should secede referred the question back to the voters for a referendum to be held in August. Arkansas did not secede until Abraham Lincoln demanded Arkansas troops be sent to Fort Sumter to quell the rebellion there. On May 6, the members of the state convention, having been recalled by the convention president, voted to terminate Arkansas's membership in the Union and join the Confederate States of America.
Arkansas held a very important position for the Rebels, maintaining control of the Mississippi River and surrounding Southern states. The bloody Battle of Wilson's Creek just across the border in Missouri shocked many Arkansans who thought the war would be a quick and decisive Southern victory. Battles early in the war took place in northwest Arkansas, including the Battle of Cane Hill, Battle of Pea Ridge, and Battle of Prairie Grove. Union general Samuel Curtis swept across the state to Helena in the Delta in 1862. Little Rock was captured the following year. The government shifted the state Confederate capital to Hot Springs, and then again to Washington from 1863 to 1865, for the remainder of the war. Throughout the state, guerrilla warfare ravaged the countryside and destroyed cities. Passion for the Confederate cause waned after implementation of programs such as the draft, high taxes, and martial law.
Under the Military Reconstruction Act, Congress declared Arkansas restored to the Union in June 1868, after the Legislature accepted the 14th Amendment. The Republican-controlled reconstruction legislature established universal male suffrage (though temporarily disfranchising former Confederate Army officers, who were all Democrats), a public education system for blacks and whites, and passed general issues to improve the state and help more of the population. The State soon came under control of the Radical Republicans and Unionists, and led by Governor Powell Clayton, they presided over a time of great upheaval as Confederate sympathizers and the Ku Klux Klan fought the new developments, particularly voting rights for African Americans.
End of Reconstruction and late 19th century.
In 1874, the Brooks-Baxter War, a political struggle between factions of the Republican Party shook Little Rock and the state governorship. It was settled only when President Ulysses S. Grant ordered Joseph Brooks to disperse his militant supporters.
Following the Brooks-Baxter War, a new state constitution was ratified, re-enfranchising former Confederates and effectively bringing an end to Reconstruction.
In 1881, the Arkansas state legislature enacted a bill that adopted an official pronunciation of the state's name, to combat a controversy then simmering. (See Law and Government below.)
After Reconstruction, the state began to receive more immigrants and migrants. Chinese, Italian, and Syrian men were recruited for farm labor in the developing Delta region. None of these nationalities stayed long at farm labor; the Chinese especially, as they quickly became small merchants in towns around the Delta. Many Chinese became such successful merchants in small towns that they were able to educate their children at college.
Construction of railroads enabled more farmers to get their products to market. It also brought new development into different parts of the state, including the Ozarks, where some areas were developed as resorts. In a few years at the end of the 19th century, for instance, Eureka Springs in Carroll County grew to 10,000 people, rapidly becoming a tourist destination and the fourth-largest city of the state. It featured newly constructed, elegant resort hotels and spas planned around its natural springs, considered to have healthful properties. The town's attractions included horse racing and other entertainment. It appealed to a wide variety of classes, becoming almost as popular as Hot Springs.
Rise of the Jim Crow laws and early 20th century.
In the late 1880s, the worsening agricultural depression catalyzed Populist and third party movements, leading to interracial coalitions. Struggling to stay in power, in the 1890s the Democrats in Arkansas followed other Southern states in passing legislation and constitutional amendments that disfranchised blacks and poor whites. In 1891 state legislators passed a requirement for a literacy test, knowing it would exclude many blacks and whites. At the time, more than 25% of the population could neither read nor write. In 1892, they amended the state constitution to require a poll tax and more complex residency requirements, both of which adversely affected poor people and sharecroppers, forcing most blacks and many poor whites from voter rolls.
By 1900 the Democratic Party expanded use of the white primary in county and state elections, further denying blacks a part in the political process. Only in the primary was there any competition among candidates, as Democrats held all the power. The state was a Democratic one-party state for decades, until after passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce constitutional rights.
Between 1905 and 1911, Arkansas began to receive a small immigration of German, Slovak, and Scots-Irish from Europe. The German and Slovak peoples settled in the eastern part of the state known as the Prairie, and the Irish founded small communities in the southeast part of the state. The Germans were mostly Lutheran and the Slovaks were primarily Catholic. The Irish were mostly Protestant from Ulster, of Scots and Northern Borders descent. Some early 20th-century immigration included people from eastern Europe. Together, these immigrants made the Delta more diverse than the rest of the state. In the same years, some black migrants moved into the area because of opportunities to develop the bottomlands and own their own property.
Black sharecroppers began to try to organize a farmers' union after World WarI. They were seeking better conditions of payment and accounting from white landowners of the area cotton plantations. Whites resisted any change and often tried to break up their meetings. On September 30, 1919, two white men, including a local deputy, tried to break up a meeting of black sharecroppers who were trying to organize a farmers' union. After a white deputy was killed in a confrontation with guards at the meeting, word spread to town and around the area. Hundreds of whites from Phillips and neighboring areas rushed to suppress the blacks, and started attacking blacks at large. Governor Charles Hillman Brough requested federal troops to stop what was called the Elaine massacre. White mobs spread throughout the county, killing an estimated 237 blacks before most of the violence was suppressed after October 1. Five whites also died in the incident. The governor accompanied the troops to the scene; President Woodrow Wilson had approved their use.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 flooded the areas along the Ouachita Rivers along with many other rivers.
Based on the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt given shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, nearly 16,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the West Coast of the United States and incarcerated in two internment camps in the Arkansas Delta. The Rohwer Camp in Desha County operated from September 1942 to November 1945 and at its peak interned 8,475 prisoners. The Jerome War Relocation Center in Drew County operated from October 1942 to June 1944 and held about 8,000.
Fall of segregation.
After the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional in "Brown "v." Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" (1954), some students worked to integrate schools in the state. The Little Rock Nine brought Arkansas to national attention in 1957 when the federal government had to intervene to protect African-American students trying to integrate a high school in the capital. Governor Orval Faubus had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to help segregationists prevent nine African-American students from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School. After attempting three times to contact Faubus, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent 1,000 troops from the active-duty 101st Airborne Division to escort and protect the African-American students as they entered school on September 25, 1957. In defiance of federal court orders to integrate, the governor and city of Little Rock decided to close the high schools for the remainder of the school year. By the fall of 1959, the Little Rock high schools were completely integrated.
Geography.
Boundaries.
Arkansas borders Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, Oklahoma to the west, Missouri to the north, and Tennessee and Mississippi to the east. The United States Census Bureau classifies Arkansas as a southern state, sub-categorized among the West South Central States. The Mississippi River forms most of its eastern border, except in Clay and Greene counties, where the St. Francis River forms the western boundary of the Missouri Bootheel, and in many places where the channel of the Mississippi has meandered (or been straightened by man) from its original 1836 course.
Terrain.
Arkansas can generally be split into two halves, the highlands in the northwest and the lowlands of the southeast. The highlands are part of the Southern Interior Highlands, including The Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains. The southern lowlands include the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Arkansas Delta. This split can yield to a regional division into northwest, southwest, northeast, southeast, and central Arkansas. These regions are broad and not defined along county lines. Arkansas has seven distinct natural regions: the Ozark Mountains, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas River Valley, Gulf Coastal Plain, Crowley's Ridge, and the Arkansas Delta, with Central Arkansas sometimes included as a blend of multiple regions.
The southeastern part of Arkansas along the Mississippi Alluvial Plain is sometimes called the Arkansas Delta. This region is a flat landscape of rich alluvial soils formed by repeated flooding of the adjacent Mississippi. Farther from the river, in the southeastern part of the state, the Grand Prairie has a more undulating landscape. Both are fertile agricultural areas. The Delta region is bisected by a geological formation known as Crowley's Ridge. A narrow band of rolling hills, Crowley's Ridge rises above the surrounding alluvial plain and underlies many of eastern Arkansas's major towns.
Northwest Arkansas is part of the Ozark Plateau including the Ozark Mountains, to the south are the Ouachita Mountains, and these regions are divided by the Arkansas River; the southern and eastern parts of Arkansas are called the Lowlands. These mountain ranges are part of the U.S. Interior Highlands region, the only major mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's highest point is Mount Magazine in the Ouachita Mountains, which is above sea level.
Arkansas is home to many caves, such as Blanchard Springs Caverns. The State Archeologist has catalogued more than 43,000 Native American living, hunting and tool-making sites, many of them Pre-Columbian burial mounds and rock shelters. Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro is the world's only diamond-bearing site accessible to the public for digging. Arkansas is home to a dozen Wilderness Areas totaling . These areas are set aside for outdoor recreation and are open to hunting, fishing, hiking, and primitive camping. No mechanized vehicles nor developed campgrounds are allowed in these areas.
Hydrology.
Arkansas has many rivers, lakes, and reservoirs within or along its borders. Major tributaries to the Mississippi River include the Arkansas River, the White River, and the St. Francis River. The Arkansas is fed by the Mulberry and Fourche LaFave Rivers in the Arkansas River Valley, which is also home to Lake Dardanelle. The Buffalo, Little Red, Black and Cache Rivers are all tributaries to the White River, which also empties into the Mississippi. Bayou Bartholomew and the Saline, Little Missouri, and Caddo Rivers are all tributaries to the Ouachita River in south Arkansas, which empties into the Mississippi in Louisiana. The Red River briefly forms the state's boundary with Texas. Arkansas has few natural lakes and many reservoirs, such as Bull Shoals Lake, Lake Ouachita, Greers Ferry Lake, Millwood Lake, Beaver Lake, Norfork Lake, DeGray Lake, and Lake Conway.
Flora and fauna.
Arkansas's temperate deciduous forest is divided into three broad ecoregions: the "Ozark, Ouachita-Appalachian Forests", the "Mississippi Alluvial and Southeast USA Coastal Plains", and the "Southeastern USA Plains". The state is further divided into seven subregions: the Arkansas Valley, Boston Mountains, Mississippi Alluvial Plain, Mississippi Valley Loess Plain, Ozark Highlands, Ouachita Mountains, and the South Central Plains. A 2010 United States Forest Service survey determined of Arkansas's land is forestland, or 56% of the state's total area. Dominant species in Arkansas's forests include "Quercus" (oak), "Carya" (hickory), "Pinus echinata" (shortleaf pine) and "Pinus taeda" (loblolly pine).
Arkansas's plant life varies with its climate and elevation. The pine belt stretching from the Arkansas delta to Texas consists of dense oak-hickory-pine growth. Lumbering and paper milling activity is active throughout the region. In eastern Arkansas, one can find "Taxodium " (cypress), "Quercus nigra" (water oaks), and hickories with their roots submerged in the Mississippi Valley bayous indicative of the deep south. Nearby Crowley's Ridge is the only home of the tulip tree in the state, and generally hosts more northeastern plant life such as the beech tree. The northwestern highlands are covered in an oak-hickory mixture, with Ozark white cedars, "cornus" (dogwoods), and "Cercis canadensis" (redbuds) also present. The higher peaks in the Arkansas River Valley play host to scores of ferns, including the "Physematium scopulinum" and "Adiantum" (maidenhair fern) on Mount Magazine. Arkansas wildlife is famous for the white-tailed deer, elk, and bald eagle. The white-tailed deer is the official state mammal.
Climate.
Arkansas generally has a humid subtropical climate. While not bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Arkansas, is still close enough to the warm, large body of water for it to influence the weather in the state. Generally, Arkansas, has hot, humid summers and slightly drier, mild to cool winters. In Little Rock, the daily high temperatures average around with lows around in July. In January highs average around and lows around . In Siloam Springs in the northwest part of the state, the average high and low temperatures in July are and in January the average high and low are . Annual precipitation throughout the state averages between about ; it is somewhat wetter in the south and drier in the northern part of the state. Snowfall is infrequent but most common in the northern half of the state. The half of the state south of Little Rock is apter to see ice storms. Arkansas's record high is at Ozark on August 10, 1936; the record low is at Gravette, on February 13, 1905.
Arkansas is known for extreme weather and frequent storms. A typical year brings thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, snow and ice storms. Between both the Great Plains and the Gulf States, Arkansas, receives around 60 days of thunderstorms. Arkansas is located in Tornado Alley, and as a result, a few of the most destructive tornadoes in U.S. history have struck the state. While sufficiently far from the coast to avoid a direct hit from a hurricane, Arkansas can often get the remnants of a tropical system, which dumps tremendous amounts of rain in a short time and often spawns smaller tornadoes.
Cities and towns.
Little Rock has been Arkansas's capital city since 1821 when it replaced Arkansas Post as the capital of the Territory of Arkansas. The state capitol was moved to Hot Springs and later Washington during the American Civil War when the Union armies threatened the city in 1862, and state government did not return to Little Rock until after the war ended. Today, the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway metropolitan area is the largest in the state, with a population of 724,385 in 2013.
The Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Area is the second-largest metropolitan area in Arkansas, growing at the fastest rate due to the influx of businesses and the growth of the University of Arkansas and Walmart.
The state has eight cities with populations above 50,000 (based on 2010 census). In descending order of size, they are Little Rock, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Springdale, Jonesboro, North Little Rock, Conway, and Rogers. Of these, only Fort Smith and Jonesboro are outside the two largest metropolitan areas. Other cities in Arkansas include Pine Bluff, Crossett, Bryant, Lake Village, Hot Springs, Bentonville, Texarkana, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Russellville, Bella Vista, West Memphis, Paragould, Cabot, Searcy, Van Buren, El Dorado, Blytheville, Harrison, Dumas, Rison, Warren, and Mountain Home.
Demographics.
Population.
The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Arkansas was 3,017,804 on July 1, 2019, a 3.49% increase since the 2010 United States census. At the 2020 U.S. census, Arkansas had a resident population of 3,011,524.
From fewer than 15,000 in 1820, Arkansas's population grew to 52,240 during a special census in 1835, far exceeding the 40,000 required to apply for statehood. Following statehood in 1836, the population doubled each decade until the 1870 census conducted following the American Civil War. The state recorded growth in each successive decade, although it gradually slowed in the 20th century.
It recorded population losses in the 1950 and 1960 censuses. This outmigration was a result of multiple factors, including farm mechanization, decreasing labor demand, and young educated people leaving the state due to a lack of non-farming industry in the state. Arkansas again began to grow, recording positive growth rates ever since and exceeding two million by the 1980 census. Arkansas's rate of change, age distributions, and gender distributions mirror national averages. Minority group data also approximates national averages. There are fewer people in Arkansas of Hispanic or Latino origin than the national average. The center of population of Arkansas for 2000 was located in Perry County, near Nogal.
According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,459 homeless people in Arkansas.
Race and ethnicity.
Per the 2019 census estimates, Arkansas was 72.0% non-Hispanic white, 15.4% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.5% Asian, 0.4% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 0.1% some other race, 2.4% two or more races, and 7.7% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. In 2011, the state was 80.1% white (74.2% non-Hispanic white), 15.6% Black or African American, 0.9% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.3% Asian, and 1.8% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race made up 6.6% of the population. As of 2011, 39.0% of Arkansas's population younger than age1 were minorities.
European Americans have a strong presence in the northwestern Ozarks and the central part of the state. African Americans live mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the state. Arkansans of Irish, English and German ancestry are mostly found in the far northwestern Ozarks near the Missouri border. Ancestors of the Irish in the Ozarks were chiefly Scots-Irish, Protestants from Northern Ireland, the Scottish lowlands and northern England part of the largest group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland before the American Revolution. English and Scots-Irish immigrants settled throughout the back country of the South and in the more mountainous areas. Americans of English stock are found throughout the state.
A 2010 survey of the principal ancestries of Arkansas's residents revealed the following: 15.5% African American, 12.3% Irish, 11.5% German, 11.0% American, 10.1% English, 4.7% Mexican, 2.1% French, 1.7% Scottish, 1.7% Dutch, 1.6% Italian, and 1.4% Scots-Irish.
Most people identifying as "American" are of English descent or Scots-Irish descent. Their families have been in the state so long, in many cases since before statehood, that they choose to identify simply as having American ancestry or do not in fact know their ancestry. Their ancestry primarily goes back to the original 13 colonies and for this reason many of them today simply claim American ancestry. Many people who identify as of Irish descent are in fact of Scots-Irish descent.
According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey, 93.8% of Arkansas's population (over the age of five) spoke only English at home. About 4.5% of the state's population spoke Spanish at home. About 0.7% of the state's population spoke another Indo-European language. About 0.8% of the state's population spoke an Asian language, and 0.2% spoke other languages.
Religion.
Like most other Southern states, Arkansas is part of the Bible Belt and predominantly Protestant. The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2010 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 661,382; the United Methodist Church with 158,574; non-denominational Evangelical Protestants with 129,638; the Catholic Church with 122,662; and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with 31,254. Some residents of the state have other religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Wicca/Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and some have no religious affiliation.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center determined that 79% of the population was Christian, dominated by evangelicals in the Southern Baptist and independent Baptist churches. In contrast with many other states, the Catholic Church as of 2014 was not the largest Christian denomination in Arkansas. Of the unaffiliated population, 2% were atheist in 2014. By 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute determined 71% of the population was Christian. Arkansas continued to be dominated by evangelicals, followed by mainline Protestants and historically black or African American churches.
Economy.
Once a state with a cashless society in the uplands and plantation agriculture in the lowlands, Arkansas's economy has evolved and diversified. The state's gross domestic product (GDP) was $119billion in 2015. Six Fortune 500 companies are based in Arkansas, including the world's #1 retailer, Walmart; Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt, Dillard's, Murphy USA, and Windstream are also headquartered in the state. The per capita personal income in 2015 was $39,107, ranking 45th in the nation. The median household income from 2011 to 2015 was $41,371, ranking 49th in the nation. The state's agriculture outputs are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk. Its industrial outputs are food processing, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, and paper products. Arkansas's mines produce natural gas, oil, crushed stone, bromine, and vanadium. According to CNBC, Arkansas is the 20th-best state for business, with the 2nd-lowest cost of doing business, 5th-lowest cost of living, 11th-best workforce, 20th-best economic climate, 28th-best-educated workforce, 31st-best infrastructure and the 32nd-friendliest regulatory environment. Arkansas gained 12 spots in the best state for business rankings since 2011. As of 2014, it was the most affordable state to live in.
As of June 2021, the state's unemployment rate was 4.4%; the preliminary rate for November 2021 is 3.4%.
Industry and commerce.
Arkansas's earliest industries were fur trading and agriculture, with development of cotton plantations in the areas near the Mississippi River. They were dependent on slave labor through the American Civil War.
Today only about three percent of the population are employed in the agricultural sector, it remains a major part of the state's economy, ranking 13th in the nation in the value of products sold. Arkansas is the nation's largest producer of rice, broilers, and turkeys, and ranks in the top three for cotton, pullets, and aquaculture (catfish). Forestry remains strong in the Arkansas Timberlands, and the state ranks fourth nationally and first in the South in softwood lumber production. Automobile parts manufacturers have opened factories in eastern Arkansas to support auto plants in other states. Bauxite was formerly a large part of the state's economy, mined mostly around Saline County.
Tourism is also very important to the Arkansas economy; the official state nickname "The Natural State" was created for state tourism advertising in the 1970s, and is still used to this day. The state maintains 52 state parks and the National Park Service maintains seven properties in Arkansas. The completion of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock has drawn many visitors to the city and revitalized the nearby River Market District. Many cities also hold festivals, which draw tourists to Arkansas culture, such as The Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival in Warren, King Biscuit Blues Festival, Ozark Folk Festival, Toad Suck Daze, and Tontitown Grape Festival.
Transportation.
Transportation in Arkansas is overseen by the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT), headquartered in Little Rock. Several main corridors pass through Little Rock, including Interstate30 (I-30) and I-40 (the nation's 3rd-busiest trucking corridor). Arkansas first designated a state highway system in 1924, and first numbered its roads in 1926. Arkansas had one of the first paved roads, the Dollarway Road, and one of the first members of the Interstate Highway System. The state maintains a large system of state highways today, in addition to eight Interstates and 20 U.S. Routes.
In northeast Arkansas, I-55 travels north from Memphis to Missouri, with a new spur to Jonesboro (I-555). Northwest Arkansas is served by the segment of I-49 from Fort Smith to the beginning of the Bella Vista Bypass. This segment of I-49 currently follows mostly the same route as the former section of I-540 that extended north of I-40. The state also has the 13th largest state highway system in the nation.
Arkansas is served by of railroad track divided among twenty-six railroad companies including three Class I railroads. Freight railroads are concentrated in southeast Arkansas to serve the industries in the region. The Texas Eagle, an Amtrak passenger train, serves five stations in the state Walnut Ridge, Little Rock, Malvern, Arkadelphia, and Texarkana.
Arkansas also benefits from the use of its rivers for commerce. The Mississippi River and Arkansas River are both major rivers. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, allowing barge traffic up the Arkansas River to the Port of Catoosa in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
There are four airports with commercial service: Clinton National Airport (formerly Little Rock National Airport or Adams Field), Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, Fort Smith Regional Airport, and Texarkana Regional Airport, with dozens of smaller airports in the state.
Public transit and community transport services for the elderly or those with developmental disabilities are provided by agencies such as the Central Arkansas Transit Authority and the Ozark Regional Transit, organizations that are part of the Arkansas Transit Association.
Government.
As with the federal government of the United States, political power in Arkansas is divided into three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Each officer's term is four years long. Office holders are term-limited to two full terms plus any partial terms before the first full term.
Executive.
The governor of Arkansas is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, who was inaugurated on January 10, 2023. The six other elected executive positions in Arkansas are lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, auditor, and land commissioner. The governor also appoints the leaders of various state boards, committees, and departments. Arkansas governors served two-year terms until a referendum lengthened the term to four years, effective with the 1986 election. Individuals elected to these offices are limited to a lifetime total of two four-year terms per office.
In Arkansas, the lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor and thus can be from a different political party.
Legislative.
The Arkansas General Assembly is the state's bicameral bodies of legislators, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Senate contains 35 members from districts of approximately equal population. These districts are redrawn decennially with each US census, and in election years ending in "2", the entire body is put up for reelection. Following the election, half of the seats are designated as two-year seats and are up for reelection again in two years, these "half-terms" do not count against a legislator's term limits. The remaining half serve a full four-year term. This staggers elections such that half the body is up for reelection every two years and allows for complete body turnover following redistricting. Arkansas voters elected a 21–14 Republican majority in the Senate in 2012. Arkansas House members can serve a maximum of three two-year terms. House districts are redistricted by the Arkansas Board of Apportionment. In the 2012 elections, Republicans gained a 51–49 majority in the House of Representatives.
The Republican Party majority status in the Arkansas State House of Representatives after the 2012 elections, is the party's first since 1874. Arkansas was the last state of the old Confederacy to not have Republican control of either chamber of its house since the American Civil War.
Following the term limits changes, studies have shown that lobbyists have become less influential in state politics. Legislative staff, not subject to term limits, have acquired additional power and influence due to the high rate of elected official turnover.
Judicial.
Arkansas's judicial branch has five court systems: Arkansas Supreme Court, Arkansas Court of Appeals, Circuit Courts, District Courts and City Courts.
Most cases begin in district court, which is subdivided into state district court and local district court. State district courts exercise district-wide jurisdiction over the districts created by the General Assembly, and local district courts are presided over by part-time judges who may privately practice law. 25 state district court judges preside over 15 districts, with more districts created in 2013 and 2017. There are 28 judicial circuits of Circuit Court, with each contains five subdivisions: criminal, civil, probate, domestic relations, and juvenile court. The jurisdiction of the Arkansas Court of Appeals is determined by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and there is no right of appeal from the Court of Appeals to the high court. The Arkansas Supreme Court can review Court of Appeals cases upon application by either a party to the litigation, upon request by the Court of Appeals, or if the Arkansas Supreme Court feels the case should have been initially assigned to it. The twelve judges of the Arkansas Court of Appeals are elected from judicial districts to renewable six-year terms.
The Arkansas Supreme Court is the court of last resort in the state, composed of seven justices elected to eight-year terms. Established by the Arkansas Constitution in 1836, the court's decisions can be appealed to only the Supreme Court of the United States.
Federal.
Both Arkansas's U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, are Republicans. The state has four seats in U.S. House of Representatives. All four seats are held by Republicans: Rick Crawford (1st district), French Hill (2nd district), Steve Womack (3rd district), and Bruce Westerman (4th district).
Politics.
Arkansas governor Bill Clinton brought national attention to the state with a long speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention endorsing Michael Dukakis. Some journalists suggested the speech was a threat to his ambitions; Clinton defined it "a comedy of error, just one of those fluky things". He won the Democratic nomination for president in 1992. Presenting himself as a "New Democrat" and using incumbent George H. W. Bush's against him, Clinton won the 1992 presidential election with 43.0% of the vote to Bush's 37.5% and independent billionaire Ross Perot's 18.9%.
Most Republican strength traditionally lay mainly in the northwestern part of the state, particularly Fort Smith and Bentonville, as well as North Central Arkansas around the Mountain Home area. In the latter area, Republicans have been known to get 90% or more of the vote, while the rest of the state was more Democratic. After 2010, Republican strength expanded further to the Northeast and Southwest and into the Little Rock suburbs. The Democrats are mostly concentrated to central Little Rock, the Mississippi Delta, the Pine Bluff area, and the areas around the southern border with Louisiana.
Arkansas has elected only three Republicans to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction: Tim Hutchinson, who was defeated after one term by Mark Pryor; John Boozman, who defeated incumbent Blanche Lincoln; and Tom Cotton, who defeated Pryor in 2014. Before 2013, the General Assembly had not been controlled by the Republican Party since Reconstruction, with the GOP holding a 51-seat majority in the state House and a 21-seat (of 35) in the state Senate following victories in 2012. Arkansas was one of just three states among the states of the former Confederacy that sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate (the others being Florida and Virginia) for any period during the first decade of the 21st century.
In 2010, Republicans captured three of the state's four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, they won election to all four House seats. Arkansas held the distinction of having a U.S. House delegation composed entirely of military veterans (Rick Crawford, Army; Tim Griffin, Army Reserve; Steve Womack, Army National Guard; Tom Cotton, Army). When Pryor was defeated in 2014, the entire congressional delegation was in GOP hands for the first time since Reconstruction.
Reflecting the state's large evangelical population, Arkansas has a strong social conservative bent. In the aftermath of the landmark Supreme Court decision "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", Arkansas became one of nine states where abortion is banned. Under the Arkansas Constitution, Arkansas is a right to work state. Its voters passed a ban on same-sex marriage in 2004, with 75% voting yes, although that ban has been inactive since the Supreme Court protected same-sex marriage in "Obergefell v. Hodges".
Arkansas retains the death penalty. Authorized methods of execution include the Electric chair.
Military.
The Strategic Air Command facility of Little Rock Air Force Base was one of eighteen silos in the command of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing (308th SMW), specifically one of the nine silos within its 374th Strategic Missile Squadron (374th SMS). The squadron was responsible for Launch Complex 374–7, site of the 1980 explosion of a TitanII Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in Damascus, Arkansas.
Taxation.
Taxes are collected by the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.
Health.
As of 2012, Arkansas, as with many Southern states, has a high incidence of premature death, infant mortality, cardiovascular deaths, and occupational fatalities compared to the rest of the United States. The state is tied for 43rd with New York in percentage of adults who regularly exercise. Arkansas is usually ranked as one of the least healthy states due to high obesity, smoking, and sedentary lifestyle rates, but according to a Gallup poll, Arkansas made the most immediate progress in reducing its number of uninsured residents after the Affordable Care Act passed. The percentage of uninsured in Arkansas dropped from 22.5 in 2013 to 12.4 in August 2014.
The Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Act, a statewide smoking ban excluding bars and some restaurants, went into effect in 2006.
Healthcare in Arkansas is provided by a network of hospitals as members of the Arkansas Hospital Association. Major institutions with multiple branches include Baptist Health, Community Health Systems, and HealthSouth. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock operates the UAMS Medical Center, a teaching hospital ranked as high performing nationally in cancer and nephrology. The pediatric division of UAMS Medical Center is known as Arkansas Children's Hospital, nationally ranked in pediatric cardiology and heart surgery. Together, these two institutions are the state's only Level I trauma centers.
Education.
Arkansas has 1,064 state-funded kindergartens, elementary, junior and senior high schools.
The state supports a network of public universities and colleges, including two major university systems: Arkansas State University System and University of Arkansas System. The University of Arkansas, flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System in Fayetteville was ranked #63 among public schools in the nation by "U.S. News & World Report". Other public institutions include University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Arkansas Tech University, Henderson State University, Southern Arkansas University, and University of Central Arkansas across the state. It is also home to 11 private colleges and universities including Hendrix College, one of the nation's top 100 liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report.
In the 1920s the state required all children to attend public schools. The school year was set at 131 days, although some areas were unable to meet that requirement.
Generally prohibited in the West at large, school corporal punishment is not unusual in Arkansas, with 20,083 public school students paddled at least one time, according to government data for the 2011–12 school year. The rate of corporal punishment in public schools is higher only in Mississippi.
Educational attainment.
Arkansas is one of the least educated U.S. states. It ranks near the bottom in terms of percentage of the population with a high school or college degree. The state's educational system has a history of underfunding, low teachers' salaries and political meddling in the curriculum.
Educational statistics during the early days are fragmentary and unreliable. Many counties did not submit full reports to the secretary of state, who did double duty as commissioner of common schools. But the percentage of whites over 20 years old who were illiterate was given as:
In 2010 Arkansas students earned an average score of 20.3 on the ACT exam, just below the national average of 21. These results were expected due to the large increase in the number of students taking the exam since the establishment of the Academic Challenge Scholarship. Top high schools receiving recognition from the U.S. News & World Report are spread across the state, including Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, KIPP Delta Collegiate in Helena-West Helena, Bentonville, Rogers, Rogers Heritage, Valley Springs, Searcy, and McCrory. A total of 81 Arkansas high schools were ranked by the U.S. News & World Report in 2012.
Arkansas ranks as the 32nd smartest state on the Morgan Quitno Smartest State Award, 44th in percentage of residents with at least a high school diploma, and 48th in percentage of bachelor's degree attainment. Arkansas has been making strides in education reform. "Education Week" has praised the state, ranking Arkansas in the top 10 of their Quality Counts Education Rankings every year since 2009 while scoring it in the top5 during 2012 and 2013. Arkansas specifically received an A in Transition and Policy Making for progress in this area consisting of early-childhood education, college readiness, and career readiness. Governor Mike Beebe has made improving education a major issue through his attempts to spend more on education. Through reforms, the state is a leader in requiring curricula designed to prepare students for postsecondary education, rewarding teachers for student achievement, and providing incentives for principals who work in lower-tier schools.
Funding.
As an organized territory, and later in the early days of statehood, education was funded by the sales of federally controlled public lands. This system was inadequate and prone to local graft. In an 1854 message to the legislature, Governor Elias N. Conway said, "We have a common-school law intended as a system to establish common schools in all part of the state; but for the want of adequate means there are very few in operation under this law." At the time, only about a quarter of children were enrolled in school.
By the beginning of the American Civil War, the state had only twenty-five publicly funded common schools.
In 1867, the state legislature was still controlled by ex-Confederates. It passed a Common Schools Law that allowed public funded but limited schools to white children.
The 1868 legislature banned former Confederates and passed a more wide-ranging law detailing funding and administrative issues and allowing black children to attend school. In furtherance of this, the postwar 1868 state constitution was the first to permit a personal-property tax to fund the lands and buildings for public schools. With the 1868 elections, the first county school commissioners took office.
In 2014, the state spent $9,616 per student, compared with a national average of about $11,000 putting Arkansas in nineteenth place.
Media.
As of 2010 many Arkansas local newspapers are owned by WEHCO Media, Alabama-based Lancaster Management, Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group, Missouri-based Rust Communications, Nevada-based Stephens Media, and New York-based GateHouse Media.
Culture.
The culture of Arkansas includes distinct cuisine, dialect, and traditional festivals. Sports are also very important to the culture, including football, baseball, basketball, hunting, and fishing. Perhaps the best-known aspect of Arkansas's culture is the stereotype that its citizens are shiftless hillbillies. The reputation began when early explorers characterized the state as a savage wilderness full of outlaws and thieves. The most enduring icon of Arkansas's hillbilly reputation is "The Arkansas Traveller", a painted depiction of a folk tale from the 1840s. Though intended to represent the divide between rich southeastern plantation Arkansas planters and the poor northwestern hill country, the meaning was twisted to represent a Northerner lost in the Ozarks on a white horse asking a backwoods Arkansan for directions. The state also suffers from the racial stigma common to former Confederate states, with historical events such as the Little Rock Nine adding to Arkansas's enduring image.
Art and history museums display pieces of cultural value for Arkansans and tourists to enjoy. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville was visited by 604,000 people in 2012, its first year. The museum includes walking trails and educational opportunities in addition to displaying over 450 works covering five centuries of American art. Several historic town sites have been restored as Arkansas state parks, including Historic Washington State Park, Powhatan Historic State Park, and Davidsonville Historic State Park.
Arkansas features a variety of native music across the state, ranging from the blues heritage of West Memphis, Pine Bluff, Helena–West Helena to rockabilly, bluegrass, and folk music from the Ozarks. Festivals such as the King Biscuit Blues Festival and Bikes, Blues, and BBQ pay homage to the history of blues in the state. The Ozark Folk Festival in Mountain View is a celebration of Ozark culture and often features folk and bluegrass musicians. Literature set in Arkansas such as "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou and "A Painted House" by John Grisham describe the culture at various time periods.
Sports and recreation.
Sports have become an integral part of the culture of Arkansas, and her residents enjoy participating in and spectating various events throughout the year.
Team sports and especially collegiate football are important to Arkansans. College football in Arkansas began from humble beginnings, when the University of Arkansas first fielded a team in 1894. Over the years, many Arkansans have looked to Arkansas Razorbacks football as the public image of the state. Although the University of Arkansas is based in Fayetteville, the Razorbacks have always played at least one game per season at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in an effort to keep fan support in central and south Arkansas.
Arkansas State University became the second NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) (then known as Division I-A) team in the state in 1992 after playing in lower divisions for nearly two decades. The two schools have never played each other, due to the University of Arkansas's policy of not playing intrastate games. Two other campuses of the University of Arkansas System are Division I members. The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, a league whose members all play football in the second-level Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, known for sports purposes as Little Rock, joined the Ohio Valley Conference in 2022 after playing in the Sun Belt Conference; unlike many other OVC members, it does not field a football program. The state's other DivisionI member is the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), which joined the ASUN Conference in 2021 after leaving the FCS Southland Conference. Because the ASUN does not plan to start FCS football competition until at least 2022, UCA football is competing in the Western Athletic Conference as part of a formal football partnership between the two leagues. Seven of Arkansas's smaller colleges play in NCAA Division II, with six in the Great American Conference and one in the Lone Star Conference. Two other small Arkansas colleges compete in NCAA Division III, in which athletic scholarships are prohibited. High school football also began to grow in Arkansas in the early 20th century.
Baseball runs deep in Arkansas and was popular before the state hosted Major League Baseball (MLB) spring training in Hot Springs from 1886 to the 1920s. Two minor league teams are based in the state. The Arkansas Travelers play at Dickey–Stephens Park in North Little Rock, and the Northwest Arkansas Naturals play in Arvest Ballpark in Springdale. Both teams compete in Double-A Central.
Hunting continues in the state. The state created the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 1915 to regulate hunting. Today a significant portion of Arkansas's population participates in hunting duck in the Mississippi flyway and deer across the state. Ducks Unlimited has called Stuttgart, Arkansas, "the epicenter of the duck universe". Millions of acres of public land are available for both bow and modern gun hunters.
Fishing has always been popular in Arkansas, and the sport and the state have benefited from the creation of reservoirs across the state. Following the completion of Norfork Dam, the Norfork Tailwater and the White River have become a destination for trout fishers. Several smaller retirement communities such as Bull Shoals, Hot Springs Village, and Fairfield Bay have flourished due to their position on a fishing lake. The National Park Service has preserved the Buffalo National River in its natural state and fly fishers visit it annually.
Attractions.
Arkansas is home to many areas protected by the National Park System. These include:
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1931 | Atmosphere (disambiguation) | An atmosphere is a gas layer around a celestial body.
Atmosphere may also refer to:
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1933 | Apus | Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 "Uranometria". The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Shading the others at apparent magnitude 3.8 is Alpha Apodis, an orange giant that has around 48 times the diameter and 928 times the luminosity of the Sun. Marginally fainter is Gamma Apodis, another ageing giant star. Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible with the naked eye. Two star systems have been found to have planets.
History.
Apus was one of twelve constellations published by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the "Eerste Schipvaart", to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue in 1603 under the Dutch name "De Paradijs Voghel", "The Bird of Paradise", and Plancius called the constellation "Paradysvogel Apis Indica"; the first word is Dutch for "bird of paradise". "Apis" (Latin for "bee") is assumed to have been a typographical error for "avis" ("bird").
After its introduction on Plancius's globe, the constellation's first known appearance in a celestial atlas was in German cartographer Johann Bayer's "Uranometria" of 1603. Bayer called it "Apis Indica" while fellow astronomers Johannes Kepler and his son-in-law Jakob Bartsch called it "Apus" or "Avis Indica". The name "Apus" is derived from the Greek "apous", meaning "without feet". This referred to the Western misconception that the bird-of-paradise had no feet, which arose because the only specimens available in the West had their feet and wings removed. Such specimens began to arrive in Europe in 1522, when the survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition brought them home. The constellation later lost some of its tail when Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille used those stars to establish Octans in the 1750s.
Characteristics.
Covering 206.3 square degrees and hence 0.5002% of the sky, Apus ranks 67th of the 88 modern constellations by area. Its position in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible to observers south of 7°N. It is bordered by Ara, Triangulum Australe and Circinus to the north, Musca and Chamaeleon to the west, Octans to the south, and Pavo to the east. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Aps". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of six segments ("illustrated in infobox"). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −67.48° and −83.12°.
Features.
Stars.
Lacaille gave twelve stars Bayer designations, labelling them Alpha through to Kappa, including two stars next to each other as Delta and another two stars near each other as Kappa. Within the constellation's borders, there are 39 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5. Beta, Gamma and Delta Apodis form a narrow triangle, with Alpha Apodis lying to the east. The five brightest stars are all red-tinged, which is unusual among constellations.
Alpha Apodis is an orange giant of spectral type K3III located 430 ± 20 light-years away from Earth, with an apparent magnitude of 3.8. It spent much of its life as a blue-white (B-type) main sequence star before expanding, cooling and brightening as it used up its core hydrogen. It has swollen to 48 times the Sun's diameter, and shines with a luminosity approximately 928 times that of the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4312 K. Beta Apodis is an orange giant 149 ± 2 light-years away, with a magnitude of 4.2. It is around 1.84 times as massive as the Sun, with a surface temperature of 4677 K. Gamma Apodis is a yellow giant of spectral type G8III located 150 ± 4 light-years away, with a magnitude of 3.87. It is approximately 63 times as luminous the Sun, with a surface temperature of 5279 K. Delta Apodis is a double star, the two components of which are 103 arcseconds apart and visible through binoculars. Delta1 is a red giant star of spectral type M4III located 630 ± 30 light-years away. It is a semiregular variable that varies from magnitude +4.66 to +4.87, with pulsations of multiple periods of 68.0, 94.9 and 101.7 days. Delta2 is an orange giant star of spectral type K3III, located 550 ± 10 light-years away, with a magnitude of 5.3. The separate components can be resolved with the naked eye.
The fifth-brightest star is Zeta Apodis at magnitude 4.8, a star that has swollen and cooled to become an orange giant of spectral type K1III, with a surface temperature of 4649 K and a luminosity 133 times that of the Sun. It is 300 ± 4 light-years distant. Near Zeta is Iota Apodis, a binary star system 1,040 ± 60 light-years distant, that is composed of two blue-white main sequence stars that orbit each other every 59.32 years. Of spectral types B9V and B9.5 V, they are both over three times as massive as the Sun.
Eta Apodis is a white main sequence star located 140.8 ± 0.9 light-years distant. Of apparent magnitude 4.89, it is 1.77 times as massive, 15.5 times as luminous as the Sun and has 2.13 times its radius. Aged 250 ± 200 million years old, this star is emitting an excess of 24 μm infrared radiation, which may be caused by a debris disk of dust orbiting at a distance of more than 31 astronomical units from it.
Theta Apodis is a cool red giant of spectral type M7 III located 350 ± 30 light-years distant. It shines with a luminosity approximately 3879 times that of the Sun and has a surface temperature of 3151 K. A semiregular variable, it varies by 0.56 magnitudes with a period of 119 days—or approximately 4 months. It is losing mass at the rate of times the mass of the Sun per year through its stellar wind. Dusty material ejected from this star is interacting with the surrounding interstellar medium, forming a bow shock as the star moves through the galaxy. NO Apodis is a red giant of spectral type M3III that varies between magnitudes 5.71 and 5.95. Located 780 ± 20 light-years distant, it shines with a luminosity estimated at 2059 times that of the Sun and has a surface temperature of 3568 K. S Apodis is a rare R Coronae Borealis variable, an extremely hydrogen-deficient supergiant thought to have arisen as the result of the merger of two white dwarfs; fewer than 100 have been discovered as of 2012. It has a baseline magnitude of 9.7. R Apodis is a star that was given a variable star designation, yet has turned out not to be variable. Of magnitude 5.3, it is another orange giant.
Two star systems have had exoplanets discovered by doppler spectroscopy, and the substellar companion of a third star system—the sunlike star HD 131664—has since been found to be a brown dwarf with a calculated mass of the companion to 23 times that of Jupiter (minimum of 18 and maximum of 49 Jovian masses). HD 134606 is a yellow sunlike star of spectral type G6IV that has begun expanding and cooling off the main sequence. Three planets orbit it with periods of 12, 59.5 and 459 days, successively larger as they are further away from the star. HD 137388 is another star—of spectral type K2IV—that is cooler than the Sun and has begun cooling off the main sequence. Around 47% as luminous and 88% as massive as the Sun, with 85% of its diameter, it is thought to be around 7.4 ± 3.9 billion years old. It has a planet that is 79 times as massive as the Earth and orbits its sun every 330 days at an average distance of 0.89 astronomical units (AU).
Deep-sky objects.
The Milky Way covers much of the constellation's area. Of the deep-sky objects in Apus, there are two prominent globular clusters—NGC 6101 and IC 4499—and a large faint nebula that covers several degrees east of Beta and Gamma Apodis. NGC 6101 is a globular cluster of apparent magnitude 9.2 located around 50,000 light-years distant from Earth, which is around 160 light-years across. Around 13 billion years old, it contains a high concentration of massive bright stars known as blue stragglers, thought to be the result of two stars merging. IC 4499 is a loose globular cluster in the medium-far galactic halo; its apparent magnitude is 10.6.
The galaxies in the constellation are faint. IC 4633 is a very faint spiral galaxy surrounded by a vast amount of Milky Way line-of-sight integrated flux nebulae—large faint clouds thought to be lit by large numbers of stars.
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1934 | Abadan, Iran | Abadan ( "Ābādān", ) is a city and capital of Abadan County, Khuzestan Province, which is located in the southwest of Iran. It lies on Abadan Island ( long, 3–19 km or 2–12 miles wide). The island is bounded in the west by the Arvand waterway and to the east by the Bahmanshir outlet of the Karun River (the Arvand Rood), from the Persian Gulf, near the Iran–Iraq border. Abadan is 140 km from the provincial capital city of Ahvaz.
Etymology.
The earliest mention of the island of Abadan, if not the port itself, is found in works of the geographer Marcian, who renders the name "Apphadana". Earlier, the classical geographer Ptolemy notes "Apphana" as an island off the mouth of the Tigris (which is where the modern Island of Abadan is located). An etymology for this name is presented by B. Farahvashi to be derived from the Persian word "ab" (water) and the root "pā" (guard, watch) thus "coastguard station").
In Islamic times, a pseudo-etymology was produced by the historian Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. 892) quoting a folk story that the town was presumably founded by one "Abbad bin Hosayn" from the Arabian Tribe of Banu Tamim, who established a garrison there during the governorship of "Hajjaj" in the Ummayad period.
In the subsequent centuries, the Persian version of the name had begun to come into general use before it was adopted by official decree in 1935.
Population.
The civilian population of the city dropped close to zero during the eight years of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). The 1986 census recorded only 6 people. In 1991, 84,774 had returned to live in the city. By 2001, the population had jumped to 206,073, and it was 217,988, in 48,061 families, according to 2006 census. Abadan Refinery is one of the largest in the world.
Only 9% of managers (of the oil company) were from Khuzestan. The proportion of natives of Tehran, the Caspian, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan rose from 4% of blue collar workers to 22% of white collar workers to 45% of managers, thus Arabic-speakers were concentrated on the lower rungs of the work force, managers tended to be brought in from some distance. There is also a single Armenian church in the centre of the city, Saint Garapet church.
History.
Abadan is thought to have been further developed into a major port city under the Abbasids' rule. The city was then a commercial source of salt and woven mats. The siltation of the river delta forced the town further away from water; In the 14th century, however, Ibn Battutah described Abadan just as a small port in a flat salty plain. Politically, Abadan was often the subject of dispute between the nearby states. In 1847, Persia acquired it from the Ottoman Empire in which state Abadan has remained since. From the 17th century onward, the island of Abadan was part of the lands of the Arab "Ka'ab" (Bani Kaab) tribe. One section of the tribe, "Mohaysen", had its headquarters at "Mohammara" (now Khorramshahr), until the removal of Shaikh Khaz'al Khan in 1924.
It was not until the 20th century that rich oil fields were discovered in the area. On 16 July 1909, after secret negotiation with the British consul, Percy Cox, assisted by Arnold Wilson, and Sheik Khaz'al agreed to a rental agreement for the island, including Abadan. The Sheik continued to administer the island until 1924. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company built their first pipeline terminus oil refinery in Abadan, starting in 1909 and completing it in 1912, with oil flowing by August 1912 (see Abadan Refinery). Refinery throughput numbers rose from 33,000 tons in 1912–1913 to 4,338,000 tons in 1931. By 1938, it was the largest in the world.
During World War II, Abadan was the site of brief combat between Iranian forces and British and Indian troops during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. Alanbrooke wrote in August 1942 that everything depends on the oil from Abadan, as "if we lost Persian oil we inevitably lost Egypt, command of the Indian Ocean, and endangered the whole India Burma situation, which "could not be made good from America because of the shortage of tankers ...". Later, Abadan was a major logistics centre for Lend-Lease aircraft being sent to the Soviet Union by the United States.</ref> </ref>
In 1951, Iran nationalised all oil properties and refining ground to a stop on the island. Rioting broke out in Abadan, after the government had decided to nationalise the oil facilities, and three British workers were killed. It was not until 1954 that a settlement was reached, which allowed a consortium of international oil companies to manage the production and refining on the island. That continued until 1973, when the NIOC took over all facilities. After the total nationalisation, Iran focused on supplying oil domestically and built a pipeline from Abadan to Tehran.
