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AbiWord () is a free and open-source software word processor. It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word "abierto", meaning "open".
AbiWord was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first part of a proposed AbiSuite but was adopted by open source developers after SourceGear changed its business focus and ceased development. It now runs on Linux, ReactOS, Solaris, AmigaOS 4.0 (through its Cygwin X11 engine), MeeGo (on the Nokia N9 smartphone), Maemo (on the Nokia N810), QNX and other operating systems. Development of a version for Microsoft Windows has temporarily ended due to lack of maintainers (the latest released versions are 2.8.6 and 2.9.4 beta).
The macOS port has remained on version 2.4 since 2005, although the current version does run non-natively on macOS through XQuartz.
AbiWord is part of the AbiSource project which develops a number of office-related technologies. Abiword is one of the rare text processing software which allows local users to edit simultaneously the same shared document in a local network, without the requirement of an Internet connection, since 2009.
Features
AbiWord supports both basic word processing features such as lists, indents and character formats, and more sophisticated features including tables, styles, page headers and footers, footnotes, templates, multiple views, page columns, spell checking, and grammar checking. Starting with version 2.8.0, AbiWord includes a collaboration plugin that allows integration with AbiCollab.net, a Web-based service that permits multiple users to work on the same document in real time, in full synchronization. The Presentation view of AbiWord, which permits easy display of presentations created in AbiWord on "screen-sized" pages, is another feature not often found in word processors.
Interface
AbiWord generally works similarly to classic versions (pre-Office 2007) of Microsoft Word, as direct ease of migration was a high priority early goal. While many interface similarities remain, cloning the Word interface is no longer a top priority. The interface is intended to follow user interface guidelines for each respective platform.
File formats
AbiWord comes with several import and export filters providing partial support for such formats as HTML, Microsoft Word (.doc), Office Open XML (.docx), OpenDocument Text (.odt), Rich Text Format (.rtf), and text documents (.txt). LaTeX is supported for export only. Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably WordPerfect documents. The native file format, .abw, uses XML, so as to mitigate vendor lock-in concerns with respect to interoperability and digital archiving.
Grammar checking
The AbiWord project includes a US English-only grammar checking plugin using Link Grammar. AbiWord had grammar checking before any other open source word processor, although a grammar checker was later added to OpenOffice.org. Link Grammar is both a theory of syntax and an open source parser which is now developed by the AbiWord project.
See also
List of free and open-source software packages
List of word processors
Comparison of word processors
Office Open XML software
OpenDocument software
References
External links
1998 software
Cross-platform free software
Free software programmed in C++
Free word processors
Linux word processors
MacOS word processors
Office software that uses GTK
Portable software
Software using the GPL license
Windows word processors
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Angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors) are a class of medication used primarily for the treatment of high blood pressure and heart failure. This class of medicine works by causing relaxation of blood vessels as well as a decrease in blood volume, which leads to lower blood pressure and decreased oxygen demand from the heart.
ACE inhibitors inhibit the activity of angiotensin-converting enzyme, an important component of the renin–angiotensin system which converts angiotensin I to angiotensin II, and hydrolyses bradykinin. Therefore, ACE inhibitors decrease the formation of angiotensin II, a vasoconstrictor, and increase the level of bradykinin, a peptide vasodilator. This combination is synergistic in lowering blood pressure. As a result of inhibiting the ACE enzyme in the bradykinin system, the ACE inhibitor drugs allow for increased levels of bradykinin which would normally be degraded. Bradykinin produces prostaglandin. This mechanism can explain the two most common side effects seen with ACE Inhibitors: angioedema and cough.
Frequently prescribed ACE inhibitors include benazepril, zofenopril, perindopril, trandolapril, captopril, enalapril, lisinopril, and ramipril.
Medical use
ACE inhibitors were initially approved for the treatment of hypertension and can be used alone or in combination with other anti-hypertensive medications. Later, they were found useful for other cardiovascular and kidney diseases including:
Acute myocardial infarction (heart attack)
Heart failure (left ventricular systolic dysfunction)
Kidney complications of diabetes mellitus (diabetic nephropathy) by means of decreasing the blood pressure and increasing perfusion in glomerular arterioles.
In treating high blood pressure, ACE inhibitors are often the first drug choice, particularly when diabetes is present, but age can lead to different choices and it is common to need more than one drug to obtain the desired improvement. There are fixed-dose combination drugs, such as ACE inhibitor and thiazide combinations. ACE inhibitors have also been used in chronic kidney failure and kidney involvement in systemic sclerosis (hardening of tissues, as scleroderma renal crisis). In those with stable coronary artery disease, but no heart failure, benefits are similar to other usual treatments.
In 2012, there was a meta-analysis published in the BMJ that described the protective role of ACE inhibitors in reducing the risk of pneumonia when compared to angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARBs). The authors found a decreased risk in patients with previous stroke (54% risk reduction), with heart failure (37% risk reduction), and of Asian descent (43% risk reduction vs 54% risk reduction in non-Asian population). However, no reduced pneumonia related mortality was observed.
Other
ACE inhibitors may also be used to help decrease excessive water consumption in people with schizophrenia resulting in psychogenic polydipsia. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial showed that when used for this purpose, enalapril led to decreased consumption (determined by urine output and osmolality) in 60% of people; the same effect has been demonstrated in other ACE inhibitors.
Additionally ACE-I are commonly used after renal transplant to manage post-transplant erythrocytosis, a condition characterised by a persistently high hematocrit greater than 51% which often develops 8–24 months after successful transplantation, as ACE-I have been shown to decrease erythropoietin production.
Adverse effects
Common side effects include: low blood pressure, cough, hyperkalemia, headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and kidney impairment.
The main adverse effects of ACE inhibition can be understood from their pharmacological action. The other reported adverse effects are liver problems and effects on the fetus. Kidney problems may occur with all ACE inhibitors that directly follows from their mechanism of action. Patients starting on an ACE inhibitor usually have a modest reduction in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). However, the decrease may be significant in conditions of pre-existing decreased renal perfusions, such as renal artery stenosis, heart failure, polycystic kidney disease, or volume depletion. In these patients, the maintenance of GFR depends on angiotensin-II-dependent efferent vasomotor tone. Therefore, renal function should be closely monitored over the first few days after initiation of treatment with ACE inhibitor in patients with decreased renal perfusion. A moderate reduction in renal function, no greater than 30% rise in serum creatinine, that is stabilized after a week of treatment is deemed acceptable as part of the therapeutic effect, providing the residual renal function is sufficient.
Reduced GFR is especially a problem if the patient is concomitantly taking an NSAID and a diuretic. When the three drugs are taken together, the risk of developing renal failure is significantly increased.
High blood potassium is another possible complication of treatment with an ACE inhibitor due to its effect on aldosterone. Suppression of angiotensin II leads to a decrease in aldosterone levels. Since aldosterone is responsible for increasing the excretion of potassium, ACE inhibitors can cause retention of potassium. Some people, however, can continue to lose potassium while on an ACE inhibitor. Hyperkalemia may decrease the velocity of impulse conduction in the nerves and muscles, including cardiac tissues. This leads to cardiac dysfunction and neuromuscular consequences, such as muscle weakness, paresthesia, nausea, diarrhea, and others. Close monitoring of potassium levels is required in patients receiving treatment with ACE inhibitors who are at risk of hyperkalemia.
Another possible adverse effect specific for ACE inhibitors, but not for other RAAS blockers, is an increase in bradykinin level.
A persistent dry cough is a relatively common adverse effect believed to be associated with the increases in bradykinin levels produced by ACE inhibitors, although the role of bradykinin in producing these symptoms has been disputed. Many cases of cough in people on ACE inhibitors may not be from the medication itself, however. People who experience this cough are often switched to angiotensin II receptor antagonists.
Some (0.7%) develop angioedema due to increased bradykinin levels. A genetic predisposition may exist.
A severe rare allergic reaction can affect the bowel wall and secondarily cause abdominal pain.
Blood
Hematologic effects, such as neutropenia, agranulocytosis and other blood dyscrasias, have occurred during therapy with ACE inhibitors, especially in people with additional risk factors.
Pregnancy
In pregnant women, ACE inhibitors taken during all the trimesters have been reported to cause congenital malformations, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths. Commonly reported fetal abnormalities include hypotension, renal dysplasia, anuria/oliguria, oligohydramnios, intrauterine growth retardation, pulmonary hypoplasia, patent ductus arteriosus, and incomplete ossification of the skull. Overall, about half of newborns exposed to ACE inhibitors are adversely affected, leading to birth defects.
ACE inhibitors are ADEC pregnancy category D and should be avoided in women who are likely to become pregnant. In the U.S., ACE inhibitors must be labeled with a boxed warning concerning the risk of birth defects when taken during the second and third trimester. Their use in the first trimester is also associated with a risk of major congenital malformations, particularly affecting the cardiovascular and central nervous systems.
Overdose
Symptoms and Treatment: There are few reports of ACE inhibitor overdose in the literature. The most likely manifestations are hypotension, which may be severe, hyperkalemia, hyponatremia and renal impairment with metabolic acidosis. Treatment should be mainly symptomatic and supportive, with volume expansion using normal saline to correct hypotension and improve renal function, and gastric lavage followed by activated charcoal and a cathartic to prevent further absorption of the drug. Captopril, enalapril, lisinopril and perindopril are known to be removable by hemodialysis.
Contraindications and precautions
The ACE inhibitors are contraindicated in people with:
Pregnancy or breastfeeding
Previous angioedema associated with ACE inhibitor therapy
Bilateral renal artery stenosis
Hypersensitivity to ACE inhibitors
ACE inhibitors should be used with caution in people with:
Impaired renal function
Aortic valve stenosis or cardiac outflow obstruction
Hypovolemia or dehydration
Hemodialysis with high-flux polyacrylonitrile membranes
A combination of ACE inhibitor with other drugs may increase effects of these drugs, but also the risk of adverse effects. The commonly reported adverse effects of drug combination with ACE inhibitor are acute renal failure, hypotension, and hyperkalemia. The drugs interacting with ACE inhibitor should be prescribed with caution. Special attention should be given to combinations of ACE inhibitor with other RAAS blockers, diuretics (especially potassium-sparing diuretics), NSAIDs, anticoagulants, cyclosporine, DPP-4 inhibitors, and potassium supplements.
Potassium supplementation should be used with caution and under medical supervision owing to the hyperkalemic effect of ACE inhibitors.
Concomitant use with cyclooxygenase inhibitors tends to decrease ACE inhibitor's hypotensive effect.
Mechanism of action
ACE inhibitors reduce the activity of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) as the primary etiologic (causal) event in the development of hypertension in people with diabetes mellitus, as part of the insulin-resistance syndrome or as a manifestation of renal disease.
Renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system
The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system is a major blood pressure regulating mechanism. Markers of electrolyte and water imbalance in the body such as hypotension, low distal tubule sodium concentration, decreased blood volume and high sympathetic tone trigger the release of the enzyme renin from the cells of juxtaglomerular apparatus in the kidney.
Renin activates a circulating liver derived prohormone angiotensinogen by proteolytic cleavage of all but its first ten amino acid residues known as angiotensin I. ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) then removes a further two residues, converting angiotensin I into angiotensin II. ACE is found in the pulmonary circulation and in the endothelium of many blood vessels. The system increases blood pressure by increasing the amount of salt and water the body retains, although angiotensin is also very good at causing the blood vessels to tighten (a potent vasoconstrictor).
Effects
ACE inhibitors block the conversion of angiotensin I (ATI) to angiotensin II (ATII). They thereby lower arteriolar resistance and increase venous capacity; decrease cardiac output, cardiac index, stroke work, and volume; lower resistance in blood vessels in the kidneys; and lead to increased natriuresis (excretion of sodium in the urine). Renin increases in concentration in the blood as a result of negative feedback of conversion of ATI to ATII. ATI increases for the same reason; ATII and aldosterone decrease. Bradykinin increases because of less inactivation by ACE.
Under normal conditions, angiotensin II has these effects:
Vasoconstriction (narrowing of blood vessels) and vascular smooth muscle hypertrophy (enlargement) induced by ATII may lead to increased blood pressure and hypertension. Further, constriction of the efferent arterioles of the kidney leads to increased perfusion pressure in the glomeruli.
It contributes to ventricular remodeling and ventricular hypertrophy of the heart through stimulation of the proto-oncogenes c-fos, c-jun, c-myc, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-B), through fibrogenesis and apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Stimulation by ATII of the adrenal cortex to release aldosterone, a hormone that acts on kidney tubules, causes sodium and chloride ions retention and potassium excretion. Sodium is a "water-holding" ion, so water is also retained, which leads to increased blood volume, hence an increase in blood pressure.
Stimulation of the posterior pituitary to release vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone, ADH) also acts on the kidneys to increase water retention. If ADH production is excessive in heart failure, Na+ level in the plasma may fall (hyponatremia), and this is a sign of increased risk of death in heart failure patients.
A decrease renal protein kinase C
During the course of ACE inhibitor use, the production of ATII is decreased, which prevents aldosterone release from the adrenal cortex. This allows the kidney to excrete sodium ions along with obligate water, and retain potassium ions. This decreases blood volume, leading to decreased blood pressure.
Epidemiological and clinical studies have shown ACE inhibitors reduce the progress of diabetic nephropathy independently from their blood pressure-lowering effect. This action of ACE inhibitors is used in the prevention of diabetic renal failure.
ACE inhibitors have been shown to be effective for indications other than hypertension even in patients with normal blood pressure. The use of a maximum dose of ACE inhibitors in such patients (including for prevention of diabetic nephropathy, congestive heart failure, and prophylaxis of cardiovascular events) is justified, because it improves clinical outcomes independently of the blood pressure-lowering effect of ACE inhibitors. Such therapy, of course, requires careful and gradual titration of the dose to prevent the effects of rapidly decreasing blood pressure (dizziness, fainting, etc.).
ACE inhibitors have also been shown to cause a central enhancement of parasympathetic nervous system activity in healthy volunteers and patients with heart failure. This action may reduce the prevalence of malignant cardiac arrhythmias, and the reduction in sudden death reported in large clinical trials.
ACE Inhibitors also reduce plasma norepinephrine levels, and its resulting vasoconstriction effects, in heart failure patients, thus breaking the vicious circles of sympathetic and renin angiotensin system activation, which sustains the downward spiral in cardiac function in congestive heart failure
The ACE inhibitor enalapril has also been shown to reduce cardiac cachexia in patients with chronic heart failure. Cachexia is a poor prognostic sign in patients with chronic heart failure.
ACE inhibitors are under early investigation for the treatment of frailty and muscle wasting (sarcopenia) in elderly patients without heart failure.
Examples
Currently, there are 10 ACE inhibitors approved for use in the United States by the FDA: captopril (1981), enalapril (1985), lisinopril (1987), benazepril (1991), fosinopril (1991), quinapril (1991), ramipril (1991), perindopril (1993), moexipril (1995) and trandolapril (1996).
ACE inhibitors are easily identifiable by their common suffix, '-pril'. ACE inhibitors can be divided into three groups based on their molecular structure of the enzyme binding sites (sulfhydryl, phosphinyl, carboxyl) to the active center of ACE:
Sulfhydryl-containing agents
Alacepril
Captopril (trade name Capoten), the first ACE inhibitor.
Zofenopril
These agents appear to show antioxidative properties but may be involved in adverse events such as skin eruptions.
Dicarboxylate-containing agents
This is the largest group, including:
Enalapril (Vasotec/Renitec/Berlipril/Enap/Enalapril Profarma)
Ramipril (Altace/Prilace/Ramace/Ramiwin/Triatec/Tritace/Ramitac)
Quinapril (Accupril)
Perindopril (Coversyl/Aceon/Perindo)
Lisinopril (Listril/Lopril/Novatec/Prinivil/Zestril, Lisidigal)
Benazepril (Lotensin)
Imidapril (Tanatril)
Trandolapril (Mavik/Odrik/Gopten)
Cilazapril (Inhibace)
Phosphonate-containing agents
Ceronapril (never marketed)
Fosinopril (Fositen/Monopril)
Naturally occurring
A comprehensive resource on anti-hypertensive peptides is available in form of a database. It contains around 1700 unique antihypertensive peptides
Arfalasin (HOE 409) is angiotensin antagonist.
Dairy products
Casokinins and lactokinins, breakdown products of casein and whey, occur naturally after ingestion of milk products, especially cultured milk. Their role in blood pressure control is uncertain.
The lactotripeptides Val-Pro-Pro and Ile-Pro-Pro produced by the probiotic Lactobacillus helveticus or derived from casein have been shown to have ACE-inhibiting and antihypertensive functions. In one study, L. helveticus PR4 was isolated from Italian cheeses.
Comparative information
All ACE inhibitors have similar antihypertensive efficacy when equivalent doses are administered. The main differences lie with captopril, the first ACE inhibitor. Captopril has a shorter duration of action and an increased incidence of adverse effects. It is also the only ACE inhibitor capable of passing through the blood–brain barrier, although the significance of this characteristic has not been shown to have any positive clinical effects.
In a large clinical study, one of the agents in the ACE inhibitor class, ramipril (Altace), demonstrated an ability to reduce the mortality rates of patients with a myocardial infarction and to slow the subsequent development of heart failure. This finding was made after it was discovered that regular use of ramipril reduced mortality rates even in test subjects who didn't have hypertension.
Some believe ramipril's additional benefits may be shared by some or all drugs in the ACE-inhibitor class. However, ramipril currently remains the only ACE inhibitor for which such effects are actually evidence-based.
A meta-analysis confirmed that ACE inhibitors are effective and certainly the first-line choice in hypertension treatment. This meta-analysis was based on 20 trials and a cohort of 158,998 patients, of whom 91% were hypertensive. ACE inhibitors were used as the active treatment in seven trials (n=76,615) and angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) in 13 trials (n=82,383).
ACE inhibitors were associated with a statistically significant 10% mortality reduction: (HR 0.90; 95% CI, 0.84–0.97; P=0.004). In contrast, no significant mortality reduction was observed with ARB treatment (HR 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94–1.04; P=0.683). Analysis of mortality reduction by different ACE inhibitors showed that perindopril-based regimens are associated with a statistically significant 13% all-cause mortality reduction.
Taking into account the broad spectrum of the hypertensive population, one might expect that an effective treatment with ACE inhibitors, in particular with perindopril, would result in an important gain of lives saved.
Equivalent doses in hypertension
The ACE inhibitors have different strengths with different starting dosages. Dosage should be adjusted according to the clinical response.
Combination with angiotensin II receptor antagonists
ACE inhibitors possess many common characteristics with another class of cardiovascular drugs, angiotensin II receptor antagonists, which are often used when patients are intolerant of the adverse effects produced by ACE inhibitors. ACE inhibitors do not completely prevent the formation of angiotensin II, as blockage is dose-dependent, so angiotensin II receptor antagonists may be useful because they act to prevent the action of angiotensin II at the AT1 receptor, leaving AT2 receptor unblocked; the latter may have consequences needing further study.
The combination therapy of angiotensin II receptor antagonists with ACE inhibitors may be superior to either agent alone. This combination may increase levels of bradykinin while blocking the generation of angiotensin II and its activity at the AT1 receptor. This 'dual blockade' may be more effective than using an ACE inhibitor alone, because angiotensin II can be generated via non-ACE-dependent pathways. Preliminary studies suggest this combination of pharmacologic agents may be advantageous in the treatment of essential hypertension, chronic heart failure, and nephropathy. However, the more recent ONTARGET study showed no benefit of combining the agents and more adverse events. While statistically significant results have been obtained for its role in treating hypertension, clinical significance may be lacking. There are warnings about the combination of ACE inhibitors with ARBs.
Patients with heart failure may benefit from the combination in terms of reducing morbidity and ventricular remodeling.
The most compelling evidence for the treatment of nephropathy has been found: This combination therapy partially reversed the proteinuria and also exhibited a renoprotective effect in patients with diabetic nephropathy, and pediatric IgA nephropathy.
History
Leonard T. Skeggs and his colleagues (including Norman Shumway) discovered ACE in plasma in 1956. It was also noted that those who worked in banana plantations in South-western Brazil collapsed after being bitten by a pit viper, leading to a search for a blood pressure lowering component in its venom. Brazilian scientist Sérgio Henrique Ferreira reported a bradykinin-potentiating factor (BPF) present in the venom of Bothrops jararaca, a South American pit viper, in 1965. Ferreira then went to John Vane's laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow with his already-isolated BPF. The conversion of the inactive angiotensin I to the potent angiotensin II was thought to take place in the plasma. However, in 1967, Kevin K. F. Ng and John R. Vane showed plasma ACE is too slow to account for the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II in vivo. Subsequent investigation showed rapid conversion occurs during its passage through the pulmonary circulation.
Bradykinin is rapidly inactivated in the circulating blood, and it disappears completely in a single pass through the pulmonary circulation. Angiotensin I also disappears in the pulmonary circulation because of its conversion to angiotensin II. Furthermore, angiotensin II passes through the lungs without any loss. The inactivation of bradykinin and the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II in the lungs was thought to be caused by the same enzyme. In 1970, Ng and Vane, using BPF provided by Ferreira, showed the conversion is inhibited during its passage through the pulmonary circulation.
BPFs are members of a family of peptides whose potentiating action is linked to inhibition of bradykinin by ACE. Molecular analysis of BPF yielded a nonapeptide BPF teprotide (SQ 20,881), which showed the greatest ACE inhibition potency and hypotensive effect in vivo. Teprotide had limited clinical value as a result of its peptide nature and lack of activity when given orally. In the early 1970s, knowledge of the structure-activity relationship required for inhibition of ACE was growing. David Cushman, Miguel Ondetti and colleagues used peptide analogues to study the structure of ACE, using carboxypeptidase A as a model. Their discoveries led to the development of captopril, the first orally-active ACE inhibitor, in 1975.
Captopril was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1981. The first nonsulfhydryl-containing ACE inhibitor, enalapril, was approved four years later. At least 8 other ACE inhibitors have since been marketed.