Abadan was not a major cultural or religious centre, but it played an important role in the Islamic Revolution. On 19 August 1978, the anniversary of the US-backed coup d'état that had overthrown the nationalist and popular Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, the Cinema Rex, a movie theatre in Abadan, was set ablaze. The Cinema Rex Fire caused 430 deaths, but more importantly, it was another event that kept the Islamic Revolution moving ahead. At the time, there was much confusion and misinformation about the perpetrators of the incident. The public largely put the blame on the local police chief and also the Shah and SAVAK. The reformist "Sobh-e Emrooz" newspaper in one of its editorials revealed that the Cinema Rex was burned down by radical Islamists. The newspaper was shut down immediately afterwards. Over time, the true culprits, radical Islamists, were apprehended, and the logic behind this act was revealed, as they were trying both to foment the general public to distrust the government even more, and perceived cinema as a link to the Americans. The fire was one of four during a short period in August, with other fires in Mashhad, Rizaiya, and Shiraz.
In September 1980, Abadan was almost overrun during a surprise attack on Khuzestan by Iraq, marking the beginning of the Iran–Iraq War. For 12 months, Abadan was besieged, but never captured, by Iraqi forces, and in September 1981, the Iranians broke the siege of Abadan. Much of the city, including the oil refinery, which was the world's largest refinery with a capacity of 628,000 barrels per day, was badly damaged or destroyed by the siege and by bombing. Prior to the war, the city's civilian population was about 300,000, but at the war's end nearly the entire populace had sought refuge elsewhere in Iran.
After the war, the biggest concern was the rebuilding of Abadan's oil refinery, as it was operating at 10% of capacity due to damage. In 1993, the refinery began limited operation and the port reopened. By 1997, the refinery reached the same rate of production as before the war. Recently, Abadan has been the site of major labour activity as workers at the oil refineries in the city have staged walkouts and strikes to protest non-payment of wages and the political situation in the country.
Recent events.
To honor the 100th anniversary of the refining of oil in Abadan, city officials are planning an oil museum. The Abadan oil refinery was featured on the reverse side of Iran's 100-rial banknotes printed in 1965 and from 1971 to 1973. Abadan today has been declared as a free zone city. The healthy relationship between Iran and Iraq has become one of the transit cities connecting both countries through a 40-minute drive.
Geography.
Climate.
The climate in Abadan is arid (Köppen climate classification "BWh") and similar to Baghdad's, but slightly hotter due to Abadan's lower latitude. Summers are dry and extremely hot, with temperatures above almost daily and temperatures above can be almost common. Abadan is notably one of the few hottest populated places on earth and experiences a few sand and dust storms per year. Winters are mildly wet and spring-like, though subject to cold spells with night frost. However, winters in Abadan have no snow. Winter temperatures are around . The world's highest unconfirmed temperature was a temperature flare up during a heat burst in June 1967, with a temperature of . The lowest recorded temperature in the city range is . which was recorded on 20 January 1964 and 3 February 1967 while the highest is , recorded on 11 July 1951, 9 August 1981 and 5 August 2022.
Economics and education.
The Abadan Institute of Technology was established in Abadan in 1939. The school specialized in engineering and petroleum chemistry, and was designed to train staff for the refinery in town. The school's name has since changed several times, but since 1989 has been considered a branch campus of the Petroleum University of Technology, centred in Tehran. Abadan University of Medical Sciences, It was founded by Ministry of Health and Medical Education in September 1941 as a Nursing Faculty and in 2012 it became an independent faculty of medical school. Program study of this school is similar to curriculum that applies most Iranian medical faculties.
Abadan was chosen for constructing a refinery because of its strategic position and proximity to other resources. The Abadan Refinery construction project started in 1909 and its operation began in 1962 by a production capacity of 2500 barrels per day.
There is an international airport in Abadan. It is represented by the IATA airport code ABD.
There is a large amount of external investment from East Asian countries that are building oil refineries and developing a lot of real estate.
Today, Abadan is known for its lively fish market where locals buy fresh catch of the day used in the many delicious seafood dishes of the city. Abadan is also part of the Arvand Free Zone, a 155 square kilometer industrial and security zone.
Transportation.
By plane.
The city is served by Abadan-Ayatollah Jami International Airport with flights on various commercial airlines.
By train.
The nearest railway station is in Khorramshahr, about 10 km north of Abadan. Daytime trains from Ahvaz as well as overnight trains from Tehran and Mashhad are available.
Sport.
Sanat Naft Abadan F.C., is one of the Iranian football clubs that is currently competing with other teams in the Iranian Football Premier League.
Takhti Stadium, the main stadium is the city and the team.
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1935 | Attorney | Attorney may refer to:
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1937 | Alexander Fleming | Sir Alexander Fleming, (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955), was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould "Penicillium rubens" is described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease". For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named "Micrococcus Lysodeikticus", later renamed "Micrococcus luteus".
Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in "Time" magazine's list of the . In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace.
Early life and education.
Born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Alexander Fleming was the third of four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) and Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. Hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his second marriage to Grace, and died when Alexander was seven.
Fleming went to Loudoun Moor School and Darvel School, and earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London, where he attended the Royal Polytechnic Institution. After working in a shipping office for four years, the twenty-year-old Alexander Fleming inherited some money from an uncle, John Fleming. His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to him that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington (now part of Imperial College London); he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906.
Fleming, who was a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force from 1900 to 1914, had been a member of the rifle club at the medical school. The captain of the club, wishing to retain Fleming in the team, suggested that he join the research department at St Mary's, where he became assistant bacteriologist to Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy and immunology. In 1908, he gained a BSc degree with gold medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Mary's until 1914.
Commissioned lieutenant in 1914 and promoted captain in 1917, Fleming served throughout World War I in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned in Dispatches. He and many of his colleagues worked in battlefield hospitals at the Western Front in France. In 1918 he returned to St Mary's Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928. In 1951 he was elected the Rector of the University of Edinburgh for a term of three years.
Scientific contributions.
Antiseptics.
During World War I, Fleming with Leonard Colebrook and Sir Almroth Wright joined the war efforts and practically moved the entire Inoculation Department of St Mary's to the British military hospital at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Serving as Temporary Lieutenant of the Royal Army Medical Corps, he witnessed the death of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics, which were used at the time to treat infected wounds, he observed, often worsened the injuries. In an article published in the medical journal "The Lancet" in 1917, he described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glassblowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during the war. Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that protected the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that were out of reach. Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army physicians over the course of the war continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients.
Discovery of lysozyme.
At St Mary's Hospital, Fleming continued his investigations into bacteria culture and antibacterial substances. As his research scholar at the time V. D. Allison recalled, Fleming was not a tidy researcher and usually expected unusual bacterial growths in his culture plates. Fleming had teased Allison of his "excessive tidiness in the laboratory", and Allison rightly attributed such untidiness as the success of Fleming's experiments, and said, "[If] he had been as tidy as he thought I was, he would not have made his two great discoveries."
In late 1921, while he was maintaining agar plates for bacteria, he found that one of the plates was contaminated with bacteria from the air. When he added nasal mucus, he found that the mucus inhibited the bacterial growth. Surrounding the mucus area was a clear transparent circle (1 cm from the mucus), indicating the killing zone of bacteria, followed by a glassy and translucent ring beyond which was an opaque area indicating normal bacterial growth. In the next test, he used bacteria maintained in saline that formed a yellow suspension. Within two minutes of adding fresh mucus, the yellow saline turned completely clear. He extended his tests using tears, which were contributed by his co-workers. As Allison reminisced, saying, "For the next five or six weeks, our tears were the source of supply for this extraordinary phenomenon. Many were the lemons we used (after the failure of onions) to produce a flow of tears... The demand by us for tears was so great, that laboratory attendants were pressed into service, receiving threepence for each contribution."
His further tests with sputum, cartilage, blood, semen, ovarian cyst fluid, pus, and egg white showed that the bactericidal agent was present in all of these. He reported his discovery before the Medical Research Club in December and before the Royal Society the next year but failed to stir any interest, as Allison recollected:
I was present at this [Medical Research Club] meeting as Fleming's guest. His paper describing his discovery was received with no questions asked and no discussion, which was most unusual and an indication that it was considered to be of no importance. The following year he read a paper on the subject before the Royal Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly and he and I gave a demonstration of our work. Again with one exception little comment or attention was paid to it.
Reporting in the 1 May 1922 issue of the "" under the title "On a remarkable bacteriolytic element found in tissues and secretions", Fleming wrote:In this communication I wish to draw attention to a substance present in the tissues and secretions of the body, which is capable of rapidly dissolving certain bacteria. As this substance has properties akin to those of ferments I have called it a "Lysozyme", and shall refer to it by this name throughout the communication. The lysozyme was first noticed during some investigations made on a patient suffering from acute coryza.This was the first recorded discovery of lysozyme. With Allison, he published further studies on lysozyme in October issue of the "British Journal of Experimental Pathology" the same year. Although he was able to obtain larger amounts of lysozyme from egg whites, the enzyme was only effective against small counts of harmless bacteria, and therefore had little therapeutic potential. This indicates one of the major differences between pathogenic and harmless bacteria.
Described in the original publication, "a patient suffering from acute coryza" was later identified as Fleming himself. His research notebook dated 21 November 1921 showed a sketch of the culture plate with a small note: “Staphyloid coccus from A.F.'s nose." He also identified the bacterium present in the nasal mucus as "Micrococcus Lysodeikticus", giving the species name (meaning "lysis indicator" for its susceptibility to lysozymal activity). The species was reassigned as "Micrococcus luteus" in 1972. The "Fleming strain" (NCTC2665) of this bacterium has become a model in different biological studies. The importance of lysozyme was not recognised, and Fleming was well aware of this, in his presidential address at the Royal Society of Medicine meeting on 18 October 1932, he said:I choose lysozyme as the subject for this address for two reasons, firstly because I have a fatherly interest in the name, and, secondly, because its importance in connection with natural immunity does not seem to be generally appreciated. In his Nobel lecture on 11 December 1945, he briefly mentioned lysozyme, saying, "Penicillin was not the first antibiotic I happened to discover." It was only towards the end of the 20th century that the true importance of Fleming's discovery in immunology was realised as lysozyme became the first antimicrobial protein discovered that constitute part of our innate immunity.
Discovery of penicillin.
Experiment.
By 1927, Fleming had been investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well known from his earlier work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher. In 1928, he studied the variation of "Staphylococcus aureus" grown under natural condition, after the work of Joseph Warwick Bigger, who discovered that the bacterium could grow into a variety of types (strains). On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent a holiday with his family at Suffolk. Before leaving for his holiday, he inoculated staphylococci on culture plates and left them on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. On his return, Fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci immediately surrounding the fungus had been destroyed, whereas other staphylococci colonies farther away were normal, famously remarking "That's funny". Fleming showed the contaminated culture to his former assistant Merlin Pryce, who reminded him, "That's how you discovered lysozyme." He identified the mould as being from the genus "Penicillium." He suspected it to be "P. chrysogenum," but a colleague Charles J. La Touche identified it as "P. rubrum." (It was later corrected as "P. notatum" and then officially accepted as "P. chrysogenum"; in 2011, it was resolved as "P. rubens.")
The laboratory in which Fleming discovered and tested penicillin is preserved as the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. The source of the fungal contaminant was established in 1966 as coming from La Touche's room, which was directly below Fleming's.
Fleming grew the mould in a pure culture and found that the culture broth contained an antibacterial substance. He investigated its anti-bacterial effect on many organisms, and noticed that it affected bacteria such as staphylococci and many other Gram-positive pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria, but not typhoid fever or paratyphoid fever, which are caused by Gram-negative bacteria, for which he was seeking a cure at the time. It also affected "Neisseria gonorrhoeae," which causes gonorrhoea, although this bacterium is Gram-negative. After some months of calling it "mould juice" or "the inhibitor", he gave the name penicillin on 7 March 1929 for the antibacterial substance present in the mould.
Reception and publication.
Fleming presented his discovery on 13 February 1929 before the Medical Research Club. His talk on "A medium for the isolation of Pfeiffer's bacillus" did not receive any particular attention or comment. Henry Dale, the then Director of National Institute for Medical Research and chair of the meeting, much later reminisced that he did not even sense any striking point of importance in Fleming's speech. Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the "British Journal of Experimental Pathology," but little attention was paid to the article. His problem was the difficulty of producing penicillin in large amounts, and moreover, isolation of the main compound. Even with the help of Harold Raistrick and his team of biochemists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, chemical purification was futile. "As a result, penicillin languished largely forgotten in the 1930s", as Milton Wainwright described.
As late as in 1936, there was no appreciation for penicillin. When Fleming talked of its medical importance at the Second International Congress of Microbiology held in London, no one believed him. As Allison, his companion in both the Medical Research Club and international congress meeting, remarked the two occasions:[Fleming at the Medical Research Club meeting] suggested the possible value of penicillin for the treatment of infection in man. Again there was a total lack of interest and no discussion. Fleming was keenly disappointed, but worse was to follow. He read a paper on his work on penicillin at a meeting of the International Congress of Microbiology, attended by the foremost bacteriologists from all over the world. There was no support for his views on its possible future value for the prevention and treatment of human infections and discussion was minimal. Fleming bore these disappointments stoically, but they did not alter his views or deter him from continuing his investigation of penicillin.In 1941, the "British Medical Journal" reported that "[Penicillin] does not appear to have been considered as possibly useful from any other point of view."
Purification and stabilisation.
In Oxford, Ernst Boris Chain and Edward Abraham were studying the molecular structure of the antibiotic. Abraham was the first to propose the correct structure of penicillin. Shortly after the team published its first results in 1940, Fleming telephoned Howard Florey, Chain's head of department, to say that he would be visiting within the next few days. When Chain heard that Fleming was coming, he remarked "Good God! I thought he was dead."
Norman Heatley suggested transferring the active ingredient of penicillin back into water by changing its acidity. This produced enough of the drug to begin testing on animals. There were many more people involved in the Oxford team, and at one point the entire Sir William Dunn School of Pathology was involved in its production. After the team had developed a method of purifying penicillin to an effective first stable form in 1940, several clinical trials ensued, and their amazing success inspired the team to develop methods for mass production and mass distribution in 1945.
Fleming was modest about his part in the development of penicillin, describing his fame as the "Fleming Myth" and he praised Florey and Chain for transforming the laboratory curiosity into a practical drug. Fleming was the first to discover the properties of the active substance, giving him the privilege of naming it: penicillin. He also kept, grew, and distributed the original mould for twelve years, and continued until 1940 to try to get help from any chemist who had enough skill to make penicillin. Sir Henry Harris summed up the process in 1998 as: "Without Fleming, no Chain; without Chain, no Florey; without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no penicillin." The discovery of penicillin and its subsequent development as a prescription drug mark the start of modern antibiotics.
Medical use and mass production.
In his first clinical trial, Fleming treated his research scholar Stuart Craddock who had developed severe infection of the nasal antrum (sinusitis). The treatment started on 9 January 1929 but without any effect. It probably was due to the fact that the infection was with influenza bacillus ("Haemophilus influenzae"), the bacterium which he had found unsusceptible to penicillin. Fleming gave some of his original penicillin samples to his colleague-surgeon Arthur Dickson Wright for clinical test in 1928. Although Wright reportedly said that it "seemed to work satisfactorily", there are no records of its specific use. Cecil George Paine, a pathologist at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield and former student of Fleming, was the first to use penicillin successfully for medical treatment. He cured eye infections (conjunctivitis) of one adult and three infants (neonatal conjunctivitis) on 25 November 1930.
Fleming also successfully treated severe conjunctivitis in 1932. Keith Bernard Rogers, who had joined St Mary's as medical student in 1929, was captain of the London University rifle team and was about to participate in an inter-hospital rifle shooting competition when he developed conjunctivitis. Fleming applied his penicillin and cured Rogers before the competition. It is said that the "penicillin worked and the match was won." However, the report that "Keith was probably the first patient to be treated clinically with penicillin ointment" is no longer true as Paine's medical records showed up.
There is a popular assertion both in popular and scientific literature that Fleming largely abandoned penicillin work in the early 1930s. In his review of André Maurois's "The Life of Sir Alexander Fleming, Discoverer of Penicillin," William L. Kissick went so far as to say that "Fleming had abandoned penicillin in 1932... Although the recipient of many honors and the author of much scientific work, Sir Alexander Fleming does not appear to be an ideal subject for a biography." This is false, as Fleming continued to pursue penicillin research. As late as in 1939, Fleming's notebook shows attempts to make better penicillin production using different media. In 1941, he published a method for assessment of penicillin effectiveness. As to the chemical isolation and purification, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford took up the research to mass-produce it, which they achieved with support from World War II military projects under the British and US governments.
By mid-1942, the Oxford team produced the pure penicillin compound as yellow powder. In August 1942, Harry Lambert (an associate of Fleming's brother Robert) was admitted to St Mary's Hospital due to a life-threatening infection of the nervous system (streptococcal meningitis). Fleming treated him with sulphonamides, but Lambert's condition deteriorated. He tested the antibiotic susceptibility and found that his penicillin could kill the bacteria. He requested Florey for the isolated sample. Florey sent the incompletely purified sample, which Fleming immediately administered into Lambert's spinal canal. Lambert showed signs of improvement the very next day, and completely recovered within a week. Fleming published the clinical case in "The Lancet" in 1943.
Upon this medical breakthrough, Allison informed the British Ministry of Health of the importance of penicillin and the need for mass production. The War Cabinet was convinced of the usefulness upon which Sir Cecil Weir, Director General of Equipment, called for a meeting on the mode of action on 28 September 1942. The Penicillin Committee was created on 5 April 1943. The committee consisted of Weir as chairman, Fleming, Florey, Sir Percival Hartley, Allison and representatives from pharmaceutical companies as members. The main goals were to produce penicillin rapidly in large quantities with collaboration of American companies, and to supply the drug exclusively for Allied armed forces. By D-Day in 1944, enough penicillin had been produced to treat all the wounded of the Allied troops.
Antibiotic resistance.
Fleming also discovered very early that bacteria developed antibiotic resistance whenever too little penicillin was used or when it was used for too short a period. Almroth Wright had predicted antibiotic resistance even before it was noticed during experiments. Fleming cautioned about the use of penicillin in his many speeches around the world. On 26 June 1945, he made the following cautionary statements: "the microbes are educated to resist penicillin and a host of penicillin-fast organisms is bred out ... In such cases the thoughtless person playing with penicillin is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted." He cautioned not to use penicillin unless there was a properly diagnosed reason for it to be used, and that if it were used, never to use too little, or for too short a period, since these are the circumstances under which bacterial resistance to antibiotics develops.
It had been experimentally shown in 1942 that "S. aureu"s could develop penicillin resistance under prolonged exposure. Elaborating the possibility of penicillin resistance in clinical conditions in his Nobel Lecture, Fleming said:The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.It was around that time that the first clinical case of penicillin resistance was reported.
Personal life.
On 24 December 1915, Fleming married a trained nurse, Sarah Marion McElroy of Killala, County Mayo, Ireland. Their only child, Robert Fleming (1924–2015), became a general medical practitioner. After his first wife's death in 1949, Fleming married Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, a Greek colleague at St. Mary's, on 9 April 1953; she died in 1986.
Fleming came from a Presbyterian background, while his first wife Sarah was a (lapsed) Roman Catholic. It is said that he was not particularly religious, and their son Robert was later received into the Anglican church, while still reportedly inheriting his two parents' fairly irreligious disposition.
When Fleming learned of Robert D. Coghill and Andrew J. Moyer patenting the method of penicillin production in the United States in 1944, he was furious, and commented:I found penicillin and have given it free for the benefit of humanity. Why should it become a profit-making monopoly of manufacturers in another country?From 1921 until his death in 1955, Fleming owned a country home named "The Dhoon" in Barton Mills, Suffolk.
Death.
On 11 March 1955, Fleming died at his home in London of a heart attack. His ashes are buried in St Paul's Cathedral.
Awards and legacy.
Fleming's discovery of penicillin changed the world of modern medicine by introducing the age of useful antibiotics; penicillin has saved, and is still saving, millions of people around the world.
The laboratory at St Mary's Hospital where Fleming discovered penicillin is home to the Fleming Museum, a popular London attraction. His alma mater, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, merged with Imperial College London in 1988. The "Sir Alexander Fleming Building" on the South Kensington campus was opened in 1998, where his son Robert and his great-granddaughter Claire were presented to the Queen; it is now one of the main preclinical teaching sites of the Imperial College School of Medicine.
His other alma mater, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now the University of Westminster) has named one of its student halls of residence "Alexander Fleming House", which is near to Old Street.
Myths.
The Fleming myth.
By 1942, penicillin, produced as pure compound, was still in short supply and not available for clinical use. When Fleming used the first few samples prepared by the Oxford team to treat Harry Lambert who had streptococcal meningitis, the successful treatment was a major news, particularly popularised in "The Times". Wright was surprised to discover that Fleming and the Oxford team were not mentioned, though Oxford was attributed as the source of the drug. Wright wrote to the editor of "The Times", which eagerly interviewed Fleming, but Florey prohibited the Oxford team from seeking media coverage. As a consequence, only Fleming was widely publicised in the media, which led to the misconception that he was entirely responsible for the discovery and development of the drug. Fleming himself referred to this incident as "the Fleming myth."
The Churchills.
The popular story of Winston Churchill's father paying for Fleming's education after Fleming's father saved young Winston from death is false. According to the biography, "Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution" by Kevin Brown, Alexander Fleming, in a letter to his friend and colleague Andre Gratia, described this as "A wondrous fable." Nor did he save Winston Churchill himself during World War II. Churchill was saved by Lord Moran, using sulphonamides, since he had no experience with penicillin, when Churchill fell ill in Carthage in Tunisia in 1943. "The Daily Telegraph" and "The Morning Post" on 21 December 1943 wrote that he had been saved by penicillin. He was saved by the new sulphonamide drug Sulphapyridine, known at the time under the research code M&B 693, discovered and produced by May & Baker Ltd, Dagenham, Essex – a subsidiary of the French group Rhône-Poulenc. In a subsequent radio broadcast, Churchill referred to the new drug as "This admirable M&B". It is highly probable that the correct information about the sulphonamide did not reach the newspapers because, since the original sulphonamide antibacterial, Prontosil, had been a discovery by the German laboratory Bayer, and as Britain was at war with Germany at the time, it was thought better to raise British morale by associating Churchill's cure with a British discovery, penicillin.
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1938 | Andrew Carnegie | Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away around $350 million (roughly $ billion in ), almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, expressed support for progressive taxation and an estate tax, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland and emigrated to Pittsburgh, United States with his parents in 1848 at age 12. Carnegie started work as a telegrapher, and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges, and oil derricks. He accumulated further wealth as a bond salesman, raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J. P. Morgan in 1901 for $303,450,000 (equal to $ today); it formed the basis of the U.S. Steel Corporation. After selling Carnegie Steel, he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American for the next several years.
Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on building local libraries, world peace, education, and scientific research. He funded the Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.
Biography.
Early life.
Andrew Carnegie was born to Margaret Morrison Carnegie and William Carnegie in Dunfermline, Scotland, in a typical weaver's cottage with only one main room, consisting of half the ground floor, which was shared with the neighboring weaver's family. The main room served as a living room, dining room and bedroom. He was named after his paternal grandfather. In 1836, the family moved to a larger house in Edgar Street (opposite Reid's Park), following the demand for more heavy damask, from which his father benefited. He was educated at the Free School in Dunfermline, a gift to the town from the philanthropist Adam Rolland of Gask.
Carnegie's maternal uncle, Scottish political leader George Lauder Sr., deeply influenced him as a boy by introducing him to Robert Burns' writings and historical Scottish heroes such as Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob Roy. Lauder's son, also named George Lauder, grew up with Carnegie and became his business partner. When Carnegie was 12, his father had fallen on tough times as a handloom weaver. Making matters worse, the country was in starvation. His mother helped support the family by assisting her brother and by selling potted meats at her "sweetie shop", leaving her as the primary breadwinner. Struggling to make ends meet, the Carnegies then decided to borrow money from George Lauder, Sr. and move to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in the United States in 1848 for the prospect of a better life. Carnegie's migration to America would be his second journey outside Dunfermline—the first being an outing to Edinburgh to see Queen Victoria.
In September 1848, Carnegie arrived with his family in Allegheny. Carnegie's father struggled to sell his product on his own. Eventually, the father and son both received job offers at the same Scottish-owned cotton mill, Anchor Cotton Mills. Carnegie's first job in 1848 was as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a Pittsburgh cotton factory. His starting wage was $1.20 per week ($ by inflation).
His father quit his position at the cotton mill soon after, returning to his loom and removing him as breadwinner once again. But Carnegie attracted the attention of John Hay, a Scottish manufacturer of bobbins, who offered him a job for $2.00 per week ($ by inflation). In his autobiography, Carnegie writes about the hardships he had to endure with this new job.
Telegraph.
In 1849, Carnegie became a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, at $2.50 per week ($ by inflation) following the recommendation of his uncle. He was a hard worker and would memorize all of the locations of Pittsburgh's businesses and the faces of important men. He made many connections this way. He also paid close attention to his work and quickly learned to distinguish the different sounds the incoming telegraph signals produced. He developed the ability to translate signals by ear, without using the paper slip, and within a year was promoted to an operator. Carnegie's education and passion for reading were given a boost by Colonel James Anderson, who opened his personal library of 400 volumes to working boys each Saturday night. Carnegie was a consistent borrower and a "self-made man" in both his economic development and his intellectual and cultural development. He was so grateful to Colonel Anderson for the use of his library that he "resolved, if ever wealth came to me, [to see to it] that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to the nobleman". His capacity, his willingness for hard work, his perseverance and his alertness soon brought him opportunities.
Railroads.
Starting in 1853, when Carnegie was around 18 years old, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad employed him as a secretary/telegraph operator at a salary of $4.00 per week ($ by inflation). Carnegie accepted the job with the railroad as he saw more prospects for career growth and experience there than with the telegraph company. At age 24, Scott asked Carnegie if he could handle being superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On December 1, 1859, Carnegie officially became superintendent of the Western Division. Carnegie then hired his sixteen-year-old brother Tom to be his personal secretary and telegraph operator. Not only did Carnegie hire his brother, he also hired his cousin, Maria Hogan, who became the first female telegraph operator in the country. As superintendent Carnegie made a salary of $1500 a year ($ by inflation). His employment by the Pennsylvania Railroad would be vital to his later success. The railroads were the first big businesses in America, and the Pennsylvania was one of the largest of them all. Carnegie learned much about management and cost control during these years, and from Scott in particular.
Scott also helped him with his first investments. Many of these were part of the corruption indulged in by Scott and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, John Edgar Thomson, which consisted of inside trading in companies that the railroad did business with, or payoffs made by contracting parties "as part of a quid pro quo". In 1855, Scott made it possible for Carnegie to invest $500 in the Adams Express Company, which contracted with the Pennsylvania to carry its messengers. The money was secured by his mother's placing of a $600 mortgage on the family's $700 home, but the opportunity was available only because of Carnegie's close relationship with Scott. A few years later, he received a few shares in Theodore Tuttle Woodruff's sleeping car company as a reward for holding shares that Woodruff had given to Scott and Thomson, as a payoff. Reinvesting his returns in such inside investments in railroad-related industries (iron, bridges, and rails), Carnegie slowly accumulated capital, the basis for his later success. Throughout his later career, he made use of his close connections to Thomson and Scott, as he established businesses that supplied rails and bridges to the railroad, offering the two men stakes in his enterprises.
1860–1865: The Civil War.
Before the Civil War, Carnegie arranged a merger between Woodruff's company and that of George Pullman, the inventor of the sleeping car for first-class travel, which facilitated business travel at distances over . The investment proved a success and a source of profit for Woodruff and Carnegie. The young Carnegie continued to work for Pennsylvania's Tom Scott and introduced several improvements in the service.
In the spring of 1861, Carnegie was appointed by Scott, who was now Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military transportation, as Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East. Carnegie helped open the rail lines into Washington D.C. that the rebels had cut; he rode the locomotive pulling the first brigade of Union troops to reach Washington D.C. Following the defeat of Union forces at Bull Run, he personally supervised the transportation of the defeated forces. Under his organization, the telegraph service rendered efficient service to the Union cause and significantly assisted in the eventual victory. Carnegie later joked that he was "the first casualty of the war" when he gained a scar on his cheek from freeing a trapped telegraph wire.
The defeat of the Confederacy required vast supplies of munitions and railroads (and telegraph lines) to deliver the goods. The war demonstrated how integral the industries were to American success.
Keystone Bridge Company.
In 1864, Carnegie was one of the early investors in the Columbia Oil Company in Venango County, Pennsylvania. In one year, the firm yielded over $1 million in cash dividends, and petroleum from oil wells on the property sold profitably. The demand for iron products, such as armor for gunboats, cannons, and shells, as well as a hundred other industrial products, made Pittsburgh a center of wartime production. Carnegie worked with others in establishing a steel rolling mill, and steel production and control of industry became the source of his fortune. Carnegie had some investments in the iron industry before the war.
After the war, Carnegie left the railroads to devote his energies to the ironworks trade. Carnegie worked to develop several ironworks, eventually forming the Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Ironworks, in Pittsburgh. Although he had left the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, he remained connected to its management, namely Thomas A. Scott and J. Edgar Thomson. He used his connection to the two men to acquire contracts for his Keystone Bridge Company and the rails produced by his ironworks. He also gave stock in his businesses to Scott and Thomson, and the Pennsylvania was his best customer. When he built his first steel plant, he made a point of naming it after Thomson. As well as having good business sense, Carnegie possessed charm and literary knowledge. He was invited to many important social functions, which Carnegie exploited to his advantage.
Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned shares in the landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri (completed 1874). This project was an important proof-of-concept for steel technology, which marked the opening of a new steel market.
Carnegie believed in using his fortune for others and doing more than making money. He wrote:
Industrialist.
1875–1900: Steel empire.
Carnegie made his fortune in the steel industry, controlling the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations ever owned by an individual in the United States. One of his two great innovations was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel by adopting and adapting the Bessemer process, which allowed the high carbon content of pig iron to be burnt away in a controlled and rapid way during steel production. Steel prices dropped as a result, and Bessemer steel was rapidly adopted for rails; however, it was not suitable for buildings and bridges.
The second was in his vertical integration of all suppliers of raw materials. In 1883, Carnegie bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a railway, and a line of lake steamships. In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel was the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world, with a capacity to produce approximately 2,000 tons of pig iron per day.
By 1889, the U.S. output of steel exceeded that of the UK, and Carnegie owned a large part of it. Carnegie's empire grew to include the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works in Braddock (named for John Edgar Thomson, Carnegie's former boss and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad), the Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works, the Lucy Furnaces, the Union Iron Mills, the Union Mill (Wilson, Walker & County), the Keystone Bridge Works, the Hartman Steel Works, the Frick Coke Company, and the Scotia ore mines. Carnegie combined his assets and those of his associates in 1892 with the launching of the Carnegie Steel Company.
Carnegie's success was also due to his relationship with the railroad industries, which not only relied on steel for track, but were also making money from steel transport. The steel and railroad barons worked closely to negotiate prices instead of allowing free-market competition.
Besides Carnegie's market manipulation, United States trade tariffs were also working in favor of the steel industry. Carnegie spent energy and resources lobbying Congress for a continuation of favorable tariffs from which he earned millions of dollars a year. Carnegie tried to keep this information concealed, but legal documents released in 1900, during proceedings with the ex-chairman of Carnegie Steel, Henry Clay Frick, revealed how favorable the tariffs had been.
1901: U.S. Steel.
In 1901, Carnegie was 65 years of age and considering retirement. He reformed his enterprises into conventional joint stock corporations as preparation for this. John Pierpont Morgan was a banker and America's most important financial deal maker. He had observed how efficiently Carnegie produced profits. He envisioned an integrated steel industry that would cut costs, lower prices to consumers, produce in greater quantities and raise wages to workers. To this end, he needed to buy out Carnegie and several other major producers and integrate them into one company, thereby eliminating duplication and waste. He concluded negotiations on March 2, 1901, and formed the United States Steel Corporation. It was the first corporation in the world with a market capitalization of over $1 billion.
The buyout, secretly negotiated by Charles M. Schwab (no relation to Charles R. Schwab), was the largest such industrial takeover in United States history to date. The holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel Corporation, a trust organized by Morgan, and Carnegie retired from business. His steel enterprises were bought out for $303,450,000.
Carnegie's share of this amounted to $225.64 million (in , $), which was paid to him in the form of 5%, 50-year gold bonds. The letter agreeing to sell his share was signed on February 26, 1901. On March 2, the circular formally filed the organization and capitalization (at $1.4 billion—4% of the U.S. gross domestic product at the time) of the United States Steel Corporation actually completed the contract. The bonds were to be delivered within two weeks to the Hudson Trust Company of Hoboken, New Jersey, in trust to Robert A. Franks, Carnegie's business secretary. There, a special vault was built to house the physical bulk of nearly $230 million worth of bonds.
Scholar and activist.
1880–1900.
Carnegie continued his business career; some of his literary intentions were fulfilled. He befriended the English poet Matthew Arnold, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, and the American humorist Mark Twain, as well as being in correspondence and acquaintance with most of the U.S. Presidents, statesmen, and notable writers.
Carnegie constructed commodious swimming-baths for the people of his hometown in Dunfermline in 1879. In the following year, Carnegie gave £8,000 for the establishment of a Dunfermline Carnegie Library in Scotland. In 1884, he gave $50,000 to Bellevue Hospital Medical College (now part of New York University Medical Center) to found a histological laboratory, now called the Carnegie Laboratory.
In 1881, Carnegie took his family, including his 70-year-old mother, on a trip to the United Kingdom. They toured Scotland by coach, and enjoyed several receptions en route. The highlight was a return to Dunfermline, where Carnegie's mother laid the foundation stone of a Carnegie Library which he funded. Carnegie's criticism of British society did not mean dislike; on the contrary, one of Carnegie's ambitions was to act as a catalyst for a close association between English-speaking peoples. To this end, in the early 1880s in partnership with Samuel Storey, he purchased numerous newspapers in Britain, all of which were to advocate the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of "the British Republic". Carnegie's charm, aided by his wealth, afforded him many British friends, including Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
In 1886, Carnegie's younger brother Thomas died at age 43. While owning steel works, Carnegie had purchased at low cost the most valuable of the iron ore fields around Lake Superior.
Following his tour of the UK, he wrote about his experiences in a book entitled "An American Four-in-hand in Britain". In 1886, Carnegie wrote his most radical work to date, entitled "Triumphant Democracy". Liberal in its use of statistics to make its arguments, the book argued his view that the American republican system of government was superior to the British monarchical system. It gave a highly favorable and idealized view of American progress and criticized the British royal family. The cover depicted an upended royal crown and a broken scepter. The book created considerable controversy in the UK. The book made many Americans appreciate their country's economic progress and sold over 40,000 copies, mostly in the U.S.
Although actively involved in running his many businesses, Carnegie had become a regular contributor to numerous magazines, most notably "The Nineteenth Century", under the editorship of James Knowles, and the influential "North American Review", led by the editor Lloyd Bryce. In 1889, Carnegie published "Wealth" in the June issue of the "North American Review". After reading it, Gladstone requested its publication in Britain, where it appeared as "The Gospel of Wealth" in "The Pall Mall Gazette". Carnegie argued that the life of a wealthy industrialist should comprise two parts. The first part was the gathering and the accumulation of wealth. The second part was for the subsequent distribution of this wealth to benevolent causes. Philanthropy was key to making life worthwhile.
Carnegie was a well-regarded writer. He published three books on travel.
Anti-imperialism.
In the aftermath of the Spanish–American War, the United States seemed poised to annex Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Carnegie strongly opposed the idea of American colonies. He opposed the annexation of the Philippines almost to the point of supporting William Jennings Bryan against McKinley in 1900. In 1898, Carnegie tried to arrange independence for the Philippines. As the conclusion of the Spanish–American War neared, the United States purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million. To counter what he perceived as American imperialism, Carnegie personally offered $20 million to the Philippines so that the Filipino people could purchase their independence from the United States. However, nothing came of the offer. In 1898 Carnegie joined the American Anti-Imperialist League, in opposition to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. Its membership included former presidents of the United States Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison and literary figures such as Mark Twain.
1901–1919: Philanthropist.
Carnegie spent his last years as a philanthropist. From 1901 forward, public attention was turned from the shrewd business acumen which had enabled Carnegie to accumulate such a fortune, to the public-spirited way in which he devoted himself to utilizing it on philanthropic projects. He had written about his views on social subjects and the responsibilities of great wealth in "Triumphant Democracy" (1886) and "Gospel of Wealth" (1889). Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to providing capital for purposes of public interest and social and educational advancement. He saved letters of appreciation from those he helped in a desk drawer labeled "Gratitude and Sweet Words."
He provided $25,000 a year to the movement for spelling reform. His organization, the Simplified Spelling Board, created the "Handbook of Simplified Spelling", which was written wholly in reformed spelling.
3,000 public libraries.
Among his many philanthropic efforts, the establishment of public libraries throughout the United States, Britain, Canada and other English-speaking countries was especially prominent. In this special driving interest of his, Carnegie was inspired by meetings with philanthropist Enoch Pratt (1808–1896). The Enoch Pratt Free Library (1886) of Baltimore, Maryland, impressed Carnegie deeply; he said, "Pratt was my guide and inspiration."
Carnegie turned over management of the library project by 1908 to his staff, led by James Bertram (1874–1934). The first Carnegie Library opened in 1883 in Dunfermline. His method was to provide funds to build and equip the library, but only on the condition that the local authority matched that by providing the land and a budget for operation and maintenance.
To secure local interest, in 1885, he gave $500,000 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a public library; in 1886, he gave $250,000 to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, for a music hall and library; and he gave $250,000 to Edinburgh for a free library. In total, Carnegie funded some 3,000 libraries, located in 47 U.S. states, and also in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji. He also donated £50,000 to help set up the University of Birmingham in 1899.
As Van Slyck (1991) showed, during the last years of the 19th century, there was the increasing adoption of the idea that free libraries should be available to the American public. But the design of such libraries was the subject of prolonged and heated debate. On one hand, the library profession called for designs that supported efficiency in administration and operation; on the other, wealthy philanthropists favored buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and enhanced civic pride. Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two.
Investing in education, science, pensions, civil heroism, music, and world peace.
In 1900, Carnegie gave $2 million to start the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) at Pittsburgh and the same amount in 1902 to found the Carnegie Institution at Washington, D.C., for encourage research and discovery. He later contributed more to these and other schools. CIT is now known as Carnegie Mellon University after it merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. Carnegie also served on the Boards of Cornell University and Stevens Institute of Technology.
In 1911, Carnegie became a sympathetic benefactor to George Ellery Hale, who was trying to build the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson, and donated an additional ten million dollars to the Carnegie Institution with the following suggestion to expedite the construction of the telescope: "I hope the work at Mount Wilson will be vigorously pushed, because I am so anxious to hear the expected results from it. I should like to be satisfied before I depart, that we are going to repay to the old land some part of the debt we owe them by revealing more clearly than ever to them the new heavens." The telescope saw first light on November 2, 1917, with Carnegie still alive.
In 1901, in Scotland, he gave $10 million to establish the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. It was created by a deed that he signed on June 7, 1901, and it was incorporated by royal charter on August 21, 1902. The establishing gift of $10 million was then an unprecedented sum: at the time, total government assistance to all four Scottish universities was about £50,000 a year. The aim of the Trust was to improve and extend the opportunities for scientific research in the Scottish universities and to enable the deserving and qualified youth of Scotland to attend a university. He was subsequently elected Lord Rector of University of St. Andrews in December 1901, and formally installed as such in October 1902, serving until 1907. He also donated large sums of money to Dunfermline, the place of his birth. In addition to a library, Carnegie also bought the private estate which became Pittencrieff Park and opened it to all members of the public, establishing the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust to benefit the people of Dunfermline. A statue of Carnegie was later built between 1913 and 1914 in the park as a commemoration for his creation of the park.
Carnegie was a major patron of music. He was a founding financial backer of Jeannette Thurber's National Conservatory of Music of America in 1885. He built the music performing venue Carnegie Hall in New York City; it opened in 1891 and remained in his family until 1925. His interest in music led him to fund the construction of 7,000 pipe organs in churches and temples, with no apparent preference for any religious denomination or sect.
He gave a further $10 million in 1913 to endow the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, a grant-making foundation. He transferred to the trust the charge of all his existing and future benefactions, other than university benefactions in the United Kingdom. He gave the trustees a wide discretion, and they inaugurated a policy of financing rural library schemes rather than erecting library buildings, and of assisting the musical education of the people rather than granting organs to churches.
In 1901, Carnegie also established large pension funds for his former employees at Homestead and, in 1905, for American college professors. The latter fund evolved into TIAA-CREF. One critical requirement was that church-related schools had to sever their religious connections to get his money.
Carnegie was a large benefactor of the Tuskegee Institute for African-American education under Booker T. Washington. He helped Washington create the National Negro Business League.
In 1904, he founded the Carnegie Hero Fund for the United States and Canada (a few years later also established in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany) for the recognition of deeds of heroism. Carnegie contributed $1.5 million in 1903 for the erection of the Peace Palace at The Hague; and he donated $150,000 for a Pan-American Palace in Washington as a home for the International Bureau of American Republics.
When it became obvious that Carnegie could not give away his entire fortune within his lifetime, he established the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding" and continue his program of giving.
Carnegie was honored for his philanthropy and support of the arts by initiation as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity on October 14, 1917, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The fraternity's mission reflects Carnegie's values by developing young men to share their talents to create harmony in the world.
By the standards of 19th-century tycoons, Carnegie was not a particularly ruthless man but a humanitarian with enough acquisitiveness to go in the ruthless pursuit of money. "Maybe with the giving away of his money," commented biographer Joseph Wall, "he would justify what he had done to get that money."
To some, Carnegie represents the idea of the American dream. He was an immigrant from Scotland who came to America and became successful. He is not only known for his successes but his huge amounts of philanthropic works, not only for charities but also to promote democracy and independence to colonized countries.
Death.
Carnegie died on August 11, 1919, in Lenox, Massachusetts, at his Shadow Brook estate, of Bronchial Pneumonia. He had already given away $350,695,653 (approximately US$ in dollars) of his wealth. After his death, his last $30 million was given to foundations, charities, and to pensioners. He was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The grave site is located on the Arcadia Hebron plot of land at the corner of Summit Avenue and Dingle Road. Carnegie is buried only a few yards away from union organizer Samuel Gompers, another important figure of industry in the Gilded Age.
Controversies.
1889: Johnstown Flood.
Carnegie was one of more than 50 members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which has been blamed for the Johnstown Flood that killed 2,209 people in 1889.
At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin Ruff, Carnegie's partner Henry Clay Frick had formed the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club high above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The sixty-odd club members were the leading business tycoons of Western Pennsylvania and included among their number Frick's best friend, Andrew Mellon, his attorneys Philander Knox and James Hay Reed, as well as Frick's business partner, Carnegie. High above the city, near the small town of South Fork, the South Fork Dam was originally built between 1838 and 1853 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as part of a canal system to be used as a reservoir for a canal basin in Johnstown. With the coming-of-age of railroads superseding canal barge transport, the lake was abandoned by the Commonwealth, sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and sold again to private interests, and eventually came to be owned by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1881. Prior to the flood, speculators had purchased the abandoned reservoir, made less than well-engineered repairs to the old dam, raised the lake level, built cottages and a clubhouse, and created the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Less than downstream from the dam sat the city of Johnstown.
The dam was high and long. Between 1881, when the club was opened, and 1889, the dam frequently sprang leaks and was patched, mostly with mud and straw. Additionally, a previous owner removed and sold for scrap the three cast iron discharge pipes that previously allowed a controlled release of water. There had been some speculation as to the dam's integrity, and concerns had been raised by the head of the Cambria Iron Works downstream in Johnstown. Such repair work, a reduction in height, and unusually high snowmelt and heavy spring rains combined to cause the dam to give way on May 31, 1889, resulting in twenty million tons of water sweeping down the valley as the Johnstown Flood. When word of the dam's failure was telegraphed to Pittsburgh, Frick and other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club gathered to form the Pittsburgh Relief Committee for assistance to the flood victims as well as determining never to speak publicly about the club or the flood. This strategy was a success, and Knox and Reed were able to fend off all lawsuits that would have placed blame upon the club's members.
Although Cambria Iron and Steel's facilities were heavily damaged by the flood, they returned to full production within a year. After the flood, Carnegie built Johnstown a new library to replace the one built by Cambria's chief legal counsel Cyrus Elder, which was destroyed in the flood. The Carnegie-donated library is now owned by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, and houses the Flood Museum.
1892: Homestead Strike.
The Homestead Strike was a bloody labor confrontation lasting 143 days in 1892, one of the most serious in U.S. history. The conflict was centered on Carnegie Steel's main plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and grew out of a labor dispute between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company.
Carnegie left on a trip to Scotland before the unrest peaked. In doing so, Carnegie left mediation of the dispute in the hands of his associate and partner Henry Clay Frick. Frick was well known in industrial circles for maintaining staunch anti-union sentiment. With the collective bargaining agreement between the union and company expiring at the end of June, Frick and the leaders of the local AA union entered into negotiations in February. With the steel industry doing well and prices higher, the AA asked for a wage increase; the AA represented about 800 of the 3,800 workers at the plant. Frick immediately countered with an average 22% wage decrease that would affect nearly half the union's membership and remove a number of positions from the bargaining unit.
The union and company failed to come to an agreement, and management locked the union out. Workers considered the stoppage a "lockout" by management and not a "strike" by workers. As such, the workers would have been well within their rights to protest, and subsequent government action would have been a set of criminal procedures designed to crush what was seen as a pivotal demonstration of the growing labor rights movement, strongly opposed by management. Frick brought in thousands of strikebreakers to work the steel mills and Pinkerton agents to safeguard them.
On July 6, the arrival of a force of 300 Pinkerton agents from New York City and Chicago resulted in a fight in which 10 men — seven strikers and three Pinkertons — were killed and hundreds were injured. Pennsylvania Governor Robert Pattison ordered two brigades of the state militia to the strike site. Then allegedly in response to the fight between the striking workers and the Pinkertons, anarchist Alexander Berkman shot at Frick in an attempted assassination, wounding him. While not directly connected to the strike, Berkman was tied in for the assassination attempt. According to Berkman, "...with the elimination of Frick, responsibility for Homestead conditions would rest with Carnegie." Afterwards, the company successfully resumed operations with non-union immigrant employees in place of the Homestead plant workers, and Carnegie returned to the United States. However, Carnegie's reputation was permanently damaged by the Homestead events.
Theodore Roosevelt.
According to David Nasaw, after 1898, when the United States entered a war with Spain, Carnegie increasingly devoted his energy to supporting pacifism. He strongly opposed the war and the subsequent imperialistic American takeover of the Philippines. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, Carnegie and Roosevelt were in frequent contact. They exchanged letters, communicated through mutual friends such as Secretary of State John Hay, and met in person. Carnegie hoped that Roosevelt would turn the Philippines free, not realizing he was more of an imperialist and believer in warrior virtues than President McKinley had been. He saluted Roosevelt for forcing Germany and Britain to arbitrate their conflict with Venezuela in 1903, and especially for becoming the mediator who negotiated an end to the war between Russia and Japan in 1907-1908. Roosevelt relied on Carnegie for financing his expedition to Africa in 1909. In return he asked the ex-president to mediate the growing conflict between the cousins who ruled Britain and Germany. Roosevelt started to do so but the scheme collapsed when king Edward VII suddenly died. Nasaw argues that Roosevelt systematically deceived and manipulated Carnegie, and held the elderly man in contempt. Nasaw quotes a private letter Roosevelt wrote to Whitelaw Reid in 1905: [I have] tried hard to like Carnegie, but it is pretty difficult. There is no type of man for whom I feel a more contemptuous abhorrence than for the one who makes a God of mere money-making and at the same time is always yelling out that kind of utterly stupid condemnation of war which in almost every case springs from a combination of defective physical courage, of unmanly shrinking from pain and effort, and of hopelessly twisted ideals. All the suffering from Spanish war comes far short of the suffering, preventable and non-preventable, among the operators of the Carnegie steel works, and among the small investors, during the time that Carnegie was making his fortune…. It is as noxious folly to denounce war per se as it is to denounce business per se. Unrighteous war is a hideous evil; but I am not at all sure that it is worse evil than business unrighteousness.
Personal life.
Family.
Carnegie did not want to marry during his mother's lifetime, instead choosing to take care of her in her illness towards the end of her life. After she died in 1886, the 51-year-old Carnegie married Louise Whitfield, who was 21 years his junior. In 1897, the couple had their only child, a daughter, whom they named after Carnegie's mother, Margaret.
Residence.
Carnegie bought Skibo Castle in Scotland, and made his home partly there and partly in his New York mansion located at 2 East 91st Street at Fifth Avenue. The building was completed in late 1902, and he lived there until his death in 1919. His wife Louise continued to live there until her death in 1946. The building is now used as the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution. The surrounding neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side has come to be called Carnegie Hill. The mansion was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
Philosophy.
Politics.
Carnegie gave "formal allegiance" to the Republican Party, though he was said to be "a violent opponent of some of the most sacred doctrines" of the party.
Andrew Carnegie Dictum.
In his final days, Carnegie had pneumonia. Before his death on August 11, 1919, Carnegie had donated $350,695,654 for various causes. The "Andrew Carnegie Dictum" was:
Carnegie was involved in philanthropic causes, but he kept himself away from religious circles. He wanted to be identified by the world as a "positivist". He was highly influenced in public life by John Bright.
On wealth.
As early as 1868, at age 33, he drafted a memo to himself. He wrote: "...The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money." In order to avoid degrading himself, he wrote in the same memo he would retire at age 35 to pursue the practice of philanthropic giving, for "... the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." However, he did not begin his philanthropic work in all earnest until 1881, at age 46, with the gift of a library to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland.
Carnegie wrote "The Gospel of Wealth", an article in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society. In that article, Carnegie also expressed sympathy for the ideas of progressive taxation and an estate tax:
The following is taken from one of Carnegie's memos to himself:
Intellectual influences.
Carnegie claimed to be a champion of evolutionary thought—particularly the work of Herbert Spencer, even declaring Spencer his teacher. Although Carnegie claimed to be a disciple of Spencer, many of his actions went against the ideas he espoused.
Spencerian evolution was for individual rights and against government interference. Furthermore, Spencerian evolution held that those unfit to sustain themselves must be allowed to perish. Spencer believed that just as there were many varieties of beetles, respectively modified to existence in a particular place in nature, so too had human society "spontaneously fallen into division of labour". Individuals who survived to this, the latest and highest stage of evolutionary progress would be "those in whom the power of self-preservation is the greatest—are the select of their generation." Moreover, Spencer perceived governmental authority as borrowed from the people to perform the transitory aims of establishing social cohesion, insurance of rights, and security. Spencerian 'survival of the fittest' firmly credits any provisions made to assist the weak, unskilled, poor and distressed to be an imprudent disservice to evolution. Spencer insisted people should resist for the benefit of collective humanity, as severe fate singles out the weak, debauched, and disabled.
Andrew Carnegie's political and economic focus during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the defense of laissez-faire economics. Carnegie emphatically resisted government intrusion in commerce, as well as government-sponsored charities. Carnegie believed the concentration of capital was essential for societal progress and should be encouraged. Carnegie was an ardent supporter of commercial "survival of the fittest" and sought to attain immunity from business challenges by dominating all phases of the steel manufacturing procedure. Carnegie's determination to lower costs included cutting labor expenses as well. In a notably Spencerian manner, Carnegie argued that unions impeded the natural reduction of prices by pushing up costs, which blocked evolutionary progress. Carnegie felt that unions represented the narrow interest of the few while his actions benefited the entire community.
On the surface, Andrew Carnegie appears to be a strict laissez-faire capitalist and follower of Herbert Spencer, often referring to himself as a disciple of Spencer. Conversely, Carnegie, a titan of industry, seems to embody all of the qualities of Spencerian survival of the fittest. The two men enjoyed a mutual respect for one another and maintained a correspondence until Spencer's death in 1903. There are, however, some major discrepancies between Spencer's capitalist evolutionary conceptions and Andrew Carnegie's capitalist practices.
Spencer wrote that in production the advantages of the superior individual are comparatively minor, and thus acceptable, yet the benefit that dominance provides those who control a large segment of production might be hazardous to competition. Spencer feared that an absence of "sympathetic self-restraint" of those with too much power could lead to the ruin of their competitors. He did not think free-market competition necessitated competitive warfare. Furthermore, Spencer argued that individuals with superior resources who deliberately used investment schemes to put competitors out of business were committing acts of "commercial murder". Carnegie built his wealth in the steel industry by maintaining an extensively integrated operating system. Carnegie also bought out some regional competitors, and merged with others, usually maintaining the majority shares in the companies. Over the course of twenty years, Carnegie's steel properties grew to include the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Lucy Furnace Works, the Union Iron Mills, the Homestead Works, the Keystone Bridge Works, the Hartman Steel Works, the Frick Coke Company, and the Scotia ore mines among many other industry-related assets.
Herbert Spencer absolutely was against government interference in business in the form of regulatory limitations, taxes, and tariffs as well. Spencer saw tariffs as a form of taxation that levied against the majority in service to "the benefit of a small minority of manufacturers and artisans".
Despite Carnegie's personal dedication to Herbert Spencer as a friend, his adherence to Spencer's political and economic ideas is more contentious. In particular, it appears Carnegie either misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented some of Spencer's principal arguments. Spencer remarked upon his first visit to Carnegie's steel mills in Pittsburgh, which Carnegie saw as the manifestation of Spencer's philosophy, "Six months' residence here would justify suicide."
On the subject of charity Andrew Carnegie's actions diverged in the most significant and complex manner from Herbert Spencer's philosophies. In his 1854 essay "Manners and Fashion", Spencer referred to public education as "Old schemes". He went on to declare that public schools and colleges fill the heads of students with inept, useless knowledge and exclude useful knowledge. Spencer stated that he trusted no organization of any kind, "political, religious, literary, philanthropic", and believed that as they expanded in influence so too did their regulations expand. In addition, Spencer thought that as all institutions grow they become evermore corrupted by the influence of power and money. The institution eventually loses its "original spirit, and sinks into a lifeless mechanism". Spencer insisted that all forms of philanthropy that uplift the poor and downtrodden were reckless and incompetent. Spencer thought any attempt to prevent "the really salutary sufferings" of the less fortunate "bequeath to posterity a continually increasing curse". Carnegie, a self-proclaimed devotee of Spencer, testified to Congress on February 5, 1915: "My business is to do as much good in the world as I can; I have retired from all other business."
Carnegie held that societal progress relied on individuals who maintained moral obligations to themselves and to society. Furthermore, he believed that charity supplied the means for those who wish to improve themselves to achieve their goals. Carnegie urged other wealthy people to contribute to society in the form of parks, works of art, libraries and other endeavors that improve the community and contribute to the "lasting good". Carnegie also held a strong opinion against inherited wealth. Carnegie believed that the sons of prosperous businesspersons were rarely as talented as their fathers. By leaving large sums of money to their children, wealthy business leaders were wasting resources that could be used to benefit society. Most notably, Carnegie believed that the future leaders of society would rise from the ranks of the poor. Carnegie strongly believed in this because he had risen from the bottom. He believed the poor possessed an advantage over the wealthy because they receive greater attention from their parents and are taught better work ethics.
Religion and worldview.
Carnegie and his family belonged to the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, also known informally as the Northern Presbyterian Church. In his early life Carnegie was skeptical of Calvinism, and religion as a whole, but reconciled with it later in his life. In his autobiography, Carnegie describes his family as moderate Presbyterian believers, writing that "there was not one orthodox Presbyterian" in his family; various members of his family having somewhat distanced themselves from Calvinism, some of them leaning more towards Swedenborgianism. While a child, his family led vigorous theological and political disputes. His mother avoided the topic of religion. His father left the Presbyterian church after a sermon on infant damnation, while, according to Carnegie, still remaining very religious on his own.
Witnessing sectarianism and strife in 19th century Scotland regarding religion and philosophy, Carnegie kept his distance from organized religion and theism. Carnegie instead preferred to see things through naturalistic and scientific terms stating, "Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution."
Later in life, Carnegie's firm opposition to religion softened. For many years he was a member of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, pastored from 1905 to 1926 by Social Gospel exponent Henry Sloane Coffin, while his wife and daughter belonged to the Brick Presbyterian Church. He also prepared (but did not deliver) an address in which he professed a belief in "an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed". Records exist of a short period of correspondence around 1912–1913 between Carnegie and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith. In these letters, one of which was published in "The New York Times" in full text, Carnegie is extolled as a "lover of the world of humanity and one of the founders of Universal Peace".
World peace.
Influenced by his "favorite living hero in public life" John Bright, Carnegie started his efforts in pursuit of world peace at a young age, and supported causes that opposed military intervention. His motto, "All is well since all grows better", served not only as a good rationalization of his successful business career, but also his view of international relations.
Despite his efforts towards international peace, Carnegie faced many dilemmas on his quest. These dilemmas are often regarded as conflicts between his view on international relations and his other loyalties. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, for example, Carnegie allowed his steel works to fill large orders of armor plate for the building of an enlarged and modernized United States Navy, but he opposed American overseas expansion.
Despite that, Carnegie served as a major donor for the newly established International Court of Arbitration's Peace Palace—brainchild of Russian tsar Nicholas II.
His largest and in the long run most influential peace organization was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, formed in 1910 with a $10 million endowment. In 1913, at the dedication of the Peace Palace in The Hague, Carnegie predicted that the end of the war was "as certain to come, and come soon, as day follows night."
In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Carnegie founded the Church Peace Union (CPU), a group of leaders in religion, academia, and politics. Through the CPU, Carnegie hoped to mobilize the world's churches, religious organizations, and other spiritual and moral resources to join in promoting moral leadership to put an end to war forever. For its inaugural international event, the CPU sponsored a conference to be held on August 1, 1914, on the shores of Lake Constance in southern Germany. As the delegates made their way to the conference by train, Germany was invading Belgium.
Despite its inauspicious beginning, the CPU thrived. Today its focus is on ethics and it is known as the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, whose mission is to be the voice for ethics in international affairs.
The outbreak of the First World War was clearly a shock to Carnegie and his optimistic view on world peace. Although his promotion of anti-imperialism and world peace had all failed, and the Carnegie Endowment had not fulfilled his expectations, his beliefs and ideas on international relations had helped build the foundation of the League of Nations after his death, which took world peace to another level.
United States colonial expansion.
On the matter of American colonial expansion, Carnegie had always thought it is an unwise gesture for the United States. He did not oppose the annexation of the Hawaiian islands or Puerto Rico, but he opposed the annexation of the Philippines. Carnegie believed that it involved a denial of the fundamental democratic principle, and he also urged William McKinley to withdraw American troops and allow the Filipinos to live with their independence. This act strongly impressed the other American anti-imperialists, who soon elected him vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League.
After he sold his steel company in 1901, Carnegie was able to get fully involved in the peace cause, both financially and personally. He gave away much of his fortunes to various peacekeeping agencies in order to keep them growing. When a friend, the British writer William T. Stead, asked him to create a new organization for the goal of a peace and arbitration society, his reply was:
Carnegie believed that it is the effort and will of the people, that maintains the peace in international relations. Money is just a push for the act. If world peace depended solely on financial support, it would not seem a goal, but more like an act of pity.
Like Stead, he believed that the United States and the British Empire would merge into one nation, telling him "We are heading straight to the Re-United States". Carnegie believed that the combined country's power would maintain world peace and disarmament. The creation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910 was regarded as a milestone on the road to the ultimate goal of abolition of war. Beyond a gift of $10 million for peace promotion, Carnegie also encouraged the "scientific" investigation of the various causes of war, and the adoption of judicial methods that should eventually eliminate them. He believed that the Endowment exists to promote information on the nations' rights and responsibilities under existing international law and to encourage other conferences to codify this law.
Legacy and honors.
Carnegie received the honorary Doctor of Laws (DLL) from the University of Glasgow in June 1901, and received the Freedom of the City of Glasgow "in recognition of his munificence" later the same year. In July 1902 he received the Freedom of the city of St Andrews, ""in testimony of his great zeal for the welfare of his fellow-men on both sides of the Atlantic"," and in October 1902 the Freedom of the City of Perth "in testimony of his high personal worth and beneficial influence, and in recognition of widespread benefactions bestowed on this and other lands, and especially in gratitude for the endowment granted by him for the promotion of University education in Scotland" and the Freedom of the City of Dundee. Also in 1902, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the University of Aberdeen in 1906. In 1910, he received the Freedom of the City of Belfast and was made as well Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the French government. Carnegie was awarded as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands on August 25, 1913. Carnegie received July 1, 1914 an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen the Netherlands.
Benefactions.
According to biographer Burton J. Hendrick:
Hendrick argues that:
Research sources.
Carnegie's personal papers are at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
The Carnegie Collections of the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library consist of the archives of the following organizations founded by Carnegie: The Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY); The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP); the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT);The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs (CCEIA). These collections deal primarily with Carnegie philanthropy and have very little personal material related to Carnegie. Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh jointly administer the Andrew Carnegie Collection of digitized archives on Carnegie's life.
Works.
Carnegie was a frequent contributor to periodicals on labor issues.
Books
Articles
Pamphlets
Public speaking
Collected works
References.
Bibliography.
Collections
External links.
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1939 | Approximant | Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like (as in "rest") and semivowels like and (as in "yes" and "west", respectively), as well as lateral approximants like (as in "less").
Terminology.
Before Peter Ladefoged coined the term "approximant" in the 1960s, the terms "frictionless continuant" and "semivowel" were used to refer to non-lateral approximants.
In phonology, "approximant" is also a distinctive feature that encompasses all sonorants except nasals, including vowels, taps and trills.
Semivowels.
Some approximants resemble vowels in acoustic and articulatory properties and the terms "semivowel" and "glide" are often used for these non-syllabic vowel-like segments. The correlation between semivowels and vowels is strong enough that cross-language differences between semivowels correspond with the differences between their related vowels.
Vowels and their corresponding semivowels alternate in many languages depending on the phonological environment, or for grammatical reasons, as is the case with Indo-European ablaut. Similarly, languages often avoid configurations where a semivowel precedes its corresponding vowel. A number of phoneticians distinguish between semivowels and approximants by their location in a syllable. Although he uses the terms interchangeably, remarks that, for example, the final glides of English "par" and "buy" differ from French "par" ('through') and "baille" ('tub') in that, in the latter pair, the approximants appear in the syllable coda, whereas, in the former, they appear in the syllable nucleus. This means that opaque (if not minimal) contrasts can occur in languages like Italian (with the i-like sound of "piede" 'foot', appearing in the nucleus: , and that of "piano" 'plan', appearing in the syllable onset: ) and Spanish (with a near minimal pair being "abyecto" 'abject' and "abierto" 'opened').
In articulation and often diachronically, palatal approximants correspond to front vowels, velar approximants to back vowels, and labialized approximants to rounded vowels. In American English, the rhotic approximant corresponds to the rhotic vowel. This can create alternations (as shown in the above table).
In addition to alternations, glides can be inserted to the left or the right of their corresponding vowels when they occur next to a hiatus. For example, in Ukrainian, medial triggers the formation of an inserted that acts as a syllable onset so that when the affix is added to футбол ('football') to make футболіст 'football player', it is pronounced , but маоїст ('Maoist'), with the same affix, is pronounced with a glide. Dutch for many speakers has a similar process that extends to mid vowels:
Similarly, vowels can be inserted next to their corresponding glide in certain phonetic environments. Sievers' law describes this behaviour for Germanic.
Non-high semivowels also occur. In colloquial Nepali speech, a process of glide-formation occurs, where one of two adjacent vowels becomes non-syllabic; the process includes mid vowels so that ('cause to wish') features a non-syllabic mid vowel. Spanish features a similar process and even nonsyllabic can occur so that "ahorita" ('right away') is pronounced . It is not often clear, however, whether such sequences involve a semivowel (a consonant) or a diphthong (a vowel), and in many cases, it may not be a meaningful distinction.
Although many languages have central vowels , which lie between back/velar and front/palatal , there are few cases of a corresponding approximant . One is in the Korean diphthong or though it is more frequently analyzed as velar (as in the table above), and Mapudungun may be another, with three high vowel sounds, , , and three corresponding consonants, , and , and a third one is often described as a voiced unrounded velar fricative; some texts note a correspondence between this approximant and that is parallel to – and –. An example is "liq" (?) ('white').
It has been noted that the expected symbols for the approximant correlates of are or .
Approximants versus fricatives.
In addition to less turbulence, approximants also differ from fricatives in the precision required to produce them. When emphasized, approximants may be slightly fricated (that is, the airstream may become slightly turbulent), which is reminiscent of fricatives. For example, the Spanish word "ayuda" ('help') features a palatal approximant that is pronounced as a fricative in emphatic speech. Spanish can be analyzed as having a meaningful distinction between fricative, approximant, and intermediate . However, such frication is generally slight and intermittent, unlike the strong turbulence of fricative consonants.
For places of articulation further back in the mouth, languages do not contrast voiced fricatives and approximants. Therefore, the IPA allows the symbols for the voiced fricatives to double for the approximants, with or without a lowering diacritic.
Occasionally, the glottal "fricatives" are called approximants, since typically has no more frication than voiceless approximants, but they are often phonations of the glottis without any accompanying manner or place of articulation.
Lateral approximants.
In lateral approximants, the center of tongue makes solid contact with the roof of the mouth. However, the defining location is the side of the tongue, which only approaches the teeth, allowing free passage of air.
Voiceless approximants.
Voiceless approximants are not recognized by all phoneticians as a discrete phonetic category. There are problems in distinguishing voiceless approximants from voiceless fricatives.
Phonetic characteristics.
Fricative consonants are generally said to be the result of turbulent airflow at a place of articulation in the vocal tract. However, an audible voiceless sound may be made without this turbulent airflow: makes a distinction between "local friction" (as in or ) and "cavity friction" (as in voiceless vowels like and ). More recent research distinguishes between "turbulent" and "laminar" airflow in the vocal tract. It is not clear if it is possible to describe voiceless approximants categorically as having laminar airflow (or cavity friction in Pike's terms) as a way of distinguishing them from fricatives. write that "the airflow for voiced approximants remains laminar (smooth), and does not become turbulent. Voiceless approximants are rare in the languages of the world, but when they do occur the airflow is usually somewhat turbulent." Audible voiceless sounds may also be produced by means of turbulent airflow at the glottis, as in ; in such a case, it is possible to articulate an audible voiceless sound without the production of local friction at a supraglottal constriction. describes such sounds, but classes them as sonorants.
Distinctiveness.
Voiceless approximants are rarely if ever distinguished phonemically from voiceless fricatives in the sound system of a language. discuss the issue and conclude "In practice, it is difficult to distinguish between a voiceless approximant and a voiceless fricative at the same place of articulation ... there is no evidence that any language in the world makes such a distinction crucial."
Disagreement over use of the term.
Voiceless approximants are treated as a phonetic category by (among others) , , and . However, the term "voiceless approximant" is seen by some phoneticians as controversial. It has been pointed out that if "approximant" is defined as a speech sound that involves the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough to create turbulent airflow, then it is difficult to see how a "voiceless" approximant could be audible. As John C. Wells puts it in his blog, "voiceless approximants are by definition inaudible ... If there's no friction and no voicing, there's nothing to hear." A similar point is made in relation to frictionless continuants by : "There are no voiceless frictionless continuants because this would imply silence; the voiceless counterpart of the frictionless continuant is the voiceless fricative." argue that the increased airflow arising from voicelessness alone makes a voiceless continuant a fricative, even if lacking a greater constriction in the oral cavity than a voiced approximant.
argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Navajo and Zulu voiceless lateral fricatives , but also say that "in other cases it is difficult to decide whether a voiceless lateral should be described as an approximant or a fricative". compared voiceless laterals in Estonian Swedish, Icelandic, and Welsh and found that Welsh-speakers consistently used , that Icelandic-speakers consistently used , and that speakers of Estonian Swedish varied in their pronunciation. They conclude that there is "a range of variants within voiceless laterals, rather than a categorical split between lateral fricatives and voiceless approximant laterals".
Nasalized approximants.
Examples are:
In Portuguese, the nasal glides and historically became and in some words. In Edo, the nasalized allophones of the approximants and are nasal occlusives, and .
What are transcribed as nasal approximants may include non-syllabic elements of nasal vowels or diphthongs.
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1940 | Astronomer Royal | Astronomer royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the astronomer royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the astronomer royal for Scotland dating from 1834.
The post was created by King Charles II in 1675, at the same time as he founded the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He appointed John Flamsteed, instructing him "."
The astronomer royal was director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich from the establishment of the post in 1675 until 1972. The astronomer royal became an honorary title in 1972 without executive responsibilities, and a separate post of director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory was created to manage the institution.
The astronomer royal today receives a stipend of 100 GBP per year and is a member of the royal household, under the general authority of the Lord Chamberlain. After the separation of the two offices, the position of astronomer royal has been largely honorary, although the holder remains available to advise the Sovereign on astronomical and related scientific matters, and the office is of great prestige.
There was formerly a royal astronomer of Ireland, a post that seemingly ended with Irish independence.
The astronomer royal is mentioned in H. G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds" and in George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London". He also makes an appearance in the lyrics of "Gilbert and Sullivan"'s "The Pirates of Penzance" and plays an important role in Fred Hoyle's novel "The Black Cloud".
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1941 | Aeon | The word aeon , also spelled eon (in American and Australian English), originally meant "life", "vital force" or "being", "generation" or "a period of time", though it tended to be translated as "age" in the sense of "ages", "forever", "timeless" or "for eternity". It is a Latin transliteration from the ancient Greek word ('), from the archaic (') meaning "century". In Greek, it literally refers to the timespan of one hundred years. A cognate Latin word ' or ' (cf. ) for "age" is present in words such as "longevity" and "mediaeval".
Although the term aeon may be used in reference to a period of a thousand million years (especially in geology, cosmology and astronomy), its more common usage is for any long, indefinite period. Aeon can also refer to the four aeons on the geologic time scale that make up the Earth's history, the Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and the current aeon, Phanerozoic.
Astronomy and cosmology.
In astronomy, an aeon is defined as a billion years (109 years, abbreviated AE).
Roger Penrose uses the word "aeon" to describe the period between successive and cyclic Big Bangs within the context of conformal cyclic cosmology.
Philosophy and mysticism.
In Buddhism, an "aeon" or "" (Sanskrit: ) is often said to be 1,334,240,000 years, the life cycle of the world.
Christianity's idea of "eternal life" comes from the word for life, ' (), and a form of ' (), which could mean life in the next aeon, the Kingdom of God, or Heaven, just as much as immortality, as in .
According to Christian universalism, the Greek New Testament scriptures use the word ' () to mean a long period and the word ' () to mean "during a long period"; thus, there was a time before the aeons, and the aeonian period is finite. After each person's mortal life ends, they are judged worthy of aeonian life or aeonian punishment. That is, after the period of the aeons, all punishment will cease and death is overcome and then God becomes the all in each one (). This contrasts with the conventional Christian belief in eternal life and eternal punishment.
Occultists of the Thelema and Ordo Templi Orientis (English: "Order of the Temple of the East") traditions sometimes speak of a "magical Aeon" that may last for perhaps as little as 2,000 years.
Aeon may also be an archaic name for omnipotent beings, such as gods.
Gnosticism.
In many Gnostic systems, the various emanations of God, who is also known by such names as the "One", the "Monad", "Aion teleos" ("The Broadest Aeon", Greek: ), "Bythos" ("depth or profundity", Greek: ), "Proarkhe" ("before the beginning", Greek: ), ' ("the beginning", Greek: ), ' ("wisdom"), and "" ("the Anointed One"), are called "Aeons". In the different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosticism.
In the Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships ( '; singular: '); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called " (Greek , from ").
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1942 | Airline | An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and/or freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which they both offer and operate the same flight. Generally, airline companies are recognized with an air operating certificate or license issued by a governmental aviation body. Airlines may be scheduled or charter operators.
The first airline was the German airship company DELAG, founded on November 16, 1909. The four oldest non-airship airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM (1919), Colombia's Avianca (1919), Australia's Qantas (1920) and the Mexicana de Aviación Mexicana de Aviación (1921).
Airline ownership has seen a shift from mostly personal ownership until the 1930s to government-ownership of major airlines from the 1940s to 1980s and back to large-scale privatization following the mid-1980s. Since the 1980s, there has been a trend of major airline mergers and the formation of airline alliances. The largest alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld. Airline alliances coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide).
History.
The first airlines.
DELAG, "Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft I" was the world's first airline. It was founded on November 16, 1909, with government assistance, and operated airships manufactured by The Zeppelin Corporation. Its headquarters were in Frankfurt. The first fixed-wing scheduled airline was started on January 1, 1914, from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa, Florida, operated by the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line.
Europe.
Beginnings.
The earliest fixed wing airline in Europe was Aircraft Transport and Travel, formed by George Holt Thomas in 1916; via a series of takeovers and mergers, this company is an ancestor of modern-day British Airways. Using a fleet of former military Airco DH.4A biplanes that had been modified to carry two passengers in the fuselage, it operated relief flights between Folkestone and Ghent, Belgium. On July 15 , 1919, the company flew a proving flight across the English Channel, despite a lack of support from the British government. Flown by Lt. H Shaw in an Airco DH.9 between RAF Hendon and Paris – Le Bourget Airport, the flight took 2 hours and 30 minutes at £21 per passenger.
On August 25, 1919, the company used DH.16s to pioneer a regular service from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome to Paris's Le Bourget, the first regular international service in the world. The airline soon gained a reputation for reliability, despite problems with bad weather, and began to attract European competition. In November 1919, it won the first British civil airmail contract. Six Royal Air Force Airco DH.9A aircraft were lent to the company, to operate the airmail service between Hawkinge and Cologne. In 1920, they were returned to the Royal Air Force.
Other British competitors were quick to follow – Handley Page Transport was established in 1919 and used the company's converted wartime Type O/400 bombers with a capacity for 12 passengers, to run a London-Paris passenger service.
The first French airline was Société des lignes Latécoère, later known as Aéropostale, which started its first service in late 1918 to Spain. The Société Générale des Transports Aériens was created in late 1919, by the Farman brothers and the Farman F.60 Goliath plane flew scheduled services from Toussus-le-Noble to Kenley, near Croydon, England. Another early French airline was the Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes, established in 1919 by Louis-Charles Breguet, offering a mail and freight service between Le Bourget Airport, Paris and Lesquin Airport, Lille.
The first German airline to use heavier than air aircraft was Deutsche Luft-Reederei established in 1917 which started operating in February 1919. In its first year, the D.L.R. operated regularly scheduled flights on routes with a combined length of nearly 1000 miles. By 1921 the D.L.R. network was more than 3000 km (1865 miles) long, and included destinations in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Baltic Republics. Another important German airline was Junkers Luftverkehr, which began operations in 1921. It was a division of the aircraft manufacturer Junkers, which became a separate company in 1924. It operated joint-venture airlines in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.
The Dutch airline KLM made its first flight in 1920, and is the oldest continuously operating airline in the world. Established by aviator Albert Plesman, it was immediately awarded a "Royal" predicate from Queen Wilhelmina. Its first flight was from Croydon Airport, London to Amsterdam, using a leased Aircraft Transport and Travel DH-16, and carrying two British journalists and a number of newspapers. In 1921, KLM started scheduled services.
In Finland, the charter establishing Aero O/Y (now Finnair) was signed in the city of Helsinki on 12 September 1923. Junkers F.13 D-335 became the first aircraft of the company, when Aero took delivery of it on 14 March 1924. The first flight was between Helsinki and Tallinn, capital of Estonia, and it took place on 20 March 1924, one week later.
In the Soviet Union, the Chief Administration of the Civil Air Fleet was established in 1921. One of its first acts was to help found Deutsch-Russische Luftverkehrs A.G. (Deruluft), a German-Russian joint venture to provide air transport from Russia to the West. Domestic air service began around the same time, when Dobrolyot started operations on 15 July 1923 between Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod. Since 1932 all operations had been carried under the name Aeroflot.
Early European airlines tended to favor comfort – the passenger cabins were often spacious with luxurious interiors – over speed and efficiency. The relatively basic navigational capabilities of pilots at the time also meant that delays due to the weather were commonplace.
Rationalization.
By the early 1920s, small airlines were struggling to compete, and there was a movement towards increased rationalization and consolidation. In 1924, Imperial Airways was formed from the merger of Instone Air Line Company, British Marine Air Navigation, Daimler Airway and Handley Page Transport, to allow British airlines to compete with stiff competition from French and German airlines that were enjoying heavy government subsidies. The airline was a pioneer in surveying and opening up air routes across the world to serve far-flung parts of the British Empire and to enhance trade and integration.
The first new airliner ordered by Imperial Airways, was the Handley Page W8f "City of Washington", delivered on 3 November 1924. In the first year of operation the company carried 11,395 passengers and 212,380 letters. In April 1925, the film "The Lost World" became the first film to be screened for passengers on a scheduled airliner flight when it was shown on the London-Paris route.
Two French airlines also merged to form Air Union on 1 January 1923. This later merged with four other French airlines to become Air France, the country's flagship carrier to this day, on 17 May 1933.
Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa was created in 1926 by merger of two airlines, one of them Junkers Luftverkehr. Lufthansa, due to the Junkers heritage and unlike most other airlines at the time, became a major investor in airlines outside of Europe, providing capital to Varig and Avianca. German airliners built by Junkers, Dornier, and Fokker were among the most advanced in the world at the time.
Expansion.
In 1926, Alan Cobham surveyed a flight route from the UK to Cape Town, South Africa, following this up with another proving flight to Melbourne, Australia. Other routes to British India and the Far East were also charted and demonstrated at this time. Regular services to Cairo and Basra began in 1927 and were extended to Karachi in 1929. The London-Australia service was inaugurated in 1932 with the Handley Page HP 42 airliners. Further services were opened up to Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Brisbane and Hong Kong passengers departed London on 14 March 1936 following the establishment of a branch from Penang to Hong Kong.
Imperial's aircraft were small, most seating fewer than twenty passengers, and catered for the rich. Only about 50,000 passengers used Imperial Airways in the 1930s. Most passengers on intercontinental routes or on services within and between British colonies were men doing colonial administration, business or research.
Like Imperial Airways, Air France and KLM's early growth depended heavily on the needs to service links with far-flung colonial possessions (North Africa and Indochina for the French and the East Indies for the Dutch). France began an air mail service to Morocco in 1919 that was bought out in 1927, renamed Aéropostale, and injected with capital to become a major international carrier. In 1933, Aéropostale went bankrupt, was nationalized and merged into Air France.
Although Germany lacked colonies, it also began expanding its services globally. In 1931, the airship Graf Zeppelin began offering regular scheduled passenger service between Germany and South America, usually every two weeks, which continued until 1937. In 1936, the airship Hindenburg entered passenger service and successfully crossed the Atlantic 36 times before crashing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937. In 1938, a weekly air service from Berlin to Kabul, Afghanistan, started operating.
From February 1934 until World War II began in 1939, Deutsche Lufthansa operated an airmail service from Stuttgart, Germany via Spain, the Canary Islands and West Africa to Natal in Brazil. This was the first time an airline flew across an ocean.
By the end of the 1930s Aeroflot had become the world's largest airline, employing more than 4,000 pilots and 60,000 other service personnel and operating around 3,000 aircraft (of which 75% were considered obsolete by its own standards). During the Soviet era Aeroflot was synonymous with Russian civil aviation, as it was the only air carrier. It became the first airline in the world to operate sustained regular jet services on 15 September 1956 with the Tupolev Tu-104.
Deregulation.
Deregulation of the European Union airspace in the early 1990s has had substantial effect on the structure of the industry there. The shift towards 'budget' airlines on shorter routes has been significant. Airlines such as EasyJet and Ryanair have often grown at the expense of the traditional national airlines.
There has also been a trend for these national airlines themselves to be privatized such as has occurred for Aer Lingus and British Airways. Other national airlines, including Italy's Alitalia, suffered – particularly with the rapid increase of oil prices in early 2008.
Finnair, the largest airline of Finland, had no fatal or hull-loss accidents since 1963, and is recognized for its safety.
United States.
Early development.
Tony Jannus conducted the United States' first scheduled commercial airline flight on January 1, 1914 for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. The 23-minute flight traveled between St. Petersburg, Florida and Tampa, Florida, passing some above Tampa Bay in Jannus' Benoist XIV wood and muslin biplane flying boat. His passenger was a former mayor of St. Petersburg, who paid $400 for the privilege of sitting on a wooden bench in the open cockpit. The Airboat line operated for about four months, carrying more than 1,200 passengers who paid $5 each. Chalk's International Airlines began service between Miami and Bimini in the Bahamas in February 1919. Based in Ft. Lauderdale, Chalk's claimed to be the oldest continuously operating airline in the United States until its closure in 2008.
Following World War I, the United States found itself swamped with aviators. Many decided to take their war-surplus aircraft on barnstorming campaigns, performing aerobatic maneuvers to woo crowds. In 1918, the United States Postal Service won the financial backing of Congress to begin experimenting with air mail service, initially using Curtiss Jenny aircraft that had been procured by the United States Army Air Service. Private operators were the first to fly the mail but due to numerous accidents the US Army was tasked with mail delivery. During the Army's involvement they proved to be too unreliable and lost their air mail duties. By the mid-1920s, the Postal Service had developed its own air mail network, based on a transcontinental backbone between New York City and San Francisco. To supplement this service, they offered twelve contracts for spur routes to independent bidders. Some of the carriers that won these routes would, through time and mergers, evolve into Pan Am, Delta Air Lines, Braniff Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines (originally a division of Boeing), Trans World Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and Eastern Air Lines.
Service during the early 1920s was sporadic: most airlines at the time were focused on carrying bags of mail. In 1925, however, the Ford Motor Company bought out the Stout Aircraft Company and began construction of the all-metal Ford Trimotor, which became the first successful American airliner. With a 12-passenger capacity, the Trimotor made passenger service potentially profitable. Air service was seen as a supplement to rail service in the American transportation network.
At the same time, Juan Trippe began a crusade to create an air network that would link America to the world, and he achieved this goal through his airline, Pan Am, with a fleet of flying boats that linked Los Angeles to Shanghai and Boston to London. Pan Am and Northwest Airways (which began flights to Canada in the 1920s) were the only U.S. airlines to go international before the 1940s.
With the introduction of the Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3 in the 1930s, the U.S. airline industry was generally profitable, even during the Great Depression. This trend continued until the beginning of World War II.
Since 1945.
World War II, like World War I, brought new life to the airline industry. Many airlines in the Allied countries were flush from lease contracts to the military, and foresaw a future explosive demand for civil air transport, for both passengers and cargo. They were eager to invest in the newly emerging flagships of air travel such as the Boeing Stratocruiser, Lockheed Constellation, and Douglas DC-6. Most of these new aircraft were based on American bombers such as the B-29, which had spearheaded research into new technologies such as pressurization. Most offered increased efficiency from both added speed and greater payload.
In the 1950s, the De Havilland Comet, Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and Sud Aviation Caravelle became the first flagships of the Jet Age in the West, while the Eastern bloc had Tupolev Tu-104 and Tupolev Tu-124 in the fleets of state-owned carriers such as Czechoslovak ČSA, Soviet Aeroflot and East-German Interflug. The Vickers Viscount and Lockheed L-188 Electra inaugurated turboprop transport.
On 4 October 1958, British Overseas Airways Corporation started transatlantic flights between London Heathrow and New York Idlewild with a Comet 4, and Pan Am followed on 26 October with a Boeing 707 service between New York and Paris.
The next big boost for the airlines would come in the 1970s, when the Boeing 747, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 inaugurated widebody ("jumbo jet") service, which is still the standard in international travel. The Tupolev Tu-144 and its Western counterpart, Concorde, made supersonic travel a reality. Concorde first flew in 1969 and operated through 2003. In 1972, Airbus began producing Europe's most commercially successful line of airliners to date. The added efficiencies for these aircraft were often not in speed, but in passenger capacity, payload, and range. Airbus also features modern electronic cockpits that were common across their aircraft to enable pilots to fly multiple models with minimal cross-training.
Deregulation.
The 1978 U.S. airline industry deregulation lowered federally controlled barriers for new airlines just as a downturn in the nation's economy occurred. New start-ups entered during the downturn, during which time they found aircraft and funding, contracted hangar and maintenance services, trained new employees, and recruited laid-off staff from other airlines.
Major airlines dominated their routes through aggressive pricing and additional capacity offerings, often swamping new start-ups. In the place of high barriers to entry imposed by regulation, the major airlines implemented an equally high barrier called loss leader pricing. In this strategy an already established and dominant airline stomps out its competition by lowering airfares on specific routes, below the cost of operating on it, choking out any chance a start-up airline may have. The industry side effect is an overall drop in revenue and service quality. Since deregulation in 1978 the average domestic ticket price has dropped by 40%. So has airline employee pay. By incurring massive losses, the airlines of the USA now rely upon a scourge of cyclical Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings to continue doing business. America West Airlines (which has since merged with US Airways) remained a significant survivor from this new entrant era, as dozens, even hundreds, have gone under.
In many ways, the biggest winner in the deregulated environment was the air passenger. Although not exclusively attributable to deregulation, indeed the U.S. witnessed an explosive growth in demand for air travel. Many millions who had never or rarely flown before became regular fliers, even joining frequent flyer loyalty programs and receiving free flights and other benefits from their flying. New services and higher frequencies meant that business fliers could fly to another city, do business, and return the same day, from almost any point in the country. Air travel's advantages put long-distance intercity railroad travel and bus lines under pressure, with most of the latter having withered away, whilst the former is still protected under nationalization through the continuing existence of Amtrak.
By the 1980s, almost half of the total flying in the world took place in the U.S., and today the domestic industry operates over 10,000 daily departures nationwide.
Toward the end of the century, a new style of low cost airline emerged, offering a no-frills product at a lower price. Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, AirTran Airways, Skybus Airlines and other low-cost carriers began to represent a serious challenge to the so-called "legacy airlines", as did their low-cost counterparts in many other countries. Their commercial viability represented a serious competitive threat to the legacy carriers. However, of these, ATA and Skybus have since ceased operations.
Increasingly since 1978, US airlines have been reincorporated and spun off by newly created and internally led management companies, and thus becoming nothing more than operating units and subsidiaries with limited financially decisive control. Among some of these holding companies and parent companies which are relatively well known, are the UAL Corporation, along with the AMR Corporation, among a long list of airline holding companies sometime recognized worldwide. Less recognized are the private-equity firms which often seize managerial, financial, and board of directors control of distressed airline companies by temporarily investing large sums of capital in air carriers, to rescheme an airlines assets into a profitable organization or liquidating an air carrier of their profitable and worthwhile routes and business operations.
Thus the last 50 years of the airline industry have varied from reasonably profitable, to devastatingly depressed. As the first major market to deregulate the industry in 1978, U.S. airlines have experienced more turbulence than almost any other country or region. In fact, no U.S. legacy carrier survived bankruptcy-free. Among the outspoken critics of deregulation, former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall has publicly stated: "Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing shows airline industry deregulation was a mistake."
Bailout.
Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (P.L. 107–42) in response to a severe liquidity crisis facing the already-troubled airline industry in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Through the ATSB Congress sought to provide cash infusions to carriers for both the cost of the four-day federal shutdown of the airlines and the incremental losses incurred through December 31, 2001, as a result of the terrorist attacks. This resulted in the first government bailout of the 21st century. Between 2000 and 2005 US airlines lost $30 billion with wage cuts of over $15 billion and 100,000 employees laid off.
In recognition of the essential national economic role of a healthy aviation system, Congress authorized partial compensation of up to $5 billion in cash subject to review by the U.S. Department of Transportation and up to $10 billion in loan guarantees subject to review by a newly created Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB). The applications to DOT for reimbursements were subjected to rigorous multi-year reviews not only by DOT program personnel but also by the Government Accountability Office and the DOT Inspector General.
Ultimately, the federal government provided $4.6 billion in one-time, subject-to-income-tax cash payments to 427 U.S. air carriers, with no provision for repayment, essentially a gift from the taxpayers. (Passenger carriers operating scheduled service received approximately $4 billion, subject to tax.) In addition, the ATSB approved loan guarantees to six airlines totaling approximately $1.6 billion. Data from the U.S. Treasury Department show that the government recouped the $1.6 billion and a profit of $339 million from the fees, interest and purchase of discounted airline stock associated with loan guarantees.
The three largest major carriers and Southwest Airlines control 70% of the U.S. passenger market.
Asia.
Although Philippine Airlines (PAL) was officially founded on February 26, 1941, its license to operate as an airliner was derived from merged Philippine Aerial Taxi Company (PATCO) established by mining magnate Emmanuel N. Bachrach on 3 December 1930, making it Asia's oldest scheduled carrier still in operation. Commercial air service commenced three weeks later from Manila to Baguio, making it Asia's first airline route. Bachrach's death in 1937 paved the way for its eventual merger with Philippine Airlines in March 1941 and made it Asia's oldest airline. It is also the oldest airline in Asia still operating under its current name. Bachrach's majority share in PATCO was bought by beer magnate Andres R. Soriano in 1939 upon the advice of General Douglas MacArthur and later merged with newly formed Philippine Airlines with PAL as the surviving entity. Soriano has controlling interest in both airlines before the merger. PAL restarted service on 15 March 1941, with a single Beech Model 18 NPC-54 aircraft, which started its daily services between Manila (from Nielson Field) and Baguio, later to expand with larger aircraft such as the DC-3 and Vickers Viscount.
Cathay Pacific was one of the first airlines to be launched among the other Asian countries in 1946 along with Asiana Airlines, which later joined in 1988. The license to operate as an airliner was granted by the federal government body after reviewing the necessity at the national assembly. The Hanjin occupies the largest ownership of Korean Air as well as few low-budget airlines as of now. Korean Air is one of the four founders of SkyTeam, which was established in 2000. Asiana Airlines joined Star Alliance in 2003. Korean Air and Asiana Airlines comprise one of the largest combined airline miles and number of passenger served at the regional market of Asian airline industry
India was also one of the first countries to embrace civil aviation. One of the first Asian airline companies was Air India, which was founded as Tata Airlines in 1932, a division of Tata Sons Ltd. (now Tata Group). The airline was founded by India's leading industrialist, JRD Tata. On 15 October 1932, J. R. D. Tata himself flew a single engined De Havilland Puss Moth carrying air mail (postal mail of Imperial Airways) from Karachi to Bombay via Ahmedabad. The aircraft continued to Madras via Bellary piloted by Royal Air Force pilot Nevill Vintcent. Tata Airlines was also one of the world's first major airlines which began its operations without any support from the Government.
With the outbreak of World War II, the airline presence in Asia came to a relative halt, with many new flag carriers donating their aircraft for military aid and other uses. Following the end of the war in 1945, regular commercial service was restored in India and Tata Airlines became a public limited company on 29 July 1946, under the name Air India. After the independence of India, 49% of the airline was acquired by the Government of India. In return, the airline was granted status to operate international services from India as the designated flag carrier under the name Air India International.
On 31 July 1946, a chartered Philippine Airlines (PAL) DC-4 ferried 40 American servicemen to Oakland, California, from Nielson Airport in Makati with stops in Guam, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll and Honolulu, Hawaii, making PAL the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific Ocean. A regular service between Manila and San Francisco was started in December. It was during this year that the airline was designated as the flag carrier of Philippines.
During the era of decolonization, newly born Asian countries started to embrace air transport. Among the first Asian carriers during the era were Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong (founded in September 1946), Orient Airways (later Pakistan International Airlines; founded in October 1946), Air Ceylon (later SriLankan Airlines; founded in 1947), Malayan Airways Limited in 1947 (later Singapore and Malaysia Airlines), El Al in Israel in 1948, Garuda Indonesia in 1949, Japan Airlines in 1951, Thai Airways in 1960, and Korean National Airlines in 1947.
Singapore Airlines had won quality awards.
Latin America and Caribbean.
Among the first countries to have regular airlines in Latin America and the Caribbean were Bolivia with Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, Cuba with Cubana de Aviación, Colombia with Avianca (the first airline established in the Americas), Argentina with Aerolíneas Argentinas, Chile with LAN Chile (today LATAM Airlines), Brazil with Varig, the Dominican Republic with Dominicana de Aviación, Mexico with Mexicana de Aviación, Trinidad and Tobago with BWIA West Indies Airways (today Caribbean Airlines), Venezuela with Aeropostal, Puerto Rico with Puertorriquena; and TACA based in El Salvador and representing several airlines of Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua). All the previous airlines started regular operations well before World War II. Puerto Rican commercial airlines such as Prinair, Oceanair, Fina Air and Vieques Air Link came much after the second world war, as did several others from other countries like Mexico's Interjet and Volaris, Venezuela's Aserca Airlines and others.
The air travel market has evolved rapidly over recent years in Latin America. Some industry estimates indicated in 2011 that over 2,000 new aircraft will begin service over the next five years in this region.
These airlines serve domestic flights within their countries, as well as connections within Latin America and also overseas flights to North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Only five airline groups – Avianca, Panama's Copa, Mexico's Volaris, the Irelandia group and LATAM Airlines – have international subsidiaries and cover many destinations within the Americas as well as major hubs in other continents. LATAM with Chile as the central operation along with Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina and formerly with some operations in the Dominican Republic. The Avianca group has its main operation in Colombia based around the hub in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as subsidiaries in various Latin American countries with hubs in San Salvador, El Salvador, as well as Lima, Peru, with a smaller operation in Ecuador. Copa has subsidiaries Copa Airlines Colombia and Wingo, both in Colombia, while Volaris of Mexico has Volaris Costa Rica and Volaris El Salvador, and the Irelandia group formerly included Viva Aerobus of Mexico; it now includes Viva Colombia and Viva Air Peru.
Regulation.
National.
Many countries have national airlines that the government owns and operates. Fully private airlines are subject to much government regulation for economic, political, and safety concerns. For instance, governments often intervene to halt airline labor actions to protect the free flow of people, communications, and goods between different regions without compromising safety.
The United States, Australia, and to a lesser extent Brazil, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, and Japan have "deregulated" their airlines. In the past, these governments dictated airfares, route networks, and other operational requirements for each airline. Since deregulation, airlines have been largely free to negotiate their own operating arrangements with different airports, enter and exit routes easily, and to levy airfares and supply flights according to market demand. The entry barriers for new airlines are lower in a deregulated market, and so the U.S. has seen hundreds of airlines start up (sometimes for only a brief operating period). This has produced far greater competition than before deregulation in most markets. The added competition, together with pricing freedom, means that new entrants often take market share with highly reduced rates that, to a limited degree, full service airlines must match. This is a major constraint on profitability for established carriers, which tend to have a higher cost base.