In 1991, Japanese scientists created the first milk-based ACE inhibitor, in the form of a fermented milk drink, using specific cultures to liberate the tripeptide isoleucine-proline-proline (IPP) from the dairy protein. Valine-proline-proline (VPP) is also liberated in this process—another milk tripeptide with a very similar chemical structure to IPP. Together, these peptides are now often referred to as lactotripeptides. In 1996, the first human study confirmed the blood pressure-lowering effect of IPP in fermented milk. Although twice the amount of VPP is needed to achieve the same ACE-inhibiting activity as the originally discovered IPP, VPP also is assumed to add to the total blood pressure lowering effect.
Since the first lactotripeptides discovery, more than 20 human clinical trials have been conducted in many different countries.
Note
See also
Angiotensin II receptor blocker
Discovery and development of angiotensin receptor blockers
Loop diuretic, also used to treat CHF
Renin inhibitor
References
External links
From snake venom to ACE inhibitor — the discovery and rise of captopril
ACE inhibitors
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Parallel ATA (PATA), originally , also known as IDE, is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection is used for storage devices such as hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and optical disc drives in computers.
The standard is maintained by the X3/INCITS committee. It uses the underlying (ATA) and Packet Interface (ATAPI) standards.
The Parallel ATA standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development, which began with the original AT Attachment interface, developed for use in early PC AT equipment. The ATA interface itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations are still in common informal use, in particular Extended IDE (EIDE) and Ultra ATA (UATA). After the introduction of SATA in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Parallel ATA cables have a maximum allowable length of . Because of this limit, the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years, ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. It has largely been replaced by SATA in newer systems.
History and terminology
The standard was originally conceived as the "AT Bus Attachment," officially called "AT Attachment" and abbreviated "ATA" because its primary feature was a direct connection to the 16-bit ISA bus introduced with the IBM PC/AT. The original ATA specifications published by the standards committees use the name "AT Attachment". The "AT" in the IBM PC/AT referred to "Advanced Technology" so ATA has also been referred to as "Advanced Technology Attachment". When a newer Serial ATA (SATA) was introduced in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Physical ATA interfaces became a standard component in all PCs, initially on host bus adapters, sometimes on a sound card but ultimately as two physical interfaces embedded in a Southbridge chip on a motherboard. Called the "primary" and "secondary" ATA interfaces, they were assigned to base addresses 0x1F0 and 0x170 on ISA bus systems. They were replaced by SATA interfaces.
IDE and ATA-1
The first version of what is now called the ATA/ATAPI interface was developed by Western Digital under the name Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Together with Compaq Computer (the initial customer), they worked with various disk drive manufacturers to develop and ship early products with the goal of remaining software compatible with the existing IBM PC hard drive interface. The first such drives appeared internally in Compaq PCs in 1986
and were first separately offered by Conner Peripherals as the CP342 in June 1987.
The term Integrated Drive Electronics refers to the fact that the drive controller is integrated into the drive, as opposed to a separate controller situated at the other side of the connection cable to the drive. On an IBM PC compatible, CP/M machine, or similar, this was typically a card installed on a motherboard. The interface cards used to connect a parallel ATA drive to, for example, an ISA Slot, are not drive controllers: they are merely bridges between the host bus and the ATA interface. Since the original ATA interface is essentially just a 16-bit ISA bus in disguise, the bridge was especially simple in case of an ATA connector being located on an ISA interface card. The integrated controller presented the drive to the host computer as an array of 512-byte blocks with a relatively simple command interface. This relieved the mainboard and interface cards in the host computer of the chores of stepping the disk head arm, moving the head arm in and out, and so on, as had to be done with earlier ST-506 and ESDI hard drives. All of these low-level details of the mechanical operation of the drive were now handled by the controller on the drive itself. This also eliminated the need to design a single controller that could handle many different types of drives, since the controller could be unique for the drive. The host need only to ask for a particular sector, or block, to be read or written, and either accept the data from the drive or send the data to it.
The interface used by these drives was standardized in 1994 as ANSI standard X3.221-1994, AT Attachment Interface for Disk Drives. After later versions of the standard were developed, this became known as "ATA-1".
A short-lived, seldom-used implementation of ATA was created for the IBM XT and similar machines that used the 8-bit version of the ISA bus. It has been referred to as "XT-IDE", "XTA" or "XT Attachment".
EIDE and ATA-2
In 1994, about the same time that the ATA-1 standard was adopted, Western Digital introduced drives under a newer name, Enhanced IDE (EIDE). These included most of the features of the forthcoming ATA-2 specification and several additional enhancements. Other manufacturers introduced their own variations of ATA-1 such as "Fast ATA" and "Fast ATA-2".
The new version of the ANSI standard, AT Attachment Interface with Extensions ATA-2 (X3.279-1996), was approved in 1996. It included most of the features of the manufacturer-specific variants.
ATA-2 also was the first to note that devices other than hard drives could be attached to the interface:
ATAPI
As mentioned in the previous sections, ATA was originally designed for, and worked only with hard disk drives and devices that could emulate them. The introduction of ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface) by a group called the Small Form Factor committee (SFF) allowed ATA to be used for a variety of other devices that require functions beyond those necessary for hard disk drives. For example, any removable media device needs a "media eject" command, and a way for the host to determine whether the media is present, and these were not provided in the ATA protocol.
The Small Form Factor committee approached this problem by defining ATAPI, the "ATA Packet Interface". ATAPI is actually a protocol allowing the ATA interface to carry SCSI commands and responses; therefore, all ATAPI devices are actually "speaking SCSI" other than at the electrical interface. In fact, some early ATAPI devices were simply SCSI devices with an ATA/ATAPI to SCSI protocol converter added on. The SCSI commands and responses are embedded in "packets" (hence "ATA Packet Interface") for transmission on the ATA cable. This allows any device class for which a SCSI command set has been defined to be interfaced via ATA/ATAPI.
ATAPI devices are also "speaking ATA", as the ATA physical interface and protocol are still being used to send the packets. On the other hand, ATA hard drives and solid state drives do not use ATAPI.
ATAPI devices include CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives, tape drives, and large-capacity floppy drives such as the Zip drive and SuperDisk drive.
The SCSI commands and responses used by each class of ATAPI device (CD-ROM, tape, etc.) are described in other documents or specifications specific to those device classes and are not within ATA/ATAPI or the T13 committee's purview. One commonly used set is defined in the MMC SCSI command set.
ATAPI was adopted as part of ATA in INCITS 317-1998, AT Attachment with Packet Interface Extension (ATA/ATAPI-4).
UDMA and ATA-4
The ATA/ATAPI-4 standard also introduced several "Ultra DMA" transfer modes. These initially supported speeds from 16 MByte/s to 33 MByte/second. In later versions, faster Ultra DMA modes were added, requiring new 80-wire cables to reduce crosstalk. The latest versions of Parallel ATA support up to 133 MByte/s.
Ultra ATA
Ultra ATA, abbreviated UATA, is a designation that has been primarily used by Western Digital for different speed enhancements to the ATA/ATAPI standards. For example, in 2000 Western Digital published a document describing "Ultra ATA/100", which brought performance improvements for the then-current ATA/ATAPI-5 standard by improving maximum speed of the Parallel ATA interface from 66 to 100 MB/s. Most of Western Digital's changes, along with others, were included in the ATA/ATAPI-6 standard (2002).
Current terminology
The terms "integrated drive electronics" (IDE), "enhanced IDE" and "EIDE" have come to be used interchangeably with ATA (now Parallel ATA, or PATA).
In addition, there have been several generations of "EIDE" drives marketed, compliant with various versions of the ATA specification. An early "EIDE" drive might be compatible with ATA-2, while a later one with ATA-6.
Nevertheless, a request for an "IDE" or "EIDE" drive from a computer parts vendor will almost always yield a drive that will work with most Parallel ATA interfaces.
Another common usage is to refer to the specification version by the fastest mode supported. For example, ATA-4 supported Ultra DMA modes 0 through 2, the latter providing a maximum transfer rate of 33 megabytes per second. ATA-4 drives are thus sometimes called "UDMA-33" drives, and sometimes "ATA-33" drives. Similarly, ATA-6 introduced a maximum transfer speed of 100 megabytes per second, and some drives complying with this version of the standard are marketed as "PATA/100" drives.
x86 BIOS size limitations
Initially, the size of an ATA drive was stored in the system x86 BIOS using a type number (1 through 45) that predefined the C/H/S parameters and also often the landing zone, in which the drive heads are parked while not in use. Later, a "user definable" format called C/H/S or cylinders, heads, sectors was made available. These numbers were important for the earlier ST-506 interface, but were generally meaningless for ATA—the CHS parameters for later ATA large drives often specified impossibly high numbers of heads or sectors that did not actually define the internal physical layout of the drive at all. From the start, and up to ATA-2, every user had to specify explicitly how large every attached drive was. From ATA-2 on, an "identify drive" command was implemented that can be sent and which will return all drive parameters.
Owing to a lack of foresight by motherboard manufacturers, the system BIOS was often hobbled by artificial C/H/S size limitations due to the manufacturer assuming certain values would never exceed a particular numerical maximum.
The first of these BIOS limits occurred when ATA drives reached sizes in excess of 504 MiB, because some motherboard BIOSes would not allow C/H/S values above 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. Multiplied by 512 bytes per sector, this totals bytes which, divided by bytes per MiB, equals 504 MiB (528 MB).
The second of these BIOS limitations occurred at 1024 cylinders, 256 heads, and 63 sectors, and a problem in MS-DOS limited the number of heads to 255. This totals to bytes (8032.5 MiB), commonly referred to as the 8.4 gigabyte barrier. This is again a limit imposed by x86 BIOSes, and not a limit imposed by the ATA interface.
It was eventually determined that these size limitations could be overridden with a small program loaded at startup from a hard drive's boot sector. Some hard drive manufacturers, such as Western Digital, started including these override utilities with large hard drives to help overcome these problems. However, if the computer was booted in some other manner without loading the special utility, the invalid BIOS settings would be used and the drive could either be inaccessible or appear to the operating system to be damaged.
Later, an extension to the x86 BIOS disk services called the "Enhanced Disk Drive" (EDD) was made available, which makes it possible to address drives as large as 264 sectors.
Interface size limitations
The first drive interface used 22-bit addressing mode which resulted in a maximum drive capacity of two gigabytes. Later, the first formalized ATA specification used a 28-bit addressing mode through LBA28, allowing for the addressing of 228 () sectors (blocks) of 512 bytes each, resulting in a maximum capacity of 128 GiB (137 GB).
ATA-6 introduced 48-bit addressing, increasing the limit to 128 PiB (144 PB). As a consequence, any ATA drive of capacity larger than about 137 GB must be an ATA-6 or later drive. Connecting such a drive to a host with an ATA-5 or earlier interface will limit the usable capacity to the maximum of the interface.
Some operating systems, including Windows XP pre-SP1, and Windows 2000 pre-SP3, disable LBA48 by default, requiring the user to take extra steps to use the entire capacity of an ATA drive larger than about 137 gigabytes.