As a result, profitability in a deregulated market is uneven for most airlines. These forces have caused some major airlines to go out of business, in addition to most of the poorly established new entrants.
In the United States, the airline industry is dominated by four large firms. Because of industry consolidation, after fuel prices dropped considerably in 2015, very little of the savings were passed on to consumers.
International.
Groups such as the International Civil Aviation Organization establish worldwide standards for safety and other vital concerns. Most international air traffic is regulated by bilateral agreements between countries, which designate specific carriers to operate on specific routes. The model of such an agreement was the Bermuda Agreement between the US and UK following World War II, which designated airports to be used for transatlantic flights and gave each government the authority to nominate carriers to operate routes.
Bilateral agreements are based on the "freedoms of the air", a group of generalized traffic rights ranging from the freedom to overfly a country to the freedom to provide domestic flights within a country (a very rarely granted right known as cabotage). Most agreements permit airlines to fly from their home country to designated airports in the other country: some also extend the freedom to provide continuing service to a third country, or to another destination in the other country while carrying passengers from overseas.
In the 1990s, "open skies" agreements became more common. These agreements take many of these regulatory powers from state governments and open up international routes to further competition. Open skies agreements have met some criticism, particularly within the European Union, whose airlines would be at a comparative disadvantage with the United States' because of cabotage restrictions.
Economy.
In 2017, 4.1 billion passengers have been carried by airlines in 41.9 million commercial scheduled flights (an average payload of passengers), for 7.75 trillion passenger kilometres (an average trip of km) over 45,091 airline routes served globally. In 2016, air transport generated $704.4 billion of revenue in 2016, employed 10.2 million workers, supported 65.5 million jobs and $2.7 trillion of economic activity: 3.6% of the global GDP.
In July 2016, the total weekly airline capacity was 181.1 billion Available Seat Kilometers (+6.9% compared to July 2015): 57.6bn in Asia-Pacific, 47.7bn in Europe, 46.2bn in North America, 12.2bn in Middle East, 12.0bn in Latin America and 5.4bn in Africa.
Costs.
Airlines have substantial fixed and operating costs to establish and maintain air services: labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, booking commissions, advertising, catering, training, aviation insurance and other costs. Thus all but a small percentage of the income from ticket sales is paid out to a wide variety of external providers or internal cost centers.
Moreover, the industry is structured so that airlines often act as tax collectors. Airline fuel is untaxed because of a series of treaties existing between countries. Ticket prices include a number of fees, taxes and surcharges beyond the control of airlines. Airlines are also responsible for enforcing government regulations. If airlines carry passengers without proper documentation on an international flight, they are responsible for returning them back to the original country.
Analysis of the 1992–1996 period shows that every player in the air transport chain is far more profitable than the airlines, who collect and pass through fees and revenues to them from ticket sales. While airlines as a whole earned 6% return on capital employed (2–3.5% less than the cost of capital), airports earned 10%, catering companies 10–13%, handling companies 11–14%, aircraft lessors 15%, aircraft manufacturers 16%, and global distribution companies more than 30%.
There has been continuing cost competition from low cost airlines. Many companies emulate Southwest Airlines in various respects. The lines between full-service and low-cost airlines have become blurred – e.g., with most "full service" airlines introducing baggage check fees despite Southwest not doing so.
Many airlines in the U.S. and elsewhere have experienced business difficulty. U.S. airlines that have declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy since 1990 have included American Airlines, Continental Airlines (twice), Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, Pan Am, United Airlines and US Airways (twice).
Where an airline has established an engineering base at an airport, then there may be considerable economic advantages in using that same airport as a preferred focus (or "hub") for its scheduled flights.
Fuel hedging is a contractual tool used by transportation companies like airlines to reduce their exposure to volatile and potentially rising fuel costs. Several low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines adopt this practice. Southwest is credited with maintaining strong business profits between 1999 and the early 2000s due to its fuel hedging policy. Many other airlines are replicating Southwest's hedging policy to control their fuel costs.
Operating costs for US major airlines are primarily aircraft operating expense including jet fuel, aircraft maintenance, depreciation and aircrew for 44%, servicing expense for 29% (traffic 11%, passenger 11% and aircraft 7%), 14% for reservations and sales and 13% for overheads (administration 6% and advertising 2%). An average US major Boeing 757-200 flies stages 11.3 block hours per day and costs $2,550 per block hour: $923 of ownership, $590 of maintenance, $548 of fuel and $489 of crew; or $13.34 per 186 seats per block hour. For a Boeing 737-500, a low-cost carrier like Southwest have lower operating costs at $1,526 than a full service one like United at $2,974, and higher productivity with 399,746 ASM per day against 264,284, resulting in a unit cost of $cts/ASM against $cts/ASM.
McKinsey observes that "newer technology, larger aircraft, and increasingly efficient operations continually drive down the cost of running an airline", from nearly 40 US cents per ASK at the beginning of the jet age, to just above 10 cents since 2000. Those improvements were passed onto the customer due to high competition: fares have been falling throughout the history of airlines.
Revenue.
Airlines assign prices to their services in an attempt to maximize profitability. The pricing of airline tickets has become increasingly complicated over the years and is now largely determined by computerized yield management systems.
Because of the complications in scheduling flights and maintaining profitability, airlines have many loopholes that can be used by the knowledgeable traveler. Many of these airfare secrets are becoming more and more known to the general public, so airlines are forced to make constant adjustments.
Most airlines use differentiated pricing, a form of price discrimination, to sell air services at varying prices simultaneously to different segments. Factors influencing the price include the days remaining until departure, the booked load factor, the forecast of total demand by price point, competitive pricing in force, and variations by day of week of departure and by time of day. Carriers often accomplish this by dividing each cabin of the aircraft (first, business and economy) into a number of travel classes for pricing purposes.
A complicating factor is that of origin-destination control ("O&D control"). Someone purchasing a ticket from Melbourne to Sydney (as an example) for A$200 is competing with someone else who wants to fly Melbourne to Los Angeles through Sydney on the same flight, and who is willing to pay A$1400. Should the airline prefer the $1400 passenger, or the $200 passenger plus a possible Sydney-Los Angeles passenger willing to pay $1300? Airlines have to make hundreds of thousands of similar pricing decisions daily.
The advent of advanced computerized reservations systems in the late 1970s, most notably Sabre, allowed airlines to easily perform cost-benefit analyses on different pricing structures, leading to almost perfect price discrimination in some cases (that is, filling each seat on an aircraft at the highest price that can be charged without driving the consumer elsewhere).
The intense nature of airfare pricing has led to the term "fare war" to describe efforts by airlines to undercut other airlines on competitive routes. Through computers, new airfares can be published quickly and efficiently to the airlines' sales channels. For this purpose the airlines use the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO), who distribute latest fares for more than 500 airlines to Computer Reservation Systems across the world.
The extent of these pricing phenomena is strongest in "legacy" carriers. In contrast, low fare carriers usually offer pre-announced and simplified price structure, and sometimes quote prices for each leg of a trip separately.
Computers also allow airlines to predict, with some accuracy, how many passengers will actually fly after making a reservation to fly. This allows airlines to overbook their flights enough to fill the aircraft while accounting for "no-shows", but not enough (in most cases) to force paying passengers off the aircraft for lack of seats, stimulative pricing for low demand flights coupled with overbooking on high demand flights can help reduce this figure. This is especially crucial during tough economic times as airlines undertake massive cuts to ticket prices to retain demand.
Over January/February 2018, the cheapest airline surveyed by price comparator rome2rio was now-defunct Tigerair Australia with $0.06/km followed by AirAsia X with $0.07/km, while the most expensive was Charterlines, Inc. with $1.26/km followed by Buddha Air with $1.18/km.
For the IATA, the global airline industry revenue was $754 billion in 2017 for a $38.4 billion collective profit, and should rise by 10.7% to $834 billion in 2018 for a $33.8 billion profit forecast, down by 12% due to rising jet fuel and labor costs.
The demand for air transport will be less elastic for longer flights than for shorter flights, and more elastic for leisure travel than for business travel.
Airlines often have a strong seasonality, with traffic low in winter and peaking in summer. In Europe the most extreme market are the Greek islands with July/August having more than ten times the winter traffic, as Jet2 is the most seasonal among low-cost carriers with July having seven times the January traffic, whereas legacy carriers are much less with only 85/115% variability.
Assets and financing.
Airline financing is quite complex, since airlines are highly leveraged operations. Not only must they purchase (or lease) new airliner bodies and engines regularly, they must make major long-term fleet decisions with the goal of meeting the demands of their markets while producing a fleet that is relatively economical to operate and maintain; comparably Southwest Airlines and their reliance on a single airplane type (the Boeing 737 and derivatives), with the now defunct Eastern Air Lines which operated 17 different aircraft types, each with varying pilot, engine, maintenance, and support needs.
A second financial issue is that of hedging oil and fuel purchases, which are usually second only to labor in its relative cost to the company. However, with the current high fuel prices it has become the largest cost to an airline. Legacy airlines, compared with new entrants, have been hit harder by rising fuel prices partly due to the running of older, less fuel efficient aircraft. While hedging instruments can be expensive, they can easily pay for themselves many times over in periods of increasing fuel costs, such as in the 2000–2005 period.
In view of the congestion apparent at many international airports, the ownership of slots at certain airports (the right to take-off or land an aircraft at a particular time of day or night) has become a significant tradable asset for many airlines. Clearly take-off slots at popular times of the day can be critical in attracting the more profitable business traveler to a given airline's flight and in establishing a competitive advantage against a competing airline.
If a particular city has two or more airports, market forces will tend to attract the less profitable routes, or those on which competition is weakest, to the less congested airport, where slots are likely to be more available and therefore cheaper. For example, Reagan National Airport attracts profitable routes due partly to its congestion, leaving less-profitable routes to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Dulles International Airport.
Other factors, such as surface transport facilities and onward connections, will also affect the relative appeal of different airports and some long-distance flights may need to operate from the one with the longest runway. For example, LaGuardia Airport is the preferred airport for most of Manhattan due to its proximity, while long-distance routes must use John F. Kennedy International Airport's longer runways.
Partnerships.
Codesharing is the most common type of airline partnership; it involves one airline selling tickets for another airline's flights under its own airline code. An early example of this was Japan Airlines' (JAL) codesharing partnership with Aeroflot in the 1960s on Tokyo–Moscow flights; Aeroflot operated the flights using Aeroflot aircraft, but JAL sold tickets for the flights as if they were JAL flights. This practice allows airlines to expand their operations, at least on paper, into parts of the world where they cannot afford to establish bases or purchase aircraft. Another example was the Austrian–Sabena partnership on the Vienna–Brussels–New York/JFK route during the late '60s, using a Sabena Boeing 707 with Austrian livery.
Since airline reservation requests are often made by city-pair (such as "show me flights from Chicago to Düsseldorf"), an airline that can codeshare with another airline for a variety of routes might be able to be listed as indeed offering a Chicago–Düsseldorf flight. The passenger is advised however, that airline no. 1 operates the flight from say Chicago to Amsterdam (for example), and airline no. 2 operates the continuing flight (on a different airplane, sometimes from another terminal) to Düsseldorf. Thus the primary rationale for code sharing is to expand one's service offerings in city-pair terms to increase sales.
A more recent development is the airline alliance, which became prevalent in the late 1990s. These alliances can act as virtual mergers to get around government restrictions. The largest are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld, and these accounted for over 60% of global commercial air traffic . Alliances of airlines coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide). These are increasingly integrated business combinations—sometimes including cross-equity arrangements—in which products, service standards, schedules, and airport facilities are standardized and combined for higher efficiency. One of the first airlines to start an alliance with another airline was KLM, who partnered with Northwest Airlines. Both airlines later entered the SkyTeam alliance after the fusion of KLM and Air France in 2004.
Often the companies combine IT operations, or purchase fuel and aircraft as a bloc to achieve higher bargaining power. However, the alliances have been most successful at purchasing invisible supplies and services, such as fuel. Airlines usually prefer to purchase items visible to their passengers to differentiate themselves from local competitors. If an airline's main domestic competitor flies Boeing airliners, then the airline may prefer to use Airbus aircraft regardless of what the rest of the alliance chooses.
Largest airlines.
The world's largest airlines can be defined in several ways. , American Airlines Group was the largest by fleet size, passengers carried and revenue passenger mile. Delta Air Lines was the largest by revenue, assets value and market capitalization. Lufthansa Group was the largest by number of employees, FedEx Express by freight tonne-kilometres, Turkish Airlines by number of countries served and UPS Airlines by number of destinations served (though United Airlines was the largest passenger airline by number of destinations served).
State support.
Historically, air travel has survived largely through state support, whether in the form of equity or subsidies. The airline industry as a whole has made a cumulative loss during its 100-year history.
One argument is that positive externalities, such as higher growth due to global mobility, outweigh the microeconomic losses and justify continuing government intervention. A historically high level of government intervention in the airline industry can be seen as part of a wider political consensus on strategic forms of transport, such as highways and railways, both of which receive public funding in most parts of the world. Although many countries continue to operate state-owned or parastatal airlines, many large airlines today are privately owned and are therefore governed by microeconomic principles to maximize shareholder profit.
In December 1991, the collapse of Pan Am, an airline often credited for shaping the international airline industry, highlighted the financial complexities faced by major airline companies.
Following the 1978 deregulation, U.S. carriers did not manage to make an aggregate profit for 12 years in 31, including four years where combined losses amounted to $10 billion, but rebounded with eight consecutive years of profits since 2010, including its four with over $10 billion profits. They drop loss-making routes, avoid fare wars and market share battles, limit capacity growth, add hub feed with regional jets to increase their profitability. They change schedules to create more connections, buy used aircraft, reduce international frequencies and leverage partnerships to optimize capacities and benefit from overseas connectivity.
Environment.
Aircraft engines emit noise pollution, gases and particulate emissions, and contribute to global dimming.
Growth of the industry in recent years raised a number of ecological questions.
Domestic air transport grew in China at 15.5 percent annually from 2001 to 2006. The rate of air travel globally increased at 3.7 percent per year over the same time. In the EU greenhouse gas emissions from aviation increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006. However it must be compared with the flights increase, only in UK, between 1990 and 2006 terminal passengers increased from 100 000 thousands to 250 000 thousands., according to AEA reports every year, 750 million passengers travel by European airlines, which also share 40% of merchandise value in and out of Europe. Without even pressure from "green activists", targeting lower ticket prices, generally, airlines do what is possible to cut the fuel consumption (and gas emissions connected therewith). Further, according to some reports, it can be concluded that the last piston-powered aircraft were as fuel-efficient as the average jet in 2005.
Despite continuing efficiency improvements from the major aircraft manufacturers, the expanding demand for global air travel has resulted in growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Currently, the aviation sector, including US domestic and global international travel, make approximately 1.6 percent of global anthropogenic GHG emissions per annum. North America accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world's GHG emissions from aviation fuel use.
emissions from the jet fuel burned per passenger on an average airline flight is about 353 kilograms (776 pounds). Loss of natural habitat potential associated with the jet fuel burned per passenger on a airline flight is estimated to be 250 square meters (2700 square feet).
In the context of climate change and peak oil, there is a debate about possible taxation of air travel and the inclusion of aviation in an emissions trading scheme, with a view to ensuring that the total external costs of aviation are taken into account.
The airline industry is responsible for about 11 percent of greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S. transportation sector. Boeing estimates that biofuels could reduce flight-related greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent. The solution would be blending algae fuels with existing jet fuel:
There are projects on electric aircraft, and some of which are fully operational as of 2013.
Call signs.
Each operator of a scheduled or charter flight uses an airline call sign when communicating with airports or air traffic control. Most of these call-signs are derived from the airline's trade name, but for reasons of history, marketing, or the need to reduce ambiguity in spoken English (so that pilots do not mistakenly make navigational decisions based on instructions issued to a different aircraft), some airlines and air forces use call-signs less obviously connected with their trading name. For example, British Airways uses a "Speedbird" call-sign, named after the logo of one of its predecessors, BOAC, while SkyEurope used "Relax".
Personnel.
The various types of airline personnel include flight crew, responsible for the operation of the aircraft. Flight crew members include: pilots (captain and first officer: some older aircraft also required a flight engineer and/or a navigator); flight attendants (led by a purser on larger aircraft); In-flight security personnel on some airlines (most notably El Al)
Groundcrew, responsible for operations at airports, include Aerospace and avionics engineers responsible for certifying the aircraft for flight and management of aircraft maintenance; Aerospace engineers, responsible for airframe, powerplant and electrical systems maintenance; Avionics engineers responsible for avionics and instruments maintenance; Airframe and powerplant technicians; Electric System technicians, responsible for maintenance of electrical systems; Flight dispatchers; Baggage handlers; Ramp Agents; Remote centralized weight and balancing; Gate agents; Ticket agents; Passenger service agents (such as airline lounge employees); Reservation agents, usually (but not always) at facilities outside the airport; Crew schedulers.
Airlines follow a corporate structure where each broad area of operations (such as maintenance, flight operations (including flight safety), and passenger service) is supervised by a vice president. Larger airlines often appoint vice presidents to oversee each of the airline's hubs as well. Airlines employ lawyers to deal with regulatory procedures and other administrative tasks.
Trends.
The pattern of ownership has been privatized since the mid-1980s, that is, the ownership has gradually changed from governments to private and individual sectors or organizations. This occurs as regulators permit greater freedom and non-government ownership, in steps that are usually decades apart. This pattern is not seen for all airlines in all regions. Many major airlines operating between the 1940s and 1980s were government-owned or government-established. However, most airlines from the earliest days of air travel in the 1920s and 1930s were personal businesses.
Growth rates are not consistent in all regions, but countries with a deregulated airline industry have more competition and greater pricing freedom. This results in lower fares and sometimes dramatic spurts in traffic growth. The U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, India and other markets exhibit this trend. The industry has been observed to be cyclical in its financial performance. Four or five years of poor earnings precede five or six years of improvement. But profitability even in the good years is generally low, in the range of 2–3% net profit after interest and tax. In times of profit, airlines lease new generations of airplanes and upgrade services in response to higher demand. Since 1980, the industry has not earned back the cost of capital during the best of times. Conversely, in bad times losses can be dramatically worse. Warren Buffett in 1999 said "the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero."
As in many mature industries, consolidation is a trend. Airline groupings may consist of limited bilateral partnerships, long-term, multi-faceted alliances between carriers, equity arrangements, mergers, or takeovers. Since governments often restrict ownership and merger between companies in different countries, most consolidation takes place within a country. In the U.S., over 200 airlines have merged, been taken over, or gone out of business since the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. Many international airline managers are lobbying their governments to permit greater consolidation to achieve higher economy and efficiency.
Types.
There are several types of passenger airlines, mainly
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1943 | Australian Democrats | The Australian Democrats is a centrist political party in Australia. Founded in 1977 from a merger of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement, both of which were descended from Liberal Party dissenting splinter groups, it was Australia's largest minor party from its formation in 1977 through to 2004 and frequently held the balance of power in the Senate during that time.
The Democrats' inaugural leader was Don Chipp, a former Liberal cabinet minister, who famously promised to "keep the bastards honest". At the 1977 federal election, the Democrats polled 11.1 percent of the Senate vote and secured two seats. The party would retain a presence in the Senate for the next 30 years, at its peak (between 1999 and 2002) holding nine out of 76 seats, though never securing a seat in the lower house. Due to the party's numbers in the Senate, both Liberal and Labor governments required the assistance of the Democrats to pass contentious legislation. Ideologically, the Democrats were usually regarded as centrists, occupying the political middle ground between the Liberal Party and the Labor Party.
Over three decades, the Australian Democrats achieved representation in the legislatures of the ACT, South Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia and Tasmania as well as Commonwealth Senate seats in all six states. However, at the 2004 and 2007 federal elections, all seven of its Senate seats were lost. The party's share of the vote collapsed at these elections, which was largely attributed to party leader Meg Lees' decision to pass the Howard government's goods and services tax, which led to several years of popular recriminations and party infighting that destroyed the Democrats' reputation as competent overseers of legislation. The last remaining State parliamentarian, David Winderlich, left the party and was defeated as an independent in 2010.
The party was formally deregistered in 2016 for not having the required 500 members. In 2018 the Democrats merged with CountryMinded, a small, also unregistered agrarian political party, and later that year the party's constitution was radically rewritten to establish "top-down" governance and de-emphasize the principle of participatory democracy. On 7 April 2019 the party regained registration with the Australian Electoral Commission.
As of 2022, the national president of the party is former senator and parliamentary leader Lyn Allison.
History.
1977–1986: Foundation and Don Chipp's leadership.
The Australian Democrats were formed in May 1977 from an amalgamation of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement. The two groups found a common basis for a new political movement in the widespread discontent with the two major parties. Former Liberal minister Don Chipp agreed to lead the new party.
The party's broad aim was to achieve a balance of power in one or more parliaments and to exercise it responsibly in line with policies determined by membership.
The first Australian Democrat parliamentarian was Robin Millhouse, the sole New LM member of the South Australian House of Assembly, who joined the Democrats in 1977. Millhouse held his seat (Mitcham) at the 1977 and 1979 state elections. In 1982, Millhouse resigned to take up a senior judicial appointment, and Heather Southcott won the by-election for the Democrats, but lost the seat to the Liberals later that year at the 1982 state election. Mitcham was the only single-member lower-house seat anywhere in Australia to be won by the Democrats.
The first Democrat federal parliamentarian was Senator Janine Haines, who in 1977 was nominated by the South Australian Parliament to fill the casual vacancy caused by the resignation of Liberal Senator Steele Hall. Hall had been elected as a Liberal Movement senator, before rejoining the Liberal Party in 1976, and South Australian premier Don Dunstan nominated Haines on the basis that the Democrats was the successor party to the Liberal Movement.
At the 1977 election, the Australian Democrats secured two seats in the Senate with the election of Colin Mason (NSW) and Don Chipp (VIC), though Haines lost her seat in South Australia. At the 1980 election, this increased to five seats with the election of Michael Macklin (QLD) and John Siddons (VIC) and the return of Janine Haines (SA). Thereafter they frequently held enough seats to give them the balance of power in the upper chamber.
At a Melbourne media conference on 19 September 1980, in the midst of the 1980 election campaign, Chipp described his party's aim as to "keep the bastards honest"—the "bastards" being the major parties and/or politicians in general. This became a long-lived slogan for the Democrats.
1986–1990: Janine Haines' leadership.
Don Chipp resigned from the Senate on 18 August 1986, being succeeded as party leader by Janine Haines and replaced as a senator for Victoria by Janet Powell.
At the 1987 election following a double dissolution, the reduced quota of 7.7% necessary to win a seat assisted the election of three new senators. 6-year terms were won by Paul McLean (NSW) and incumbents Janine Haines (South Australia) and Janet Powell (Victoria). In South Australia, a second senator, John Coulter, was elected for a 3-year term, as were incumbent Michael Macklin (Queensland) and Jean Jenkins (Western Australia).
1990 saw the voluntary departure from the Senate of Janine Haines (a step with which not all Democrats agreed) and the failure of her strategic goal of winning the House of Representatives seat of Kingston. The casual vacancy was filled by Meg Lees several months before the election of Cheryl Kernot in place of retired deputy leader Michael Macklin. The ambitious Kernot immediately contested the party's national parliamentary deputy leadership. Being unemployed at the time, she requested and obtained party funds to pay for her travel to address members in all seven divisions. In the event, Victorian Janet Powell was elected as leader and John Coulter was chosen as deputy leader.
1990–1993: Janet Powell and John Coulter.
Despite the loss of Haines and the WA Senate seat (through an inconsistent national preference agreement with the ALP), the 1990 federal election heralded something of a rebirth for the party, with a dramatic rise in primary vote. This was at the same time as an economic recession was building, and events such as the Gulf War in Kuwait were beginning to shepherd issues of globalisation and transnational trade on to national government agendas.
The Australian Democrats had a long-standing policy to oppose war and so opposed Australia's support of, and participation in, the Gulf War. Whereas the House of Representatives was able to avoid any debate about the war and Australia's participation, the Democrats took full advantage of the opportunity to move for a debate in the Senate.
Because of the party's pacifist-based opposition to the Gulf War, there was mass-media antipathy and negative publicity which some construed as poor media performance by Janet Powell, the party's standing having stalled at about 10%. Before 12 months of her leadership had passed, the South Australian and Queensland divisions were circulating the party's first-ever petition to criticise and oust the parliamentary leader. The explicit grounds related to Powell's alleged responsibility for poor AD ratings in Gallup and other media surveys of potential voting support. When this charge was deemed insufficient, interested party officers and senators reinforced it with negative media 'leaks' concerning her openly established relationship with Sid Spindler and exposure of administrative failings resulting in excessive overtime to a staff member. With National Executive blessing, the party room pre-empted the ballot by replacing the leader with deputy John Coulter. In the process, severe internal divisions were generated. One major collateral casualty was the party whip Paul McLean who resigned and quit the Senate in disgust at what he perceived as in-fighting between close friends. The casual NSW vacancy created by his resignation was filled by Karin Sowada. Powell duly left the party, along with many leading figures of the Victorian branch of the party, and unsuccessfully stood as an Independent candidate when her term expired. In later years, she campaigned for the Australian Greens.
1993–1997: Cheryl Kernot.
The party's parliamentary influence was weakened in 1996 after the Howard government was elected, and a Labor senator, Mal Colston, resigned from the Labor Party. Since the Democrats now shared the parliamentary balance of power with two Independent senators, the Coalition government was able on occasion to pass legislation by negotiating with Colston and Brian Harradine.
In October 1997, party leader Cheryl Kernot resigned, announcing that she would be joining the Australian Labor Party. (Five years later it was revealed that she had been in a sexual relationship with Labor deputy leader Gareth Evans). Kernot resigned from the Senate and was replaced by Andrew Bartlett, while deputy Meg Lees became the new party leader.
1997–2004: Meg Lees, Natasha Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett.
Under Lees' leadership, in the 1998 federal election, the Democrats' candidate John Schumann came within 2 per cent of taking Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's seat of Mayo in the Adelaide Hills under Australia's preferential voting system. The party's representation increased to nine senators, and they regained the balance of power, holding it until the Coalition gained a Senate majority at the 2004 election.
Internal conflict and leadership tensions from 2000 to 2002, blamed on the party's support for the Government's Goods and Services Tax, was damaging to the Democrats. Opposed by the Labor Party, the Australian Greens and independent Senator Harradine, the tax required Democrat support to pass. In an election fought on tax, the Democrats publicly stated that they liked neither the Liberal's nor the Labor's tax packages, but pledged to work with whichever party was elected to make theirs better. They campaigned with the slogan "No Goods and Services Tax on Food".
In 1999, after negotiations with Prime Minister Howard, Meg Lees, Andrew Murray and the party room senators agreed to support the A New Tax System legislation with exemptions from goods and services tax for most food and some medicines, as well as many environmental and social concessions. Five Australian Democrats senators voted in favour. However, two dissident senators on the party's left, Natasha Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett, voted against the goods and services tax.
In 2001, a leadership spill saw Meg Lees replaced as leader by Natasha Stott Despoja after a very public and bitter leadership battle. Despite criticism of Stott Despoja's youth and lack of experience, the 2001 election saw the Democrats receive similar media coverage to the previous election. Despite the internal divisions, the Australian Democrats' election result in 2001 was quite good. However, it was not enough to prevent the loss of Vicki Bourne's Senate seat in NSW.
The 2002 South Australian election was the last time an Australian Democrat would be elected to an Australian parliament. Sandra Kanck was re-elected to a second eight-year term from an upper house primary vote of 7.3 percent.
Resulting tensions between Stott Despoja and Lees led to Meg Lees leaving the party in 2002, becoming an independent and forming the Australian Progressive Alliance. Stott Despoja stood down from the leadership following a loss of confidence by her party room colleagues. It led to a protracted leadership battle in 2002, which eventually led to the election of Senator Andrew Bartlett as leader. While the public fighting stopped, the public support for the party remained at record lows.
On 6 December 2003, Bartlett stepped aside temporarily as leader of the party, after an incident in which he swore at Liberal Senator Jeannie Ferris on the floor of Parliament while intoxicated. The party issued a statement stating that deputy leader Lyn Allison would serve as the acting leader of the party. Bartlett apologised to the Democrats, Jeannie Ferris and the Australian public for his behaviour and assured all concerned that it would never happen again. On 29 January 2004, after seeking medical treatment, Bartlett returned to the Australian Democrats leadership, vowing to abstain from alcohol.
Decline.
Following internal conflict over the goods and services tax and resultant leadership changes, a dramatic decline occurred in the Democrats' membership and voting support in all states. Simultaneously, an increase was recorded in support for the Australian Greens who, by 2004, were supplanting the Democrats as a substantial third party. The trend was noted that year by political scientists Dean Jaensch et al.
Support for the Australian Democrats fell significantly at the 2004 federal election in which they achieved only 2.4 per cent of the national vote. Nowhere was this more noticeable than in their key support base of suburban Adelaide in South Australia, where they received between 1 and 4 percent of the lower house vote; by comparison, they tallied between 7 and 31 per cent of the vote in 2001. No Democrat senators were elected, though four kept their seats due to being elected in 2001, thus their representation fell from eight senators to four. Three incumbent senators were defeated: Aden Ridgeway (NSW), Brian Greig (WA) and John Cherry (Qld). Following the loss, the customary post-election leadership ballot installed Allison as leader, with Bartlett as her deputy. From 1 July 2005 the Australian Democrats lost official parliamentary party status, being represented by only four senators while the governing Liberal-National Coalition gained a majority and potential control of the Senate—the first time this advantage had been enjoyed by any government since 1980.
On 28 August 2006, the founder of the Australian Democrats, Don Chipp, died. Former prime minister Bob Hawke said: "... there is a coincidental timing almost between the passing of Don Chipp and what I think is the death throes of the Democrats." In November 2006, the Australian Democrats fared very poorly in the Victorian state election, receiving a Legislative Council vote tally of only 0.83%, less than half of the party's result in 2002 (1.79 per cent).
The Democrats again had no success at the 2007 federal election, and lost all four of their remaining Senate seats. Two incumbent senators, Lyn Allison (Victoria) and Andrew Bartlett (Queensland), were defeated, their seats both reverting to major parties. Their two remaining colleagues, Andrew Murray (WA) and Natasha Stott Despoja (SA), retired. All four senators' terms expired on 30 June 2008—leaving the Australian Democrats with no federal representation for the first time since its founding in 1977. Later, in 2009, Jaensch suggested it was possible the Democrats could make a political comeback at the 2010 South Australian election, but this did not occur.
State/territory losses.
The Tasmanian division of the party was deregistered for having insufficient members in January 2006.
At the 2006 South Australian election, the Australian Democrats were reduced to 1.7 per cent of the Legislative Council (upper house) vote. Their sole councillor up for re-election, Kate Reynolds, was defeated. In July 2006, Richard Pascoe, national and South Australian party president, resigned, citing slumping opinion polls and the poor result in the 2006 South Australian election as well as South Australian parliamentary leader Sandra Kanck's comments regarding the drug MDMA which he saw as damaging to the party.
In the New South Wales state election of March 2007, the Australian Democrats lost their last remaining NSW Upper House representative, Arthur Chesterfield-Evans. The party fared poorly, gaining only 1.8 per cent of the Legislative Council vote.
On 13 September 2007, the ACT Democrats (Australian Capital Territory Division of the party) was deregistered by the ACT Electoral Commissioner, being unable to demonstrate a minimum membership of 100 electors.
These losses left Sandra Kanck, in South Australia, as the party's only parliamentarian. She retired in 2009 and was replaced by David Winderlich, making him (as of 2020) the last Democrat to sit in any Australian parliament. The Democrats lost all representation when Winderlich resigned from the party in October 2009. He sat the remainder of his term as an independent, and lost his seat at the 2010 South Australian election.
Post-parliamentary decline.
Following the loss of all Democrats MP's in both federal and state parliaments, the party continued to be riven by factionalism. In 2009 a dispute arose between two factions, the "Christian Centrists" loyal to former leader Meg Lees, and a faction comprising the party's more progressive members. The dispute arose when the Christian Centrist controlled national executive removed a website for party members from the internet, stating that its operation was a violation of the party constitution. In response, the progressive faction accused the national executive of being undemocratic and of acting contrary to the party constitution themselves. By 2012, this dispute had been superseded by another between members loyal to former Senator Brian Greig and members who were supporters of former South Australian MP Sandra Kanck. Brian Greig was elected the party's president, but resigned after less than a month due to frustration with the party's factionalism.
Deregistration.
On 16 April 2015, the Australian Electoral Commission deregistered the Australian Democrats as a political party for failure to demonstrate the requisite 500 members to maintain registration. However, the party did run candidates and remain registered for a period of time thereafter in the New South Wales Democrats and Queensland Democrat divisions.
Renewed registration (2019–present).
In November 2018 there was a report that CountryMinded, a de-registered microparty, would merge with the Australian Democrats in a new bid to seek membership growth, electoral re-registration and financial support. In February 2019, application for registration was submitted to the AEC and was upheld on 7 April 2019, despite an objection from the Australian Democrats (Queensland Division).
The party unsuccessfully contested the lower-house seat of Adelaide and a total of six Senate seats (two in each state of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia) at the 2019 federal election. At the 2022 federal election one lower-house seat (Eden-Monaro) and three Senate seats were contested without success, polling fewer than 0.7% of first-preference votes.
Overview.
The party was founded on principles of honesty, tolerance, compassion and direct democracy through postal ballots of all members, so that "there should be no hierarchical structure ... by which a carefully engineered elite could make decisions for the members." From the outset, members' participation was fiercely protected in national and divisional constitutions prescribing internal elections, regular meeting protocols, annual conferences—and monthly journals for open discussion and balloting. Dispute resolution procedures were established, with final recourse to a party ombudsman and membership ballot.
Policies determined by the unique participatory method promoted environmental awareness and sustainability, opposition to the primacy of economic rationalism (Australian neoliberalism), preventative approaches to human health and welfare, animal rights, rejection of nuclear technology and weapons.
The Australian Democrats were the first representatives of green politics at the federal level in Australia. They "were in the vanguard of environmentalism in Australia. From the early 1980s they were unequivocally opposed to the building of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania and they opposed the mining and export of uranium and the development of nuclear power plants in Australia." In particular, leader Don Chipp, and Tasmanian state Democrat Norm Sanders, played crucial legislative roles in protecting the Franklin Dam.
The party's centrist role made it subject to criticism from both the right and left of the political spectrum. In particular, Chipp's former conservative affiliation was frequently recalled by opponents on the left. This problem was to torment later leaders and strategists who, by 1991, were proclaiming "the electoral objective" as a higher priority than the rigorous participatory democracy espoused by the party's founders.
Because of their numbers on the cross benches during the Hawke and Keating governments, the Democrats were sometimes regarded as exercising a balance of power—which attracted electoral support from a significant sector of the electorate which had been alienated by both Labor and Coalition policies and practices.
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1944 | Australian Capital Territory | The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a federal territory of Australia. Canberra, the capital city of Australia, is located in this territory. It is located in southeastern Australian mainland as an enclave completely within the state of New South Wales. Founded after Federation as the seat of government for the new nation, the territory hosts the headquarters of all important institutions of the Australian Government.
On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies of Australia was achieved. Section 125 of the new Australian Constitution provided that land, situated in New South Wales and at least from Sydney, would be ceded to the new federal government. Following discussion and exploration of various areas within New South Wales, the "Seat of Government Act 1908" was passed in 1908 which specified a capital in the Yass-Canberra region. The territory was transferred to the federal government by New South Wales in 1911, two years prior to the capital city being founded and formally named as Canberra in 1913.
While the overwhelming majority of the population reside in the city of Canberra in the ACT's north-east, the territory also includes some towns such as Williamsdale, Oaks Estate, Uriarra, Tharwa and Hall. The ACT also includes the Namadgi National Park which comprises the majority of land area of the territory. Despite a common misconception, the Jervis Bay Territory is not part of the ACT although the laws of the Australian Capital Territory apply as if Jervis Bay did form part of the ACT. The territory has a relatively dry, continental climate experiencing warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters.
The Australian Capital Territory is home to many important institutions of the federal government, national monuments and museums. This includes the Parliament of Australia, the High Court of Australia, the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Australian War Memorial. It also hosts the majority of foreign embassies in Australia as well as regional headquarters of many international organisations, not-for-profit groups, lobbying groups and professional associations. Several major universities also have campuses in the ACT including the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, the University of New South Wales, Charles Sturt University and the Australian Catholic University.
A locally elected legislative assembly has governed the territory since 1988. However, the Commonwealth maintains authority over the territory and may overturn local laws. It still maintains control over the area known as the Parliamentary Triangle through the National Capital Authority. Residents of the territory elect three members of the House of Representatives and two senators.
With 453,324 residents, the Australian Capital Territory is the second smallest mainland state or territory by population. At the , the median weekly income for people in the territory aged over 15 was $998, significantly higher than the national average of $662. The average level of degree qualification in the ACT is also higher than the national average. Within the ACT, 37.1% of the population hold a bachelor's degree level or above education compared to the national figure of 20%.
In September 2022, it was announced the border between NSW and the ACT would change for the first time since it was created in 1911. ACT chief minister Andrew Barr said NSW premier Dominic Perrottet had agreed to a proposed border change of in the Ginninderra watershed.
History.
Indigenous inhabitants.
Aboriginal Australian peoples have long inhabited the area. Evidence indicates habitation dating back at least 25,000 years, and it is possible that the area was inhabited for considerably longer, with evidence of an Aboriginal presence at Lake Mungo dating back around 40,000–62,000 years. The principal group occupying the region were the Ngunnawal people, with the Ngarigo and Walgalu living immediately to the south, the Wandadian to the east, the Gandangara to the north and the Wiradjuri to the north-west.
European colonisation.
Following European settlement, the growth of the new colony of New South Wales led to an increasing demand for arable land. Governor Lachlan Macquarie supported expeditions to open up new lands to the south of Sydney. The 1820s saw further exploration in the Canberra area associated with the construction of a road from Sydney to the Goulburn plains. While working on the project, Charles Throsby learned of a nearby lake and river from the local Indigenous peoples and he accordingly sent Wild to lead a small party to investigate the site. The search was unsuccessful, but they did discover the Yass River and it is surmised that they would have set foot on part of the future territory.
A second expedition was mounted shortly thereafter and they became the first Europeans to camp at the Molonglo (Ngambri) and Queanbeyan (Jullergung) Rivers. However, they failed to find the Murrumbidgee River. The issue of the Murrumbidgee was solved in 1821 when Throsby mounted a third expedition and successfully reached the watercourse, on the way providing the first detailed account of the land where the Australian Capital Territory now resides. The last expedition in the region before settlement was undertaken by Allan Cunningham in 1824. He reported that the region was suitable for grazing and the settlement of the Limestone Plains followed immediately thereafter.
Early settlement.
The first land grant in the region was made to Joshua John Moore in 1823 and European settlement in the area began in 1824 with the construction of a homestead by his stockmen on what is now the Acton Peninsula. Moore formally purchased the site in 1826 and named the property "Canberry" or "Canberra".
A significant influx of population and economic activity occurred around the 1850s goldrushes. The goldrushes prompted the establishment of communication between Sydney and the region by way of the Cobb & Co coaches, which transported mail and passengers. The first post offices opened in Ginninderra in 1859 and at Lanyon in 1860.
During colonial times, the European communities of Ginninderra, Molonglo and Tuggeranong settled and farmed the surrounding land. The region was also called the Queanbeyan-Yass district, after the two largest towns in the area. The villages of Ginninderra and Tharwa developed to service the local agrarian communities.
During the first 20 years of settlement, there was only limited contact between the settlers and Aboriginal people. Over the succeeding years, the Ngunnawal and other local indigenous people effectively ceased to exist as cohesive and independent communities adhering to their traditional ways of life. Those who had not succumbed to disease and other predations either dispersed to the local settlements or were relocated to more distant Aboriginal reserves set up by the New South Wales government in the latter part of the 19th century.
Creation of the territory.
In 1898, a referendum on a proposed Constitution was held in four of the colonies – New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Although the referendum achieved a majority in all four colonies, the New South Wales referendum failed to gain the minimum number of votes needed for the bill to pass. Following this result, a meeting of the four Premiers in 1898 heard from George Reid, the Premier of New South Wales, who argued that locating the future capital in New South Wales would be sufficient to ensure the passage of the Bill. The 1899 referendum on this revised bill was successful and passed with sufficient numbers. Section 125 of the Australian Constitution thus provided that, following Federation in 1901, land would be ceded freely to the new Federal Government.
This, however, left open the question of where to locate the capital. In 1906 and after significant deliberations, New South Wales agreed to cede sufficient land on the condition that it was in the Yass-Canberra region, this site being closer to Sydney. Initially, Dalgety, New South Wales remained at the forefront, but Yass-Canberra prevailed after voting by federal representatives. The "Seat of Government Act 1908" was passed in 1908, which repealed the 1904 Act and specified a capital in the Yass-Canberra region. Government surveyor Charles Scrivener was deployed to the region in the same year to map out a specific site and, after an extensive search, settled upon the present location, basing the borders primarily on the need to secure a stable water supply for the planned capital.
The Australian Capital Territory was transferred to the Commonwealth by New South Wales on 1 January 1911, two years before the naming of Canberra as the national capital on 20 March 1913.
Development throughout 20th century.
In 1911, an international competition to design the future capital was held, which was won by the Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin in 1912. The official naming of Canberra occurred on 12 March 1913 and construction began immediately.
After Griffin's departure following difficulty in implementing his project, the Federal Capital Advisory Committee was established in 1920 to advise the government of the construction efforts. The committee had limited success meeting its goals. However, the chairman, John Sulman, was instrumental in applying the ideas of the garden city movement to Griffin's plan. The committee was replaced in 1925 by the Federal Capital Commission.
In 1930, the ACT Advisory Council was established to advise the minister for territories on the community's concerns. In 1934, Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory was established.
From 1938 to 1957, the National Capital Planning and Development Committee continued to plan the further expansion of Canberra. However, the National Capital Planning and Development Committee did not have executive power, and decisions were made on the development of Canberra without the committee's consultation. During this time, Prime Minister Robert Menzies regarded the state of the national capital as an embarrassment.
After World War II, there was a shortage of housing and office space in Canberra. A Senate Select Committee hearing was held in 1954 to address its development requirements. This Committee recommended the creation of a single planning body with executive power. Consequently, the National Capital Planning and Development Committee was replaced by the National Capital Development Commission in 1957. The National Capital Development Commission ended four decades of disputes over the shape and design of Lake Burley Griffin and construction was completed in 1964 after four years of work. The completion of the centrepiece of Griffin's design finally laid the platform for the development of Griffin's Parliamentary Triangle.
Self-government.
In 1978, an advisory referendum was held to determine the views of ACT citizens about whether there should be self-government. Just under 64 percent of voters rejected devolved government options, in favour of the status quo. Nevertheless, in 1988, the new minister for the Australian Capital Territory Gary Punch received a report recommending the abolition of the National Capital Development Commission and the formation of a locally elected government. Punch recommended that the Hawke government accept the report's recommendations and subsequently Clyde Holding introduced legislation to grant self-government to the territory in October 1988.
The enactment on 6 December 1988 of the "Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988" established the framework for self-government. The first election for the 17-member Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly was held on 4 March 1989.
The initial years of self-government were difficult and unstable. A majority of ACT residents had opposed self-government and had it imposed upon them by the federal parliament. At the first election, 4 of the 17 seats were won by anti-self-government single-issue parties due to a protest vote by disgruntled Canberrans and a total of 8 were won by minor parties and independents.
In 1992, Labor won eight seats and the minor parties and independents won only three. Stability increased, and in 1995, Kate Carnell became the first elected Liberal chief minister. In 1998, Carnell became the first chief minister to be re-elected.
Geography.
The Australian Capital Territory is the smallest mainland territory (aside from the Jervis Bay Territory) and covers a total land area of , slightly smaller than Luxembourg.
It is bounded by the Bombala railway line in the east, the watershed of Naas Creek in the south, the watershed of the Cotter River in the west and the watershed of the Molonglo River in the north-east. These boundaries were set to give the ACT an adequate water supply. The ACT extends about North-South between 35.124°S and 35.921°S, and West-East between 148.763°E and 149.399°E. The city area of Canberra occupies the north-eastern corner of this area.
The Australian Capital Territory includes the city of Canberra and some towns such as Williamsdale, Oaks Estate, Uriarra Village, Tharwa and Hall. The Australian Capital Territory also contains agricultural land (sheep, dairy cattle, vineyards and small amounts of crops) and a large area of national park (Namadgi National Park), much of it mountainous and forested.
Tidbinbilla is a locality to the south-west of Canberra that features the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, operated by the United States' NASA as part of its Deep Space Network. The Southern Tablelands Temperate Grassland straddles the state.
There are a large range of mountains, rivers and creeks throughout the territory and are largely contained within the Namadgi National Park. These include the Naas and Murrumbidgee Rivers.
Climate.
The territory has a relatively dry, continental climate experiencing warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters. Under Köppen-Geiger classification, the territory has an oceanic climate ("Cfb").
January is the hottest month with an average high of 27.7°C. July is the coldest month when the average high drops to . The highest maximum temperature recorded in the territory was 44.0°C on 4 January 2020. The lowest minimum temperature was −10.0°C on 11 July 1971.
Rainfall varies significantly across the territory. Much higher rainfall occurs in the mountains to the west of Canberra compared to the east. The mountains act as a barrier during winter with the city receiving less rainfall. Average annual rainfall in the territory is 629mm and there is an average of 108 rain days annually. The wettest month is October with an average rainfall of 65.3mm and the driest month is June with an average of 39.6mm.
Frost is common in the winter months. Snow is rare in Canberra's city centre, but the surrounding areas get annual snowfall through winter and often the snow-capped mountains can be seen from the city. The last significant snowfall in the city centre was in 1968.
Smoke haze became synonymous with the 2019/2020 Australian summer. On 1 January 2020 Canberra had the worst air quality of any major city in the world, with an AQI of 7700 (USAQI 949).
Geology.
Notable geological formations in the Australian Capital Territory include the "Canberra Formation", the "Pittman Formation", "Black Mountain Sandstone" and "State Circle Shale".
In the 1840s fossils of brachiopods and trilobites from the Silurian period were discovered at Woolshed Creek near Duntroon. At the time, these were the oldest fossils discovered in Australia, though this record has now been far surpassed. Other specific geological places of interest include the State Circle cutting and the Deakin anticline.
The oldest rocks in the ACT date from the Ordovician around 480 million years ago. During this period the region along with most of Eastern Australia was part of the ocean floor; formations from this period include the "Black Mountain Sandstone" formation and the "Pittman Formation" consisting largely of quartz-rich sandstone, siltstone and shale. These formations became exposed when the ocean floor was raised by a major volcanic activity in the Devonian forming much of the east coast of Australia.
Flora and fauna.
The environments range from alpine area on the higher mountains, to sclerophyll forest and to woodland. Much of the ACT has been cleared for grazing and is also burnt off by bushfires several times per century. The kinds of plants can be grouped into vascular plants, that include gymnosperms, flowering plants, and ferns, as well as bryophytes, lichens, fungi and freshwater algae. Four flowering plants are endemic to the ACT. Several lichens are unique to the territory. Most plants in the ACT are characteristic of the Flora of Australia and include well known plants such as Grevillea, Eucalyptus trees and kangaroo grass.
The native forest in the Australian Capital Territory was almost wholly eucalypt species and provided a resource for fuel and domestic purposes. By the early 1960s, logging had depleted the eucalypt, and concern about water quality led to the forests being closed. Interest in forestry began in 1915 with trials of a number of species including "Pinus radiata" on the slopes of Mount Stromlo. Since then, plantations have been expanded, with the benefit of reducing erosion in the Cotter catchment, and the forests are also popular recreation areas.
The fauna of the territory includes representatives from most major Australian animal groups. This includes kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, platypus, echidna, emu, kookaburras and dragon lizards.
Government and politics.
Territory government.
Unlike the States of Australia which have their own constitutions, territories like the ACT are governed under a Commonwealth statutefor the ACT, the "Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988". The "Self-Government Act" constitutes a democratic government for the Territory consisting of a popularly elected Legislative Assembly which elects a Chief Minister from among its membership who, in turn, appoints an Executive consisting of a number of Ministers.
The executive power of the Territory rests with the ACT Government, led by the Executive. The Executive is chaired by the Chief Minister (currently the Labor Party's Andrew Barr) and consists of Ministers appointed by them. The Executive are supported by the ACT Public Service, which is arranged into directorates, and a number of public authorities. The Chief Minister is the equivalent of a State Premier and sits on the National Cabinet. Unlike the States and the Northern Territory, there is no vice-regal representative who chairs the Executive. The Chief Minister performs many of the roles that a state governor normally holds in the context of a state; however, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly gazettes the laws and summons meetings of the Assembly.
The legislative power of the Territory is vested in the unicameral Legislative Assembly. The Assembly consists of 25 who are elected from five electorates using the Hare-Clark single transferable voting system. The Assembly is presided over by the Speaker (currently the Labor Party's Joy Burch). The Assembly has almost all of the same powers as the state parliaments, the power to "make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Territory", with limited exceptions relating to the Territory's unique relationship with the Commonwealth. The Hare-Clark voting system was adopted after a referendum in 1992 and was entrenched by another referendum in 1995. The electoral system cannot be changed except by a two-thirds majority in the Assembly or a majority vote of support at a public referendum.
There is no level of local government below the Territory government as in the States and the functions associated with local government are carried out principally by the Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate. There is an indigenous voice to the ACT Government, called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body.
Despite the wide powers of the Territory government, the federal government continues to have power over the Territory. This includes an unused power to dissolve the Assembly and appoint a caretaker government in extraordinary circumstances. The federal and territory governments share some officers, such as the Ombudsman. The federal parliament also retains the power to make any law for the Territory under section 122 of the Constitution and an exclusive power to legislate for the "seat of government". Territory laws which conflict with federal law are inoperable to the extent of the inconsistency. Land in the Territory that is designated to be "National Land" under federal law remains under the control of the federal government, usually represented by the National Capital Authority. The federal parliament can disallow laws enacted by the Assembly by a joint resolution of both houses of Parliament, a power which replaced a federal executive veto in 2011.
Judiciary and policing.
The judicial power of the Territory is exercised by the territory courts. These courts are the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory, the Magistrates Court of the Australian Capital Territory and the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal. It is unique in that the territory does not have an intermediary court like other mainland states and territories; there is only the superior court and a court of summary jurisdiction. From 2001, appeals from the Supreme Court are heard by a panel of Supreme Court judges sitting as the Court of Appeal. The current Chief Justice is Lucy McCallum and the current Chief Magistrate is Lorraine Walker.
The Federal Court has concurrent jurisdiction over civil matters arising under Territory law, a fact which has become increasingly important to the practice of defamation law across Australia.
Policing services are provided by the ACT Policing unit of the Australian Federal Police under agreements between the territory government, the federal government, and the police force. Canberra had the lowest rate of crime of any capital city in Australia .
Federal representation.
In Australia's Federal Parliament, the ACT is represented by five federal members: three members of the House of Representatives represent the Division of Bean, the Division of Canberra and the Division of Fenner, and it is one of only two territories to be represented in the Senate, with two Senators (the other being the Northern Territory). The Member for Bean and the ACT Senators also represent the constituents of Norfolk Island. The Member for Fenner and the ACT Senators also represent the constituents of the Jervis Bay Territory.
Jervis Bay Territory.
In 1915, the "Jervis Bay Territory Acceptance Act 1915" created the Jervis Bay Territory as an annex to the Federal Capital Territory. While the Act's use of the language of "annexed" is sometimes interpreted as implying that the Jervis Bay Territory was to form part of the Federal Capital Territory, the accepted legal position is that it has been a legally distinct territory from its creation despite being subject to ACT law and, prior to ACT self-government in 1988, being administratively treated as part of the ACT.
In 1988, when the ACT gained self-government, Jervis Bay was formally pronounced as a separate territory administered by the Commonwealth known as the Jervis Bay Territory. However, the laws of the ACT continue to apply to the Jervis Bay Territory. Magistrates from the ACT regularly travel to the Jervis Bay Territory to conduct court.
Another occasional misconception is that the ACT retains a small area of territory on the coast on the Beecroft Peninsula, consisting of a strip of coastline around the northern headland of Jervis Bay. While the land is owned by the Commonwealth Government, that area itself is still considered to be under the jurisdiction of New South Wales government, not a separate territory nor a part of the ACT.
Demographics.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that the population of the territory was 453,324 on 31 December 2021, with an annual growth in 2021 of 0.4%. A 2019 projection estimated the population would reach to approximately 700,000 by 2058.
The overwhelming majority of the population reside in the city of Canberra.
At the , the median weekly income for people in the territory aged over 15 was $998 while the national average was $662.
The average level of degree qualification in the ACT is higher than the national average. Within the ACT, 37.1% of the population hold a bachelor's degree level or above education compared to the national figure of 20%.
City and towns.
The Australian Capital Territory consists of the city of Canberra and some towns including Williamsdale, Oaks Estate, Uriarra, Tharwa and Hall.
The urban areas of the Australian Capital Territory are organised into a hierarchy of districts, town centres, group centres, local suburbs as well as other industrial areas and villages. There are seven districts (with an eighth currently under construction), each of which is divided into smaller suburbs, and most of which have a town centre which is the focus of commercial and social activities. The districts were settled in the following chronological order:
The North and South Canberra districts are substantially based on Walter Burley Griffin's designs. In 1967, the then National Capital Development Commission adopted the "Y Plan" which laid out future urban development in the Australian Capital Territory a series of central shopping and commercial area known as the 'town centres' linked by freeways, the layout of which roughly resembled the shape of the letter Y, with Tuggeranong at the base of the Y and Belconnen and Gungahlin located at the ends of the arms of the Y.
Ancestry and immigration.
At the , the most commonly nominated ancestries were:
The showed that 32.5% of the ACT's inhabitants were born overseas. Of inhabitants born outside of Australia, the most prevalent countries of birth were India, England, China, Nepal and New Zealand.
2.0% of the population, or 8,949 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2021.
Language.
At the , 71.3% of people spoke only English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Mandarin (3.2%), Nepali (1.3%), Vietnamese (1.1%), Punjabi (1.1%), Hindi (1.0%).
Religion.
The most common responses in the for religion in the territory were No Religion (43.5%), Catholic (19.3%), Anglican (8.2%), Not stated (5.2%) and Hinduism (4.5%).
Culture.
Education.
Almost all educational institutions in the Australian Capital Territory are located within Canberra. The ACT public education system schooling is normally split up into Pre-School, Primary School (K-6), High School (7–10) and College (11–12) followed by studies at University or Institute of Technology. Many private high schools include years 11 and 12 and are referred to as colleges. Children are required to attend school until they turn 17 under the ACT Government's "Learn or Earn" policy.
In February 2004 there were 140 public and non-governmental schools in ACT; 96 were operated by the Government and 44 are non-Government. In 2005, there were 60,275 students in the ACT school system. 59.3% of the students were enrolled in government schools with the remaining 40.7% in non-government schools. There were 30,995 students in primary school, 19,211 in high school, 9,429 in college and a further 340 in special schools.
As of May 2004, 30% of people in the ACT aged 15–64 had a level of educational attainment equal to at least a bachelor's degree, significantly higher than the national average of 19%. The two main tertiary institutions are the Australian National University (ANU) in Acton and the University of Canberra (UC) in Bruce. There are also two religious university campuses in Canberra: Signadou is a campus of the Australian Catholic University and St Mark's Theological College is a campus of Charles Sturt University. Tertiary level vocational education is also available through the multi-campus Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT).
The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and the Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC) are in the suburb of Campbell in Canberra's inner northeast. ADFA teaches military undergraduates and postgraduates and is officially a campus of the University of New South Wales while Duntroon provides Australian Army Officer training.
The Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) offers courses in computer game development and 3D animation.
Sport.
The Australian Capital Territory is home to a number of major professional sports league franchise teams including the ACT Brumbies (Rugby Union), Canberra United (Football), Canberra Raiders (Rugby League) and the Canberra Capitals (Basketball).
The Prime Minister's XI (Cricket), started by Robert Menzies in the 1950s and revived by Bob Hawke in 1984, has been played every year at Manuka Oval against an overseas touring team.
The Greater Western Sydney Giants (Australian Rules) play three regular season matches a year and one pre-season match in Canberra at Manuka Oval.
Arts and entertainment.
The territory is home to many national monuments and institutions such as the Australian War Memorial, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Library, the National Archives, the Australian Academy of Science, the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Museum. Many Commonwealth government buildings in the Australian Capital Territory are open to the public, including Parliament House, the High Court and the Royal Australian Mint.
Lake Burley Griffin is the site of the Captain James Cook Memorial and the National Carillon. Other sites of interest include the Telstra Tower, the Australian National Botanic Gardens, the National Zoo and Aquarium, the National Dinosaur Museum and Questacon – the National Science and Technology Centre.
The Canberra Museum and Gallery in the city is a repository of local history and art, housing a permanent collection and visiting exhibitions. Several historic homes are open to the public: Lanyon and Tuggeranong Homesteads in the Tuggeranong Valley, Mugga-Mugga in Symonston, and Blundells' Cottage in Parkes all display the lifestyle of the early European settlers. Calthorpes' House in Red Hill is a well-preserved example of a 1920s house from Canberra's very early days.
The Australian Capital Territory has many venues for live music and theatre: the Canberra Theatre and Playhouse which hosts many major concerts and productions; and Llewellyn Hall (within the ANU School of Music), a world-class concert hall are two of the most notable. The Albert Hall was Canberra's first performing arts venue, opened in 1928. It was the original performance venue for theatre groups such as the Canberra Repertory Society.
There are numerous bars and nightclubs which also offer live entertainment, particularly concentrated in the areas of Dickson, Kingston and the city. Most town centres have facilities for a community theatre and a cinema, and they all have a library. Popular cultural events include the National Folk Festival, the Royal Canberra Show, the Summernats car festival, Enlighten festival and the National Multicultural Festival in February.
Media.
The Australian Capital Territory have a daily newspaper, "The Canberra Times", which was established in 1926. There are also several free weekly publications, including news magazines "City News" and "Canberra Weekly."
Major daily newspapers such as "The Daily Telegraph" and "The Sydney Morning Herald" from Sydney, "The Age" and "The Herald Sun" from Melbourne as well as national publications "The Australian" and "The Australian Financial Review" are also available for purchase via retail outlets or via home delivery in the Australian Capital Territory.
There are a number of AM and FM stations broadcasting throughout the ACT (AM/FM Listing). The main commercial operators are the Capital Radio Network (2CA and 2CC), and Austereo/ARN (104.7 and Mix 106.3). There are also several community operated stations as well as the local and national stations of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
A DAB+ digital radio trial is also in operation, it simulcasts some of the AM/FM stations, and also provides several digital only stations (DAB+ Trial Listing).
Five free-to-air television stations service the territory:
Each station broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels.
Pay television services are available from Foxtel (via satellite) and telecommunications company TransACT (via cable).
Infrastructure.
Health.
The Australian Capital Territory has two large public hospitals both located in Canberra: the approximately 600-bed Canberra Hospital in Garran and the 174-bed Calvary Public Hospital in Bruce. Both are teaching institutions. The largest private hospital is the Calvary John James Hospital in Deakin. Calvary Private Hospital in Bruce and Healthscope's National Capital Private Hospital in Garran are also major healthcare providers.
The Australian Capital Territory has 10 aged care facilities. ACT's hospitals receive emergency cases from throughout southern New South Wales, and ACT Ambulance Service is one of four operational agencies of the ACT Emergency Services Authority. NETS provides a dedicated ambulance service for inter-hospital transport of sick newborns within the ACT and into surrounding New South Wales.
Transport.
The automobile is by far the dominant form of transport in the Australian Capital Territory. The city is laid out so that arterial roads connecting inhabited clusters run through undeveloped areas of open land or forest, which results in a low population density; this also means that idle land is available for the development of future transport corridors if necessary without the need to build tunnels or acquire developed residential land. In contrast, other capital cities in Australia have substantially less green space.
Australian Capital Territory's localities are generally connected by parkways—limited access dual carriageway roads with speed limits generally set at a maximum of . An example is the Tuggeranong Parkway which links Canberra's CBD and Tuggeranong, and bypasses Weston Creek. In most districts, discrete residential suburbs are bounded by main arterial roads with only a few residential linking in, to deter non-local traffic from cutting through areas of housing.
ACTION, the government-operated bus service, provides public transport throughout the Australian Capital Territory. CDC Canberra provides bus services between the Australian Capital Territory and nearby areas of New South Wales (Murrumbateman and Yass) and as Qcity Transit (Queanbeyan). A light rail line that opened in April 2019 links the CBD with the northern district of Gungahlin. At the 2016 census, 7.1% of the journeys to work involved public transport while 4.5% were on foot.
There are two local taxi companies. Aerial Capital Group enjoyed monopoly status until the arrival of Cabxpress in 2007. In October 2015, the ACT Government passed legislation to regulate ride sharing, allowing ride share services including Uber to operate legally in the Australian Capital Territory. The ACT Government was the first jurisdiction in Australia to enact legislation to regulate the service.
An interstate NSW TrainLink railway service connects Canberra to Sydney. Canberra's railway station is in the inner south suburb of Kingston. Train services to Melbourne are provided by way of a NSW TrainLink bus service which connects with a rail service between Sydney and Melbourne in Yass, about a one-hour drive from Canberra.
Canberra is about three hours by road from Sydney on the Federal Highway (National Highway 23), which connects with the Hume Highway (National Highway 31) near Goulburn, and seven hours by road from Melbourne on the Barton Highway (National Highway 25), which joins the Hume Highway at Yass. It is a two-hour drive on the Monaro Highway (National Highway 23) to the ski fields of the Snowy Mountains and the Kosciuszko National Park. Batemans Bay, a popular holiday spot on the New South Wales coast, is also two hours away via the Kings Highway.
Canberra Airport provides direct domestic services to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Hobart and Perth, with connections to other domestic centres. There are also direct flights to regional cities: Dubbo and Newcastle in New South Wales. Regular direct international flights operate to Singapore and Doha from the airport daily, but both with a stopover in Sydney before Canberra. Canberra Airport is, as of September 2013, designated by the Australian Government Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development as a restricted use designated international airport. Until 2003, the civilian airport shared runways with RAAF Base Fairbairn. In June of that year, the Air Force base was decommissioned and from that time the airport was fully under civilian control.
Utilities.
The government-owned Icon Water, formerly ACTEW, manages the territory's water and sewerage infrastructure. ActewAGL is a joint venture between Icon and AGL, and is the retail provider of Australian Capital Territory's utility services including water, natural gas, electricity, and also some telecommunications services via a subsidiary TransACT.
Australian Capital Territory's water is stored in four reservoirs, the Corin, Bendora and Cotter dams on the Cotter River and the Googong Dam on the Queanbeyan River. Although the Googong Dam is located in New South Wales, it is managed by the ACT government. Icon Water owns Australian Capital Territory's two wastewater treatment plants, located at Fyshwick and on the lower reaches of the Molonglo River.
Electricity for the Australian Capital Territory mainly comes from the national power grid through substations at Holt and Fyshwick (via Queanbeyan). Power was first supplied from a thermal plant built in 1913, near the Molonglo River, but this was finally closed in 1957. The ACT has four solar farms, which were opened between 2014 and 2017: Royalla (rated output of 20 megawatts, 2014), Mount Majura (2.3 MW, 2016), Mugga Lane (13 MW, 2017) and Williamsdale (11 MW, 2017). In addition numerous houses in Canberra have photovoltaic panels and/or solar hot water systems. In 2015/16, rooftop solar systems supported by the ACT government's feed-in tariff had a capacity of 26.3 megawatts, producing 34,910 MWh. In the same year, retailer-supported schemes had a capacity of 25.2 megawatts and exported 28,815 MWh to the grid (power consumed locally was not recorded).
The ACT has the highest rate with internet access at home (94 per cent of households in 2014–15).
Economy.
The economic activity of the Australian Capital Territory is heavily concentrated around the city of Canberra.
A stable housing market, steady employment and rapid population growth in the 21st century have led to economic prosperity and, in 2011, CommSec ranked the ACT as the second best performing economic region in the country. This trend continued into 2016, when the territory was ranked the third best performing out of all of Australia's states and territories.
In 2017–18, the ACT had the fastest rate of growth in the nation due to a rapid growth in population, a strongly performing higher education sector as well as a significant housing and infrastructure investment.
Higher education is the territory's largest export industry. The ACT is home to a significant number of universities and higher education providers. The other major services exports of the ACT in 2017-18 were government services and personal travel. The major goods exports of the territory in 2017-18 were gold coin, legal tender coin, metal structures and fish, though these represent a small proportion of the economy compared to services exports.
The economy of the ACT is largely dependent on the public sector with 30% of the jobs in the territory being in the public sector. Decisions by the federal government regarding the public service can have a significant impact on the territory's economy.
The ACT's gross state product in 2017-18 was $39.8 billion which represented 2.2% of the overall gross domestic product of Australia. In 2017-18 the ACT economy grew by 4.0 per cent, the highest growth rate of any jurisdiction in Australia. This brought real economic growth over the three years to June 2018 to 12 per cent.
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1947 | Aotus | Aotus (the name is derived from the Ancient Greek words for "earless" in both cases: the monkey is missing external ears, and the pea is missing earlike bracteoles) may refer to:
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1948 | Ally McBeal | Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy drama television series, originally aired on Fox from September 8, 1997, to May 20, 2002. Created by David E. Kelley, the series stars Calista Flockhart in the title role as a lawyer working in the Boston law firm Cage and Fish, with other lawyers whose lives and loves are eccentric, humorous, and dramatic. The series received critical acclaim in its early seasons, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 1998 and 1999, and also winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1999. As of August 2022, a revival is in development at ABC.
Overview.
The series, set in the fictional Boston law firm Cage & Fish, begins with main character Allison Marie "Ally" McBeal joining the firm co-owned by her law school classmate Richard Fish (Greg Germann) after leaving her previous job due to sexual harassment. On her first day, Ally is horrified to find that she will be working alongside her ex-boyfriend Billy Thomas (Gil Bellows)—whom she has never gotten over. To make things worse, Billy is now married to fellow lawyer Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), who later joins Cage and Fish. The triangle among the three forms the basis for the main plot for the show's first three seasons.
Although ostensibly a legal drama, the main focus of the series was the romantic and personal lives of the main characters, often using legal proceedings as plot devices to contrast or reinforce a character's drama. For example, bitter divorce litigation of a client might provide a backdrop for Ally's decision to break up with a boyfriend. Legal arguments were also frequently used to explore multiple sides of various social issues.
Cage and Fish (which becomes Cage/Fish & McBeal or Cage, Fish, & Associates towards the end of the series), the fictional law firm where most of the characters work, is depicted as a highly sexualized environment symbolized by its unisex restroom. Lawyers and secretaries in the firm routinely date, flirt with, or have a romantic history with one another and frequently run into former or potential romantic interests in the courtroom or on the street outside.
The series had many offbeat and frequently surreal running gags and themes, such as Ally's tendency to immediately fall over whenever she met somebody she found attractive, Richard Fish's wattle fetish and humorous mottos ("Fishisms" & "Bygones"), John's gymnastic dismounts out of the office's unisex bathroom stalls, or the dancing twins (played by Eric & Steve Cohen) at the bar, that ran through the series. The show also used vivid, dramatic fantasy sequences for Ally's and other characters' wishful thinking; of particular note is the early internet sensation the dancing baby.
The series also featured regular visits to a local bar where singer Vonda Shepard regularly performed (though occasionally handing over the microphone to the characters). Star contemporary singers also performed in the bar at the end of the shows, including acts such as Mariah Carey, Barry White and Anastacia. The series also took place in the same continuity as David E. Kelley's legal drama "The Practice" (which aired on ABC), as the two shows crossed over with one another on occasion, a rare occurrence for two shows that aired on different networks.
Ultimately, in the last installment of the fifth and final season, "Bygones", Ally decided to resign from Cage & Fish, leave Boston, and go to New York City.
Cancellation.
Fox canceled "Ally McBeal" after five seasons. In addition to being the lowest-rated season of "Ally McBeal" and the grounds for the show's cancellation, the fifth season was also the only season of the show that failed to win any Emmy or Golden Globe awards.
Episodes.
In Australia, "Ally McBeal" was aired by the Seven Network from 1997 to 2002. In 2010, it was aired repeatedly by Network 10.
Crossovers with "The Practice".
Seymore Walsh, a stern judge often exasperated by the eccentricities of the Cage & Fish lawyers and played by actor Albert Hall, was also a recurring character on "The Practice". In addition, Judge Jennifer (Whipper) Cone appears on "The Practice" episode "Line of Duty" (S02 E15), while Judge Roberta Kittelson, a recurring character on "The Practice", has a featured guest role in the "Ally McBeal" episode "Do you Wanna Dance?"
Most of the primary "Practice" cast members guest starred in the "Ally McBeal" episode "The Inmates" (S01 E20), in a storyline that concluded with the "Practice" episode "Axe Murderer" (S02 E26), featuring Calista Flockhart and Gil Bellows reprising their "Ally" characters. Unusually for a TV crossover, "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice" aired on different networks. Bobby Donnell, the main character of "The Practice" played by Dylan McDermott, was featured heavily in both this crossover and another "Ally McBeal" episode, "These are the Days".
Regular "Practice" cast members Lara Flynn Boyle and Michael Badalucco each had a cameo in "Ally McBeal" (Boyle as a woman who trades insults with Ally in the episode "Making Spirits Bright" and Badalucco as one of Ally's dates in the episode "I Know him by Heart") but it is unclear whether they were playing the same characters they play on "The Practice".
In Season 5, Lara Flynn Boyle had an uncredited guest appearance as a rebuttal witness opposite guest star Heather Locklear's character in the episode, "Tom Dooley".
Filming location.
14 Beacon Street in Boston was the exterior which was used as the location for the law firm "Cage & Fish" (later "Cage, Fish, & McBeal"), which was located on the 7th floor of this building.
Reception.
Upon premiering in 1997, the show was an instant hit, averaging around 11 million viewers per episode. The show's second season saw an increase in ratings and soon became a top 20 show, averaging around 13 million viewers per episode. The show's ratings began to decline in the third season, but stabilized in the fourth season after Robert Downey Jr. joined the regular cast as Ally's boyfriend Larry Paul, and a fresher aesthetic was created by new art director Matthew DeCoste. However, Downey's character was written out after the end of the season due to the actor's troubles with drug addiction.
The first two seasons, as well as the fourth, remain the most critically acclaimed and saw the most awards success at the Emmys, SAG Awards and the Golden Globes. In 2007, "Ally McBeal" placed #48 on "Entertainment Weekly" 2007 "New TV Classics" list.
Feminist criticism.
"Ally McBeal" received some criticism from TV critics and feminists who found the title character annoying and demeaning to women (specifically regarding professional women) because of her perceived flightiness, lack of demonstrated legal knowledge, short skirts, and emotional instability. Perhaps the most notorious example of the debate sparked by the show was the June 29, 1998, cover story of "Time" magazine, which juxtaposed McBeal with three pioneering feminists (Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem) and asked "Is Feminism Dead?" In episode 12 of the second season of the show, Ally talks to her co-worker John Cage about a dream she had, saying "You know, I had a dream that they put my face on the cover of "Time" magazine as 'the face of feminism'."
Music.
Music was a prominent feature of "Ally McBeal". Vonda Shepard, a relatively unknown musician at the time, performed regularly on the show and her song "Searchin' My Soul" was the show's theme song. Many of the songs Shepard performed were established hits with lyrics that paralleled the events of each episode, for example, "Both Sides Now", "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Tell Him". Besides recording background music for the show, Shepard frequently appeared at the ends of episodes as a musician performing at a local piano bar frequented by the main characters. On rare occasions, her character would have conventional dialogue. A portion of "Searchin' My Soul" was played at the beginning of each episode, but the song was never played in its entirety.
Several of the characters had a musical leitmotif that played when they appeared. John Cage's was "You're the First, the Last, My Everything", Ling Woo's was the Wicked Witch of the West theme from "The Wizard of Oz", and Ally McBeal herself picked "Tell Him", when told by a psychiatrist that she needed a theme song in a Season 1 episode.
Due to the popularity of the show and Shepard's music, a soundtrack titled "Songs from Ally McBeal" was released in 1998, as well as a successor soundtrack titled "" in 1999. Two compilation albums from the show featuring Shepard were also released in 2000 and 2001. A Christmas album was also released under the title "Ally McBeal: A Very Ally Christmas". The album received positive reviews, and Shephard's version of Kay Starr's Christmas song "(Everybody's Waitin' for) The Man with the Bag", received considerable airplay during the holiday season.
Other artists featured on the show include Barry White, Al Green, Gladys Knight, Tina Turner, Macy Gray, Gloria Gaynor, Chayanne, Barry Manilow, Anastacia, Elton John, Sting and Mariah Carey. Josh Groban played the role of Malcolm Wyatt in the May 2001 season finale, performing "You're Still You". The series creator, David E. Kelley, was impressed with Groban's performance at The Family Celebration event and based on the audience reaction to Groban's singing, Kelley created a character for him in that finale. The background score for the show was composed by Danny Lux.
Home media.
Due to music licensing issues, none of the seasons of "Ally McBeal" were available on DVD in the United States until 2009, though the show had been available in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, Brazil, and the Czech Republic with all the show's music intact since 2005. In the UK, Ireland, and Spain all seasons are available in a complete box set.
20th Century Fox released the complete first season on DVD in Region 1 on October 6, 2009. They also released a special complete series edition on the same day. Season 1 does not contain any special features, but the complete series set contains several bonus features, including featurettes, an all-new retrospective, the episode of "The Practice" in which Calista Flockhart guest-starred, and a bonus disc entitled "The Best of Ally McBeal Soundtrack." In addition, both releases contain all of the original music. Season 2 was released on April 6, 2010. Seasons 3, 4, and 5 were all released on October 5, 2010.
"Ally" (1999).
In 1999, at the height of the show's popularity, a half-hour version entitled "Ally" began airing in parallel with the main program. This version, designed in a sitcom format, used re-edited scenes from the main program, along with previously unseen footage. The intention was to further develop the plots in the comedy drama in a sitcom style. It also focused only on Ally's personal life, cutting all the courtroom plots. The repackaged show was cancelled partway through its initial run. While 13 episodes of "Ally" were produced, only ten aired.
Possible revival.
In March 2021, it was reported that a revival as a limited series was in early development by 20th Television with Flockhart possibly returning.
In August 2022, it was reported that ABC was in early development of a sequel series with Karin Gist writing and executive producing.
In popular culture.
In episode 2, season 3 of the British comedy "The Adam and Joe Show", the show was parodied as "Ally McSqueal" using soft toys.
Episode 12, season 1 of the show "Futurama", "When Aliens Attack", centers on an invasion of Earth by the Omicronians precipitated by a signal loss during the climax of an episode of "Single Female Lawyer", whose main character is Jenny McNeal.
In episode 8, season 4 of the show "The Good Place", the Judge hands Ted Danson's character a petition to reboot Ally McBeal stating "everything else is getting rebooted."
In the 2021 film "The Mauritanian", Guantanamo Bay detention camp detainee Mohamedou Ould Salahi says to a US judge "Even in Mauritania, we have watched "Law & Order" and "Ally McBeal"."
In episode 3, season 4 of the show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", a lyric in the song Dont Be a Lawyer, mentions the show "No one you work with looks like Ally McBeal"
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1949 | Andreas Capellanus | Andreas Capellanus ("Capellanus" meaning "chaplain"), also known as Andrew the Chaplain, and occasionally by a French translation of his name, André le Chapelain, was the 12th-century author of a treatise commonly known as "De amore" ("About Love"), and often known in English, somewhat misleadingly, as "The Art of Courtly Love", though its realistic, somewhat cynical tone suggests that it is in some measure an antidote to courtly love. Little is known of Andreas Capellanus's life, but he is presumed to have been a courtier of Marie de Champagne, and probably of French origin.
His work.
"De Amore" was written at the request of Marie de Champagne, daughter of King Louis VII of France and of Eleanor of Aquitaine. In it, the author informs a young pupil, Walter, of the pitfalls of love. A dismissive allusion in the text to the "wealth of Hungary" has suggested the hypothesis that it was written after 1184, at the time when Bela III of Hungary had sent to the French court a statement of his income and had proposed marriage to Marie's half-sister Marguerite of France, but before 1186, when his proposal was accepted.
"De Amore" is made up of three books. The first book covers the etymology and definition of love and is written in the manner of an academic lecture. The second book consists of sample dialogues between members of different social classes; it outlines how the romantic process between the classes should work. This second work is largely considered to be an inferior to the first. Book three is made of stories from actual courts of love presided over by noble women.
John Jay Parry, the editor of one modern edition of "De Amore", quotes critic Robert Bossuat as describing "De Amore" as "one of those capital works which reflect the thought of a great epoch, which explains the secret of a civilization". It may be viewed as didactic, mocking, or merely descriptive; in any event it preserves the attitudes and practices that were the foundation of a long and significant tradition in Western literature.
The social system of "courtly love", as gradually elaborated by the Provençal troubadours from the mid twelfth century, soon spread. One of the circles in which this poetry and its ethic were cultivated was the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine (herself the granddaughter of an early troubadour poet, William IX of Aquitaine). "De Amore" codifies the social and love life of Eleanor's court at Poitiers between 1170 and 1174, though it was evidently written at least ten years later and, apparently, at Troyes. It deals with several specific themes that were the subject of poetical debate among late twelfth century troubadours and trobairitz.
The meaning of "De Amore" has been debated over the centuries. In the years immediately following its release many people took Andreas' opinions concerning Courtly Love seriously. In more recent times, however, scholars have come to view the priest's work as satirical. Many scholars now agree that Andreas was commenting on the materialistic, superficial nature of medieval nobles. Andreas seems to have been warning young Walter, his protégé, about love in the Middle Ages.
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1950 | American Civil Liberties Union | The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". The ACLU works through litigation and lobbying and has over 1,800,000 members as of July 2018, with an annual budget of over $300 million. Affiliates of the ACLU are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases where it considers civil liberties at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of "amicus curiae" briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation.
In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions established by its board of directors. Current positions of the ACLU include opposing the death penalty; supporting same-sex marriage and the right of LGBT people to adopt; supporting reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion rights; eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBT people; decarceration in the United States; supporting the rights of prisoners and opposing torture; and upholding the separation of church and state by opposing government preference for religion over non-religion or for particular faiths over others.
Legally, the ACLU consists of two separate but closely affiliated nonprofit organizations, namely the American Civil Liberties Union, a 501(c)(4) social welfare group; and the ACLU Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity. Both organizations engage in civil rights litigation, advocacy, and education, but only donations to the 501(c)(3) foundation are tax deductible, and only the 501(c)(4) group can engage in unlimited political lobbying. The two organizations share office space and employees.
Overview.
The ACLU was founded in 1920 by a committee including Roger Nash Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Walter Nelles, Morris Ernst, Albert DeSilver, Arthur Garfield Hays, Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Felix Frankfurter, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Rose Schneiderman. It focused on freedom of speech, primarily for anti-war protesters. It was founded in response to the controversial Palmer raids, which saw thousands of radicals arrested in matters which violated their constitutional search and seizures protection. During the 1920s, the ACLU expanded its scope to include protecting the free speech rights of artists and striking workers and working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to mitigate discrimination. During the 1930s, the ACLU started to engage in work combating police misconduct and supporting Native American rights. Many of the ACLU's cases involved the defense of Communist Party members and Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1940, the ACLU leadership voted to exclude communists from its leadership positions, a decision rescinded in 1968. During World War II, the ACLU defended Japanese-American citizens, unsuccessfully trying to prevent their forcible relocation to internment camps. During the Cold War, the ACLU headquarters was dominated by anti-communists, but many local affiliates defended members of the Communist Party.
By 1964, membership had risen to 80,000, and the ACLU participated in efforts to expand civil liberties. In the 1960s, the ACLU continued its decades-long effort to enforce separation of church and state. It defended several anti-war activists during the Vietnam War. The ACLU was involved in the "Miranda" case, which addressed conduct by police during interrogations, and in the "New York Times" case, which established new protections for newspapers reporting on government activities. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ACLU ventured into new legal areas involving the rights of homosexuals, students, prisoners, and the poor. In the twenty-first century, the ACLU has fought the teaching of creationism in public schools and challenged some provisions of anti-terrorism legislation as infringing on privacy and civil liberties. Fundraising and membership spiked after the 2016 presidential election, and the ACLU's 2018 membership was more than 1.2 million.
Organization.
Leadership.
The ACLU is led by a president and an executive director, Deborah N. Archer and Anthony Romero, respectively, in 2021. The president acts as chair of the ACLU's board of directors, leads fundraising, and facilitates policy-setting. The executive director manages the day-to-day operations of the organization. The board of directors consists of 80 persons, including representatives from each state affiliate and at-large delegates. The organization has its headquarters in 125 Broad Street, a 40-story skyscraper located in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
The leadership of the ACLU does not always agree on policy decisions; differences of opinion within the ACLU leadership have sometimes grown into major debates. In 1937, an internal debate erupted over whether to defend Henry Ford's right to distribute anti-union literature. In 1939, a heated debate took place over whether to prohibit communists from serving in ACLU leadership roles. During the early 1950s and Cold War McCarthyism, the board was divided on whether to defend communists. In 1968, a schism formed over whether to represent Benjamin Spock's anti-war activism. In 1973, as the Watergate Scandal continued to unfold, leadership was initially divided over whether to call for President Nixon's impeachment and removal from office. In 2005, there was internal conflict about whether or not a gag rule should be imposed on ACLU employees to prevent the publication of internal disputes.
Funding.
In the year ending March 31, 2014, the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation had a combined income from support and revenue of $100.4 million, originating from grants (50.0%), membership donations (25.4%), donated legal services (7.6%), bequests (16.2%), and revenue (0.9%). Membership dues are treated as donations; members choose the amount they pay annually, averaging approximately $50 per member. In the year ending March 31, 2014, the combined expenses of the ACLU and ACLU Foundation were $133.4 million, spent on programs (86.2%), management (7.4%), and fundraising (8.2%). (After factoring in other changes in net assets of +$30.9 million, from sources such as investment income, the organization had an overall decrease in net assets of $2.1 million.) Over the period from 2011 to 2014, the ACLU Foundation, on average, has accounted for roughly 70% of the combined budget, and the ACLU roughly 30%.
The ACLU solicits donations to its charitable foundation. The ACLU is accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and the Charity Navigator has ranked the ACLU with a four-star rating. The local affiliates solicit their own funding; however, some also receive funds from the national ACLU, with the distribution and amount of such assistance varying from state to state. At its discretion, the national organization provides subsidies to smaller affiliates that lack sufficient resources to be self-sustaining; for example, the Wyoming ACLU chapter received such subsidies until April 2015, when, as part of a round of layoffs at the national ACLU, the Wyoming office was closed.
In October 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation because the foundations had adopted language from the USA PATRIOT Act in their donation agreements, including a clause stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities". The ACLU views this clause, both in federal law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties, saying it is overly broad and ambiguous.
Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse monetary judgments; a town, state, or federal agency may be required to change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages except by an explicit statutory waiver. In some cases, the law permits plaintiffs who successfully sue government agencies to collect money damages or other monetary relief. In particular, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 leaves the government liable in some civil rights cases. Fee awards under this civil rights statute are considered "equitable relief" rather than damages, and government entities are not immune from equitable relief. Under laws such as this, the ACLU and its state affiliates sometimes share in monetary judgments against government agencies. In 2006, the Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act sought to prevent monetary judgments in the particular case of violations of church-state separation.
The ACLU has received court-awarded fees from opponents; for example, the Georgia affiliate was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its courthouse; a second Ten Commandments case in the state, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment. The State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases.
State affiliates.
Most of the organization's workload is performed by its local affiliates. There is at least one affiliate organization in each state, as well as one in Washington, D.C., and in Puerto Rico. California has three affiliates. The affiliates operate autonomously from the national organization; each affiliate has its own staff, executive director, board of directors, and budget. Each affiliate consists of two non-profit corporations: a 501(c)(3) corporation–called the ACLU Foundation–that does not perform lobbying, and a 501(c)(4) corporation–called ACLU–which is entitled to lobby. Both organizations share staff and offices
ACLU affiliates are the basic unit of the ACLU's organization and engage in litigation, lobbying, and public education. For example, in 2020, the ACLU's New Jersey chapter argued 26 cases before the New Jersey Supreme Court, about one-third of the total cases heard in that court. They sent over 50,000 emails to officials or agencies and had 28 full-time staff.
Positions.
The ACLU's official position statements included the following policies:
Support and opposition.
A variety of persons and organizations support the ACLU. There were over 1,000,000 members in 2017, and the ACLU receives thousands of grants from hundreds of charitable foundations annually. Allies of the ACLU in legal actions have included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Jewish Congress, People for the American Way, the National Rifle Association of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the National Organization for Women.
The ACLU has been criticized by liberals such as when it excluded communists from its leadership ranks when it defended Neo-Nazis, when it declined to defend Paul Robeson, or when it opposed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. In 2014, an ACLU affiliate supported anti-Islam protesters and in 2018 the ACLU was criticized when it supported the NRA.
Conversely, it has been criticized by conservatives such as when it argued against official prayer in public schools or when it opposed the Patriot Act.
The ACLU has supported conservative figures such as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace, Henry Ford and Oliver North as well as liberal figures such as Dick Gregory, Rockwell Kent and Benjamin Spock.
Major sources of criticism are legal cases in which the ACLU represents an individual or organization that promotes offensive or unpopular viewpoints, such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, the Westboro Baptist Church or the Unite the Right rally. The ACLU's official policy is "... [we have] represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That's because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they're going to be preserved for everyone."
Early years.
CLB era.
The ACLU developed from the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB), co-founded in 1917 during World War I by Crystal Eastman, an attorney activist, and Roger Nash Baldwin. The focus of the CLB was on freedom of speech, primarily anti-war speech, and on supporting conscientious objectors who did not want to serve in World War I.
Three United States Supreme Court decisions in 1919 each upheld convictions under laws against certain anti-war speech. In 1919, the Court upheld the conviction of Socialist Party leader Charles Schenck for publishing anti-war literature. In "Debs v. United States," the court upheld the conviction of Eugene Debs. While the Court upheld a conviction a third time in "Abrams v. United States", Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote an important dissent which has gradually been absorbed as an American principle: he urged the court to treat freedom of speech as a fundamental right, which should rarely be restricted.
In 1918, Crystal Eastman resigned from the organization due to health issues. After assuming sole leadership of the CLB, Baldwin insisted that the organization be reorganized. He wanted to change its focus from litigation to direct action and public education.
The CLB directors concurred, and on January 19, 1920, they formed an organization under a new name, the American Civil Liberties Union. Although a handful of other organizations in the United States at that time focused on civil rights, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the ACLU was the first that did not represent a particular group of persons or a single theme. Like the CLB, the NAACP pursued litigation to work on civil rights, including efforts to overturn the disfranchisement of African Americans in the South that had taken place since the turn of the century.
During the first decades of the ACLU, Baldwin continued as its leader. His charisma and energy attracted many supporters to the ACLU board and leadership ranks. Baldwin was ascetic, wearing hand-me-down clothes, pinching pennies, and living on a minimal salary. The ACLU was directed by an executive committee and was not particularly democratic or egalitarian. New Yorkers dominated the ACLU's headquarters. Most ACLU funding came from philanthropies, such as the Garland Fund.
Free speech era.
In the 1920s, government censorship was commonplace. Magazines were routinely confiscated under the anti-obscenity Comstock laws; permits for labor rallies were often denied; and virtually all anti-war or anti-government literature was outlawed. Right-wing conservatives wielded vast amounts of power, and activists that promoted unionization, socialism, or government reform were often denounced as un-American or unpatriotic. In one typical instance in 1923, author Upton Sinclair was arrested for trying to read the First Amendment during an Industrial Workers of the World rally.
ACLU leadership was divided on how to challenge civil rights violations. One faction, including Baldwin, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Norman Thomas, believed that direct, militant action was the best path. Hays was the first of many successful attorneys that relinquished their private practices to work for the ACLU. Another group, including Walter Nelles and Walter Pollak, felt that lawsuits taken to the Supreme Court were the best way to achieve change.
During the 1920s, the ACLU's primary focus was on freedom of speech in general and speech within the labor movement particularly. Because most of the ACLU's efforts were associated with the labor movement, the ACLU itself came under heavy attack from conservative groups, such as the American Legion, the National Civic Federation, and Industrial Defense Association and the Allied Patriotic Societies.
In addition to labor, the ACLU also led efforts in non-labor arenas, for example, promoting free speech in public schools. The ACLU was banned from speaking in New York public schools in 1921. The ACLU, working with the NAACP, also supported racial discrimination cases. The ACLU defended free speech regardless of espoused opinions. For example, the reactionary, anti-Catholic, anti-black Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a frequent target of ACLU efforts, but the ACLU defended the KKK's right to hold meetings in 1923. There were some civil rights that the ACLU did not make an effort to defend in the 1920s, including censorship of the arts, government search and seizure issues, right to privacy, or wiretapping.
Government officials routinely hounded the Communist Party USA, leading it to be the primary client of the ACLU. At the same time, the Communists were very aggressive in their tactics, often engaging in illegal conduct such as denying their party membership under oath. This led to frequent conflicts between the Communists and ACLU. Communist leaders sometimes attacked the ACLU, particularly when the ACLU defended the free speech rights of conservatives, whereas Communists tried to disrupt speeches by critics of the USSR. This uneasy relationship between the two groups continued for decades.
Public schools.
Scopes trial.
When 1925 arrived five years after the ACLU was formed the organization had virtually no success to show for its efforts. That changed in 1925, when the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in "The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes". Clarence Darrow, a member of the ACLU National Committee, headed Scopes' legal team. The prosecution, led by William Jennings Bryan, contended that the Bible should be interpreted literally in teaching creationism in school. The ACLU lost the case, and Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the law. Still, it overturned the conviction on a technicality.
The Scopes trial was a phenomenal public relations success for the ACLU. The ACLU became well known across America, and the case led to the first endorsement of the ACLU by a major US newspaper. The ACLU continued to fight for the separation of church and state in schoolrooms, decade after decade, including the 1982 case "McLean v. Arkansas" and the 2005 case "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District".
Baldwin was involved in a significant free speech victory of the 1920s after he was arrested for attempting to speak at a rally of striking mill workers in New Jersey. Although the decision was limited to the state of New Jersey, the appeals court's judgment in 1928 declared that constitutional guarantees of free speech must be given "liberal and comprehensive construction", and it marked a major turning point in the civil rights movement, signaling the shift of judicial opinion in favor of civil rights.
The most important ACLU case of the 1920s was "Gitlow v. New York", in which Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for violating a state law against inciting anarchy and violence when he distributed literature promoting communism. Although the Supreme Court did not overturn Gitlow's conviction, it adopted the ACLU's stance (later termed the incorporation doctrine) that the First Amendment freedom of speech applied to state laws, as well as federal laws.
"Pierce v. Society of Sisters".
After the First World War, many native-born Americans had a revival of concerns about the assimilation of immigrants and worries about "foreign" values; they wanted public schools to teach children to be American. Numerous states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture, and in 1922, the voters of Oregon passed the Oregon Compulsory Education Act. The law was primarily aimed at eliminating parochial schools, including Catholic schools. It was promoted by groups such as the Knights of Pythias, the Federation of Patriotic Societies, the Oregon Good Government League, the Orange Order, and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Oregon Compulsory Education Act required almost all children in Oregon between eight and sixteen years of age to attend public school by 1926. Associate Director Roger Nash Baldwin, a personal friend of Luke E. Hart, the then–Supreme Advocate and future Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, offered to join forces with the Knights to challenge the law. The Knights of Columbus pledged an immediate $10,000 to fight the law and any additional funds necessary to defeat it.
The case became known as "Pierce v. Society of Sisters", a seminal United States Supreme Court decision that significantly expanded coverage of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. In a unanimous decision, the court held that the act was unconstitutional and that parents, not the state, had the authority to educate children as they thought best. It upheld the religious freedom of parents to educate their children in religious schools.
Early strategy.
Leaders of the ACLU were divided on the best tactics to use to promote civil liberties. Felix Frankfurter felt that legislation was the best long-term solution because the Supreme Court could not (and in his opinion should not) mandate liberal interpretations of the Bill of Rights. But Walter Pollak, Morris Ernst, and other leaders felt that Supreme Court decisions were the best path to guarantee civil liberties. A series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1920s foretold a changing national atmosphere; anti-radical emotions were diminishing, and there was a growing willingness to protect freedom of speech and assembly via court decisions.
Free speech expansion.
Censorship was commonplace in the early 20th century. State laws and city ordinances routinely outlawed speech deemed obscene or offensive and prohibited meetings or literature promoting unions or labor organizations. Starting in 1926, the ACLU expanded its free speech activities to encompass censorship of art and literature. In that year, H. L. Mencken deliberately broke Boston law by distributing copies of his banned "American Mercury" magazine; the ACLU defended him and won an acquittal. The ACLU went on to win additional victories, including the landmark case "United States v. One Book Called Ulysses" in 1933, which reversed a ban by the Customs Department against the book "Ulysses" by James Joyce. The ACLU only achieved mixed results in the early years, and it was not until 1966 that the Supreme Court finally clarified the obscenity laws in the "Roth v. United States" and "Memoirs v. Massachusetts" cases.
The Comstock laws banned the distribution of sex education information based on the premise that it was obscene and led to promiscuous behavior. Mary Ware Dennett was fined $300 in 1928 for distributing a pamphlet containing sex education material. The ACLU, led by Morris Ernst, appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which judge Learned Hand ruled that the pamphlet's primary purpose was to "promote understanding".
The success prompted the ACLU to broaden their freedom of speech efforts beyond labor and political speech to encompass movies, press, radio, and literature. The ACLU formed the National Committee on Freedom from Censorship in 1931 to coordinate this effort. By the early 1930s, censorship in the United States was diminishing.