Older operating systems, such as Windows 98, do not support 48-bit LBA at all. However, members of the third-party group MSFN have modified the Windows 98 disk drivers to add unofficial support for 48-bit LBA to Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and Windows ME.
Some 16-bit and 32-bit operating systems supporting LBA48 may still not support disks larger than 2 TiB due to using 32-bit arithmetic only; a limitation also applying to many boot sectors.
Primacy and obsolescence
Parallel ATA (then simply called ATA or IDE) became the primary storage device interface for PCs soon after its introduction. In some systems, a third and fourth motherboard interface was provided, allowing up to eight ATA devices to be attached to the motherboard. Often, these additional connectors were implemented by inexpensive RAID controllers.
Soon after the introduction of Serial ATA (SATA) in 2003, use of Parallel ATA declined. The first motherboards with built-in SATA interfaces usually had only a single PATA connector (for up to two PATA devices), along with multiple SATA connectors. Some PCs and laptops of the era have a SATA hard disk and an optical drive connected to PATA.
As of 2007, some PC chipsets, for example the Intel ICH10, had removed support for PATA. Motherboard vendors still wishing to offer Parallel ATA with those chipsets must include an additional interface chip. In more recent computers, the Parallel ATA interface is rarely used even if present, as four or more Serial ATA connectors are usually provided on the motherboard and SATA devices of all types are common.
With Western Digital's withdrawal from the PATA market, hard disk drives with the PATA interface were no longer in production after December 2013 for other than specialty applications.
Parallel ATA interface
Parallel ATA cables transfer data 16 bits at a time. The traditional cable uses 40-pin female connectors attached to a 40- or 80-conductor ribbon cable. Each cable has two or three connectors, one of which plugs into a host adapter interfacing with the rest of the computer system. The remaining connector(s) plug into storage devices, most commonly hard disk drives or optical drives. Each connector has 39 physical pins arranged into two rows (2.54 mm, -inch pitch), with a gap or key at pin 20. Earlier connectors may not have that gap, with all 40 pins available. Thus, later cables with the gap filled in are incompatible with earlier connectors, although earlier cables are compatible with later connectors.
Round parallel ATA cables (as opposed to ribbon cables) were eventually made available for 'case modders' for cosmetic reasons, as well as claims of improved computer cooling and were easier to handle; however, only ribbon cables are supported by the ATA specifications.
Pin 20
In the ATA standard, pin 20 is defined as a mechanical key and is not used. This pin's socket on the female connector is often obstructed, requiring pin 20 to be omitted from the male cable or drive connector; it is thus impossible to plug it in the wrong way round.
However, some flash memory drives can use pin 20 as VCC_in to power the drive without requiring a special power cable; this feature can only be used if the equipment supports this use of pin 20.
Pin 28
Pin 28 of the gray (slave/middle) connector of an 80-conductor cable is not attached to any conductor of the cable. It is attached normally on the black (master drive end) and blue (motherboard end) connectors. This enables cable select functionality.
Pin 34
Pin 34 is connected to ground inside the blue connector of an 80-conductor cable but not attached to any conductor of the cable, allowing for detection of such a cable. It is attached normally on the gray and black connectors.
44-pin variant
A 44-pin variant PATA connector is used for 2.5 inch drives inside laptops. The pins are closer together (2.0 mm pitch) and the connector is physically smaller than the 40-pin connector. The extra pins carry power.
80-conductor variant
ATA's cables have had 40 conductors for most of its history (44 conductors for the smaller form-factor version used for 2.5" drives—the extra four for power), but an 80-conductor version appeared with the introduction of the UDMA/66 mode. All of the additional conductors in the new cable are grounds, interleaved with the signal conductors to reduce the effects of capacitive coupling between neighboring signal conductors, reducing crosstalk. Capacitive coupling is more of a problem at higher transfer rates, and this change was necessary to enable the 66 megabytes per second (MB/s) transfer rate of UDMA4 to work reliably. The faster UDMA5 and UDMA6 modes also require 80-conductor cables.
Though the number of conductors doubled, the number of connector pins and the pinout remain the same as 40-conductor cables, and the external appearance of the connectors is identical. Internally, the connectors are different; the connectors for the 80-conductor cable connect a larger number of ground conductors to the ground pins, while the connectors for the 40-conductor cable connect ground conductors to ground pins one-to-one. 80-conductor cables usually come with three differently colored connectors (blue, black, and gray for controller, master drive, and slave drive respectively) as opposed to uniformly colored 40-conductor cable's connectors (commonly all gray). The gray connector on 80-conductor cables has pin 28 CSEL not connected, making it the slave position for drives configured cable select.
Differences between connectors
The image on the right shows PATA connectors after removal of strain relief, cover, and cable. Pin one is at bottom left of the connectors, pin 2 is top left, etc., except that the lower image of the blue connector shows the view from the opposite side, and pin one is at top right.
The connector is an insulation-displacement connector: each contact comprises a pair of points which together pierce the insulation of the ribbon cable with such precision that they make a connection to the desired conductor without harming the insulation on the neighboring conductors. The center row of contacts are all connected to the common ground bus and attach to the odd numbered conductors of the cable. The top row of contacts are the even-numbered sockets of the connector (mating with the even-numbered pins of the receptacle) and attach to every other even-numbered conductor of the cable. The bottom row of contacts are the odd-numbered sockets of the connector (mating with the odd-numbered pins of the receptacle) and attach to the remaining even-numbered conductors of the cable.
Note the connections to the common ground bus from sockets 2 (top left), 19 (center bottom row), 22, 24, 26, 30, and 40 on all connectors. Also note (enlarged detail, bottom, looking from the opposite side of the connector) that socket 34 of the blue connector does not contact any conductor but unlike socket 34 of the other two connectors, it does connect to the common ground bus. On the gray connector, note that socket 28 is completely missing, so that pin 28 of the drive attached to the gray connector will be open. On the black connector, sockets 28 and 34 are completely normal, so that pins 28 and 34 of the drive attached to the black connector will be connected to the cable. Pin 28 of the black drive reaches pin 28 of the host receptacle but not pin 28 of the gray drive, while pin 34 of the black drive reaches pin 34 of the gray drive but not pin 34 of the host. Instead, pin 34 of the host is grounded.
The standard dictates color-coded connectors for easy identification by both installer and cable maker. All three connectors are different from one another. The blue (host) connector has the socket for pin 34 connected to ground inside the connector but not attached to any conductor of the cable. Since the old 40 conductor cables do not ground pin 34, the presence of a ground connection indicates that an 80 conductor cable is installed. The conductor for pin 34 is attached normally on the other types and is not grounded. Installing the cable backwards (with the black connector on the system board, the blue connector on the remote device and the gray connector on the center device) will ground pin 34 of the remote device and connect host pin 34 through to pin 34 of the center device. The gray center connector omits the connection to pin 28 but connects pin 34 normally, while the black end connector connects both pins 28 and 34 normally.
Multiple devices on a cable
If two devices are attached to a single cable, one must be designated as Device 0 (in the past, commonly designated master) and the other as Device 1 (in the past, commonly designated as slave). This distinction is necessary to allow both drives to share the cable without conflict. The Device 0 drive is the drive that usually appears "first" to the computer's BIOS and/or operating system. In most personal computers the drives are often designated as "C:" for the Device 0 and "D:" for the Device 1 referring to one active primary partitions on each.
The terms device and drive are used interchangeably in the industry, as in master drive or master device.
The mode that a device must use is often set by a jumper setting on the device itself, which must be manually set to Device 0 (Master) or Device 1 (Slave). If there is a single device on a cable, it should be configured as Device 0. However, some certain era drives have a special setting called Single for this configuration (Western Digital, in particular). Also, depending on the hardware and software available, a Single drive on a cable will often work reliably even though configured as the Device 1 drive (most often seen where an optical drive is the only device on the secondary ATA interface).
The words primary and secondary typically refers to the two IDE cables, which can have two drives each (primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave).
Cable select
A drive mode called cable select was described as optional in ATA-1 and has come into fairly widespread use with ATA-5 and later. A drive set to "cable select" automatically configures itself as Device 0 or Device 1, according to its position on the cable. Cable select is controlled by pin 28. The host adapter grounds this pin; if a device sees that the pin is grounded, it becomes the Device 0 (master) device; if it sees that pin 28 is open, the device becomes the Device 1 (slave) device.
This setting is usually chosen by a jumper setting on the drive called "cable select", usually marked CS, which is separate from the Device 0/1 setting.
Note that if two drives are configured as Device 0 and Device 1 manually, this configuration does not need to correspond to their position on the cable. Pin 28 is only used to let the drives know their position on the cable; it is not used by the host when communicating with the drives. In other words, the manual master/slave setting using jumpers on the drives takes precedence and allows them to be freely placed on either connector of the ribbon cable.
With the 40-conductor cable, it was very common to implement cable select by simply cutting the pin 28 wire between the two device connectors; putting the slave Device 1 device at the end of the cable, and the master Device 0 on the middle connector. This arrangement eventually was standardized in later versions. However, it had one drawback: if there is just one master device on a 2-drive cable, using the middle connector, this results in an unused stub of cable, which is undesirable for physical convenience and electrical reasons. The stub causes signal reflections, particularly at higher transfer rates.
Starting with the 80-conductor cable defined for use in ATAPI5/UDMA4, the master Device 0 device goes at the far-from-the-host end of the cable on the black connector, the slave Device 1 goes on the grey middle connector, and the blue connector goes to the host (e.g. motherboard IDE connector, or IDE card). So, if there is only one (Device 0) device on a two-drive cable, using the black connector, there is no cable stub to cause reflections (the unused connector is now in the middle of the ribbon). Also, cable select is now implemented in the grey middle device connector, usually simply by omitting the pin 28 contact from the connector body.
Serialized, overlapped, and queued operations
The parallel ATA protocols up through ATA-3 require that once a command has been given on an ATA interface, it must complete before any subsequent command may be given. Operations on the devices must be serializedwith only one operation in progress at a timewith respect to the ATA host interface. A useful mental model is that the host ATA interface is busy with the first request for its entire duration, and therefore can not be told about another request until the first one is complete. The function of serializing requests to the interface is usually performed by a device driver in the host operating system.
The ATA-4 and subsequent versions of the specification have included an "overlapped feature set" and a "queued feature set" as optional features, both being given the name "Tagged Command Queuing" (TCQ), a reference to a set of features from SCSI which the ATA version attempts to emulate. However, support for these is extremely rare in actual parallel ATA products and device drivers because these feature sets were implemented in such a way as to maintain software compatibility with its heritage as originally an extension of the ISA bus. This implementation resulted in excessive CPU utilization which largely negated the advantages of command queuing. By contrast, overlapped and queued operations have been common in other storage buses; in particular, SCSI's version of tagged command queuing had no need to be compatible with APIs designed for ISA, allowing it to attain high performance with low overhead on buses which supported first party DMA like PCI. This has long been seen as a major advantage of SCSI.
The Serial ATA standard has supported native command queueing (NCQ) since its first release, but it is an optional feature for both host adapters and target devices. Many obsolete PC motherboards do not support NCQ, but modern SATA hard disk drives and SATA solid-state drives usually support NCQ, which is not the case for removable (CD/DVD) drives because the ATAPI command set used to control them prohibits queued operations.