Two major victories in the 1930s cemented the ACLU's campaign to promote free speech. In "Stromberg v. California", decided in 1931, the Supreme Court sided with the ACLU and affirmed the right of a communist party member to salute a communist flag. The result was the first time the Supreme Court used the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment to subject states to the requirements of the First Amendment. In "Near v. Minnesota", also decided in 1931, the Supreme Court ruled that states may not exercise prior restraint and prevent a newspaper from publishing, simply because the newspaper had a reputation for being scandalous.
1930s.
The late 1930s saw the emergence of a new era of tolerance in the United States. National leaders hailed the Bill of Rights, particularly as it protected minorities, as the essence of democracy. The 1939 Supreme Court decision in "Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization" affirmed the right of communists to promote their cause. Even conservative elements, such as the American Bar Association, began to campaign for civil liberties, which were long considered to be the domain of left-leaning organizations. By 1940, the ACLU had achieved many of the goals it set in the 1920s, and many of its policies were the law of the land.
Expansion.
In 1929, after the Scopes and Dennett victories, Baldwin perceived that there was vast, untapped support for civil liberties in the United States. Baldwin proposed an expansion program for the ACLU, focusing on police brutality, Native American rights, African American rights, censorship in the arts, and international civil liberties. The board of directors approved Baldwin's expansion plan, except for the international efforts.
The ACLU played a significant role in passing the 1932 Norris–La Guardia Act, a federal law that prohibited employers from preventing employees from joining unions and stopped the practice of outlawing strikes, marriages, and labor organizing activities with the use of injunctions. The ACLU also played a key role in initiating a nationwide effort to reduce misconduct (such as extracting false confessions) within police departments by publishing the report "Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" in 1931, under the auspices of Herbert Hoover's Wickersham Commission. In 1934, the ACLU lobbied for the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, which restored some autonomy to Native American tribes, and established penalties for kidnapping Native American children.
Although the ACLU deferred to the NAACP for litigation promoting civil liberties for African Americans, the ACLU engaged in educational efforts and published "Black Justice" in 1931, a report which documented institutional racism throughout the South, including lack of voting rights, segregation, and discrimination in the justice system. Funded by the Garland Fund, the ACLU also participated in producing the influential Margold Report, which outlined a strategy to fight for civil rights for blacks. The ACLU planned to demonstrate that the "separate but equal" policies governing the Southern discrimination were illegal because blacks were never, in fact, treated equally.
Depression era and the New Deal.
In 1932twelve years after the ACLU was foundedit had achieved significant success; the Supreme Court had embraced the free speech principles espoused by the ACLU, and the general public was becoming more supportive of civil rights in general. But the Great Depression brought new assaults on civil liberties; the year 1930 saw a large increase in the number of free speech prosecutions, a doubling of the number of lynchings, and all meetings of unemployed persons were banned in Philadelphia.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration proposed the New Deal to combat the depression. ACLU leaders were of mixed opinions about the New Deal since many felt that it represented an increase in government intervention into personal affairs and because the National Recovery Administration suspended antitrust legislation. Roosevelt was not personally interested in civil rights but did appoint many civil libertarians to key positions, including Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, a member of the ACLU.
The economic policies of the New Deal leaders were often aligned with ACLU goals, but social goals were not. In particular, movies were subject to a barrage of local ordinances that banned screenings deemed immoral or obscene. Even public health films portraying pregnancy and birth were banned, as was "Life" magazine's April 11, 1938, issue, which included photos of the birth process. The ACLU fought these bans but did not prevail.
The Catholic Church attained increasing political influence in the 1930s; it used its influence to promote the censorship of movies and to discourage the publication of birth control information. This conflict between the ACLU and the Catholic Church led to the resignation of the last Catholic priest from ACLU leadership in 1934; a Catholic priest would not be represented again until the 1970s.
The ACLU took no official position on president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing plan, which threatened to increase the number of Supreme Court justices unless the Supreme Court reversed its course and began approving New Deal legislation. The Supreme Court responded by making a major shift in policy, and no longer applied strict constitutional limits to government programs, and also began to take a more active role in protecting civil liberties.
The first decision that marked the court's new direction was "De Jonge v. Oregon", in which a communist labor organizer was arrested for calling a meeting to discuss unionization. The ACLU attorney Osmond Fraenkel, working with International Labor Defense, defended De Jonge in 1937 and won a major victory when the Supreme Court ruled that "peaceable assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime." The De Jonge case marked the start of an era lasting for a dozen years, during which Roosevelt appointees (led by Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Frank Murphy) established a body of civil liberties law. In 1938, Justice Harlan F. Stone wrote the famous "footnote four" in "United States v. Carolene Products Co." in which he suggested that state laws which impede civil liberties wouldhenceforthrequire compelling justification.
Senator Robert F. Wagner proposed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which empowered workers to unionize. Ironically, after 15 years of fighting for workers' rights, the ACLU initially opposed the act (it later took no stand on the legislation) because some ACLU leaders feared the increased power the bill gave to the government. The newly formed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) posed a dilemma for the ACLU because, in 1937, it issued an order to Henry Ford, prohibiting Ford from disseminating anti-union literature. Part of the ACLU leadership habitually took the side of labor, and that faction supported the NLRB's action. But part of the ACLU supported Ford's right to free speech. ACLU leader Arthur Garfield Hays proposed a compromise (supporting the auto workers union, yet also endorsing Ford's right to express personal opinions), but the schism highlighted a deeper divide that would become more prominent in the years to come.
The ACLU's support of the NLRB was a significant development for the ACLU because it marked the first time it accepted that a government agency could be responsible for upholding civil liberties. Until 1937, the ACLU felt that citizens and private organizations best upheld civil rights.
Some factions in the ACLU proposed new directions for the organization. In the late 1930s, some local affiliates proposed shifting their emphasis from civil liberties appellate actions to becoming a legal aid society centered on store front offices in low-income neighborhoods. The ACLU directors rejected that proposal. Other ACLU members wanted the ACLU to shift focus into the political arena and be more willing to compromise their ideals to strike deals with politicians. The ACLU leadership also rejected this initiative.
Jehovah's Witnesses.
The ACLU's support of defendants with unpopular, sometimes extreme, viewpoints has produced many landmark court cases and established new civil liberties. One such defendant was the Jehovah's Witnesses, who were involved in a large number of Supreme Court cases. Cases that the ACLU supported included "Lovell v. City of Griffin" (which struck down a city ordinance that required a permit before a person could distribute "literature of any kind"); "Martin v. Struthers" (which struck down an ordinance prohibiting door-to-door canvassing); and "Cantwell v. Connecticut" (which reversed the conviction of a Witness who was reciting offensive speech on a street corner).
The most important cases involved statutes requiring flag salutes. The Jehovah's Witnesses felt that saluting a flag was contrary to their religious beliefs. Two children were convicted in 1938 of not saluting the flag. The ACLU supported their appeal to the Supreme Court, but the court affirmed the conviction in 1940. But three years later, in "West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette", the Supreme court reversed itself and wrote, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." To underscore its decision, the Supreme Court announced it on Flag Day.
Communism and totalitarianism.
The rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Russia, and other countries that rejected freedom of speech and association greatly impacted the civil liberties movement in the US; anti-Communist sentiment rose, and civil liberties were curtailed.
The ACLU leadership was divided over whether or not to defend pro-Nazi speech in the United States; pro-labor elements within the ACLU were hostile towards Nazism and fascism and objected when the ACLU defended Nazis. Several states passed laws outlawing hate speech directed at ethnic groups. The first person arrested under New Jersey's 1935 hate speech law was a Jehovah's Witness who was charged with disseminating anti-Catholic literature. The ACLU defended the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the charges were dropped. The ACLU defended numerous pro-Nazi groups, defending their rights to free speech and free association.
In the late 1930s, the ACLU allied itself with the Popular Front, a coalition of liberal organizations coordinated by the United States Communist Party. The ACLU benefited because affiliates from the Popular Front could often fight local civil rights battles much more effectively than the New York-based ACLU. The association with the Communist Party led to accusations that the ACLU was a "Communist front", particularly because Harry F. Ward was both chairman of the ACLU and chairman of the American League Against War and Fascism, a Communist organization.
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to uncover sedition and treason within the United States. When witnesses testified at its hearings, the ACLU was mentioned several times, leading the HUAC to mention the ACLU prominently in its 1939 report. This damaged the ACLU's reputation severely, even though the report said that it could not "definitely state whether or not" the ACLU was a Communist organization.
While the ACLU rushed to defend its image against allegations of being a Communist front, it also protected witnesses harassed by the HUAC. The ACLU was one of the few organizations to protest (unsuccessfully) against the passage of the Smith Act in 1940, which would later be used to imprison many persons who supported Communism. The ACLU defended many persons who were prosecuted under the Smith Act, including labor leader Harry Bridges.
ACLU leadership was split on whether to purge its leadership of Communists. Norman Thomas, John Haynes Holmes, and Morris Ernst were anti-Communists who wanted to distance the ACLU from Communism; opposing them were Harry F. Ward, Corliss Lamont, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who rejected any political test for ACLU leadership. A bitter struggle ensued throughout 1939, and the anti-Communists prevailed in February 1940 when the board voted to prohibit anyone who supported totalitarianism from ACLU leadership roles. Ward immediately resigned, andfollowing a contentious six-hour debateFlynn was voted off the ACLU's board. The 1940 resolution was considered by many to be a betrayal of its fundamental principles. The resolution was rescinded in 1968, and Flynn was posthumously reinstated to the ACLU in 1970.
Mid-century.
World War II.
When World War II engulfed the United States, the Bill of Rights was enshrined as a hallowed document, and numerous organizations defended civil liberties. Chicago and New York proclaimed "Civil Rights" weeks, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a national Bill of Rights day. Eleanor Roosevelt was the keynote speaker at the 1939 ACLU convention. Despite this newfound respect for civil rights, Americans were becoming adamantly anti-communist and believed that excluding communists from American society was an essential step to preserve democracy.
Contrasted to World War I, there was relatively little violation of civil liberties during World War II. President Roosevelt was a strong supporter of civil liberties, butmore importantlythere were few anti-war activists during World War II. The most significant exception was the internment of Japanese Americans.
Japanese American internment.
Two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt authorized the creation of military "exclusion zones" with Executive Order 9066, paving the way for the detention of all West Coast Japanese Americans in inland camps. In addition to the non-citizen Issei (prohibited from naturalization as members of an "unassimilable" race), over two-thirds of those swept up were American-born citizens. The ACLU immediately protested to Roosevelt, comparing the evacuations to Nazi concentration camps. The ACLU was the only major organization to object to the internment plan, and their position was very unpopular, even within the organization. Not all ACLU leaders wanted to defend the Japanese Americans; Roosevelt loyalists such as Morris Ernst wanted to support Roosevelt's war effort, but pacifists such as Baldwin and Norman Thomas felt that Japanese Americans needed access to due process before they could be imprisoned. In a March 20, 1942, letter to Roosevelt, Baldwin called on the administration to allow Japanese Americans to prove their loyalty at individual hearings, describing the constitutionality of the planned removal "open to grave question". His suggestions went nowhere, and opinions within the organization became increasingly divided as the Army began the "evacuation" of the West Coast. In May, the two factions, one pushing to fight the exclusion orders then being issued, the other advocating support for the President's policy of removing citizens whose "presence may endanger national security", brought their opposing resolutions to a vote before the board and the ACLU's national leaders. They decided not to challenge the eviction of Japanese American citizens; on June 22, instructions were sent to West Coast branches not to support cases that argued the government had no constitutional right to do so.
The ACLU offices on the West Coast had been more directly involved in addressing the tide of anti-Japanese prejudice from the start, as they were geographically closer to the issue and were already working on cases challenging the exclusion by this time. The Seattle office, assisting in Gordon Hirabayashi's lawsuit, created an unaffiliated committee to continue the work the ACLU had started, while in Los Angeles, attorney A.L. Wirin continued to represent Ernest Kinzo Wakayama but without addressing the case's constitutional questions. Wirin would lose private clients because of his defense of Wakayama and other Japanese Americans; however, the San Francisco branch, led by Ernest Besig, refused to discontinue its support for Fred Korematsu, whose case had been taken on before the June 22 directive, and attorney Wayne Collins, with Besig's full support, centered his defense on the illegality of Korematsu's exclusion.
The West Coast offices had wanted a test case to take to court. However, they had a difficult time finding a Japanese American who was both willing to violate the internment orders and able to meet the ACLU's desired criteria of a sympathetic, Americanized plaintiff. Of the 120,000 Japanese Americans affected by the order, only 12 disobeyed, and Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and two others were the only resisters whose cases eventually made it to the Supreme Court. "Hirabayashi v. United States" came before the Court in May 1943, and the justices upheld the government's right to exclude Japanese Americans from the West Coast; although it had earlier forced its local office in L.A. to stop aiding Hirabayashi, the ACLU donated $1,000 to the case (over a third of the legal team's total budget) and submitted an "amicus" brief. Besig, dissatisfied with Osmond Fraenkel's tamer defense, filed an additional "amicus" brief that directly addressed Hirabayashi's constitutional rights. In the meantime, A.L. Wirin served as one of the attorneys in "Yasui v. United States" (decided the same day as the Hirabayashi case and with the same results). Still, he kept his arguments within the national office's parameters. The only case to receive a favorable ruling, "ex parte Endo", was also aided by two "amicus" briefs from the ACLU, one from the more conservative Fraenkel and another from the more putative Wayne Collins.
"Korematsu v. United States" proved to be the most controversial of these cases, as Besig and Collins refused to bow to the national ACLU office's pressure to pursue the case without challenging the government's right to remove citizens from their homes. The ACLU board threatened to revoke the San Francisco branch's national affiliation. At the same time, Baldwin tried unsuccessfully to convince Collins to step down so he could replace him as lead attorney in the case. Eventually, Collins agreed to present the case alongside Charles Horsky; however, their arguments before the Supreme Court remained based on the unconstitutionality of the exclusion order Korematsu had disobeyed. The case was decided in December 1944, when the Court once again upheld the government's right to relocate Japanese Americans, although Korematsu's, Hirabayashi's and Yasui's convictions were later overturned in "coram nobis" proceedings in the 1980s. Legal scholar Peter Irons later asserted that the national office of the ACLU's decision not to challenge the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 directly had "crippled the effective presentation of these appeals to the Supreme Court".
The national office of the ACLU was even more reluctant to defend anti-war protesters. A majority of the board passed a resolution in 1942 that declared the ACLU unwilling to defend anyone who interfered with the United States' war effort. Included in this group were the thousands of Nisei who renounced their US citizenship during the war but later regretted the decision and tried to revoke their applications for "repatriation". (A significant number of those slated to "go back" to Japan had never actually been to the country and were being deported rather than repatriated.) Ernest Besig had in 1944 visited the Tule Lake Segregation Center, where the majority of these "renunciants" were concentrated, and subsequently enlisted Wayne Collins' help to file a lawsuit on their behalf, arguing the renunciations had been given under duress. The national organization prohibited local branches from representing the renunciants, forcing Collins to pursue the case independently, although Besig and the Northern California office provided some support.
During his 1944 visit to Tule Lake, Besig had also become aware of a hastily constructed stockade in which Japanese American internees were routinely being brutalized and held for months without due process. The national ACLU office forbade Besig to intervene on behalf of the stockade prisoners or even to visit the Tule Lake camp without prior written approval from Baldwin. Unable to help directly, Besig turned to Wayne Collins for assistance. Using the threat of habeas corpus suits, Collins managed to have the stockade closed down. A year later, after learning that the stockade had been reestablished, he returned to the camp and had it closed down for good.
End of WWII in 1945.
When the war ended in 1945, the ACLU was 25 years old and had accumulated impressive legal victories. President Harry S. Truman sent a congratulatory telegram to the ACLU on the occasion of their 25th anniversary. American attitudes had changed since World War I, and dissent by minorities was tolerated with more willingness. The Bill of Rights was more respected, and minority rights were becoming more commonly championed. During their 1945 annual conference, the ACLU leaders composed a list of important civil rights issues to focus on in the future, including racial discrimination and separation of church and state.
The ACLU supported the African-American defendants in "Shelley v. Kraemer", when they tried to occupy a house they had purchased in a neighborhood with racially restrictive housing covenants. The African-American purchasers won the case in 1945.
Cold War era.
Anti-Communist sentiment gripped the United States during the Cold War beginning in 1946. Federal investigations caused many persons with Communist or left-leaning affiliations to lose jobs, become blocklisted, or be jailed. During the Cold War, although the United States collectively ignored the civil rights of Communists, other civil libertiessuch as due process in law and separation of church and statecontinued to be reinforced and even expanded.
The ACLU was internally divided when it purged Communists from its leadership in 1940, and that ambivalence continued as it decided whether to defend alleged Communists during the late 1940s. Some ACLU leaders were anti-Communist and felt that the ACLU should not defend any victims. Some ACLU leaders felt that Communists were entitled to free speech protections and that the ACLU should defend them. Other ACLU leaders were uncertain about the threat posed by Communists and tried to establish a compromise between the two extremes. This ambivalent state of affairs would last until 1954, when the civil liberties faction prevailed, leading to most anti-Communist leaders' resignations.
In 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which created the Federal Loyalty Program. This program authorized the Attorney General to create a list of organizations that were deemed to be subversive. Any association with these programs was ground for barring the person from employment. Listed organizations were not notified that they were being considered for the list, nor did they have an opportunity to present counterarguments; nor did the government divulge any factual basis for inclusion in the list. Although ACLU leadership was divided on whether to challenge the Federal Loyalty Program, some challenges were successfully made.
Also in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed ten Hollywood directors and writers, the "Hollywood Ten", intending to ask them to identify Communists, but the witnesses refused to testify. All were imprisoned for contempt of Congress. The ACLU supported several artists' appeals but lost on appeal. The Hollywood establishment panicked after the HUAC hearings and created a blacklist that prohibited anyone with leftist associations from working. The ACLU supported legal challenges to the blocklist, but those challenges failed. The ACLU was more successful with an education effort; the 1952 report "The Judges and the Judged", prepared at the ACLU's direction in response to the blocklisting of actress Jean Muir, described the unfair and unethical actions behind the blocklisting process, and it helped gradually turn public opinion against McCarthyism.
The federal government took direct aim at the US Communist Party in 1948 when it indicted its top twelve leaders in the Foley Square trial. The case hinged on whether or not mere membership in a totalitarian political party was sufficient to conclude that members advocated the overthrow of the United States government. The ACLU chose not to represent any of the defendants, and they were all found guilty and sentenced to three to five years in prison. Their defense attorneys were all cited for contempt, went to prison, and were disbarred. When the government indicted additional party members, the defendants could not find attorneys to represent them. Communists protested outside the courthouse; a bill to outlaw picketing of courthouses was introduced in Congress, and the ACLU supported the anti-picketing law.
In a change of heart, the ACLU supported the party leaders during their appeal process. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions in the "Dennis v. United States" decision by softening the free speech requirements from a "clear and present danger" test to a "grave and probable" test. The ACLU issued a public condemnation of the "Dennis" decision, and resolved to fight it. One reason for the Supreme Court's support of Cold War legislation was the 1949 deaths of Supreme Court justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge, leaving Hugo Black and William O. Douglas as the only remaining civil libertarians on the Court.
The "Dennis" decision paved the way for the prosecution of hundreds of other Communist party members. The ACLU supported many Communists during their appeals (although most of the initiative originated with local ACLU affiliates, not the national headquarters), but most convictions were upheld. The two California affiliates, in particular, felt the national ACLU headquarters was not supporting civil liberties strongly enough, and they initiated more cold war cases than the national headquarters did.
The ACLU challenged many loyalty oath requirements across the country, but the courts upheld most loyalty oath laws. California ACLU affiliates successfully challenged the California state loyalty oath. The Supreme Court, until 1957, upheld nearly every law which restricted the liberties of Communists.
The ACLU, even though it scaled back its defense of Communists during the Cold War, still came under heavy criticism as a "front" for Communism. Critics included the American Legion, Senator Joseph McCarthy, the HUAC, and the FBI. Several ACLU leaders were sympathetic to the FBI, and as a consequence, the ACLU rarely investigated any of the many complaints alleging abuse of power by the FBI during the Cold War.
In 1950, Raymond L. Wise, ACLU board member 1933–1951, defended William Perl, one of the other spies embroiled in the atomic espionage cases (made famous by the execution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg). However, the ACLU publicly endorsed the guilty verdict in the Rosenberg case. The ACLU took the position that the execution of the Rosenbergs did not involve a civil rights issue.
Organizational change.
In 1950, the ACLU board of directors asked executive director Baldwin to resign, feeling he lacked the organizational skills to lead the 9,000 (and growing) member organization. Baldwin objected, but a majority of the board elected to remove him from the position, and he was replaced by Patrick Murphy Malin. Under Malin's guidance, membership tripled to 30,000 by 1955the start of 24 years of continual growth leading to 275,000 members in 1974. Malin also presided over an expansion of local ACLU affiliates.
The ACLU, controlled by an elite of a few dozen New Yorkers, became more democratic in the 1950s. In 1951, the ACLU amended its bylaws to permit the local affiliates to participate directly in voting on ACLU policy decisions. A bi-annual conference, open to the entire membership, was instituted in the same year; in later decades, it became a pulpit for activist members, who suggested new directions for the ACLU, including abortion rights, death penalty, and rights of the poor.
McCarthy era.
During the early 1950s, the ACLU continued to steer a moderate course through the Cold War. When singer Paul Robeson was denied a passport in 1950, even though he was not accused of any illegal acts, the ACLU chose not to defend him. The ACLU later reversed their stance and supported William Worthy and Rockwell Kent in their passport confiscation cases, which resulted in legal victories in the late 1950s.
In response to communist witch-hunts, many witnesses and employees chose to use the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination to avoid divulging information about their political beliefs. Government agencies and private organizations, in response, established policies which inferred communist party membership for anyone who invoked the fifth amendment. The national ACLU was divided on whether to defend employees who had been fired merely for pleading the fifth amendment, but the New York affiliate successfully assisted teacher Harry Slochower in his Supreme Court case, which reversed his termination.
The fifth amendment issue became the catalyst for a watershed event in 1954, which finally resolved the ACLU's ambivalence by ousting the anti-communists from ACLU leadership. In 1953, the anti-communists, led by Norman Thomas and James Fly, proposed a set of resolutions that inferred guilt of persons that invoked the fifth amendment. These resolutions were the first that fell under the ACLU's new organizational rules permitting local affiliates to participate in the vote; the affiliates outvoted the national headquarters and rejected the anti-communist resolutions. Anti-communist leaders refused to accept the results of the vote and brought the issue up for discussion again at the 1954 bi-annual convention. ACLU member Frank Graham, president of the University of North Carolina, attacked the anti-communists with a counter-proposal, which stated that the ACLU "stand[s] against guilt by association, judgment by accusation, the invasion of privacy of personal opinions and beliefs, and the confusion of dissent with disloyalty". The anti-communists continued to battle Graham's proposal but were outnumbered by the affiliates. The anti-communists finally gave up and departed the board of directors in late 1954 and 1955, ending an eight-year ambivalence within the ACLU leadership ranks. After that, the ACLU proceeded with firmer resolve against Cold War anti-communist legislation. The period from the 1940 resolution (and the purge of Elizabeth Flynn) to the 1954 resignation of the anti-communist leaders is considered by many to be an era in which the ACLU abandoned its core principles.
McCarthyism declined in late 1954 after television journalist Edward R. Murrow and others publicly chastised McCarthy. The controversies over the Bill of Rights that the Cold War generated ushered in a new era in American Civil liberties. In 1954, in "Brown v. Board of Education", the Supreme Court unanimously overturned state-sanctioned school segregation, and after that, a flood of civil rights victories dominated the legal landscape.
The Supreme Court handed the ACLU two key victories in 1957, in "Watkins v. United States" and "Yates v. United States", both of which undermined the Smith Act and marked the beginning of the end of communist party membership inquiries. In 1965, the Supreme Court produced some decisions, including "Lamont v. Postmaster General" (in which the plaintiff was Corliss Lamont, a former ACLU board member), which upheld fifth amendment protections and brought an end to restrictions on political activity.
1960s.
The decade from 1954 to 1964 was the most successful period in the ACLU's history. Membership rose from 30,000 to 80,000, and by 1965 it had affiliates in seventeen states. During the ACLU's bi-annual conference in Colorado in 1964, the Supreme Court issued rulings on eight cases involving the ACLU; the ACLU prevailed on seven of the eight. The ACLU played a role in Supreme Court decisions reducing censorship of literature and arts, protecting freedom of association, prohibiting racial segregation, excluding religion from public schools, and providing due process protection to criminal suspects. The ACLU's success arose from changing public attitudes; the American populace was more educated, tolerant, and willing to accept unorthodox behavior.
Separation of church and state.
Legal battles concerning the separation of church and state originated in laws dating to 1938, which required religious instruction in school or provided state funding for religious schools. The Catholic church was a leading proponent of such laws, and the primary opponents (the "separationists") were the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the American Jewish Congress. The ACLU led the challenge in the 1947 "Everson v. Board of Education" case, in which Justice Hugo Black wrote "[t]he First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state... That wall must be kept high and impregnable." It was not clear that the Bill of Rights forbid state governments from supporting religious education, and strong legal arguments were made by religious proponents, arguing that the Supreme Court should not act as a "national school board", and that the Constitution did not govern social issues. However, the ACLU and other advocates of church/state separation persuaded the Court to declare such activities unconstitutional. Historian Samuel Walker writes that the ACLU's "greatest impact on American life" was its role in persuading the Supreme Court to "constitutionalize" so many public controversies.
In 1948, the ACLU prevailed in the "McCollum v. Board of Education" case, which challenged public school religious classes taught by clergy paid for by private funds. The ACLU also won cases challenging schools in New Mexico that were taught by clergy and had crucifixes hanging in the classrooms. In the 1960s, the ACLU, in response to member insistence, turned its attention to the in-class promotion of religion. In 1960, 42 percent of American schools included Bible reading. In 1962, the ACLU published a policy statement condemning in-school prayers, observation of religious holidays, and Bible reading. The Supreme Court concurred with the ACLU's position when it prohibited New York's in-school prayers in the 1962 "Engel v. Vitale" decision. Religious factions across the country rebelled against the anti-prayer decisions, leading them to propose the School Prayer Constitutional Amendment, which declared in-school prayer legal. The ACLU participated in a lobbying effort against the amendment, and the 1966 congressional vote failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority.
However, not all cases were victories; ACLU lost cases in 1949 and 1961 which challenged state laws requiring commercial businesses to close on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. The Supreme Court has never overturned such laws, although some states subsequently revoked many of the laws under pressure from commercial interests.
Freedom of expression.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the ACLU continued its battle against censorship of art and literature. In 1948, the New York affiliate of the ACLU received mixed results from the Supreme Court, winning the appeal of Carl Jacob Kunz, who was convicted for speaking without a police permit, but losing the appeal of Irving Feiner who was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace, based on his oration denouncing President Truman and the American Legion. The ACLU lost the case of Joseph Beauharnais, who was arrested for group libel when he distributed literature impugning the character of African Americans.
Cities across America routinely banned movies because they were deemed to be "harmful", "offensive", or "immoral"censorship which was validated by the 1915 "Mutual v. Ohio" Supreme Court decision which held movies to be mere commerce, undeserving of first amendment protection. The film "The Miracle" was banned in New York in 1951 at the behest of the Catholic Church, but the ACLU supported the film's distributor in an appeal of the ban, and won a major victory in the 1952 decision "Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson". The Catholic Church led efforts throughout the 1950s attempting to persuade local prosecutors to ban various books and movies, leading to conflict with the ACLU when the ACLU published it statement condemning the church's tactics. Further legal actions by the ACLU successfully defended films such as "M" and "la Ronde", leading the eventual dismantling of movie censorship. Hollywood continued employing self-censorship with its own Production Code, but in 1956 the ACLU called on Hollywood to abolish the Code.
The ACLU defended beat generation artists, including Allen Ginsberg who was prosecuted for his poem "Howl"; andin an unorthodox case the ACLU helped a coffee house regain its restaurant license which was revoked because its Beat customers were allegedly disturbing the peace of the neighborhood.
The ACLU lost an important press censorship case when, in 1957, the Supreme Court upheld the obscenity conviction of publisher Samuel Roth for distributing adult magazines. As late as 1953, books such as "Tropic of Cancer" and "From Here to Eternity" were still banned. But public standards rapidly became more liberal through the 1960s, and obscenity was notoriously difficult to define, so by 1971, obscenity prosecutions had halted.
Racial discrimination.
A major aspect of civil liberties progress after World War II was the undoing centuries of racism in federal, state, and local governments an effort generally associated with the civil rights movement. Several civil liberties organizations worked together for progress, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the ACLU, and the American Jewish Congress. The NAACP took primary responsibility for Supreme Court cases (often led by lead NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall), with the ACLU focusing on police misconduct, and supporting the NAACP with amicus briefs. The NAACP achieved a key victory in 1950 with the "Henderson v. United States" decision that ended segregation in interstate bus and rail transportation.
In 1954, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case of "Brown v. Board of Education", which led to the ban on racial segregation in US public schools. Southern states instituted a McCarthyism-style witch-hunt against the NAACP, attempting to force it to disclose membership lists. The ACLU's fight against racism was not limited to segregation; in 1964, the ACLU provided key support to plaintiffs, primarily lower-income urban residents, in "Reynolds v. Sims", which required states to establish the voting districts following the "one person, one vote" principle.
Police misconduct.
The ACLU regularly tackled police misconduct issues, starting with the 1932 case "Powell v. Alabama" (right to an attorney), and including 1942's "Betts v. Brady" (right to an attorney), and 1951's "Rochin v. California" (involuntary stomach pumping). In the late 1940s, several ACLU local affiliates established permanent committees to address policing issues. During the 1950s and 1960s, the ACLU was responsible for substantially advancing the legal protections against police misconduct. In 1958, the Philadelphia affiliate was responsible for causing the City of Philadelphia to create the nation's first civilian police review board. In 1959, the Illinois affiliate published the first report in the nation, "Secret Detention by the Chicago Police" which documented unlawful detention by police.
Some of the most notable ACLU successes came in the 1960s when the ACLU prevailed in a string of cases limiting the power of police to gather evidence; in 1961's "Mapp v. Ohio", the Supreme court required states to obtain a warrant before searching a person's home. The "Gideon v. Wainwright" decision in 1963 provided legal representation to indigents. In 1964, the ACLU persuaded the Court, in "Escobedo v. Illinois", to permit suspects to have an attorney present during questioning. And, in 1966, "Miranda v. Arizona" federal decision required police to notify suspects of their constitutional rights, which was later extended to juveniles in the following year's "in re Gault" (1967) federal ruling. Although many law enforcement officials criticized the ACLU for expanding the rights of suspects, police officers also used the services of the ACLU. For example, when the ACLU represented New York City policemen in their lawsuit, which objected to searches of their workplace lockers. In the late 1960s, civilian review boards in New York City and Philadelphia were abolished, over the ACLU's objection.
Civil liberties revolution of the 1960s.
The 1960s was a tumultuous era in the United States, and public interest in civil liberties underwent explosive growth. Civil liberties actions in the 1960s were often led by young people and often employed tactics such as sit ins and marches. Protests were often peaceful but sometimes employed militant tactics. The ACLU played a central role in all major civil liberties debates of the 1960s, including new fields such as gay rights, prisoner's rights, abortion, rights of the poor, and the death penalty. Membership in the ACLU increased from 52,000 at the beginning of the decade to 104,000 in 1970. In 1960, there were affiliates in seven states, and by 1974 there were affiliates in 46 states. During the 1960s, the ACLU underwent a major transformation in tactics; it shifted emphasis from legal appeals (generally involving amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court) to direct representation of defendants when they were initially arrested. At the same time, the ACLU transformed its style from "disengaged and elitist" to "emotionally engaged". The ACLU published a breakthrough document in 1963, titled "How Americans Protest", which was borne of frustration with the slow progress in battling racism, and which endorsed aggressive, even militant protest techniques.
African-American protests in the South accelerated in the early 1960s, and the ACLU assisted at every step. After four African-American college students staged a sit-in in a segregated North Carolina department store, the sit-in movement gained momentum across the United States. During 1960–61, the ACLU defended black students arrested for demonstrating in North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. The ACLU also provided legal help for the Freedom Rides in 1961, the integration of the University of Mississippi, the Birmingham campaign in 1963, and the 1964 Freedom Summer.
The NAACP was responsible for managing most sit-in related cases that made it to the Supreme Court, winning nearly every decision. But it fell to the ACLU and other legal volunteer efforts to provide legal representation to hundreds of protestorswhite and blackwho were arrested while protesting in the South. The ACLU joined with other civil liberties groups to form the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC), which provided legal representation to many protesters. The ACLU provided the majority of the funding for the LCDC.
In 1964, the ACLU opened up a major office in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to serving Southern issues. Much of the ACLU's progress in the South was due to Charles Morgan Jr., the charismatic leader of the Atlanta office. Morgan was responsible for desegregating juries ("Whitus v. Georgia"), desegregating prisons ("Lee v. Washington"), and reforming election laws. In 1966, the southern office successfully represented African-American congressman Julian Bond in "Bond v. Floyd", after the Georgia House of Representatives refused to admit Bond into the legislature on the basis that he was an admitted pacifist opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War. Another widely publicized case defended by Morgan was that of Army doctor Howard Levy, who was convicted of refusing to train Green Berets. Despite raising the defense that the Green Berets were committing war crimes in Vietnam, Levy lost on appeal in "Parker v. Levy", 417 US 733 (1974).
In 1969, the ACLU won a significant victory for free speech when it defended Dick Gregory after he was arrested for peacefully protesting against the mayor of Chicago. The court ruled in "Gregory v. Chicago" that a speaker cannot be arrested for disturbing the peace when hostility is initiated by someone in the audience, as that would amount to a "heckler's veto".
Vietnam War.
The ACLU was at the center of several legal aspects of the Vietnam war: defending draft resisters, challenging the constitutionality of the war, the potential impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the use of national security concerns to preemptively censor newspapers.
David J. Miller was the first person prosecuted for burning his draft card. The New York affiliate of the ACLU appealed his 1965 conviction (367 F.2d 72: "United States of America v. David J. Miller", 1966), but the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. Two years later, the Massachusetts affiliate took the card-burning case of David O'Brien to the Supreme Court, arguing that the act of burning was a form of symbolic speech, but the Supreme Court upheld the conviction in "United States v. O'Brien", 391 US 367 (1968). Thirteen-year-old Junior High student Mary Tinker wore a black armband to school in 1965 to object to the war and was suspended from school. The ACLU appealed her case to the Supreme Court and won a victory in "Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District". This critical case established that the government may not establish "enclaves" such as schools or prisons where all rights are forfeited.
The ACLU defended Sydney Street, who was arrested for burning an American flag to protest the reported assassination of civil rights leader James Meredith. In the "Street v. New York" decision, the court agreed with the ACLU that encouraging the country to abandon one of its national symbols was a constitutionally protected form of expression. The ACLU successfully defended Paul Cohen, who was arrested for wearing a jacket with the words "fuck the draft" on its back while he walked through the Los Angeles courthouse. The Supreme Court, in "Cohen v. California", held that the vulgarity of the wording was essential to convey the intensity of the message.
Non-war-related free speech rights were also advanced during the Vietnam war era; in 1969, the ACLU defended a Ku Klux Klan member who advocated long-term violence against the government, and the Supreme Court concurred with the ACLU's argument in the landmark decision "Brandenburg v. Ohio", which held that only speech which advocated "imminent" violence could be outlawed.
A major crisis gripped the ACLU in 1968 when a debate erupted over whether to defend Benjamin Spock and the Boston Five against federal charges that they encouraged draftees to avoid the draft. The ACLU board was deeply split over whether to defend the activists; half the board harbored anti-war sentiments and felt that the ACLU should lend its resources to the cause of the Boston Five. The other half of the board believed that civil liberties were not at stake and the ACLU would be taking a political stance. Behind the debate was the longstanding ACLU tradition that it was politically impartial and provided legal advice without regard to the defendants' political views. The board finally agreed to a compromise solution that permitted the ACLU to defend the anti-war activists without endorsing the activist's political views. Some critics of the ACLU suggest that the ACLU became a partisan political organization following the Spock case. After the Kent State shootings in 1970, ACLU leaders took another step toward politics by passing a resolution condemning the Vietnam War. The resolution was based on various legal arguments, including civil liberties violations and claiming that the war was illegal.
Also in 1968, the ACLU held an internal symposium to discuss its dual roles: providing "direct" legal support (defense for accused in their initial trial, benefiting only the individual defendant) and appellate support (providing amicus briefs during the appeal process, to establish widespread legal precedent). Historically, the ACLU was known for its appellate work, which led to landmark Supreme Court decisions, but by 1968, 90% of the ACLU's legal activities involved direct representation. The symposium concluded that both roles were valid for the ACLU.
1970s and 1980s.
Watergate era.
The ACLU supported "The New York Times" in its 1971 suit against the government, requesting permission to publish the Pentagon Papers. The court upheld the "Times" and ACLU in the "New York Times Co. v. United States" ruling, which held that the government could not preemptively prohibit the publication of classified information and had to wait until after it was published to take action.
On September 30, 1973, the ACLU became first national organization to publicly call for the impeachment and removal from office of President Richard Nixon. Six civil liberties violations were cited as grounds: "specific proved violations of the rights of political dissent; usurpation of Congressional war‐making powers; establishment of a personal secret police which committed crimes; attempted interference in the trial of Daniel Ellsberg; distortion of the system of justice and perversion of other Federal agencies". One month later, after the House of Representatives began an impeachment inquiry against him, the organization released a 56‐page handbook detailing "17 things citizens could do to bring about the impeachment of President Nixon". This resolution, when placed beside the earlier resolution opposing the Vietnam war, convinced many ACLU critics, particularly conservatives, that the organization had transformed into a liberal political organization.
Enclaves and new civil liberties.
The decade from 1965 to 1975 saw an expansion of civil liberties. Administratively, the ACLU responded by appointing Aryeh Neier to take over from Pemberton as executive director in 1970. Neier embarked on an ambitious program to expand the ACLU; he created the ACLU Foundation to raise funds and created several new programs to focus the ACLU's legal efforts. By 1974, ACLU membership had reached 275,000.
During those years, the ACLU worked to expand legal rights in three directions: new rights for persons within government-run "enclaves", new rights for members of what it called "victim groups", and privacy rights for citizens in general. At the same time, the organization grew substantially. The ACLU helped develop the field of constitutional law that governs "enclaves", which are groups of persons that live in conditions under government control. Enclaves include mental hospital patients, military members, prisoners, and students (while at school). The term enclave originated with Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas's use of the phrase "schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism" in the "Tinker v. Des Moines" decision.
The ACLU initiated the legal field of student's rights with the "Tinker v. Des Moines" case and expanded it with cases such as "Goss v. Lopez", which required schools to provide students an opportunity to appeal suspensions.
As early as 1945, the ACLU had taken a stand to protect the rights of the mentally ill when it drafted a model statute governing mental commitments. In the 1960s, the ACLU opposed involuntary commitments unless it could be demonstrated that the person was a danger to himself or the community. In the landmark 1975 "O'Connor v. Donaldson" decision, the ACLU represented a non-violent mental health patient who had been confined against his will for 15 years and persuaded the Supreme Court to rule such involuntary confinements illegal. The ACLU has also defended the rights of mentally ill individuals who are not dangerous but create disturbances. The New York chapter of the ACLU defended Billie Boggs, a woman with mental illness who exposed herself and defecated and urinated in public.
Before 1960, prisoners had virtually no recourse to the court system because courts considered prisoners to have no civil rights. That changed in the late 1950s, when the ACLU began representing prisoners subject to police brutality or deprived of religious reading material. In 1968, the ACLU successfully sued to desegregate the Alabama prison system; in 1969, the New York affiliate adopted a project to represent prisoners in New York prisons. Private attorney Phil Hirschkop discovered degrading conditions in Virginia prisons following the Virginia State Penitentiary strike and won an important victory in 1971's "Landman v. Royster" which prohibited Virginia from treating prisoners in inhumane ways. In 1972, the ACLU consolidated several prison rights efforts across the nation and created the National Prison Project. The ACLU's efforts led to landmark cases such as "Ruiz v. Estelle" (requiring reform of the Texas prison system), and in 1996 US Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) which codified prisoners' rights.
Victim groups.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the ACLU expanded its scope to include what it referred to as "victim groups", namely women, the poor, and homosexuals. Heeding the call of female members, the ACLU endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970 and created the Women's Rights Project in 1971. The Women's Rights Project dominated the legal field, handling more than twice as many cases as the National Organization for Women, including breakthrough cases such as "Reed v. Reed", "Frontiero v. Richardson", and " Taylor v. Louisiana".
ACLU leader Harriet Pilpel raised the issue of the rights of homosexuals in 1964, and two years later, the ACLU formally endorsed gay rights. In 1972, ACLU cooperating attorneys in Oregon filed the first federal civil rights case involving a claim of unconstitutional discrimination against a gay or lesbian public school teacher. The US District Court held that a state statute that authorized school districts to fire teachers for "immorality" was unconstitutionally vague, and awarded monetary damages to the teacher. The court refused to reinstate the teacher, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that refusal by a 2-to-1 vote. "Burton v. Cascade School District", 353 F. Supp. 254 (D. Or. 1972), aff'd 512 F.2d 850 (1975). In 1973, the ACLU created the Sexual Privacy Project (later the Gay and Lesbian Rights Project), which combated discrimination against homosexuals. This support continued into the 2000s. For example, after then-Senator Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom in 2007, the ACLU wrote an amicus brief for Craig, saying that sex between consenting adults in public places was protected under privacy rights.
The rights of the poor were another area that the ACLU expanded. In 1966 and again in 1968, activists within the ACLU encouraged the organization to adopt a policy overhauling the welfare system and guaranteeing low-income families a baseline income; but the ACLU board did not approve the proposals. However, the ACLU played a key role in the 1968 "King v. Smith" decision, where the Supreme Court ruled that welfare benefits for children could not be denied by a state simply because the mother cohabited with a boyfriend.
Reproductive Freedom Project.
The ACLU founded the Reproductive Freedom Project in 1974 to defend individuals the government obstructs in cases involving access to abortions, birth control, or sexual education. According to its mission statement, the project works to provide access to reproductive health care for individuals. The project also opposes abstinence-only sex education, arguing that it promotes an unwillingness to use contraceptives.
In 1980, the Project filed "Poe v. Lynchburg Training School & Hospital" which attempted to overturn "Buck v. Bell", the 1927 US Supreme Court decision which had allowed the Commonwealth of Virginia to legally sterilize persons it deemed to be mentally defective without their permission. Though the Court did not overturn "Buck v.Bell", in 1985, the state agreed to provide counseling and medical treatment to the survivors among the 7,200 to 8,300 people sterilized between 1927 and 1979. In 1977, the ACLU took part in and litigated "Walker v. Pierce", the federal circuit court case that led to federal regulations to prevent Medicaid patients from being sterilized without their knowledge or consent. In 1981–1990, the Project litigated "Hodgson v. Minnesota", which resulted in the Supreme Court overturning a state law requiring both parents to be notified before a minor could legally have an abortion. In the 1990s, the Project provided legal assistance and resource kits to those who were being challenged for educating about sexuality and AIDS. In 1995, the Project filed an amicus brief in "Curtis v. School Committee of Falmouth", which allowed for the distribution of condoms in a public school.
The Reproductive Freedom Project focuses on three ideas: (1) to "reverse the shortage of trained abortion providers throughout the country" (2) to "block state and federal welfare "reform" proposals that cut off benefits for children who are born to women already receiving welfare, unmarried women, or teenagers" and (3) to "stop the elimination of vital reproductive health services as a result of hospital mergers and health care networks". The Project proposes to achieve these goals through legal action and litigation.
Privacy.
The right to privacy is not explicitly identified in the US Constitution, but the ACLU led the charge to establish such rights in the indecisive "Poe v. Ullman" (1961) case, which addressed a state statute outlawing contraception. The issue arose again in "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965), and this time the Supreme Court adopted the ACLU's position and formally declared a right to privacy. The New York affiliate of the ACLU pushed to eliminate anti-abortion laws starting in 1964, a year before "Griswold" was decided; in 1967 the ACLU itself formally adopted the right to abortion as a policy. The ACLU led the defense in "United States v. Vuitch" (1971), which expanded the right of physicians to determine when abortions were necessary. These efforts culminated in one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions, "Roe v. Wade" (1973), which legalized abortion throughout the United States. The ACLU successfully argued against state bans on interracial marriage, in the case of "Loving v. Virginia" (1967).
Related to privacy, the ACLU engaged in several battles to ensure that government records about individuals were kept private and to give individuals the right to review their records. The ACLU supported several measures, including the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act, which required credit agencies to divulge credit information to individuals; the 1973 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which provided students the right to access their records; and the 1974 Privacy Act, which prevented the federal government from disclosing personal information without good cause.
Allegations of bias.
In the early 1970s, conservatives and libertarians began to criticize the ACLU for being too political and too liberal. Legal scholar Joseph W. Bishop wrote that the ACLU's trend to partisanship started with its defense of Spock's anti-war protests. Critics also blamed the ACLU for encouraging the Supreme Court to embrace judicial activism. Critics claimed that the ACLU's support of controversial decisions like "Roe v. Wade" and "Griswold v. Connecticut" violated the intention of the authors of the Bill of Rights. The ACLU became an issue in the 1988 presidential campaign, when Republican candidate George H. W. Bush accused Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis (a member of the ACLU) of being a "card carrying member of the ACLU".
The Skokie case.
In 1977, the National Socialist Party of America, led by Frank Collin, applied to the town of Skokie, Illinois, for a permit to hold a demonstration in the town park. Skokie at the time had a majority population of Jews, totaling 40,000 of 70,000 citizens, some of whom were survivors of Nazi concentration camps. Skokie refused to grant the NSPA a permit and passed ordinances against hate speech and military wear, in addition to requiring an insurance bond. Skokie's Village Council ordered village attorney, Harvey Schwartz, to seek an injunction to stop the demonstration. The ACLU assisted Collin and appealed to federal court, eventually prevailing in NSPA v. Village of Skokie
The Skokie case was heavily publicized across America, partially because Jewish groups such as the Jewish Defense League and Anti Defamation League strenuously objected to the demonstration, leading many members of the ACLU to cancel their memberships. The Illinois affiliate of the ACLU lost about 25% of its membership and nearly one-third of its budget. The financial strain from the controversy led to layoffs at local chapters. After the membership crisis died down, the ACLU sent out a fund-raising appeal which explained their rationale for the Skokie case and raised over $500,000 ($ in dollars).
Reagan era.
The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president in 1981 ushered in an eight-year period of conservative leadership in the US government. Under Reagan's leadership, the government pushed a conservative social agenda.
Fifty years after the Scopes trial, the ACLU found itself fighting another classroom case, the Arkansas 1981 creationism statute, which required schools to teach the biblical account of creation as a scientific alternative to evolution. The ACLU won the case in the "McLean v. Arkansas" decision.