Two devices on one cable—speed impact
There are many debates about how much a slow device can impact the performance of a faster device on the same cable. There is an effect, but the debate is confused by the blurring of two quite different causes, called here "Lowest speed" and "One operation at a time".
"Lowest speed"
On early ATA host adapters, both devices' data transfers can be constrained to the speed of the slower device, if two devices of different speed capabilities are on the same cable.
For all modern ATA host adapters, this is not true, as modern ATA host adapters support independent device timing. This allows each device on the cable to transfer data at its own best speed. Even with earlier adapters without independent timing, this effect applies only to the data transfer phase of a read or write operation.
"One operation at a time"
This is caused by the omission of both overlapped and queued feature sets from most parallel ATA products. Only one device on a cable can perform a read or write operation at one time; therefore, a fast device on the same cable as a slow device under heavy use will find it has to wait for the slow device to complete its task first.
However, most modern devices will report write operations as complete once the data is stored in their onboard cache memory, before the data is written to the (slow) magnetic storage. This allows commands to be sent to the other device on the cable, reducing the impact of the "one operation at a time" limit.
The impact of this on a system's performance depends on the application. For example, when copying data from an optical drive to a hard drive (such as during software installation), this effect probably will not matter. Such jobs are necessarily limited by the speed of the optical drive no matter where it is. But if the hard drive in question is also expected to provide good throughput for other tasks at the same time, it probably should not be on the same cable as the optical drive.
HDD passwords and security
ATA devices may support an optional security feature which is defined in an ATA specification, and thus not specific to any brand or device. The security feature can be enabled and disabled by sending special ATA commands to the drive. If a device is locked, it will refuse all access until it is unlocked.
A device can have two passwords: A User Password and a Master Password; either or both may be set. There is a Master Password identifier feature which, if supported and used, can identify the current Master Password (without disclosing it).
A device can be locked in two modes: High security mode or Maximum security mode. Bit 8 in word 128 of the IDENTIFY response shows which mode the disk is in: 0 = High, 1 = Maximum.
In High security mode, the device can be unlocked with either the User or Master password, using the "SECURITY UNLOCK DEVICE" ATA command. There is an attempt limit, normally set to 5, after which the disk must be power cycled or hard-reset before unlocking can be attempted again. Also in High security mode, the SECURITY ERASE UNIT command can be used with either the User or Master password.
In Maximum security mode, the device can be unlocked only with the User password. If the User password is not available, the only remaining way to get at least the bare hardware back to a usable state is to issue the SECURITY ERASE PREPARE command, immediately followed by SECURITY ERASE UNIT. In Maximum security mode, the SECURITY ERASE UNIT command requires the Master password and will completely erase all data on the disk. Word 89 in the IDENTIFY response indicates how long the operation will take.
While the ATA lock is intended to be impossible to defeat without a valid password, there are purported workarounds to unlock a device.
For sanitizing entire disks the built-in Secure Erase command is effective when implemented correctly. There have been a few reported instances of failures to erase some or all data.
External parallel ATA devices
Due to a short cable length specification and shielding issues it is extremely uncommon to find external PATA devices that directly use PATA for connection to a computer. A device connected externally needs additional cable length to form a U-shaped bend so that the external device may be placed alongside, or on top of the computer case, and the standard cable length is too short to permit this. For ease of reach from motherboard to device, the connectors tend to be positioned towards the front edge of motherboards, for connection to devices protruding from the front of the computer case. This front-edge position makes extension out the back to an external device even more difficult. Ribbon cables are poorly shielded, and the standard relies upon the cabling to be installed inside a shielded computer case to meet RF emissions limits.
External hard disk drives or optical disk drives that have an internal PATA interface, use some other interface technology to bridge the distance between the external device and the computer. USB is the most common external interface, followed by Firewire. A bridge chip inside the external devices converts from the USB interface to PATA, and typically only supports a single external device without cable select or master/slave.
Compact Flash interface
Compact Flash in its IDE mode is essentially a miniaturized ATA interface, intended for use on devices that use flash memory storage. No interfacing chips or circuitry are required, other than to directly adapt the smaller CF socket onto the larger ATA connector. (Although most CF cards only support IDE mode up to PIO4, making them much slower in IDE mode than their CF capable speed)
The ATA connector specification does not include pins for supplying power to a CF device, so power is inserted into the connector from a separate source. The exception to this is when the CF device is connected to a 44-pin ATA bus designed for 2.5-inch hard disk drives, commonly found in notebook computers, as this bus implementation must provide power to a standard hard disk drive.
CF devices can be designated as devices 0 or 1 on an ATA interface, though since most CF devices offer only a single socket, it is not necessary to offer this selection to end users. Although CF can be hot-pluggable with additional design methods, by default when wired directly to an ATA interface, it is not intended to be hot-pluggable.
ATA standards versions, transfer rates, and features
The following table shows the names of the versions of the ATA standards and the transfer modes and rates supported by each. Note that the transfer rate for each mode (for example, 66.7 MB/s for UDMA4, commonly called "Ultra-DMA 66", defined by ATA-5) gives its maximum theoretical transfer rate on the cable. This is simply two bytes multiplied by the effective clock rate, and presumes that every clock cycle is used to transfer end-user data. In practice, of course, protocol overhead reduces this value.
Congestion on the host bus to which the ATA adapter is attached may also limit the maximum burst transfer rate. For example, the maximum data transfer rate for conventional PCI bus is 133 MB/s, and this is shared among all active devices on the bus.
In addition, no ATA hard drives existed in 2005 that were capable of measured sustained transfer rates of above 80 MB/s. Furthermore, sustained transfer rate tests do not give realistic throughput expectations for most workloads: They use I/O loads specifically designed to encounter almost no delays from seek time or rotational latency. Hard drive performance under most workloads is limited first and second by those two factors; the transfer rate on the bus is a distant third in importance. Therefore, transfer speed limits above 66 MB/s really affect performance only when the hard drive can satisfy all I/O requests by reading from its internal cache—a very unusual situation, especially considering that such data is usually already buffered by the operating system.
, mechanical hard disk drives can transfer data at up to 524 MB/s, which is far beyond the capabilities of the PATA/133 specification. High-performance solid state drives can transfer data at up to 7000–7500 MB/s.
Only the Ultra DMA modes use CRC to detect errors in data transfer between the controller and drive. This is a 16-bit CRC, and it is used for data blocks only. Transmission of command and status blocks do not use the fast signaling methods that would necessitate CRC. For comparison, in Serial ATA, 32-bit CRC is used for both commands and data.
Features introduced with each ATA revision
Speed of defined transfer modes
Related standards, features, and proposals
ATAPI Removable Media Device (ARMD)
ATAPI devices with removable media, other than CD and DVD drives, are classified as ARMD (ATAPI Removable Media Device) and can appear as either a super-floppy (non-partitioned media) or a hard drive (partitioned media) to the operating system. These can be supported as bootable devices by a BIOS complying with the ATAPI Removable Media Device BIOS Specification, originally developed by Compaq Computer Corporation and Phoenix Technologies. It specifies provisions in the BIOS of a personal computer to allow the computer to be bootstrapped from devices such as Zip drives, Jaz drives, SuperDisk (LS-120) drives, and similar devices.
These devices have removable media like floppy disk drives, but capacities more commensurate with hard drives, and programming requirements unlike either. Due to limitations in the floppy controller interface most of these devices were ATAPI devices, connected to one of the host computer's ATA interfaces, similarly to a hard drive or CD-ROM device. However, existing BIOS standards did not support these devices. An ARMD-compliant BIOS allows these devices to be booted from and used under the operating system without requiring device-specific code in the OS.
A BIOS implementing ARMD allows the user to include ARMD devices in the boot search order. Usually an ARMD device is configured earlier in the boot order than the hard drive. Similarly to a floppy drive, if bootable media is present in the ARMD drive, the BIOS will boot from it; if not, the BIOS will continue in the search order, usually with the hard drive last.
There are two variants of ARMD, ARMD-FDD and ARMD-HDD. Originally ARMD caused the devices to appear as a sort of very large floppy drive, either the primary floppy drive device 00h or the secondary device 01h. Some operating systems required code changes to support floppy disks with capacities far larger than any standard floppy disk drive. Also, standard-floppy disk drive emulation proved to be unsuitable for certain high-capacity floppy disk drives such as Iomega Zip drives. Later the ARMD-HDD, ARMD-"Hard disk device", variant was developed to address these issues. Under ARMD-HDD, an ARMD device appears to the BIOS and the operating system as a hard drive.
ATA over Ethernet
In August 2004, Sam Hopkins and Brantley Coile of Coraid specified a lightweight ATA over Ethernet protocol to carry ATA commands over Ethernet instead of directly connecting them to a PATA host adapter. This permitted the established block protocol to be reused in storage area network (SAN) applications.
See also
Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)
CE-ATA Consumer Electronics (CE) ATA
FATA (hard drive)
INT 13H for BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Specification (SFF-8039i)
IT8212, a low-end Parallel ATA controller
Master/slave (technology)
List of device bandwidths
References
External links
CE-ATA Workgroup
AT Attachment
Computer storage buses
Computer connectors
Computer hardware standards
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The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. Branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, the VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridgeinitially Combat and later Pac-Man.
Atari was successful at creating arcade video games, but their development cost and limited lifespan drove CEO Nolan Bushnell to seek a programmable home system. The first inexpensive microprocessors from MOS Technology in late 1975 made this feasible. The console was prototyped as codename Stella by Atari subsidiary Cyan Engineering. Lacking funding to complete the project, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976.
The Atari VCS launched in 1977 with nine simple, low-resolution games in 2 KB cartridges. The system's first killer app was the home conversion of Taito's arcade game Space Invaders in 1980. The VCS became widely successful, leading to the founding of Activision and other third-party game developers and to competition from console manufacturers Mattel and Coleco. By the end of its primary lifecycle in 1983–84, games for the 2600 were using more than four times the storage size of the launch games with significantly more advanced visuals and gameplay than the system was designed for, such as Activision's Pitfall!
By 1982, the Atari 2600 was the dominant game system in North America. However, it saw competition from other consoles such as the Intellivision and ColecoVision, and poor decisions by Atari management damaged both the system and company's reputation, most notably the release of two highly anticipated games for the 2600: a port of the arcade game Pac-Man and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Pac-Man became the 2600's highest-selling game, but was panned for being inferior to the arcade version. E.T. was rushed to market for the holiday shopping season and was similarly panned and became a commercial failure. Both games, and a glut of third-party shovelware, were factors in ending Atari's relevance in the console market, contributing to the video game crash of 1983.
Warner sold Atari's home division to former Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel in 1984. In 1986, the new Atari Corporation under Tramiel released a lower-cost version of the 2600 and the backward-compatible Atari 7800, but it was Nintendo that led the recovery of the industry with its 1985 launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Production of the Atari 2600 ended on January 1, 1992, with an estimated 30 million units sold across its lifetime.