In 1982, the ACLU became involved in a case involving the distribution of child pornography ("New York v. Ferber"). In an amicus brief, the ACLU argued that child pornography that violates the three prong obscenity test should be outlawed. However, the law was overly restrictive because it banned artistic displays and non-obscene material. The court did not adopt the ACLU's position.
During the 1988 presidential election, Vice President George H. W. Bush noted that his opponent Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis had described himself as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" and used that as evidence that Dukakis was "a strong, passionate liberal" and "out of the mainstream". The phrase subsequently was used by the organization in an advertising campaign.
1990s.
In 1990, the ACLU defended Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, whose conviction was tainted by coerced testimonya violation of his fifth amendment rightsduring the Iran–Contra affair, where Oliver North was involved in illegal weapons sales to Iran to illegally fund the Contra guerillas.
In 1997, ruling unanimously in the case of "Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union", the Supreme Court voided the anti-indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act (the CDA), finding they violated the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. In their decision, the Supreme Court held that the CDA's "use of the undefined terms 'indecent' and 'patently offensive' will provoke uncertainty among speakers about how the two standards relate to each other and just what they mean."
In 2000, Marvin Johnson, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, stated that proposed anti-spam legislation infringed on free speech by denying anonymity and by forcing spam to be labeled as such, "Standardized labeling is compelled speech." He also stated, "It's relatively simple to click and delete." The debate found the ACLU joining with the Direct Marketing Association and the Center for Democracy and Technology in 2000 in criticizing a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives. As early as 1997, the ACLU had taken a strong position that nearly all spam legislation was improper, although it has supported "opt-out" requirements in some cases. The ACLU opposed the 2003 CAN-SPAM act suggesting that it could have a chilling effect on speech in cyberspace. It has been criticized for this position.
In November 2000, 15 African-American residents of Hearne, Texas, were indicted on drug charges after being arrested in a series of "drug sweeps". The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit, "Kelly v. Paschall", on their behalf, alleging that the arrests were unlawful. The ACLU contended that 15 percent of Hearne's male African-American population aged 18 to 34 were arrested based only on the "uncorroborated word of a single unreliable confidential informant coerced by police to make cases". On May 11, 2005, the ACLU and Robertson County announced a confidential settlement of the lawsuit, an outcome which "both sides stated that they were satisfied with". The District Attorney dismissed the charges against the plaintiffs of the suit. The 2009 film "American Violet" depicts this case.
In 2000, the ACLU's Massachusetts affiliate represented the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), on first amendment grounds, in the "Curley v. NAMBLA" wrongful death civil suit. The organization was sued because a man who raped and murdered a child had visited the NAMBLA website. Also in 2000, the ACLU lost the "Boy Scouts of America v. Dale" case, which had asked the Supreme Court to require the Boy Scouts of America to drop their policy of prohibiting homosexuals from becoming Boy Scout leaders.
21st century.
Free speech.
In 2006, the ACLU of Washington State joined with a pro-gun rights organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, and prevailed in a lawsuit against the North Central Regional Library District (NCRL) in Washington for its policy of refusing to disable restrictions upon an adult patron's request. Library patrons attempting to access pro-gun web sites were blocked, and the library refused to remove the blocks. In 2012, the ACLU sued the same library system for refusing to disable temporarily, at the request of an adult patron, Internet filters which blocked access to Google Images.
In 2006, the ACLU challenged a Missouri law prohibiting picketing outside veterans' funerals. The suit was filed in support of the Westboro Baptist Church and Shirley Phelps-Roper, who were threatened with arrest. The Westboro Baptist Church is well known for its picket signs that contain messages such as "God Hates Fags", "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", and "Thank God for 9/11". The ACLU issued a statement calling the legislation a "law that infringes on Shirley Phelps-Roper's rights to religious liberty and free speech". The ACLU prevailed in the lawsuit.
The ACLU argued in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court that a decision on the constitutionality of Massachusetts law required the consideration of additional evidence because lower courts have undervalued the right to engage in sidewalk counseling. The law prohibited sidewalk counselors from approaching women outside abortion facilities and offering them alternatives to abortion but allowed escorts to speak with them and accompany them into the building. In overturning the law in "McCullen v. Coakley", the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it violated the counselors' freedom of speech and that it was viewpoint discrimination.
In 2009, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in "Citizens United v. FEC", arguing that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 violated the First Amendment right to free speech by curtailing political speech. This stance on the landmark "Citizens United" case caused considerable disagreement within the organization, resulting in a discussion about its future stance during a quarterly board meeting in 2010. On March 27, 2012, the ACLU reaffirmed its stance in support of the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" ruling, at the same time voicing support for expanded public financing of election campaigns and stating the organization would firmly oppose any future constitutional amendment limiting free speech.
In 2012, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan of Georgia, claiming that the KKK was unfairly rejected from the state's "Adopt-a-Highway" program. The ACLU prevailed in the lawsuit.
Waning interest in defending white supremacists' first amendment rights.
Beginning in 2017, some individuals claimed the ACLU was reducing its support of unpopular free speech (specifically by declining to defend speech made by conservatives) in favor of identity politics, political correctness, and progressivism. Former ACLU director Ira Glasser stated that "the ACLU might not take the Skokie case today." In the 2020 documentary "Mighty Ira", which chronicles Glasser's life and career at the ACLU, Glasser says he would defend the ACLU's decision to take the Skokie case again today if needed.
One basis of these allegations was a 2017 statement made by the ACLU president to a reporter after the death of a counter-protester during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Virginia, where Romero told a reporter that the ACLU would no longer support legal cases of activists that wish to carry guns at their protests.
Another basis for these claims was an internal ACLU memo dated June 2018, discussing factors to evaluate when deciding whether or not to take a case. The memo listed several factors to consider, including "the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values". Some analysts viewed this as a retreat from the ACLU's historically strong support of first amendment rights, regardless of whether minorities were negatively impacted by the speech, citing the ACLU's past support for certain KKK and Nazi legal cases. The memo's authors stated that the memo did not define a change in official ACLU policy, but was intended as a guideline to assist ACLU affiliates in deciding which cases to take. In 2021, the ACLU responded to the criticisms by denying that they are reducing their support for unpopular First Amendment causes and listing 27 cases from 2017 to 2021 where the ACLU supported a party holding an unpopular or repugnant viewpoint. The cases included one which challenged college restrictions on hate speech; a case defending a Catholic school's right to discriminate in hiring; and a case that defended antisemitic protesters who marched outside a synagogue.
LGBTQ issues.
In March 2004, the ACLU, along with Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, sued the state of California on behalf of six same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses. That case, "Woo v. Lockyer", was eventually consolidated into "In re Marriage Cases", the California Supreme Court case which led to same-sex marriage being available in that state from June 16, 2008, until Proposition 8 was passed on November 4, 2008. The ACLU, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights then challenged Proposition 8 and won.
In 2010, the ACLU of Illinois was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame as a Friend of the Community.
In 2011, the ACLU started its Don't Filter Me project, countering LGBT-related Internet censorship in public schools in the United States.
On January 7, 2013, the ACLU settled with the federal government in "Collins v. United States" that provided for the payment of full separation pay to servicemembers discharged under "don't ask, don't tell" since November 10, 2004, who had previously been granted only half that. Some 181 were expected to receive about $13,000 each.
In 2021, the ACLU tweeted a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the subject of pregnancy, replacing gender-specific words with bracketed gender-neutral words. The president of the ACLU later apologized for the changes to the quote, explaining that it was a good-faith mistake by the ACLU's media team, attempting to address the fact that there are people who seek abortions who do not identify as women.
In 2021, the ACLU filed a brief siding with a school district that had a policy of using preferred pronouns for transgender students. Some analysts felt this was a retreat from the ACLU's historical defense of the first amendment because the ACLU was opposing the teachers who were disciplined for refusing to use the preferred pronouns.
Second amendment.
In light of the Supreme Court's "Heller" decision recognizing that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms, ACLU of Nevada took a position of supporting "the individual's right to bear arms subject to constitutionally permissible regulations" and pledged to "defend this right as it defends other constitutional rights". In 2021, the ACLU supported the position that the Second Amendment was originally written to ensure that Southern states could use militias to suppress slave uprisings, and that anti-Blackness ensured its inclusion in the Bill of Rights.
Anti-terrorism issues.
After the September 11 attacks, the federal government instituted a broad range of new measures to combat terrorism, including the passage of the Patriot Act. The ACLU challenged many of the measures, claiming that they violated rights regarding due process, privacy, illegal searches, and cruel and unusual punishment. An ACLU policy statement states:
During the ensuing debate regarding the proper balance of civil liberties and security, the membership of the ACLU increased by 20%, bringing the group's total enrollment to 330,000. The growth continued, and by August 2008 ACLU membership was greater than 500,000. It remained at that level through 2011.
The ACLU has been a vocal opponent of the Patriot Act of 2001, the PATRIOT 2 Act of 2003, and associated legislation made in response to the threat of domestic terrorism. In response to a requirement of the USA PATRIOT Act, the ACLU withdrew from the Combined Federal Campaign charity drive. The campaign required ACLU employees to be checked against a federal anti-terrorism watch list. The ACLU has stated that it would "reject $500,000 in contributions from private individuals rather than submit to a government 'blacklist' policy".
In 2004, the ACLU sued the federal government in "American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft" on behalf of Nicholas Merrill, owner of an Internet service provider. Under the provisions of the Patriot Act, the government had issued national security letters to Merrill to compel him to provide private Internet access information from some of his customers. In addition, the government placed a gag order on Merrill, forbidding him from discussing the matter with anyone.
In January 2006, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, "ACLU v. NSA", in a federal district court in Michigan, challenging government spying in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. On August 17, 2006, that court ruled that the warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately. However, the order was stayed pending an appeal. The Bush administration did suspend the program while the appeal was being heard. In February 2008, the US Supreme Court turned down an appeal from the ACLU to let it pursue a lawsuit against the program that began shortly after the September 11 terror attacks.
The ACLU and other organizations also filed separate lawsuits against telecommunications companies. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in Illinois ("Terkel v. AT&T"), which was dismissed because of the state secrets privilege and two others in California requesting injunctions against AT&T and Verizon. On August 10, 2006, the lawsuits against the telecommunications companies were transferred to a federal judge in San Francisco.
The ACLU represents a Muslim-American who was detained but never accused of a crime in "Ashcroft v. al-Kidd", a civil suit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft. In January 2010, the American military released the names of 645 detainees held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan, modifying its long-held position against publicizing such information. This list was prompted by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in September 2009 by the ACLU, whose lawyers had also requested detailed information about conditions, rules, and regulations.
The ACLU has also criticized targeted killings of American citizens who fight against the United States. In 2011, the ACLU criticized the killing of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on the basis that it was a violation of his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
On August 10, 2020, in an opinion article for "USA Today" by Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU called for the dismantling of the United States Department of Homeland Security over the deployment of federal forces in July 2020 during the George Floyd protests. On August 26, 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven protesters and three veterans following the protests in Portland, Oregon, which accused the Trump Administration of using excessive force and unlawful arrests with federal officers.
Trump administration.
Following Donald Trump's election as president on November 8, 2016, the ACLU responded on Twitter by saying: "Should President-elect Donald Trump attempt to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we'll see him in court." On January 27, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order indefinitely barring "Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen". The ACLU responded by filing a lawsuit against the ban on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who had been detained at JFK International Airport. On January 28, 2017, District Court Judge Ann Donnelly granted a temporary injunction against the immigration order, saying it was difficult to see any harm from allowing the newly arrived immigrants to remain in the country.
In response to Trump's order, the ACLU raised more than $24 million from more than 350,000 individual online donations in two days. This amounted to six times what the ACLU normally receives in online donations in a year. Celebrities donating included Chris Sacca (who offered to match other people's donations and ultimately gave $150,000), Rosie O'Donnell, Judd Apatow, Sia, John Legend, and Adele. The number of members of the ACLU doubled in the time from the election to end of January to 1 million.
Grants and contributions increased from US$106,628,381 reported by the 2016 year-end income statement to $274,104,575 by the 2017 year-end statement. The segment's primary revenue source came from individual contributions in response to the Trump presidency's infringements on civil liberties. The surge in donations more than doubled the total support and revenue of the non-profit organization year over year from 2016 to 2017. Besides filing more lawsuits than during previous presidential administrations, the ACLU has spent more money on advertisements and messaging as well, weighing in on elections and pressing political concerns. This increased public profile has drawn some accusations that the organization has become more politically partisan than in previous decades.
Miscellaneous.
During the 2004 trial regarding allegations of Rush Limbaugh's drug abuse, the ACLU argued that his privacy should not have been compromised by allowing law enforcement examination of his medical records.
In June 2004, the school district in Dover, Pennsylvania, required that its high school biology students listen to a statement that asserted that the theory of evolution is not fact and mentioning intelligent design as an alternative theory. Several parents called the ACLU to complain because they believed that the school was promoting a religious idea in the classroom and violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The ACLU, joined by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, represented the parents in a lawsuit against the school district. After a lengthy trial, Judge John E. Jones III ruled in favor of the parents in the "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District" decision, finding that intelligent design is not science and permanently forbidding the Dover school system from teaching intelligent design in science classes.
In April 2006, Edward Jones and the ACLU sued the City of Los Angeles, on behalf of Robert Lee Purrie and five other homeless people, for the city's violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, and Article I, sections 7 and 17 of the California Constitution (supporting due process and equal protection, and prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment). The Court ruled in favor of the ACLU, stating that "the LAPD cannot arrest people for sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks in Skid Row." Enforcement of section 41.18(d) 24 hours a day against persons with nowhere else to sit, lie, or sleep other than on public streets and sidewalks is breaking these amendments. The Court said the anti-camping ordinance is "one of the most restrictive municipal laws regulating public spaces in the United States". Jones and the ACLU wanted a compromise in which the LAPD is barred from enforcing section 41.18(d) (arrest, seizure, and imprisonment) in Skid Row between 9:00 p.m. and 6:30 am. The compromise plan permitted the homeless to sleep on the sidewalk, provided they were not "within 10 feet of any business or residential entrance" and only between these hours. One of the motivations for the compromise was the shortage of space in the prison system. Downtown development business interests and the Central City Association (CCA) were against the settlement. Police Chief William Bratton said the case had slowed the police effort to fight crime and clean up Skid Row and that when he was allowed to clean up Skid Row, real estate profited. On September 20, 2006, the Los Angeles City Council voted to reject the compromise. On October 3, 2006, police arrested Skid Row's transients for sleeping on the streets for the first time in months.
In 2009, the Oregon ACLU opposed changing state law to permit teachers to wear religious clothing in classrooms, citing the separation of church and state principles. The ACLU's efforts were not successful.
In 2018, the ACLU conceived and ghostwrote an op-ed in "The Washington Post" in which Amber Heard accused her ex-husband Johnny Depp of domestic abuse, leading Depp to sue Heard for defamation over the op-ed in the 2022 trial "Depp v. Heard". The ACLU testified in the trial that they wrote the op-ed in exchange for a $3.5 million donation pledge from Heard, and timed its release to capitalize on the press from Heard's newly released film "Aquaman". The ACLU demanded $86,000 from Depp for the cost of producing documents for the case. At the end of the trial, the jury ruled that Heard had defamed Depp with actual malice in all three counts related to the "Washington Post" op-ed.
In June 2020, the ACLU sued the federal government for denying Paycheck Protection Program loans to business owners with criminal backgrounds.
|
1955 | Adobe Inc. | Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format (PDF); and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription software as a service (SaaS) offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management (CXM).
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. Adobe later developed animation and multimedia through its acquisition of Macromedia, from which it acquired Macromedia Flash; video editing and compositing software with Adobe Premiere, later known as Adobe Premiere Pro; low-code web development with Adobe Muse; and a suite of software for digital marketing management.
As of 2022, Adobe has more than 26,000 employees worldwide. Adobe also has major development operations in the United States in Newton, New York City, Arden Hills, Lehi, Seattle, Austin and San Francisco. It also has major development operations in Noida and Bangalore in India.
History.
The company was started in John Warnock's garage. The name of the company, Adobe, comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, a stream which ran behind Warnock's house. That creek is so named because of the type of clay found there (Adobe being a Spanish word for "Mudbrick"), which alludes to the creative nature of the company's software. Adobe's corporate logo features a stylized "A" and was designed by graphic designer Marva Warnock, John Warnock's wife. In 2020, the company updated its visual identity, including updating its logo to a single color, an all-red logo.
Steve Jobs attempted to buy the company for $5 million in 1982, but Warnock and Geschke refused. Their investors urged them to work something out with Jobs, so they agreed to sell him shares worth 19 percent of the company. Jobs paid a five-times multiple of their company's valuation at the time, plus a five-year license fee for PostScript, in advance. The purchase and advance made Adobe the first company in the history of Silicon Valley to become profitable in its first year.
Warnock and Geschke considered various business options including a copy-service business and a turnkey system for office printing. Then they chose to focus on developing specialized printing software and created the Adobe PostScript page description language.
PostScript was the first truly international standard for computer printing as it included algorithms describing the letter-forms of many languages. Adobe added kanji printer products in 1988. Warnock and Geschke were also able to bolster the credibility of PostScript by connecting with a typesetting manufacturer. They weren't able to work with Compugraphic, but then worked with Linotype to license the Helvetica and Times Roman fonts (through the Linotron 100). By 1987, PostScript had become the industry-standard printer language with more than 400 third-party software programs and licensing agreements with 19 printer companies.
Warnock described the language as "extensible" in its ability to apply graphic arts standards to office printing.
Adobe's first products after PostScript were digital fonts which they released in a proprietary format called Type 1, worked on by Bill Paxton after he left Stanford. Apple subsequently developed a competing standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the font's outlines, and licensed it to Microsoft.
In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market with Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew out of the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers.
Adobe entered the NASDAQ Composite index in August 1986. Its revenue has grown from roughly $1 billion in 1999 to $4 billion in 2012. Adobe's fiscal years run from December to November. For example, the 2020 fiscal year ended on November 27, 2020.
In 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, a graphics editing program for the Macintosh called Photoshop. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe and soon dominated the market.
In 1993, Adobe introduced PDF, the Portable Document Format, and its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. PDF is now an International Standard: ISO 32000-1:2008.
In December 1991, Adobe released Adobe Premiere, which Adobe rebranded as Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. In 1992, Adobe acquired OCR Systems, Inc. In 1994, Adobe acquired the Aldus Corporation and added PageMaker and After Effects to its product line later in the year; it also controls the TIFF file format. In the same year, Adobe acquired LaserTools Corp and Compution Inc. In 1995, Adobe added FrameMaker, the long-document DTP application, to its product line after Adobe acquired Frame Technology Corp. In 1996, Adobe acquired Ares Software Corp. In 2002, Adobe acquired Canadian company Accelio (also known as JetForm).
In May 2003, Adobe purchased audio editing and multitrack recording software Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium Software for $16.5 million, as well as a large loop library called "Loopology". Adobe then renamed Cool Edit Pro to "Adobe Audition" and included it in the Creative Suite.
On December 3, 2005, Adobe acquired its main rival, Macromedia, in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion, adding ColdFusion, Contribute, Captivate, Breeze (rebranded as Adobe Connect), Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FlashPaper, Flex, FreeHand, HomeSite, JRun, Presenter, and Authorware to Adobe's product line.
Adobe released Adobe Media Player in April 2008. On April 27, Adobe discontinued development and sales of its older HTML/web development software, GoLive, in favor of Dreamweaver. Adobe offered a discount on Dreamweaver for GoLive users and supports those who still use GoLive with online tutorials and migration assistance. On June 1, Adobe launched Acrobat.com, a series of web applications geared for collaborative work. Creative Suite 4, which includes Design, Web, Production Premium, and Master Collection came out in October 2008 in six configurations at prices from about US$1,700 to $2,500 or by individual application. The Windows version of Photoshop includes 64-bit processing. On December 3, 2008, Adobe laid off 600 of its employees (8% of the worldwide staff) citing the weak economic environment.
On September 15, 2009, Adobe Systems announced that it would acquire online marketing and web analytics company Omniture for $1.8 billion. The deal was completed on October 23, 2009. Former Omniture products were integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud.
On November 10, 2009, the company laid off a further 680 employees.
Adobe's 2010 was marked by continuing front-and-back arguments with Apple over the latter's non-support for Adobe Flash on its iPhone, iPad and other products. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed that Flash was not reliable or secure enough, while Adobe executives have argued that Apple wishes to maintain control over the iOS platform. In April 2010, Steve Jobs published a post titled "Thoughts on Flash" where he outlined his thoughts on Flash and the rise of HTML 5.
In July 2010, Adobe bought Day Software integrating their line of CQ Products: WCM, DAM, SOCO, and Mobile
In January 2011, Adobe acquired DemDex, Inc. with the intent of adding DemDex's audience-optimization software to its online marketing suite. At Photoshop World 2011, Adobe unveiled a new mobile photo service. Carousel is a new application for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that uses Photoshop Lightroom technology to allow users to adjust and fine-tune images on all platforms. Carousel will also allow users to automatically sync, share and browse photos. The service was later renamed to "Adobe Revel".
In October 2011, Adobe acquired Nitobi Software, the makers of the mobile application development framework "PhoneGap". As part of the acquisition, the source code of PhoneGap was submitted to the Apache Foundation, where it became Apache Cordova.
In November 2011, Adobe announced that they would cease development of Flash for mobile devices following version 11.1. Instead, it would focus on HTML 5 for mobile devices. In December 2011, Adobe announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Efficient Frontier.
In December 2012, Adobe opened a new corporate campus in Lehi, Utah.
In 2013, Adobe endured a major security breach. Vast portions of the source code for the company's software were stolen and posted online and over 150 million records of Adobe's customers have been made readily available for download. In 2012, about 40 million sets of payment card information were compromised by a hack at Adobe.
A class-action lawsuit alleging that the company suppressed employee compensation was filed against Adobe, and three other Silicon Valley-based companies in a California federal district court in 2013. In May 2014, it was revealed the four companies, Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel had reached agreement with the plaintiffs, 64,000 employees of the four companies, to pay a sum of $324.5 million to settle the suit.
In March 2018, at Adobe Summit, the company and NVIDIA publicized a key association to quickly upgrade their industry-driving AI and profound learning innovations. Expanding on years of coordinated effort, the organizations will work to streamline the Adobe Sensei AI and machine learning structure for NVIDIA GPUs. The joint effort will speed time to showcase and enhance the execution of new Sensei-powered services for Adobe Creative Cloud and Experience Cloud clients and engineers.
Adobe and NVIDIA have co-operated for over 10 years on empowering GPU quickening for a wide arrangement of Adobe's creative and computerized encounter items. This incorporates Sensei-powered features, for example, auto lip-sync in Adobe Character Animator CC and face-aware editing in Photoshop CC, and also cloud-based AI/ML items and features, for example, picture investigation for Adobe Stock and Lightroom CC and auto-labeling in Adobe Experience Supervisor.
In May 2018, Adobe stated they would buy e-commerce services provider Magento Commerce from private equity firm Permira for $1.68 billion. This deal will help bolster its Experience Cloud business, which provides services including analytics, advertising, and marketing. The deal is closed on June 19, 2018.
In September 2018, Adobe announced its acquisition of marketing automation software company Marketo.
In October 2018, Adobe officially changed its name from Adobe Systems Incorporated to Adobe Inc.
In January 2019, Adobe announced its acquisition of 3D texturing company Allegorithmic.
In 2020, the annual Adobe Summit was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event took place online and saw over 21 million total video views and over 2.2 million visits to the event website.
The software giant has imposed a ban on the political ads features on its digital advert sales platform as the United States presidential elections approach.
On November 9, 2020, Adobe announced it will spend US$1.5 billion to acquire Workfront, a provider of marketing collaboration software. The acquisition was completed in early December 2020.
On August 19, 2021, Adobe announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Frame.io, a leading cloud-based video collaboration platform. The transaction is valued at $1.275 billion and closed during the fourth quarter of Adobe's 2021 fiscal year.
On September 15, 2021, Adobe Inc formally announced that it will add payment services to its e-commerce platform this year, allowing merchants on their platform a method to accept payments including credit cards and PayPal.
In September 2022, Adobe announced that it had agreed to buy the software design start-up Figma for $20billion. The cloud-based design software from Figma directly competes with Adobe XD. The deal faces regulatory scrutiny. In February 2023, it was announced the European Commission would review the acquisition under European Union merger regulation (EUMR).
Products.
Adobe's currently supported roster of software, online services and file formats comprises the following ():
Reception.
Since 2000, Fortune has recognized Adobe as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. In 2021, Adobe was ranked 16th. Glassdoor recognized Adobe as a Best Place to Work. In October 2021, Fast Company included Adobe on their Brands That Matter list. In October 2008, Adobe Systems Canada Inc. was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc. and was featured in "Maclean's" newsmagazine.
Adobe received a five-star rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation with regards to its handling of government data requests in 2017.
In 2022, Adobe was listed as one of the "Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion" by the Disability Equality Index (DEI).
Criticisms.
Pricing.
Adobe has been criticized for its pricing practices, with retail prices being up to twice as much in non-US countries. For example, it is significantly cheaper to pay for a return airfare ticket to the United States and purchase one particular collection of Adobe's software there than to buy it locally in Australia.
After Adobe revealed the pricing for the Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, which was £1,000 higher for European customers, a petition to protest over "unfair pricing" was published and signed by 10,000 users. In June 2009, Adobe further increased its prices in the UK by 10% in spite of weakening of the pound against the dollar, and UK users were not allowed to buy from the US store.
Adobe's Reader and Flash programs were listed on "The 10 most hated programs of all time" article by "TechRadar".
Security.
Hackers have exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe programs, such as Adobe Reader, to gain unauthorized access to computers. Adobe's Flash Player has also been criticized for, among other things, suffering from performance, memory usage and security problems (see criticism of Flash Player). A report by security researchers from Kaspersky Lab criticized Adobe for producing the products having top 10 security vulnerabilities.
Observers noted that Adobe was spying on its customers by including spyware in the Creative Suite 3 software and quietly sending user data to a firm named Omniture. When users became aware, Adobe explained what the suspicious software did and admitted that they: "could and should do a better job taking security concerns into account". When a security flaw was later discovered in Photoshop CS5, Adobe sparked outrage by saying it would leave the flaw unpatched, so anyone who wanted to use the software securely would have to pay for an upgrade. Following a fierce backlash Adobe decided to provide the software patch.
Adobe has been criticized for pushing unwanted software including third-party browser toolbars and free virus scanners, usually as part of the Flash update process, and for pushing a third-party scareware program designed to scare users into paying for unneeded system repairs.
Customer data breach.
On October 3, 2013, the company initially revealed that 2.9 million customers' sensitive and personal data was stolen in a security breach which included encrypted credit card information. Adobe later admitted that 38 million active users have been affected and the attackers obtained access to their IDs and encrypted passwords, as well as to many inactive Adobe accounts. The company did not make it clear if all the personal information was encrypted, such as email addresses and physical addresses, though data privacy laws in 44 states require this information to be encrypted.
A 3.8 GB file stolen from Adobe and containing 152 million usernames, reversibly encrypted passwords and unencrypted password hints was posted on AnonNews.org. LastPass, a password security firm, said that Adobe failed to use best practices for securing the passwords and has not salted them. Another security firm, Sophos, showed that Adobe used a weak encryption method permitting the recovery of a lot of information with very little effort. According to IT expert Simon Bain, Adobe has failed its customers and 'should hang their heads in shame'.
Many of the credit cards were tied to the Creative Cloud software-by-subscription service. Adobe offered its affected US customers a free membership in a credit monitoring service, but no similar arrangements have been made for non-US customers. When a data breach occurs in the US, penalties depend on the state where the victim resides, not where the company is based.
After stealing the customers' data, cyber-thieves also accessed Adobe's source code repository, likely in mid-August 2013. Because hackers acquired copies of the source code of Adobe proprietary products, they could find and exploit any potential weaknesses in its security, computer experts warned. Security researcher Alex Holden, chief information security officer of Hold Security, characterized this Adobe breach, which affected Acrobat, ColdFusion and numerous other applications, as "one of the worst in US history". Adobe also announced that hackers stole parts of the source code of Photoshop, which according to commentators could allow programmers to copy its engineering techniques and would make it easier to pirate Adobe's expensive products.
Published on a server of a Russian-speaking hacker group, the "disclosure of encryption algorithms, other security schemes, and software vulnerabilities can be used to bypass protections for individual and corporate data" and may have opened the gateway to new generation zero-day attacks. Hackers already used ColdFusion exploits to make off with usernames and encrypted passwords of PR Newswire's customers, which has been tied to the Adobe security breach. They also used a ColdFusion exploit to breach Washington state court and expose up to 200,000 Social Security numbers.
Anti-competitive practices.
In 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus Corp., a software vendor that sold FreeHand, a competing product. FreeHand was direct competition to Adobe Illustrator, Adobe's flagship vector-graphics editor. The Federal Trade Commission intervened and forced Adobe to sell FreeHand back to Altsys, and also banned Adobe from buying back FreeHand or any similar program for the next 10 years (1994–2004). Altsys was then bought by Macromedia, which released versions 5 to 11. When Adobe acquired Macromedia in December 2005, it stalled development of FreeHand in 2007, effectively rendering it obsolete. With FreeHand and Illustrator, Adobe controlled the only two products that compete in the professional illustration program market for Macintosh operating systems.
In 2011, a group of 5,000 FreeHand graphic designers convened under the banner "Free FreeHand", and filed a civil antitrust complaint in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Adobe. The suit alleged that "Adobe has violated federal and state antitrust laws by abusing its dominant position in the professional vector graphic illustration software market" and that "Adobe has engaged in a series of exclusionary and anti-competitive acts and strategies designed to kill FreeHand, the dominant competitor to Adobe's Illustrator software product, instead of competing on the basis of product merit according to the principals of free market capitalism." Adobe had no response to the claims and the lawsuit was eventually settled. The FreeHand community believes Adobe should release the product to an open-source community if it cannot update it internally.
, on its FreeHand product page, Adobe stated, "While we recognize FreeHand has a loyal customer base, we encourage users to migrate to the new Adobe Illustrator CS4 software which supports both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs and Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista." , the FreeHand page no longer exists; instead, it simply redirects to the Illustrator page. Adobe's software FTP server still contains a directory for FreeHand, but it is empty.
Cancellation fees.
In April 2021, Adobe received criticism from Twitter users for the company's cancellation fees after a customer shared a tweet showing they had been charged a $291.45 cancellation fee for their Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Many also showed their cancellation fees for Adobe Creative Cloud, with this leading to many encouraging piracy of Adobe products and/or purchase of alternatives with lower prices or using free and open-source software instead. Furthermore, there have been reports that with changing subscriptions it is possible to avoid paying this fee.
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1957 | Alexander Technique | The Alexander Technique, named after its developer Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869–1955), is a type of alternative therapy based on the idea that poor posture gives rise to a range of health problems. The American National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health classifies it as a "psychological and physical" complementary approach to health when used "together with" mainstream methods. When used "in place of" conventional medicine, it's considered "alternative".
Alexander began developing his technique's principles in the 1890s in an attempt to address his own voice loss during public speaking. He credited his method with allowing him to pursue his passion for performing Shakespearean recitations.
Proponents and teachers of the Alexander Technique believe the technique can address a variety of health conditions, but there is a lack of research to support the claims. , the UK National Health Service cites evidence which suggests that the Alexander Technique may be helpful for long-term back pain and for long-term neck pain, and that it could help people cope with Parkinson's disease. Both the American health-insurance company Aetna and the Australian Department of Health have conducted reviews and concluded that there is insufficient evidence for the technique's health claims to warrant insurance coverage.
Method.
The Alexander Technique is most commonly taught in a series of private lessons which may last from 30 minutes to an hour. The number of lessons varies widely, depending on the student's needs and level of interest. Students are often performers, such as actors, dancers, musicians, athletes and public speakers, people who work on computers, or those who are in frequent pain for other reasons. Instructors observe their students, and provide both verbal and gentle manual guidance to help students learn how to move with better poise and less strain. Sessions include chair work – often in front of a mirror – during which the instructor will guide the student while the student stands, sits and walks, learning to move efficiently while maintaining a comfortable relationship between the head, neck, and spine, and table work or physical manipulation.
In the United Kingdom, there is no regulation for who can offer Alexander Technique services. Professional organisations do exist, however, typically offering 3 year courses to people becoming instructors.
History.
The Alexander Technique is based on the personal observations of Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869–1955). Alexander's career as an actor was hampered by recurrent bouts of laryngitis, but he found he could overcome it by focusing on his discomfort and tension, and relaxing. Alexander also thought posture could be improved if one became more conscious of one's own bodily movement.
While on a recital tour in New Zealand (1895), Alexander came to believe in the wider significance of improved carriage for overall physical functioning, although evidence from his own publications appears to indicate it happened less systematically and over a long period of time.
Alexander did not originally conceive of his technique as therapy, but it has become a form of alternative medicine.
When considering how to classify the Alexander Technique in relation to mainstream medicine, some sources describe it as alternative and/or complementary, depending on whether it is used alone or with mainstream methods. The American National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health classifies it as a "psychological and physical" complementary approach to health when used with mainstream methods. When used "in place of" conventional medicine, it's considered "alternative".<ref name="NCCIH3/10/2023"></ref>
Influence.
The American philosopher and educator John Dewey became impressed with the Alexander Technique after his headaches, neck pains, blurred vision, and stress symptoms largely improved during the time he used Alexander's advice to change his posture. In 1923, Dewey wrote the introduction to Alexander's "Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual".
Fritz Perls, who originated Gestalt therapy, credited Alexander as an inspiration for his psychological work.
Uses.
The Alexander Technique is used as a therapy for stress-related chronic conditions. It does not attempt to cure the underlying cause, but to teach people how to avoid bad habits which might exacerbate their condition.
The Technique is used as an alternative treatment to improve both voice and posture for people in the performing arts. it was on the curriculum of prominent Western performing arts institutions.
According to Alexander Technique instructor Michael J. Gelb, people tend to study the Alexander Technique for reasons of personal development.
Health effects.
The UK National Health Service says that advocates of the Alexander Technique made claims for it that were not supported by evidence, but that there was evidence suggesting that it might help with chronic back or neck pain, and Parkinson disease. There was limited evidence for chronic pain, stammering, and balance skills in older people. There was no good evidence of benefit for other conditions including asthma, headaches, osteoarthritis, difficulty sleeping, and stress."
A review published in "BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine" in 2014 focused on "the evidence for the effectiveness of AT sessions on musicians' performance, anxiety, respiratory function and posture" concluded that "evidence from RCTs and CTs suggests that AT sessions may improve performance anxiety in musicians. Effects on music performance, respiratory function and posture yet remain inconclusive."
A 2012 Cochrane systematic review found that there is no good evidence that the Alexander Technique is effective for treating asthma, and randomized clinical trials are needed in order to assess the effectiveness of this type of treatment approach.
A review by Aetna last updated in 2021 stated: "Aetna considers the following alternative medicine interventions experimental and investigational because there is inadequate evidence in the peer-reviewed published medical literature of their effectiveness." The Alexander Technique is included in that list.
A 2015 review, conducted for the Australian Department of Health in order to determine what services the Australian government should pay for, examined clinical trials published to date and found that "overall, the evidence was limited by the small number of participants in the intervention arms, wide confidence intervals or a lack of replication of results." It concluded that "the Alexander Technique may improve short-term pain and disability in people with low back pain, but the longer-term effects remain uncertain. For all other clinical conditions, the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique was deemed to be uncertain, due to insufficient evidence." It also noted that "evidence for the safety of Alexander Technique was lacking, with most trials not reporting on this outcome." Subsequently in 2017, the Australian government named the Alexander Technique as a practice that would not qualify for insurance subsidy, saying this step would "ensure taxpayer funds are expended appropriately and not directed to therapies lacking evidence".
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1960 | Andrea Alciato | Andrea Alciato (8 May 149212 January 1550), commonly known as Alciati (Andreas Alciatus), was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists.
Biography.
Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, near Milan, and settled in France in the early 16th century. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus and accumulated a sylloge of Roman inscriptions from Milan and its territories, as part of his preparation for his history of Milan, written in 1504–05.
Among his several appointments, Alciati taught Law at the University of Bourges between 1529 and 1535. It was Guillaume Budé who encouraged the call to Bourges at the time. Pierre Bayle, in his General Dictionary (article "Alciat"), relates that he greatly increased his salary there, by the "stratagem" of arranging to get a job offer from the University of Bologna and using it as a negotiation point .
Alciati is most famous for his "Emblemata," published in dozens of editions from 1531 onward. This collection of short Latin verse texts and accompanying woodcuts created an entire European genre, the emblem book, which attained enormous popularity in continental Europe and Great Britain.
Alciati died at Pavia in 1550.
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1962 | Apparent magnitude | Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's light caused by interstellar dust along the line of sight to the observer.
The word "magnitude" in astronomy, unless stated otherwise, usually refers to a celestial object's apparent magnitude. The magnitude scale dates back to the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, whose star catalog listed stars from 1st magnitude (brightest) to 6th magnitude (dimmest). The modern scale was mathematically defined in a way to closely match this historical system.
The scale is reverse logarithmic: the brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. A difference of 1.0 in magnitude corresponds to a brightness ratio of formula_1, or about 2.512. For example, a star of magnitude 2.0 is 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude 3.0, 6.31 times as bright as a star of magnitude 4.0, and 100 times as bright as one of magnitude 7.0.
Differences in astronomical magnitudes can also be related to another logarithmic ratio scale, the decibel: an increase of one astronomical magnitude is exactly equal to a decrease of 4 decibels (dB).
The brightest astronomical objects have negative apparent magnitudes: for example, Venus at −4.2 or Sirius at −1.46. The faintest stars visible with the naked eye on the darkest night have apparent magnitudes of about +6.5, though this varies depending on a person's eyesight and with altitude and atmospheric conditions. The apparent magnitudes of known objects range from the Sun at −26.832 to objects in deep Hubble Space Telescope images of magnitude +31.5.
The measurement of apparent magnitude is called photometry. Photometric measurements are made in the ultraviolet, visible, or infrared wavelength bands using standard passband filters belonging to photometric systems such as the UBV system or the Strömgren "uvbyβ" system.
Absolute magnitude is a measure of the intrinsic luminosity of a celestial object, rather than its apparent brightness, and is expressed on the same reverse logarithmic scale. Absolute magnitude is defined as the apparent magnitude that a star or object would have if it were observed from a distance of . Therefore, it is of greater use in stellar astrophysics since it refers to a property of a star regardless of how close it is to Earth. But in observational astronomy and popular stargazing, unqualified references to "magnitude" are understood to mean apparent magnitude.
Amateur astronomers commonly express the darkness of the sky in terms of limiting magnitude, i.e. the apparent magnitude of the faintest star they can see with the naked eye. This can be useful as a way of monitoring the spread of light pollution.
Apparent magnitude is really a measure of illuminance, which can also be measured in photometric units such as lux.
History.
The scale used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six "magnitudes". The brightest stars in the night sky were said to be of first magnitude ( = 1), whereas the faintest were of sixth magnitude ( = 6), which is the limit of human visual perception (without the aid of a telescope). Each grade of magnitude was considered twice the brightness of the following grade (a logarithmic scale), although that ratio was subjective as no photodetectors existed. This rather crude scale for the brightness of stars was popularized by Ptolemy in his "Almagest" and is generally believed to have originated with Hipparchus. This cannot be proved or disproved because Hipparchus's original star catalogue is lost. The only preserved text by Hipparchus himself (a commentary to Aratus) clearly documents that he did not have a system to describe brightness with numbers: He always uses terms like "big" or "small", "bright" or "faint" or even descriptions such as "visible at full moon".
In 1856, Norman Robert Pogson formalized the system by defining a first magnitude star as a star that is 100 times as bright as a sixth-magnitude star, thereby establishing the logarithmic scale still in use today. This implies that a star of magnitude is about 2.512 times as bright as a star of magnitude . This figure, the fifth root of 100, became known as Pogson's Ratio. The zero point of Pogson's scale was originally defined by assigning Polaris a magnitude of exactly 2. Astronomers later discovered that Polaris is slightly variable, so they switched to Vega as the standard reference star, assigning the brightness of Vega as the definition of zero magnitude at any specified wavelength.
Apart from small corrections, the brightness of Vega still serves as the definition of zero magnitude for visible and near infrared wavelengths, where its spectral energy distribution (SED) closely approximates that of a black body for a temperature of . However, with the advent of infrared astronomy it was revealed that Vega's radiation includes an infrared excess presumably due to a circumstellar disk consisting of dust at warm temperatures (but much cooler than the star's surface). At shorter (e.g. visible) wavelengths, there is negligible emission from dust at these temperatures. However, in order to properly extend the magnitude scale further into the infrared, this peculiarity of Vega should not affect the definition of the magnitude scale. Therefore, the magnitude scale was extrapolated to "all" wavelengths on the basis of the black-body radiation curve for an ideal stellar surface at uncontaminated by circumstellar radiation. On this basis the spectral irradiance (usually expressed in janskys) for the zero magnitude point, as a function of wavelength, can be computed. Small deviations are specified between systems using measurement apparatuses developed independently so that data obtained by different astronomers can be properly compared, but of greater practical importance is the definition of magnitude not at a single wavelength but applying to the response of standard spectral filters used in photometry over various wavelength bands.
With the modern magnitude systems, brightness over a very wide range is specified according to the logarithmic definition detailed below, using this zero reference. In practice such apparent magnitudes do not exceed 30 (for detectable measurements). The brightness of Vega is exceeded by four stars in the night sky at visible wavelengths (and more at infrared wavelengths) as well as the bright planets Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, and these must be described by "negative" magnitudes. For example, Sirius, the brightest star of the celestial sphere, has a magnitude of −1.4 in the visible. Negative magnitudes for other very bright astronomical objects can be found in the table below.
Astronomers have developed other photometric zero point systems as alternatives to the Vega system. The most widely used is the AB magnitude system, in which photometric zero points are based on a hypothetical reference spectrum having constant flux per unit frequency interval, rather than using a stellar spectrum or blackbody curve as the reference. The AB magnitude zero point is defined such that an object's AB and Vega-based magnitudes will be approximately equal in the V filter band.
Measurement.
Precision measurement of magnitude (photometry) requires calibration of the photographic or (usually) electronic detection apparatus. This generally involves contemporaneous observation, under identical conditions, of standard stars whose magnitude using that spectral filter is accurately known. Moreover, as the amount of light actually received by a telescope is reduced due to transmission through the Earth's atmosphere, the airmasses of the target and calibration stars must be taken into account. Typically one would observe a few different stars of known magnitude which are sufficiently similar. Calibrator stars close in the sky to the target are favoured (to avoid large differences in the atmospheric paths). If those stars have somewhat different zenith angles (altitudes) then a correction factor as a function of airmass can be derived and applied to the airmass at the target's position. Such calibration obtains the brightness as would be observed from above the atmosphere, where apparent magnitude is defined.
For those new to astronomy, Apparent Magnitude scales with the received power (as opposed to amplitude), so for astrophotography you can use the relative brightness measure to scale the exposure times between stars. Apparent magnitude also adds up (integrates) over the entire object, so it is focus independent. This needs to be taken into account when scaling exposure times for objects with significant apparent size, like the Sun, Moon and planets. For example, directly scaling the exposure time from the Moon to the Sun works, because they are approximately the same size in the sky, but scaling the exposure from the Moon to Saturn would result in an overexposure, if the image of Saturn takes up a smaller area on your sensor than the Moon did (at the same magnification or more generally f/#).
Calculations.
The dimmer an object appears, the higher the numerical value given to its magnitude, with a difference of 5 magnitudes corresponding to a brightness factor of exactly 100. Therefore, the magnitude , in the spectral band , would be given by
formula_2
which is more commonly expressed in terms of common (base-10) logarithms as
formula_3
where is the observed irradiance using spectral filter , and is the reference flux (zero-point) for that photometric filter. Since an increase of 5 magnitudes corresponds to a decrease in brightness by a factor of exactly 100, each magnitude increase implies a decrease in brightness by the factor formula_4 (Pogson's ratio). Inverting the above formula, a magnitude difference implies a brightness factor of
formula_5
Example: Sun and Moon.
"What is the ratio in brightness between the Sun and the full Moon?"
The apparent magnitude of the Sun is −26.832 (brighter), and the mean magnitude of the full moon is −12.74 (dimmer).
Difference in magnitude:
formula_6
Brightness factor:
formula_7
The Sun appears about times as bright as the full Moon.
Magnitude addition.
Sometimes one might wish to add brightness. For example, photometry on closely separated double stars may only be able to produce a measurement of their combined light output. To find the combined magnitude of that double star knowing only the magnitudes of the individual components, this can be done by adding the brightness (in linear units) corresponding to each magnitude.
formula_8
Solving for formula_9 yields
formula_10
where is the resulting magnitude after adding the brightnesses referred to by and .
Apparent bolometric magnitude.
While magnitude generally refers to a measurement in a particular filter band corresponding to some range of wavelengths, the apparent or absolute bolometric magnitude (mbol) is a measure of an object's apparent or absolute brightness integrated over all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum (also known as the object's irradiance or power, respectively). The zero point of the apparent bolometric magnitude scale is based on the definition that an apparent bolometric magnitude of 0 mag is equivalent to a received irradiance of 2.518×10−8 watts per square metre (W·m−2).
Absolute magnitude.
While apparent magnitude is a measure of the brightness of an object as seen by a particular observer, absolute magnitude is a measure of the "intrinsic" brightness of an object. Flux decreases with distance according to an inverse-square law, so the apparent magnitude of a star depends on both its absolute brightness and its distance (and any extinction). For example, a star at one distance will have the same apparent magnitude as a star four times as bright at twice that distance. In contrast, the intrinsic brightness of an astronomical object, does not depend on the distance of the observer or any extinction.
The absolute magnitude , of a star or astronomical object is defined as the apparent magnitude it would have as seen from a distance of . The absolute magnitude of the Sun is 4.83 in the V band (visual), 4.68 in the Gaia satellite's G band (green) and 5.48 in the B band (blue).
In the case of a planet or asteroid, the absolute magnitude rather means the apparent magnitude it would have if it were from both the observer and the Sun, and fully illuminated at maximum opposition (a configuration that is only theoretically achievable, with the observer situated on the surface of the Sun).
Standard reference values.
The magnitude scale is a reverse logarithmic scale. A common misconception is that the logarithmic nature of the scale is because the human eye itself has a logarithmic response. In Pogson's time this was thought to be true (see Weber–Fechner law), but it is now believed that the response is a power law .
Magnitude is complicated by the fact that light is not monochromatic. The sensitivity of a light detector varies according to the wavelength of the light, and the way it varies depends on the type of light detector. For this reason, it is necessary to specify how the magnitude is measured for the value to be meaningful. For this purpose the UBV system is widely used, in which the magnitude is measured in three different wavelength bands: U (centred at about 350 nm, in the near ultraviolet), B (about 435 nm, in the blue region) and V (about 555 nm, in the middle of the human visual range in daylight). The V band was chosen for spectral purposes and gives magnitudes closely corresponding to those seen by the human eye. When an apparent magnitude is discussed without further qualification, the V magnitude is generally understood.