History
Atari, Inc. was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972. Its first major product was Pong, released in 1972, the first successful coin-operated video game. While Atari continued to develop new arcade games in following years, Pong gave rise to a number of competitors to the growing arcade game market. The competition along with other missteps by Atari led to financial problems in 1974, though recovering by the end of the year. By 1975, Atari had released a Pong home console, competing against Magnavox, the only other major producer of home consoles at the time. Atari engineers recognized, however, the limitation of custom logic integrated onto the circuit board, permanently confining the whole console to only one game. The increasing competition increased the risk, as Atari had found with past arcade games and again with dedicated home consoles. Both platforms are built from integrating discrete electro-mechanical components into circuits, rather than programmed as on a mainframe computer. Therefore, development of a console had cost at least plus time to complete, but the final product only had about a three-month shelf life until becoming outdated by competition.
By 1974, Atari had acquired Cyan Engineering, a Grass Valley electronics company founded by Steve Mayer and Larry Emmons, both former colleagues of Bushnell and Dabney from Ampex, who helped to develop new ideas for Atari's arcade games. Even prior to the release of the home version of Pong, Cyan's engineers, led by Mayer and Ron Milner, had envisioned a home console powered by new programmable microprocessors capable of playing Atari's current arcade offerings. The programmable microprocessors would make a console's design significantly simpler and more powerful than any dedicated single-game unit. However, the cost of such chips was far outside the range that their market would tolerate. Atari had opened negotiations to use Motorola's new 6800 in future systems.
MOS Technology 6502/6507
In September 1975, MOS Technology debuted the 6502 microprocessor for at the Wescon trade show in San Francisco. Mayer and Milner attended, and met with the leader of the team that created the chip, Chuck Peddle. They proposed using the 6502 in a game console, and offered to discuss it further at Cyan's facilities after the show.
Over two days, MOS and Cyan engineers sketched out a 6502-based console design by Meyer and Milner's specifications. Financial models showed that even at , the 6502 would be too expensive, and Peddle offered them a planned 6507 microprocessor, a cost-reduced version of the 6502, and MOS's RIOT chip for input/output. Cyan and MOS negotiated the 6507 and RIOT chips at a pair. MOS also introduced Cyan to Microcomputer Associates, who had separately developed debugging software and hardware for MOS, and had developed the JOLT Computer for testing the 6502, which Peddle suggested would be useful for Atari and Cyan to use while developing their system. Milner was able to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for a programmable console by implementing Tank, an arcade game by Atari's subsidiary Kee Games, on the JOLT.
As part of the deal, Atari wanted a second source of the chipset. Peddle and Paivinen suggested Synertek whose co-founder, Bob Schreiner, was a friend of Peddle. In October 1975, Atari informed the market that it was moving forward with MOS. The Motorola sales team had already told its management that the Atari deal was finalized, and Motorola management was livid. They announced a lawsuit against MOS the next week.
Building the system
By December 1975, Atari hired Joe Decuir, a recent graduate from University of California, Berkeley who had been doing his own testing on the 6502. Decuir began debugging the first prototype designed by Mayer and Milner, which gained the codename "Stella" after the brand of Decuir's bicycle. This prototype included a breadboard-level design of the graphics interface to build upon. A second prototype was completed by March 1976 with the help of Jay Miner, who created a chip called the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) to send graphics and audio to a television. The second prototype included a TIA, a 6507, and a ROM cartridge slot and adapter.
As the TIA's design was refined, Al Alcorn brought in Atari's game developers to provide input on features. There are significant limitations in the 6507, the TIA, and other components, so the programmers creatively optimized their games to maximize the console. The console lacks a framebuffer and requires games to instruct the system to generate graphics in synchronization with the electron gun in the cathode-ray tube (CRT) as it scans across rows on the screen. The programmers found ways to "race the beam" to perform other functions while the electron gun scans outside of the visible screen.
Alongside the electronics development, Bushnell brought in Gene Landrum, a consultant who had just prior consulted for Fairchild Camera and Instrument for its upcoming Channel F, to determine the consumer requirements for the console. In his final report, Landrum suggested a living room aesthetic, with a wood grain finish, and the cartridges must be "idiot proof, child proof and effective in resisting potential static [electricity] problems in a living room environment". Landrum recommended it include four to five dedicated games in addition to the cartridges, but this was dropped in the final designs. The cartridge design was done by James Asher and Douglas Hardy. Hardy had been an engineer for Fairchild and helped in the initial design of the Channel F cartridges, but he quit to join Atari in 1976. The interior of the cartridge that Asher and Hardy designed was sufficiently different to avoid patent conflicts, but the exterior components were directly influenced by the Channel F to help work around the static electricity concerns.
Atari was still recovering from its 1974 financial woes and needed additional capital to fully enter the home console market, though Bushnell was wary of being beholden to outside financial sources. Atari obtained smaller investments through 1975, but not at the scale it needed, and began considering a sale to a larger firm by early 1976. Atari was introduced to Warner Communications, which saw the potential for the growing video game industry to help offset declining profits from its film and music divisions. Negotiations took place during 1976, during which Atari cleared itself of liabilities, including settling a patent infringement lawsuit with Magnavox over Ralph H. Baer's patents that were the basis for the Magnavox Odyssey. In mid-1976, Fairchild announced the Channel F, planned for release later that year, beating Atari to the market.
By October 1976, Warner and Atari agreed to the purchase of Atari for . Warner provided an estimated which was enough to fast-track Stella. By 1977, development had advanced enough to brand it the "Atari Video Computer System" (VCS) and start developing games.
Launch and success
The unit was showcased on June 4, 1977, at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show with plans for retail release in October. The announcement was purportedly delayed to wait out the terms of the Magnavox patent lawsuit settlement, which would have given Magnavox all technical information on any of Atari's products announced between June 1, 1976, and June 1, 1977. However, Atari encountered production problems during its first batch, and its testing was complicated by the use of cartridges.
The Atari VCS was launched in September 1977 at , with two joysticks and a Combat cartridge; eight additional games were sold separately. Most of the launch games were based on arcade games developed by Atari or its subsidiary Kee Games: for example, Combat was based on Kee's Tank (1974) and Atari's Jet Fighter (1975). Atari sold between 350,000 and 400,000 Atari VCS units during 1977, attributed to the delay in shipping the units and consumers' unfamiliarity with a swappable-cartridge console that is not dedicated to only one game.
In 1978, Atari sold only 550,000 of the 800,000 systems manufactured. This required further financial support from Warner to cover losses. Atari sold 1 million consoles in 1979, particularly during the holiday season, but there was new competition from the Mattel Electronics Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey², which also use swappable ROM cartridges. The 2019 book They Create Worlds has Atari selling about 600,000 VCS systems in 1979, bringing the installed base to a little over 1.3 million.
Atari obtained a license from Taito to develop a VCS conversion of its 1978 arcade hit Space Invaders. This is the first officially licensed arcade conversion for a home console. Its release in March 1980 doubled the console's sales for the year to more than 2 million units, and was considered the Atari VCS' killer application. Sales then doubled again for the next two years. The book They Create Worlds has Atari selling 1.25 million Space Invaders cartridges and over 1 million VCS systems in 1980, nearly doubling the install base to over 2 million, and then an estimated 3.1 million VCS systems in 1981. By 1982, 10 million consoles had been sold in the United States, while its best-selling game was Pac-Man at over copies sold by 1990. Pac-Man propelled worldwide Atari VCS sales to units during 1982, according to a November 1983 article in InfoWorld magazine. An August 1984 InfoWorld magazine article says more than Atari 2600 machines are sold by 1982. A March 1983 article in IEEE Spectrum magazine has about 3 million VCS sales in 1981, about 5.5 million in 1982, as well as a total of over 12 million VCS systems and estimated 120 million cartridges sold.
In Europe, the Atari VCS sold 125,000 units in the United Kingdom during 1980, and 450,000 in West Germany by 1984. In France, where the VCS released in 1982, the system sold 600,000 units by 1989. The console was distributed by Epoch Co. in Japan in 1979 under the name "Cassette TV Game", but not sell as well as Epoch's own Cassette Vision system in 1981.
In 1982, Atari launched its second programmable console, the Atari 5200. To standardize naming, the VCS was renamed to the "Atari 2600 Video Computer System", or "Atari 2600", derived from the manufacture part number CX2600. By 1982, the 2600 cost Atari about to make and was sold for an average of . The company spent .50 to to manufacture each cartridge, plus to for advertising, wholesaling for .
Third-party development
Activision, formed by Crane, Whitehead, and Miller in 1979, started developing third-party VCS games using their knowledge of VCS design and programming tricks, and began releasing games in 1980. Kaboom! (1981) and Pitfall! (1982) are among the most successful with at least one and four million copies sold, respectively. In 1980, Atari attempted to block the sale of the Activision cartridges, accusing the four of intellectual property infringement. The two companies settled out of court, with Activision agreeing to pay Atari a licensing fee for their games. This made Activision the first third-party video game developer and established the licensing model that continues to be used by console manufacturers for game development.
Activision's success led to the establishment of other third-party VCS game developers following Activision's model in the early 1980s, including U.S. Games, Telesys, Games by Apollo, Data Age, Zimag, Mystique, and CommaVid. The founding of Imagic included ex-Atari programmers. Mattel and Coleco, each already producing its own more advanced console, created simplified versions of their existing games for the 2600. Mattel used the M Network brand name for its cartridges. Third-party games accounted for half of VCS game sales by 1982.
Decline and redesign
In addition to third-party game development, Atari also received the first major threat to its hardware dominance from the Colecovision. Coleco had a license from Nintendo to develop a version of the arcade game Donkey Kong (1981), which was bundled with every Colecovision console. Coleco gained about 17% of the hardware market in 1982 compared to Atari's 58%. With third parties competing for market share, Atari worked to maintain dominance in the market by acquiring licenses for popular arcade games and other properties to make games from. Pac-Man has numerous technical and aesthetic flaws, but nevertheless more than 7 million copies were sold. Heading into the 1982 holiday shopping season, Atari had placed high sales expectations on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a game programmed in about six weeks. Atari produced an estimated four million cartridges, but the game was poorly reviewed, and only about 1.5 million units were sold.
Warner Communications reported weaker results than expected in December 1982 to its shareholders, having expected a 50% year-to-year growth but only obtaining 10–15% due to declining sales at Atari. Coupled with the oversaturated home game market, Atari's weakened position led investors to start pulling funds out of video games, beginning a cascade of disastrous effects known as the video game crash of 1983. Many of the third-party developers formed prior to 1983 were closed, and Mattel and Coleco left the video game market by 1985.
In September 1983, Atari sent 14 truckloads of unsold Atari 2600 cartridges and other equipment to a landfill in the New Mexico desert, later labeled the Atari video game burial. Long considered an urban legend that claimed the burial contained millions of unsold cartridges, the site was excavated in 2014, confirming reports from former Atari executives that only about 700,000 cartridges had actually been buried. Atari reported a loss for 1983 as a whole, and continued to lose money into 1984, with a loss reported in the second quarter. By mid-1984, software development for the 2600 had essentially stopped except that of Atari and Activision.