Because cooler stars, such as red giants and red dwarfs, emit little energy in the blue and UV regions of the spectrum, their power is often under-represented by the UBV scale. Indeed, some L and T class stars have an estimated magnitude of well over 100, because they emit extremely little visible light, but are strongest in infrared.
Measures of magnitude need cautious treatment and it is extremely important to measure like with like. On early 20th century and older orthochromatic (blue-sensitive) photographic film, the relative brightnesses of the blue supergiant Rigel and the red supergiant Betelgeuse irregular variable star (at maximum) are reversed compared to what human eyes perceive, because this archaic film is more sensitive to blue light than it is to red light. Magnitudes obtained from this method are known as photographic magnitudes, and are now considered obsolete.
For objects within the Milky Way with a given absolute magnitude, 5 is added to the apparent magnitude for every tenfold increase in the distance to the object. For objects at very great distances (far beyond the Milky Way), this relationship must be adjusted for redshifts and for non-Euclidean distance measures due to general relativity.
For planets and other Solar System bodies, the apparent magnitude is derived from its phase curve and the distances to the Sun and observer.
List of apparent magnitudes.
Some of the listed magnitudes are approximate. Telescope sensitivity depends on observing time, optical bandpass, and interfering light from scattering and airglow.
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1963 | Absolute magnitude | Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it were viewed from a distance of exactly , without extinction (or dimming) of its light due to absorption by interstellar matter and cosmic dust. By hypothetically placing all objects at a standard reference distance from the observer, their luminosities can be directly compared among each other on a magnitude scale. For Solar System bodies that shine in reflected light, a different definition of absolute magnitude (H) is used, based on a standard reference distance of one astronomical unit.
As with all astronomical magnitudes, the absolute magnitude can be specified for different wavelength ranges corresponding to specified filter bands or passbands; for stars a commonly quoted absolute magnitude is the absolute visual magnitude, which uses the visual (V) band of the spectrum (in the UBV photometric system). Absolute magnitudes are denoted by a capital M, with a subscript representing the filter band used for measurement, such as MV for absolute magnitude in the V band.
The more luminous an object, the smaller the numerical value of its absolute magnitude. A difference of 5 magnitudes between the absolute magnitudes of two objects corresponds to a ratio of 100 in their luminosities, and a difference of n magnitudes in absolute magnitude corresponds to a luminosity ratio of 100n/5. For example, a star of absolute magnitude MV = 3.0 would be 100 times as luminous as a star of absolute magnitude MV = 8.0 as measured in the V filter band. The Sun has absolute magnitude MV = +4.83. Highly luminous objects can have negative absolute magnitudes: for example, the Milky Way galaxy has an absolute B magnitude of about −20.8.
An object's absolute "bolometric" magnitude (Mbol) represents its total luminosity over all wavelengths, rather than in a single filter band, as expressed on a logarithmic magnitude scale. To convert from an absolute magnitude in a specific filter band to absolute bolometric magnitude, a bolometric correction (BC) is applied.
Stars and galaxies.
In stellar and galactic astronomy, the standard distance is 10 parsecs (about 32.616 light-years, 308.57 petameters or 308.57 trillion kilometres). A star at 10 parsecs has a parallax of 0.1″ (100 milliarcseconds). Galaxies (and other extended objects) are much larger than 10 parsecs, their light is radiated over an extended patch of sky, and their overall brightness cannot be directly observed from relatively short distances, but the same convention is used. A galaxy's magnitude is defined by measuring all the light radiated over the entire object, treating that integrated brightness as the brightness of a single point-like or star-like source, and computing the magnitude of that point-like source as it would appear if observed at the standard 10 parsecs distance. Consequently, the absolute magnitude of any object "equals" the apparent magnitude it "would have" if it were 10 parsecs away.
Some stars visible to the naked eye have such a low absolute magnitude that they would appear bright enough to outshine the planets and cast shadows if they were at 10 parsecs from the Earth. Examples include Rigel (−7.0), Deneb (−7.2), Naos (−6.0), and Betelgeuse (−5.6). For comparison, Sirius has an absolute magnitude of only 1.4, which is still brighter than the Sun, whose absolute visual magnitude is 4.83. The Sun's absolute bolometric magnitude is set arbitrarily, usually at 4.75.
Absolute magnitudes of stars generally range from approximately −10 to +20. The absolute magnitudes of galaxies can be much lower (brighter). For example, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 has an absolute magnitude of −22 (i.e. as bright as about 60,000 stars of magnitude −10). Some active galactic nuclei (quasars like CTA-102) can reach absolute magnitudes in excess of −32, making them the most luminous persistent objects in the observable universe, although these objects can vary in brightness over astronomically short timescales. At the extreme end, the optical afterglow of the gamma ray burst GRB 080319B reached, according to one paper, an absolute r magnitude brighter than −38 for a few tens of seconds.
Apparent magnitude.
The Greek astronomer Hipparchus established a numerical scale to describe the brightness of each star appearing in the sky. The brightest stars in the sky were assigned an apparent magnitude , and the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye are assigned . The difference between them corresponds to a factor of 100 in brightness. For objects within the immediate neighborhood of the Sun, the absolute magnitude and apparent magnitude from any distance (in parsecs, with 1 pc = 3.2616 light-years) are related by
formula_1
where is the radiant flux measured at distance (in parsecs), the radiant flux measured at distance . Using the common logarithm, the equation can be written as
formula_2
where it is assumed that extinction from gas and dust is negligible. Typical extinction rates within the Milky Way galaxy are 1 to 2 magnitudes per kiloparsec, when dark clouds are taken into account.
For objects at very large distances (outside the Milky Way) the luminosity distance (distance defined using luminosity measurements) must be used instead of , because the Euclidean approximation is invalid for distant objects. Instead, general relativity must be taken into account. Moreover, the cosmological redshift complicates the relationship between absolute and apparent magnitude, because the radiation observed was shifted into the red range of the spectrum. To compare the magnitudes of very distant objects with those of local objects, a K correction might have to be applied to the magnitudes of the distant objects.
The absolute magnitude can also be written in terms of the apparent magnitude and stellar parallax :
formula_3
or using apparent magnitude and distance modulus :
formula_4
Examples.
Rigel has a visual magnitude of 0.12 and distance of about 860 light-years:
formula_5
Vega has a parallax of 0.129″, and an apparent magnitude of 0.03:
formula_6
The Black Eye Galaxy has a visual magnitude of 9.36 and a distance modulus of 31.06:
formula_7
Bolometric magnitude.
The absolute bolometric magnitude () takes into account electromagnetic radiation at all wavelengths. It includes those unobserved due to instrumental passband, the Earth's atmospheric absorption, and extinction by interstellar dust. It is defined based on the luminosity of the stars. In the case of stars with few observations, it must be computed assuming an effective temperature.
Classically, the difference in bolometric magnitude is related to the luminosity ratio according to:
formula_8
which makes by inversion:
formula_9
where
In August 2015, the International Astronomical Union passed Resolution B2 defining the zero points of the absolute and apparent bolometric magnitude scales in SI units for power (watts) and irradiance (W/m2), respectively. Although bolometric magnitudes had been used by astronomers for many decades, there had been systematic differences in the absolute magnitude-luminosity scales presented in various astronomical references, and no international standardization. This led to systematic differences in bolometric corrections scales. Combined with incorrect assumed absolute bolometric magnitudes for the Sun, this could lead to systematic errors in estimated stellar luminosities (and other stellar properties, such as radii or ages, which rely on stellar luminosity to be calculated).
Resolution B2 defines an absolute bolometric magnitude scale where corresponds to luminosity , with the zero point luminosity set such that the Sun (with nominal luminosity ) corresponds to absolute bolometric magnitude . Placing a radiation source (e.g. star) at the standard distance of 10 parsecs, it follows that the zero point of the apparent bolometric magnitude scale corresponds to irradiance . Using the IAU 2015 scale, the nominal total solar irradiance ("solar constant") measured at 1 astronomical unit () corresponds to an apparent bolometric magnitude of the Sun of .
Following Resolution B2, the relation between a star's absolute bolometric magnitude and its luminosity is no longer directly tied to the Sun's (variable) luminosity:
formula_10
where
The new IAU absolute magnitude scale permanently disconnects the scale from the variable Sun. However, on this SI power scale, the nominal solar luminosity corresponds closely to , a value that was commonly adopted by astronomers before the 2015 IAU resolution.
The luminosity of the star in watts can be calculated as a function of its absolute bolometric magnitude as:
formula_11
using the variables as defined previously.
Solar System bodies ().
For planets and asteroids, a definition of absolute magnitude that is more meaningful for non-stellar objects is used. The absolute magnitude, commonly called formula_12, is defined as the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it were one astronomical unit (AU) from both the Sun and the observer, and in conditions of ideal solar opposition (an arrangement that is impossible in practice). Because Solar System bodies are illuminated by the Sun, their brightness varies as a function of illumination conditions, described by the phase angle. This relationship is referred to as the phase curve. The absolute magnitude is the brightness at phase angle zero, an arrangement known as opposition, from a distance of one AU.
Apparent magnitude.
The absolute magnitude formula_12 can be used to calculate the apparent magnitude formula_14 of a body. For an object reflecting sunlight, formula_12 and formula_14 are connected by the relation
formula_17
where formula_18 is the phase angle, the angle between the body-Sun and body–observer lines. formula_19 is the phase integral (the integration of reflected light; a number in the 0 to 1 range).
By the law of cosines, we have:
formula_20
Distances:
Approximations for phase integral.
The value of formula_19 depends on the properties of the reflecting surface, in particular on its roughness. In practice, different approximations are used based on the known or assumed properties of the surface. The surfaces of terrestrial planets are generally more difficult to model than those of gaseous planets, the latter of which have smoother visible surfaces.
Planets as diffuse spheres.
Planetary bodies can be approximated reasonably well as ideal diffuse reflecting spheres. Let formula_18 be the phase angle in degrees, then
formula_23
A full-phase diffuse sphere reflects two-thirds as much light as a diffuse flat disk of the same diameter. A quarter phase (formula_24) has formula_25 as much light as full phase (formula_26).
By contrast, a "diffuse disk reflector model" is simply formula_27, which isn't realistic, but it does represent the opposition surge for rough surfaces that reflect more uniform light back at low phase angles.
The definition of the geometric albedo formula_28, a measure for the reflectivity of planetary surfaces, is based on the diffuse disk reflector model. The absolute magnitude formula_12, diameter formula_30 (in kilometers) and geometric albedo formula_28 of a body are related by
formula_32 or equivalently,
formula_33
Example: The Moon's absolute magnitude formula_12 can be calculated from its diameter formula_35 and geometric albedo formula_36:
formula_37
We have formula_38, formula_39
At quarter phase, formula_40 (according to the diffuse reflector model), this yields an apparent magnitude of formula_41 The actual value is somewhat lower than that, formula_42 This is not a good approximation, because the phase curve of the Moon is too complicated for the diffuse reflector model. A more accurate formula is given in the following section.
More advanced models.
Because Solar System bodies are never perfect diffuse reflectors, astronomers use different models to predict apparent magnitudes based on known or assumed properties of the body. For planets, approximations for the correction term formula_43 in the formula for have been derived empirically, to match observations at different phase angles. The approximations recommended by the Astronomical Almanac are (with formula_18 in degrees):
Here formula_45 is the effective inclination of Saturn's rings (their tilt relative to the observer), which as seen from Earth varies between 0° and 27° over the course of one Saturn orbit, and formula_46 is a small correction term depending on Uranus' sub-Earth and sub-solar latitudes. formula_47 is the Common Era year. Neptune's absolute magnitude is changing slowly due to seasonal effects as the planet moves along its 165-year orbit around the Sun, and the approximation above is only valid after the year 2000. For some circumstances, like formula_48 for Venus, no observations are available, and the phase curve is unknown in those cases. The formula for the Moon is only applicable to the near side of the Moon, the portion that is visible from the Earth.
Example 1: On 1 January 2019, Venus was formula_49 from the Sun, and formula_50 from Earth, at a phase angle of formula_51 (near quarter phase). Under full-phase conditions, Venus would have been visible at formula_52 Accounting for the high phase angle, the correction term above yields an actual apparent magnitude of formula_53 This is close to the value of formula_54 predicted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Example 2: At first quarter phase, the approximation for the Moon gives formula_55 With that, the apparent magnitude of the Moon is formula_56 close to the expected value of about formula_57. At last quarter, the Moon is about 0.06 mag fainter than at first quarter, because that part of its surface has a lower albedo.
Earth's albedo varies by a factor of 6, from 0.12 in the cloud-free case to 0.76 in the case of altostratus cloud. The absolute magnitude in the table corresponds to an albedo of 0.434. Due to the variability of the weather, Earth's apparent magnitude cannot be predicted as accurately as that of most other planets.
Asteroids.
If an object has an atmosphere, it reflects light more or less isotropically in all directions, and its brightness can be modelled as a diffuse reflector. Bodies with no atmosphere, like asteroids or moons, tend to reflect light more strongly to the direction of the incident light, and their brightness increases rapidly as the phase angle approaches formula_58. This rapid brightening near opposition is called the opposition effect. Its strength depends on the physical properties of the body's surface, and hence it differs from asteroid to asteroid.
In 1985, the IAU adopted the semi-empirical formula_59-system, based on two parameters formula_12 and formula_61 called "absolute magnitude" and "slope", to model the opposition effect for the ephemerides published by the Minor Planet Center.
formula_62
where
This relation is valid for phase angles formula_71, and works best when formula_72.
The slope parameter formula_61 relates to the surge in brightness, typically , when the object is near opposition. It is known accurately only for a small number of asteroids, hence for most asteroids a value of formula_74 is assumed. In rare cases, formula_61 can be negative. An example is 101955 Bennu, with formula_76.
In 2012, the formula_59-system was officially replaced by an improved system with three parameters formula_12, formula_79 and formula_80, which produces more satisfactory results if the opposition effect is very small or restricted to very small phase angles. However, as of 2022, this formula_81-system has not been adopted by either the Minor Planet Center nor Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The apparent magnitude of asteroids varies as they rotate, on time scales of seconds to weeks depending on their rotation period, by up to formula_82 or more. In addition, their absolute magnitude can vary with the viewing direction, depending on their axial tilt. In many cases, neither the rotation period nor the axial tilt are known, limiting the predictability. The models presented here do not capture those effects.
Cometary magnitudes.
The brightness of comets is given separately as "total magnitude" (formula_83, the brightness integrated over the entire visible extend of the coma) and "nuclear magnitude" (formula_84, the brightness of the core region alone). Both are different scales than the magnitude scale used for planets and asteroids, and can not be used for a size comparison with an asteroid's absolute magnitude .
The activity of comets varies with their distance from the Sun. Their brightness can be approximated as
formula_85
formula_86
where formula_87 are the total and nuclear apparent magnitudes of the comet, respectively, formula_88 are its "absolute" total and nuclear magnitudes, formula_89 and formula_90 are the body-sun and body-observer distances, formula_91 is the Astronomical Unit, and formula_92 are the slope parameters characterising the comet's activity. For formula_93, this reduces to the formula for a purely reflecting body (showing no cometary activity).
For example, the lightcurve of comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) can be approximated by formula_94 On the day of its perihelion passage, 10 March 2013, comet PANSTARRS was formula_95 from the Sun and formula_96 from Earth. The total apparent magnitude formula_83 is predicted to have been formula_98 at that time. The Minor Planet Center gives a value close to that, formula_99.
The absolute magnitude of any given comet can vary dramatically. It can change as the comet becomes more or less active over time or if it undergoes an outburst. This makes it difficult to use the absolute magnitude for a size estimate. When comet 289P/Blanpain was discovered in 1819, its absolute magnitude was estimated as formula_100. It was subsequently lost and was only rediscovered in 2003. At that time, its absolute magnitude had decreased to formula_101, and it was realised that the 1819 apparition coincided with an outburst. 289P/Blanpain reached naked eye brightness (5–8 mag) in 1819, even though it is the comet with the smallest nucleus that has ever been physically characterised, and usually doesn't become brighter than 18 mag.
For some comets that have been observed at heliocentric distances large enough to distinguish between light reflected from the coma, and light from the nucleus itself, an absolute magnitude analogous to that used for asteroids has been calculated, allowing to estimate the sizes of their nuclei.
Meteors.
For a meteor, the standard distance for measurement of magnitudes is at an altitude of at the observer's zenith.
References.
/5}</math>, where formula_102, the absolute magnitude of the Sun, and formula_103</ref>
|
1965 | Apollo 1 | Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was planned to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module. The mission never flew; a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 on January 27 killed all three crew members—Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroyed the command module (CM). The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was made official by NASA in their honor after the fire.
Immediately after the fire, NASA convened an Accident Review Board to determine the cause of the fire, and both chambers of the United States Congress conducted their own committee inquiries to oversee NASA's investigation. The ignition source of the fire was determined to be electrical, and the fire spread rapidly due to combustible nylon material and the high-pressure pure oxygen cabin atmosphere. Rescue was prevented by the plug door hatch, which could not be opened against the internal pressure of the cabin. Because the rocket was unfueled, the test had not been considered hazardous, and emergency preparedness for it was poor.
During the Congressional investigation, Senator Walter Mondale publicly revealed a NASA internal document citing problems with prime Apollo contractor North American Aviation, which became known as the Phillips Report. This disclosure embarrassed NASA Administrator James E. Webb, who was unaware of the document's existence, and attracted controversy to the Apollo program. Despite congressional displeasure at NASA's lack of openness, both congressional committees ruled that the issues raised in the report had no bearing on the accident.
Crewed Apollo flights were suspended for twenty months while the command module's hazards were addressed. However, the development and uncrewed testing of the lunar module (LM) and Saturn V rocket continued. The Saturn IB launch vehicle for Apollo1, SA-204, was used for the first LM test flight, Apollo 5. The first successful crewed Apollo mission was flown by Apollo1's backup crew on Apollo 7 in October 1968.
Apollo crewed test flight plans.
AS-204 was to be the first crewed test flight of the Apollo command and service module (CSM) to Earth orbit, launched on a Saturn IB rocket. AS-204 was to test launch operations, ground tracking and control facilities and the performance of the Apollo-Saturn launch assembly and would have lasted up to two weeks, depending on how the spacecraft performed.
The CSM for this flight, number 012 built by North American Aviation (NAA), was a Block I version designed before the lunar orbit rendezvous landing strategy was chosen; therefore it lacked the capability of docking with the lunar module. This was incorporated into the Block II CSM design, along with lessons learned in Block I. Block II would be test-flown with the LM when the latter was ready.
Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton selected the first Apollo crew in January 1966, with Grissom as Command Pilot, White as Senior Pilot, and rookie Donn F. Eisele as Pilot. But Eisele dislocated his shoulder twice aboard the KC-135 weightlessness training aircraft, and had to undergo surgery on January 27. Slayton replaced him with Chaffee, and NASA announced the crew selection on March 21, 1966. James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart were named as the backup crew.
On September 29, Walter Schirra, Eisele, and Walter Cunningham were named as the prime crew for a second Block I CSM flight, AS-205. NASA planned to follow this with an uncrewed test flight of the LM (AS-206), then the third crewed mission would be a dual flight designated AS-278 (or AS-207/208), in which AS-207 would launch the first crewed Block II CSM, which would then rendezvous and dock with the LM launched uncrewed on AS-208.
In March, NASA was studying the possibility of flying the first Apollo mission as a joint space rendezvous with the final Project Gemini mission, Gemini 12 in November 1966. But by May, delays in making Apollo ready for flight just by itself, and the extra time needed to incorporate compatibility with the Gemini, made that impractical. This became moot when slippage in readiness of the AS-204 spacecraft caused the last-quarter 1966 target date to be missed, and the mission was rescheduled for February 21, 1967.
Mission background.
In October 1966, NASA announced the flight would carry a small television camera to broadcast live from the command module. The camera would also be used to allow flight controllers to monitor the spacecraft's instrument panel in flight. Television cameras were carried aboard all crewed Apollo missions.
Insignia.
Grissom's crew received approval in June 1966 to design a mission patch with the name "Apollo1" (though the approval was subsequently withdrawn pending a final decision on the mission designation, which was not resolved until after the fire). The design's center depicts a command and service module flying over the southeastern United States with Florida (the launch point) prominent. The Moon is seen in the distance, symbolic of the eventual program goal. A yellow border carries the mission and astronaut names with another border set with stars and stripes, trimmed in gold. The insignia was designed by the crew, with the artwork done by North American Aviation employee Allen Stevens.
Spacecraft and crew preparation.
The Apollo command and service module was much bigger and far more complex than any previous crewed spacecraft. In October 1963, Joseph F. Shea was named Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO) manager, responsible for managing the design and construction of both the CSM and the LM.
In a spacecraft review meeting held with Shea on August 19, 1966 (a week before delivery), the crew expressed concern about the amount of flammable material (mainly nylon netting and Velcro) in the cabin, which both astronauts and technicians found convenient for holding tools and equipment in place. Although Shea gave the spacecraft a passing grade, after the meeting they gave him a crew portrait they had posed with heads bowed and hands clasped in prayer, with the inscription:
Shea gave his staff orders to tell North American to remove the flammables from the cabin, but did not supervise the issue personally.
North American shipped spacecraft CM-012 to Kennedy Space Center on August 26, 1966, under a conditional Certificate of Flight Worthiness: 113 significant incomplete planned engineering changes had to be completed at KSC. That was not all; an additional 623 engineering change orders were made and completed after delivery. Grissom became so frustrated with the inability of the training simulator engineers to keep up with the spacecraft changes that he took a lemon from a tree by his house and hung it on the simulator.
The command and service modules were mated in the KSC altitude chamber in September, and combined system testing was performed. Altitude testing was performed first uncrewed, then with both the prime and backup crews, from October 10 through December 30. During this testing, the environmental control unit in the command module was found to have a design flaw, and was sent back to the manufacturer for design changes and rework. The returned ECU then leaked water/glycol coolant, and had to be returned a second time. Also during this time, a propellant tank in another service module had ruptured during testing at NAA, prompting the removal from the KSC test chamber of the service module so it could be tested for signs of the tank problem. These tests were negative.
In December the second Block I flight AS-205 was canceled as unnecessary; Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham were reassigned as the backup crew for Apollo1. McDivitt's crew was now promoted to prime crew of the Block II/LM mission, re-designated AS-258 because the AS-205 launch vehicle would be used in place of AS-207. A third crewed mission was planned to launch the CSM and LM together on a SaturnV (AS-503) to an elliptical medium Earth orbit (MEO), to be crewed by Frank Borman, Michael Collins and William Anders. McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart had started their training for AS-258 in CM-101 at the NAA plant in Downey, California, when the Apollo1 accident occurred.
Once all outstanding CSM-012 hardware problems had been fixed, the reassembled spacecraft completed a successful altitude chamber test with Schirra's backup crew on December 30. According to the final report of the accident investigation board, "At the post-test debriefing the backup flight crew expressed their satisfaction with the condition and performance of the spacecraft." This would appear to contradict the account given in the 1994 book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo13" by Jeffrey Kluger and astronaut James Lovell, that "When the trio climbed out of the ship... Schirra made it clear that he was not pleased with what he had seen," and that he later warned Grissom and Shea that "there's nothing wrong with this ship that I can point to, but it just makes me uncomfortable. Something about it just doesn't ring right," and that Grissom should get out at the first sign of trouble.
After the successful altitude tests, the spacecraft was removed from the altitude chamber on January 3, 1967, and mated to its Saturn IB launch vehicle on pad 34 on January 6.
Grissom said in a February 1963 interview that NASA could not eliminate risk despite precautions:
"I suppose that someday we are going to have a failure. In every other business there are failures, and they are bound to happen sooner or later", he added. Grissom was asked about the fear of potential catastrophe in a December 1966 interview:
Accident.
Plugs-out test.
The launch simulation on January 27, 1967, on pad 34, was a "plugs-out" test to determine whether the spacecraft would operate nominally on (simulated) internal power while detached from all cables and umbilicals. Passing this test was essential to making the February 21 launch date. The test was considered non-hazardous because neither the launch vehicle nor the spacecraft was loaded with fuel or cryogenics and all pyrotechnic systems (explosive bolts) were disabled.
At 1:00 pm EST (1800 GMT) on January 27, first Grissom, then Chaffee, and White entered the command module fully pressure-suited, and were strapped into their seats and hooked up to the spacecraft's oxygen and communication systems. Grissom immediately noticed a strange odor in the air circulating through his suit which he compared to "sour buttermilk", and the simulated countdown was put on hold at 1:20 pm, while air samples were taken. No cause of the odor could be found, and the countdown was resumed at 2:42 pm. The accident investigation found this odor not to be related to the fire.
Three minutes after the count was resumed the hatch installation was started. The hatch consisted of three parts: a removable inner hatch which stayed inside the cabin; a hinged outer hatch which was part of the spacecraft's heat shield; and an outer hatch cover which was part of the boost protective cover enveloping the entire command module to protect it from aerodynamic heating during launch and from launch escape rocket exhaust in the event of a launch abort. The boost hatch cover was partially, but not fully, latched in place because the flexible boost protective cover was slightly distorted by some cabling run under it to provide the simulated internal power (the spacecraft's fuel cell reactants were not loaded for this test). After the hatches were sealed, the air in the cabin was replaced with pure oxygen at , higher than atmospheric pressure.
Movement by the astronauts was detected by the spacecraft's inertial measurement unit and the astronauts' biomedical sensors, and also indicated by increases in oxygen spacesuit flow, and sounds from Grissom's stuck-open microphone. The stuck microphone was part of a problem with the communications loop connecting the crew, the Operations and Checkout Building, and the Complex 34 blockhouse control room. The poor communications led Grissom to remark: "How are we going to get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"
The simulated countdown was put on hold again at 5:40 pm while attempts were made to troubleshoot the communications problem. All countdown functions up to the simulated internal power transfer had been successfully completed by 6:20 pm, and at 6:30 the count remained on hold at T minus 10 minutes.
Fire.
The crew members were using the time to run through their checklist again, when a momentary increase in AC Bus2 voltage occurred. Nine seconds later (at 6:31:04.7), one of the astronauts (some listeners and laboratory analysis indicate Grissom) exclaimed "Hey!", "Fire!", or "Flame!"; this was followed by two seconds of scuffling sounds through Grissom's open microphone. This was immediately followed at 6:31:06.2 (23:31:06.2 GMT) by someone (believed by most listeners, and supported by laboratory analysis, to be Chaffee) saying, "[I've, or We've] got a fire in the cockpit." After 6.8 seconds of silence, a second, badly garbled transmission was heard by various listeners as:
The transmission lasted 5.0 seconds and ended with a cry of pain.
Some blockhouse witnesses said that they saw White on the television monitors, reaching for the inner hatch release handle as flames in the cabin spread from left to right.
The heat of the fire fed by pure oxygen caused the pressure to rise to , which ruptured the command module's inner wall at 6:31:19 (23:31:19 GMT, initial phase of the fire). Flames and gases then rushed outside the command module through open access panels to two levels of the pad service structure. The intense heat, dense smoke, and ineffective gas masks designed for toxic fumes rather than smoke, hampered the ground crew's attempts to rescue the men. There were fears the command module had exploded, or soon would, and that the fire might ignite the solid fuel rocket in the launch escape tower above the command module, which would have likely killed nearby ground personnel, and possibly have destroyed the pad.
As the pressure was released by the cabin rupture, the rush of gases within the module caused flames to spread across the cabin, beginning the second phase. The third phase began when most of the oxygen was consumed and was replaced with atmospheric air, essentially quenching the fire, but causing high concentrations of carbon monoxide and heavy smoke to fill the cabin, and large amounts of soot to be deposited on surfaces as they cooled.
It took five minutes for the pad workers to open all three hatch layers, and they could not drop the inner hatch to the cabin floor as intended, so they pushed it out of the way to one side. Although the cabin lights remained on, they were unable to see the astronauts through the dense smoke. As the smoke cleared they found the bodies, but were not able to remove them. The fire had partly melted Grissom's and White's nylon space suits and the hoses connecting them to the life support system. Grissom had removed his restraints and was lying on the floor of the spacecraft. White's restraints were burned through, and he was found lying sideways just below the hatch. It was determined that he had tried to open the hatch per the emergency procedure, but was not able to do so against the internal pressure. Chaffee was found strapped into his right-hand seat, as procedure called for him to maintain communication until White opened the hatch. Because of the large strands of melted nylon fusing the astronauts to the cabin interior, removing the bodies took nearly 90 minutes.
Deke Slayton was possibly the first NASA official to examine the spacecraft's interior. His testimony contradicted the official report concerning the position of Grissom's body. Slayton said of Grissom and White's bodies, "it is very difficult for me to determine the exact relationships of these two bodies. They were sort of jumbled together, and I couldn't really tell which head even belonged to which body at that point. I guess the only thing that was real obvious is that both bodies were at the lower edge of the hatch. They were not in the seats. They were almost completely clear of the seat areas."
Investigation.
As a result of the in-flight failure of the Gemini 8 mission on March 17, 1966, NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans wrote and implemented "Management Instruction 8621.1" on April 14, 1966, defining "Mission Failure Investigation Policy And Procedures". This modified NASA's existing accident procedures, based on military aircraft accident investigation, by giving the Deputy Administrator the option of performing independent investigations of major failures, beyond those for which the various Program Office officials were normally responsible. It declared, "It is NASA policy to investigate and document the causes of all major mission failures which occur in the conduct of its space and aeronautical activities and to take appropriate corrective actions as a result of the findings and recommendations."
Immediately after thefire NASA Administrator James E. Webb asked President Lyndon B. Johnson to allow NASA to handle the investigation according to its established procedure, promising to be truthful in assessing blame, and to keep the appropriate leaders of Congress informed. Seamans then directed establishment of the "Apollo 204 Review Board" chaired by Langley Research Center director Floyd L. Thompson, which included astronaut Frank Borman, spacecraft designer Maxime Faget, and six others. On February 1, Cornell University professor Frank A. Long left the board, and was replaced by Robert W. Van Dolah of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. The next day North American's chief engineer for Apollo, George Jeffs, also left.
Seamans ordered all Apollo1 hardware and software impounded, to be released only under control of the board. After thorough stereo photographic documentation of the CM-012 interior, the board ordered its disassembly using procedures tested by disassembling the identical CM-014 and conducted a thorough investigation of every part. The board also reviewed the astronauts' autopsy results and interviewed witnesses. Seamans sent Webb weekly status reports of the investigation's progress, and the board issued its final report on April 5, 1967.
Cause of death.
According to the Board, Grissom suffered severe third-degree burns on over one-third of his body and his spacesuit was mostly destroyed. White suffered third-degree burns on almost half of his body and a quarter of his spacesuit had melted away. Chaffee suffered third-degree burns over almost a quarter of his body and a small portion of his spacesuit was damaged. The autopsy report determined that the primary cause of death for all three astronauts was cardiac arrest caused by high concentrations of carbon monoxide. Burns suffered by the crew were not believed to be major factors, and it was concluded that most of them had occurred postmortem. Asphyxiation occurred after the fire melted the astronauts' suits and oxygen tubes, exposing them to the lethal atmosphere of the cabin.
Major causes of accident.
The review board identified several major factors which combined to cause the fire and the astronauts' deaths:
Ignition source.
The review board determined that the electrical power momentarily failed at 23:30:55 GMT, and found evidence of several electric arcs in the interior equipment. They were unable to conclusively identify a single ignition source. They determined that the fire most likely started near the floor in the lower left section of the cabin, close to the Environmental Control Unit. It spread from the left wall of the cabin to the right, with the floor being affected only briefly.
The board noted that a silver-plated copper wire, running through an environmental control unit near the center couch, had become stripped of its Teflon insulation and abraded by repeated opening and closing of a small access door.
This weak point in the wiring also ran near a junction in an ethylene glycol/water cooling line that had been prone to leaks. Electrolysis of ethylene glycol solution with the silver anode of the wire was discovered at the Manned Spacecraft Center on May 29, 1967, to be a hazard capable of causing a violent exothermic reaction, igniting the ethylene glycol mixture in the Command Module's pure oxygen atmosphere. Experiments at the Illinois Institute of Technology confirmed the hazard existed for silver-plated wires, but not for copper-only or nickel-plated copper. In July, ASPO directed both North American and Grumman to ensure no silver or silver-coated electrical contacts existed in the vicinity of possible glycol spills in the Apollo spacecraft.
Pure oxygen atmosphere.
The plugs-out test had been run to simulate the launch procedure, with the cabin pressurized with pure oxygen at the nominal launch level of , above standard sea level atmospheric pressure. This is more than five times the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere, and provides an environment in which materials not normally considered flammable will be highly flammable and burst into flame.
The high-pressure oxygen atmosphere was similar to that which had been used successfully in the Mercury and Gemini programs. The pressure before launch was deliberately greater than ambient in order to drive out the nitrogen-containing air and replace it with pure oxygen, and also to seal the plug door hatch cover. During the launch, the pressure would have been gradually reduced to the in-flight level of , providing sufficient oxygen for the astronauts to breathe while reducing the fire risk. The Apollo1 crew had successfully tested this procedure with their spacecraft in the Operations and Checkout Building altitude (vacuum) chamber on October 18 and 19, 1966, and the backup crew of Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham had repeated it on December 30. The investigation board noted that, during these tests, the command module had been fully pressurized with pure oxygen four times, for a total of six hours and fifteen minutes, two and a half hours longer than it had been during the plugs-out test.
Flammable materials in the cabin.
The review board cited "many types and classes of combustible material" close to ignition sources. The NASA crew systems department had installed of Velcro throughout the spacecraft, almost like carpeting. This Velcro was found to be flammable in a high-pressure 100% oxygen environment. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin states in his book "Men From Earth" that the flammable material had been removed per the crew's August 19 complaints and Joseph Shea's order, but was replaced before the August 26 delivery to Cape Kennedy.
Hatch design.
The inner hatch cover used a plug door design, sealed by higher pressure inside the cabin than outside. The normal pressure level used for launch ( above ambient) created sufficient force to prevent removing the cover until the excess pressure was vented. Emergency procedure called for Grissom to open the cabin vent valve first, allowing White to remove the cover, but Grissom was prevented from doing this because the valve was located to the left, behind the initial wall of flames. Also, while the system could easily vent the normal pressure, its flow capacity was utterly incapable of handling the rapid increase to caused by the intense heat of the fire.
North American had originally suggested the hatch open outward and use explosive bolts to blow the hatch in case of emergency, as had been done in Project Mercury. NASA did not agree, arguing the hatch could accidentally open, as it had on Grissom's "Liberty Bell 7" flight, so the Manned Spacecraft Center designers rejected the explosive design in favor of a mechanically operated one for the Gemini and Apollo programs. Before the fire, the Apollo astronauts had recommended changing the design to an outward-opening hatch, and this was already slated for inclusion in the Block II command module design. According to Donald K. Slayton's testimony before the House investigation of the accident, this was based on ease of exit for spacewalks and at the end of flight, rather than for emergency exit.
Emergency preparedness.
The board noted that the test planners had failed to identify the test as hazardous; emergency equipment (such as gas masks) were inadequate to handle this type of fire; that fire, rescue, and medical teams were not in attendance; and that the spacecraft work and access areas contained many hindrances to emergency response such as steps, sliding doors, and sharp turns.
Choice of pure oxygen atmosphere.
When designing the Mercury spacecraft, NASA had considered using a nitrogen/oxygen mixture to reduce the fire risk near launch, but rejected it based on a number of considerations. First, a pure oxygen atmosphere is comfortably breathable by humans at , greatly reducing the pressure load on the spacecraft in the vacuum of space. Second, nitrogen used with the in-flight pressure reduction carried the risk of decompression sickness (known as "the bends"). But the decision to eliminate the use of any gas but oxygen was crystalized when a serious accident occurred on April 21, 1960, in which McDonnell Aircraft test pilot G. B. North passed out and was seriously injured when testing a Mercury cabin / spacesuit atmosphere system in a vacuum chamber. The problem was found to be nitrogen-rich (oxygen-poor) air leaking from the cabin into his spacesuit feed. North American Aviation had suggested using an oxygen/nitrogen mixture for Apollo, but NASA overruled this. The pure oxygen design was judged to be safer, less complicated, and lighter in weight. In his monograph "Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions", Deputy Administrator Seamans wrote that NASA's worst mistake in engineering judgment was not running a fire test on the command module before the plugs-out test. In the first episode of the 2009 BBC documentary series "NASA: Triumph and Tragedy", Jim McDivitt said that NASA had no idea how a 100% oxygen atmosphere would influence burning. Similar remarks by other astronauts were expressed in the 2007 documentary film "In the Shadow of the Moon".
Other oxygen incidents.
Several fires in high-oxygen test environments had occurred before the Apollo fire. In 1962, USAF Colonel B. Dean Smith was conducting a test of the Gemini space suit with a colleague in a pure oxygen chamber at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, when a fire broke out, destroying the chamber. Smith and his partner narrowly escaped. On November 17, 1962, a fire broke out in a chamber at the Navy's Air Crew Equipment Laboratory during a pure oxygen test. The fire was started because a faulty ground wire arced onto nearby insulation. After attempts to extinguish the fire by smothering it, the crew escaped the chamber with minor burns across large parts of their bodies. On February 16, 1965, United States Navy Divers Fred Jackson and John Youmans were killed in a decompression chamber fire at the Experimental Diving Unit in Washington, D.C., shortly after additional oxygen was added to the chamber's atmospheric mix.
In addition to fires with personnel present, the Apollo Environmental Control System experienced several accidents from 1964 to 1966 due to various hardware malfunctions. Notable is the April 28, 1966 fire, as the subsequent investigation found that several new measures should be taken to avoid fires, including improved selection of materials and that ESC and Command Module circuits have a potential for arcing or short circuits.
Other oxygen fire occurrences are documented in reports archived in the National Air and Space Museum, such as:
Incidents had also occurred in the Soviet space program, but due to the Soviet government's policy of secrecy, these were not disclosed until well after the Apollo1 fire. Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko died on March 23, 1961, from burns sustained in a fire while participating in a 15-day endurance experiment in a high-oxygen isolation chamber, less than three weeks before the first Vostok crewed space flight; this was disclosed on January 28, 1986.
During the Voskhod 2 mission in March 1965, cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov could not completely seal the spacecraft hatch after Leonov's historic first walk in space. The spacecraft's environmental control system responded to the leaking air by adding more oxygen to the cabin, causing the concentration level to rise as high as 45%. The crew and ground controllers worried about the possibility of fire, remembering Bondarenko's death four years earlier.
On January 31, 1967, four days after the Apollo1 fire, United States Air Force airmen William F. Bartley Jr. and Richard G. Harmon were killed in a flash fire while tending laboratory rabbits in the Two Man Space Environment Simulator, a pure oxygen chamber at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base. Like the Apollo1 fire, the School fire was caused by an electrical spark in a pure oxygen environment. The widows of the Apollo1 crew sent condolence letters to Bartley and Harmon's families.
Political fallout.
Committees in both houses of the United States Congress with oversight of the space program soon launched investigations, including the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, chaired by Senator Clinton P. Anderson. Seamans, Webb, Manned Space Flight Administrator Dr. George E. Mueller, and Apollo Program Director Maj Gen Samuel C. Phillips were called to testify before Anderson's committee.
In the February 27 hearing, Senator Walter F. Mondale asked Webb if he knew of a report of extraordinary problems with the performance of North American Aviation on the Apollo contract. Webb replied he did not, and deferred to his subordinates on the witness panel. Mueller and Phillips responded they too were unaware of any such "report".
However, in late 1965, just over a year before the accident, Phillips had headed a "tiger team" investigating the causes of inadequate quality, schedule delays, and cost overruns in both the Apollo CSM and the Saturn V second stage (for which North American was also prime contractor). He gave an oral presentation (with transparencies) of his team's findings to Mueller and Seamans, and also presented them in a memo to North American president John L. Atwood, to which Mueller appended his own strongly worded memo to Atwood.
During Mondale's 1967 questioning about what was to become known as the "Phillips Report", Seamans was afraid Mondale might actually have seen a hard copy of Phillips' presentation, and responded that contractors have occasionally been subjected to on-site progress reviews; perhaps this was what Mondale's information referred to. Mondale continued to refer to "the Report" despite Phillips' refusal to characterize it as such, and, angered by what he perceived as Webb's deception and concealment of important program problems from Congress, he questioned NASA's selection of North American as prime contractor. Seamans later wrote that Webb roundly chastised him in the cab ride leaving the hearing, for volunteering information which led to the disclosure of Phillips' memo.
On May 11, Webb issued a statement defending NASA's November 1961 selection of North American as the prime contractor for Apollo. This was followed on June9 by Seamans filing a seven-page memorandum documenting the selection process. Webb eventually provided a controlled copy of Phillips' memo to Congress. The Senate committee noted in its final report NASA's testimony that "the findings of the [Phillips] task force had no effect on the accident, did not lead to the accident, and were not related to the accident", but stated in its recommendations:
Freshman Senators Edward W. Brooke III and Charles H. Percy jointly wrote an "Additional Views" section appended to the committee report, chastising NASA more strongly than Anderson for not having disclosed the Phillips review to Congress. Mondale wrote his own, even more strongly worded Additional View, accusing NASA of "evasiveness... lack of candor... patronizing attitude toward Congress... refusal to respond fully and forthrightly to legitimate Congressional inquiries, and... solicitous concern for corporate sensitivities at a time of national tragedy".
The potential political threat to Apollo blew over, due in large part to the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who at the time still wielded a measure of influence with the Congress from his own Senatorial experience. He was a staunch supporter of NASA since its inception, had even recommended the Moon program to President John F. Kennedy in 1961, and was skilled at portraying it as part of Kennedy's legacy.
Relations between NASA and North American deteriorated over the assignment of blame. North American argued unsuccessfully it was not responsible for the fatal error in spacecraft atmosphere design. Finally, Webb contacted Atwood, and demanded either he or Chief Engineer Harrison A. Storms resign. Atwood elected to fire Storms.
On the NASA side, Joseph Shea resorted to barbiturates and alcohol in order to help him cope. NASA administrator James Webb became increasingly worried about Shea's mental state. Shea was asked to take an extended voluntary leave of absence, but Shea refused, threatening to resign rather than take leave. As a compromise, he agreed to meet with a psychiatrist and to abide by an independent assessment of his psychological fitness. This approach to remove Shea from his position was also unsuccessful. Finally, six months after the fire, Shea's superiors reassigned him to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Shea felt that his new post was a "non-job," and left after only two months.
Program recovery.
Gene Kranz called a meeting of his staff in Mission Control three days after the accident, delivering a speech which has subsequently become one of NASA's principles. Speaking of the errors and overall attitude surrounding the Apollo program before the accident, he said: "We were too 'gung-ho' about the schedule and we blocked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we." He reminded the team of the perils and mercilessness of their endeavor, and stated the new requirement that every member of every team in mission control be "tough and competent", requiring nothing less than perfection throughout NASA's programs. In 2003, following the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe quoted Kranz's speech, applying it to the "Columbia" crew.
Command module redesign.
After the fire, the Apollo program was grounded for review and redesign. The command module was found to be extremely hazardous and, in some instances, carelessly assembled (for example, a misplaced wrench socket was found in the cabin).
It was decided that the remaining Block I spacecraft would be used only for uncrewed Saturn V test flights. All crewed missions would use the Block II spacecraft, to which many command module design changes were made:
Thorough protocols were implemented for documenting spacecraft construction and maintenance.
New mission naming scheme.
The astronauts' widows asked that "Apollo 1" be reserved for the flight their husbands never made, and on April 24, 1967, Mueller, as Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, announced this change officially: AS-204 would be recorded as Apollo1, "first manned Apollo Saturn flight – failed on ground test". Even though three uncrewed Apollo missions (AS-201, AS-202, and AS-203) had previously occurred, only AS-201 and AS-202 carried spacecraft. Therefore, the next mission, the first uncrewed Saturn V test flight (AS-501) would be designated Apollo4, with all subsequent flights numbered sequentially in the order flown. The first three flights would not be renumbered, and the names "Apollo2" and "Apollo3" would officially go unused. Mueller considered AS-201 and AS-202, the first and second flights of the Apollo Block I CSM, as Apollo2 and3 respectively.
The crewed flight hiatus allowed work to catch up on the Saturn V and lunar module, which were encountering their own delays. Apollo4 flew in November 1967. Apollo1's (AS-204) Saturn IB rocket was taken down from Launch Complex 34, later reassembled at Launch complex 37B and used to launch Apollo5, an uncrewed Earth orbital test flight of the first lunar module, LM-1, in January 1968. A second uncrewed Saturn V AS-502 flew as Apollo6 in April 1968, and Grissom's backup crew of Wally Schirra, Don Eisele, and Walter Cunningham, finally flew the orbital test mission as Apollo7 (AS-205), in a Block II CSM in October 1968.
Memorials.
Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Ed White was buried at West Point Cemetery on the grounds of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. NASA officials attempted to pressure Pat White, Ed White's widow, into allowing her husband also to be buried at Arlington, against what she knew to be his wishes; their efforts were foiled by astronaut Frank Borman. The names of the Apollo 1 crew are among those of multiple astronauts who have died in the line of duty, listed on the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island, Florida. President Jimmy Carter awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously to Grissom on October 1, 1978. President Bill Clinton awarded it to White and Chaffee on December 17, 1997.
An Apollo 1 mission patch was left on the Moon's surface after the first crewed lunar landing by Apollo11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The Apollo15 mission left on the surface of the Moon a tiny memorial statue, "Fallen Astronaut", along with a plaque containing the names of the Apollo1 astronauts, among others including Soviet cosmonauts, who perished in the pursuit of human space flight.
Launch Complex 34.
After the Apollo 1 fire, Launch Complex 34 was subsequently used only for the launch of Apollo7 and later dismantled down to the concrete launch pedestal, which remains at the site () along with a few other concrete and steel-reinforced structures. The pedestal bears two plaques commemorating the crew.
The "Ad Astra per aspera" plaque for "the crew of Apollo 1" is seen in the 1998 film "Armageddon".
The "Dedicated to the living memory of the crew of the Apollo 1" plaque is quoted at the end of Wayne Hale's Requiem for the NASA Space Shuttle program. Each year the families of the Apollo1 crew are invited to the site for a memorial, and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex includes the site during the tour of the historic Cape Canaveral launch sites.
In January 2005, three granite benches, built by a college classmate of one of the astronauts, were installed at the site on the southern edge of the launch pad. Each bears the name of one of the astronauts and his military service insignia.
Remains of CM-012.
The Apollo 1 command module has never been on public display. After the accident, the spacecraft was removed and taken to Kennedy Space Center to facilitate the review board's disassembly in order to investigate the cause of the fire. When the investigation was complete, it was moved to the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and placed in a secured storage warehouse.
On February 17, 2007, the parts of CM-012 were moved approximately to a newer, environmentally controlled warehouse. Only a few weeks earlier, Gus Grissom's brother Lowell publicly suggested CM-012 be permanently entombed in the concrete remains of Launch Complex 34.
On January 27, 2017, the 50th anniversary of the fire, NASA put the hatch from Apollo1 on display at the Saturn V Rocket Center at Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex. KSC's Visitor Complex also houses memorials that include parts of "Challenger" and "Columbia," located in the Space Shuttle "Atlantis" exhibit. "This is way, way, way long overdue. But we're excited about it," said Scott Grissom, Gus Grissom's older son.
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