Warner, wary of supporting its failing Atari division, started looking for buyers in 1984. Warner sold most of Atari to Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore International, in July 1984 for about , though Warner retained Atari's arcade business. Tramiel was a proponent of personal computers, and halted all new 2600 game development soon after the sale.
The North American video game market did not recover until about 1986, after Nintendo's 1985 launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. Atari Corporation released a redesigned model of the 2600 in 1986, supported by an ad campaign touting a price of "under 50 bucks". With a large library of cartridges and a low price point, the 2600 continued to sell into the late 1980s. Atari released the last batch of games in 1989–90 including Secret Quest and Fatal Run. By 1986, over Atari VCS units had been sold worldwide. The final Atari-licensed release is the PAL-only version of the arcade game KLAX in 1990.
After more than 14 years on the market, the 2600 line was formally discontinued on January 1, 1992, along with the Atari 7800 and Atari 8-bit family of home computers. In Europe, last stocks of the 2600 were sold until Summer/Fall of 1995.
Hardware
Console
The Atari 2600's CPU is the MOS Technology 6507, a version of the 6502, running at 1.19 MHz in the 2600. Though their internal silicon was identical, the 6507 was cheaper than the 6502 because its package included fewer memory-address pins—13 instead of 16. The designers of the Atari 2600 selected an inexpensive cartridge interface that has one fewer address pins than the 13 allowed by the 6507, further reducing the already limited addressable memory from 8 KB (213 = 8,192) to 4 KB (212 = 4,096). This was believed to be sufficient as Combat is itself only 2 KB. Later games circumvented this limitation with bank switching.
The console has 128 bytes of RAM for scratch space, the call stack, and the state of the game environment.
The top bezel of the console originally had six switches: power, TV type selection (color or black-and-white), game selection, player difficulty, and game reset. The difficulty switches were moved to the back of the bezel in later versions of the console. The back bezel also included the controller ports, TV output, and power input.
Graphics
The Atari 2600 was designed to be compatible with the cathode-ray tube television sets produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which commonly lack auxiliary video inputs to receive audio and video from another device. Therefore, to connect to a TV, the console generates a radio frequency signal compatible with the regional television standards (NTSC, PAL, or SECAM), using a special switch box to act as the television's antenna.
Atari developed the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) chip in the VCS to handle the graphics and conversion to a television signal. It provides a single-color, 20-bit background register that covers the left half of the screen (each bit represents 4 adjacent pixels) and is either repeated or reflected on the right side. There are 5 single-color sprites: two 8-pixel wide players; two 1 bit missiles, which share the same colors as the players; and a 1-pixel ball, which shares the background color. The 1-bit sprites all can be controlled to stretch to 1, 2, 4, or 8 pixels.
The system was designed without a frame buffer to avoid the cost of the associated RAM. The background and sprites apply to a single scan line, and as the display is output to the television, the program can change colors, sprite positions, and background settings. The careful timing required to sync the code to the screen on the part of the programmer was labeled "racing the beam"; the actual game logic runs when the television beam is outside of the visible area of the screen. Early games for the system use the same visuals for pairs of scan lines, giving a lower vertical resolution, to allow more time for the next row of graphics to be prepared. Later games, such as Pitfall!, change the visuals for each scan line or extend the black areas around the screen to extend the game code's processing time.
Regional releases of the Atari 2600 use modified TIA chips for each region's television formats, which require games to be developed and published separately for each region. All modes are 160 pixels wide. NTSC mode provides 192 visible lines per screen, drawn at 60 Hz, with 16 colors, each at 8 levels of brightness. PAL mode provides more vertical scanlines, with 228 visible lines per screen, but drawn at 50 Hz and only 13 colors. SECAM mode, also a 50 Hz format, is limited to 8 colors, each with only a single brightness level.
Controllers
The first VCS bundle has two types of controllers: a joystick (part number CX10) and pair of rotary paddle controllers (CX30). Driving controllers, which are similar to paddle controllers but can be continuously rotated, shipped with the Indy 500 launch game. After less than a year, the CX10 joystick was replaced with the CX40 model designed by James C. Asher. Because the Atari joystick port and CX40 joystick became industry standards, 2600 joysticks and some other peripherals work with later systems, including the MSX, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari 8-bit family, and Atari ST. The CX40 joystick can be used with the Master System and Sega Genesis, but does not provide all the buttons of a native controller. Third-party controllers include Wico's Command Control joystick. Later, the CX42 Remote Control Joysticks, similar in appearance but using wireless technology, were released, together with a receiver whose wires could be inserted in the controller jacks.
Atari introduced the CX50 Keyboard Controller in June 1978 along with two games that require it: Codebreaker and Hunt & Score. The similar, but simpler, CX23 Kid's Controller was released later for a series of games aimed at a younger audience. The CX22 Trak-Ball controller was announced in January 1983 and is compatible with the Atari 8-bit family.
There were two attempts to turn the Atari 2600 into a keyboard-equipped home computer: Atari's never-released CX3000 "Graduate" keyboard, and the CompuMate keyboard by Spectravideo which was released in 1983.
Console models
Minor revisions
The initial production of the VCS was made in Sunnyvale during 1977, using thick polystyrene plastic for the casing as to give the impression of weight from what was mostly an empty shell inside. The initial Sunnyvale batch had also included potential mounts for an internal speaker system on the casing, though the speakers were found to be too expensive to include and instead sound was routed through the TIA to the connected television. All six console switches on the front panel. Production of the unit was moved to Taiwan in 1978, where a less thick internal metal shielding was used and thinner plastic was used for the casing, reducing the system's weight. These two versions are commonly referred to as "Heavy Sixers" and "Light Sixers" respectively, referencing the six front switches.
In 1980, the difficulty switches were moved to the back of the console, leaving four switches on the front. Otherwise, these four-switch consoles look nearly identical to the earlier six-switch models. In 1982 Atari rebranded the console as the "Atari 2600", a name first used on a version of the four-switch model without woodgrain, giving it an all-black appearance.
Sears Video Arcade
Atari continued its OEM relationship with Sears under the latter's Tele-Games brand, which started in 1975 with the original Pong. This is unrelated to the company Telegames, which later produced 2600 cartridges. Sears released several models of the VCS as the Sears Video Arcade series starting in 1977. In 1983, the previously Japan-only Atari 2800 was rebranded as the Sears Video Arcade II.
Sears released versions of Atari's games with Tele-Games branding, usually with different titles. Three games were produced by Atari for Sears as exclusive releases: Steeplechase, Stellar Track, and Submarine Commander.
Atari 2800
The Atari 2800 is the Japanese version of the 2600 released in October 1983. It is the first Japan-specific release of a 2600, though companies like Epoch had distributed the 2600 in Japan previously. The 2800 was released a short time after Nintendo's Family Computer (which became the dominant console in Japan), and it did not gain a significant share of the market. Sears previously released the 2800 in the US during late 1982 as the Sears Video Arcade II, which came packaged with two controllers and Space Invaders. Around 30 specially branded games were released for the 2800.
Designed by engineer Joe Tilly, the 2800 has four controller ports instead of the two of the 2600. The controllers are an all-in one design using a combination of an 8-direction digital joystick and a 270-degree paddle, designed by John Amber. The 2800's case design departed from the 2600, using a wedge shape with non-protruding switches. The case style is the basis for the Atari 7800, which was redesigned for the 7800 by Barney Huang.
Atari 2600 Jr.
The 1986 model has a smaller, cost-reduced form factor with an Atari 7800-like appearance. It was advertised as a budget gaming system (under ) with the ability to run a large collection of games. Released after the video game crash of 1983, and after the North American launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the 2600 was supported with new games and television commercials promoting "The fun is back!". Atari released several minor stylistic variations: the "large rainbow" (shown), "short rainbow", and an all-black version sold only in Ireland. Later European versions include a joypad.
Unreleased prototypes
The Atari 2700 was a version of the 2600 with wireless controllers.
The CX2000, with integrated joystick controllers, was a redesign based on human factor analysis by Henry Dreyfuss Associates.
The circa-1982 Atari 3200 was a backward compatible 2600 successor.
Related hardware
The Atari 7800, announced in 1984 and released in 1986, is the official successor to the Atari 2600 and is backward compatible with 2600 cartridges.
Multiple microconsoles are based on the Atari 2600:
The TV Boy includes 127 games in an enlarged joypad.
The Atari Classics 10-in-1 TV Game, manufactured by Jakks Pacific, emulates the 2600 with ten games inside a Atari-style joystick with composite-video output.
The Atari Flashback 2 (2005) contains 40 games, with four additional programs unlocked by a cheat code. It is compatible with original 2600 controllers and can be modified to play original 2600 cartridges.
In 2017, Hyperkin announced the RetroN 77, a clone of the Atari 2600 that plays original cartridges instead of preinstalled games.
The Atari VCS (2021 console) can download and emulate 2600 games via an online store.
Atari, Inc. plans to release the Atari 2600+, an 80% scale replica of the 1980 CX2600-A model, on November 17, 2023. The 2600+ includes support for original Atari 2600 and 7200 cartridges.
Games
In 1977, nine games were released on cartridge to accompany the launch of the console: Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Blackjack, Combat, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, and Video Olympics. Indy 500 shipped with special "driving controllers", which are like paddles but rotate freely. Street Racer and Video Olympics use the standard paddle controllers.
Atari, Inc. was the only developer for the first few years, releasing dozens of games.
Atari determined that box art featuring only descriptions of the game and screenshots would not be sufficient to sell games in retail stores, since most games were based on abstract principles and screenshots give little information. Atari outsourced box art to Cliff Spohn, who created visually interesting artwork with implications of dynamic movement intended to engage the player's imagination while staying true to the gameplay. Spohn's style became a standard for Atari when bringing in assistant artists, including Susan Jaekel, Rick Guidice, John Enright, and Steve Hendricks. Spohn and Hendricks were the largest contributors to the covers in the Atari 2600 library. Ralph McQuarrie, a concept artist on the Star Wars series, was commissioned for one cover, the arcade conversion of Vanguard. These artists generally conferred with the programmer to learn about the game before drawing the art.
An Atari VCS port of the Breakout arcade game appeared in 1978. The original is in black and white with a colored overlay, and the home version is in color. In 1980, Atari released Adventure, the first action-adventure game, and the first home game with a hidden Easter egg.
Rick Maurer's port of Taito's Space Invaders, released in 1980, is the first VCS game to have more than one million copies sold—eventually doubling that within a year and totaling more than cartridges by 1983. It became the killer app to drive console sales. Versions of Atari's own Asteroids and Missile Command arcade games, released in 1981, were also major hits.
Each early VCS game is in a 2K ROM. Later games, like Space Invaders, have 4K. The VCS port of Asteroids (1981) is the first game for the system to use 8K via a bank switching technique between two 4K segments. Some later releases, including Atari's ports of Dig Dug and Crystal Castles, are 16K cartridges. One of the final games, Fatal Run (1990), doubled this to 32K.
Two Atari-published games, both from the system's peak in 1982, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man, are cited as factors in the video game crash of 1983.
A company named American Multiple Industries produced a number of pornographic games for the 2600 under the Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica label. The most notorious, Custer's Revenge, was protested by women's and Native American groups because it depicted General George Armstrong Custer raping a bound Native American woman. Atari sued American Multiple Industries in court over the release of the game.
Legacy
The 2600 was so successful in the late 1970s and early 1980s that "Atari" was a synonym for the console in mainstream media and for video games in general. Jay Miner directed the creation of the successors to the 2600's TIA chip—CTIA and ANTIC—which are central to the Atari 8-bit computers released in 1979 and later the Atari 5200 console.
The Atari 2600 was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York, in 2007. In 2009, the Atari 2600 was named the number two console of all time by IGN, which cited its remarkable role behind both the first video game boom and the video game crash of 1983, and called it "the console that our entire industry is built upon".
In November 2021, the current incarnation of Atari announced three 2600 games to be published under "Atari XP" label: Yars' Return, Aquaventure, and Saboteur. These were previously included in Atari Flashback consoles.
Notes
References
Citations
General bibliography
External links
A history of the Atari VCS/2600
Inside the Atari 2600
Hardware and prototypes at the Atari Museum
1970s toys
1980s toys
2600
Computer-related introductions in 1977
Home video game consoles
Products and services discontinued in 1992
Second-generation video game consoles
65xx-based video game consoles
Discontinued video game consoles
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The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200's launch. Created to compete with Mattel's Intellivision, the 5200 wound up a direct competitor of ColecoVision shortly after its release. While the Coleco system shipped with the first home version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong, the 5200 included the 1978 arcade game Super Breakout which had already appeared on the Atari 8-bit family and Atari VCS in 1979 and 1981 respectively.
The CPU and the graphics and sound hardware are almost identical to that of the Atari 8-bit computers, although software is not directly compatible between the two systems. The 5200's controllers have an analog joystick and a numeric keypad along with start, pause, and reset buttons. The 360-degree non-centering joystick was touted as offering more control than the eight-way Atari CX40 joystick of the 2600, but was a focal point for criticism.
On May 21, 1984, during a press conference at which the Atari 7800 was introduced, company executives revealed that the 5200 had been discontinued after less than two years on the market. Total sales of the 5200 were reportedly in excess of 1 million units, far short of its predecessor's sales of over 30 million.
Hardware
Much of the technology in the Atari 8-bit family of home computer was originally developed as a second-generation games console intended to replace the Atari Video Computer System console. However, as the system was reaching completion, the personal computer revolution was starting with the release of machines like the Commodore PET, TRS-80, and Apple II. These machines had less advanced hardware than the new Atari technology, but sold for much higher prices with associated higher profit margins. Atari's management decided to enter this market, and the technology was repackaged into the Atari 400 and 800. The chipset used in these machines was created with the mindset that the VCS would likely be obsolete by 1980.
Atari later decided to re-enter the games market with a design that closely matched their original 1978 specifications. In its prototype stage, the Atari 5200 was originally called the "Atari Video System X – Advanced Video Computer System", and was codenamed "Pam" after a female employee at Atari, Inc. It is also rumored that PAM actually stood for "Personal Arcade Machine", as the majority of games for the system ended up being arcade conversions. Actual working Atari Video System X machines, whose hardware is 100% identical to the Atari 5200 do exist, but are extremely rare.
The initial 1982 release of the system featured four controller ports, where nearly all other systems of the day had only one or two ports. The 5200 also featured a new style of controller with an analog joystick, numeric keypad, two fire buttons on each side of the controller and game function keys for Start, Pause, and Reset. The 5200 also featured the innovation of the first automatic TV switchbox, allowing it to automatically switch from regular TV viewing to the game system signal when the system was activated. Previous RF adapters required the user to slide a switch on the adapter by hand. The RF box was also where the power supply connected in a unique dual power/television signal setup similar to the RCA Studio II's. A single cable coming out of the 5200 plugged into the switch box and carried both electricity and the television signal.
The 1983 revision of the Atari 5200 has two controller ports instead of four, and a change back to the more conventional separate power supply and standard non-autoswitching RF switch. It also has changes in the cartridge port address lines to allow for the Atari 2600 adapter released that year. While the adapter was only made to work on the two-port version, modifications can be made to the four-port to make it line-compatible. In fact, towards the end of the four-port model's production run, there were a limited number of consoles produced which included these modifications. These consoles can be identified by an asterisk in their serial numbers.
At one point following the 5200's release, Atari planned a smaller, cost-reduced version of the Atari 5200, which removed the controller storage bin. Code-named the "Atari 5100" (a.k.a. "Atari 5200 Jr."), only a few fully working prototype 5100s were made before the project was canceled.
Controllers
The controller prototypes used in the electrical development lab employed a yoke-and-gimbal mechanism that came from an RC airplane controller kit. The design of the analog joystick, which used a weak rubber boot rather than springs to provide centering, proved to be ungainly and unreliable. They quickly became the Achilles' heel of the system due to the combination of an overly complex mechanical design and a very low-cost internal flex circuit system. Another major flaw of the controllers was that the design did not translate into a linear acceleration from the center through the arc of the stick travel. The controllers did, however, include a pause button, a unique feature at the time. Various third-party replacement joysticks were also released, including those made by Wico.
Atari Inc. released the Pro-Line Trak-Ball controller for the system, which was used primarily for gaming titles such as Centipede and Missile Command. A paddle controller and an updated self-centering version of the original controller were also in development, but never made it to market.
Games were shipped with plastic card overlays that snapped in over the keypad. The card would indicate which game functions, such as changing the view or vehicle speed, were assigned to each key.
The primary controller was ranked the 10th worst video game controller by IGN editor Craig Harris. An editor for Next Generation said that their non-centering joysticks "rendered many games nearly unplayable".
Internal differences from 8-bit computers
David H. Ahl in 1983 described the Atari 5200 as "a 400 computer in disguise". Its internal design is a tweaked version of the Atari 8-bit family using the ANTIC, POKEY, and GTIA coprocessors. Software designed for one does not run on the other, but source code can be mechanically converted unless it uses computer-specific features. Antic magazine reported in 1984 that "the similarities grossly outweigh the differences, so that a 5200 program can be developed and almost entirely debugged [on an Atari 8-bit computer] before testing on a 5200". John J. Anderson of Creative Computing alluded to the incompatibility being intentional, caused by Atari's console division removing 8-bit compatibility to not lose control to the rival computer division.
Besides the 5200's lack of a keyboard, the differences are:
The Atari computer 10 KB operating system is replaced with a simpler 2 KB version, of which 1 KB is the built-in character set.
Some hardware registers, such as those of the GTIA and POKEY chips, are at different memory locations.
The purpose of some registers is slightly different on the 5200.
The 5200's analog joysticks appear as pairs of paddles to the hardware, which requires different input handling from the digital joystick input on the Atari computers
In 1987, Atari Corporation released the XE Game System console, which is a repackaged 65XE (from 1985) with a detachable keyboard that can run home computer titles directly, unlike the 5200. Anderson wrote in 1984 that Atari could have released a console compatible with computer software in 1981.
Reception
The Atari 5200 did not fare well commercially compared to its predecessor, the Atari 2600. While it touted superior graphics to the 2600 and Mattel's Intellivision, the system was initially incompatible with the 2600's expansive library of games, and some market analysts have speculated that this hurt its sales, especially since an Atari 2600 cartridge adapter had been released for the Intellivision II. (A revised two-port model was released in 1983, along with a game adapter that allowed gamers to play all 2600 games.) This lack of new games was due in part to a lack of funding, with Atari continuing to develop most of its games for the saturated 2600 market.
Many of the 5200's games appeared simply as updated versions of 2600 titles, which failed to excite consumers. Its pack-in game, Super Breakout, was criticized for not doing enough to demonstrate the system's capabilities. This gave the ColecoVision a significant advantage as its pack-in, Donkey Kong, delivered a more authentic arcade experience than any previous game cartridge. In its list of the top 25 game consoles of all time, IGN claimed that the main reason for the 5200's market failure was the technological superiority of its competitor, while other sources maintain that the two consoles are roughly equivalent in power.
The 5200 received much criticism for the "sloppy" design of its non-centering analog controllers. Anderson described the controllers as "absolutely atrocious".
David H. Ahl of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games said in 1983 that the "Atari 5200 is, dare I say it, Atari's answer to Intellivision, Colecovision, and the Astrocade", describing the console as a "true mass market" version of the Atari 8-bit computers despite the software incompatibility. He criticized the joystick's imprecise control but said that "it is at least as good as many other controllers", and wondered why Super Breakout was the pack-in game when it did not use the 5200's improved graphics.
Technical specifications
CPU: Custom MOS Technology 6502C @ 1.79 MHz (not a 65C02)
Graphics chips: ANTIC and GTIA
Support hardware: 3 custom VLSI chips
Screen resolution: 14 modes: Six text modes (8×8, 4×8, and 8×10 character matrices supported), Eight graphics modes including 80 pixels per line (16 color), 160 pixels per line (4 color), 320 pixels per line (2 color), variable height and width up to overscan 384×240 pixels
Color palette: 128 (16 hues, 8 luma) or 256 (16 hues, 16 luma)
Colors on screen: 2 (320 pixels per line) to 16 (80 pixels per line). Up to 23 colors per line with player/missile and playfield priority control mixing. Register values can be changed at every scanline using ANTIC display list interrupts, allowing up to 256 (16 hues, 16 luma) to be displayed at once, with up to 16 per scanline.
Sprites: Four 8-pixel-wide sprites, four 2-pixel-wide sprites; height of each is either 128 or 256 pixels; 1 color per sprite
Scrolling: Coarse and fine scrolling horizontally and vertically. (Horizontal coarse scroll 4, 8, or 16-pixel/color clock increments, and vertically by mode line height 2, 4, 8, or 16 scan lines.) (Or horizontal fine scroll 0 to 3, 7, or 15 single-pixel/color clock increments and then a 4, 8, or 16-pixel/color clock increment coarse scroll; and vertical fine scroll 0 to 1, 3, 7, or 15 scan line increments and then a 2, 4, 8, or 16 scan line increment coarse scroll)
Sound: 4-channel PSG sound via POKEY sound chip, which also handles keyboard scanning, serial I/O, high resolution interrupt capable timers (single cycle accurate), and random number generation.
RAM: 16 KB
ROM:
2 KB on-board BIOS for system startup and interrupt routing.
32 KB ROM window for standard game cartridges, expandable using bank switching techniques.
Dimensions: 13" × 15" × 4.25"
Popular culture
Critical to the plot of the 1984 film Cloak & Dagger is an Atari 5200 game cartridge called Cloak & Dagger. The arcade version appears in the movie; in actuality the Atari 5200 version was started but never completed. The game was under development with the title Agent X when the movie producers and Atari learned of each other's projects and decided to cooperate. This collaboration was part of a larger phenomenon, of films featuring video games as critical plot elements (as with Tron and The Last Starfighter) and of video game tie-ins to the same films (as with the Tron games for the Intellivision and other platforms).
Games
See also
List of Atari 5200 emulators
Video game crash of 1983
References
External links
AtariAge – Comprehensive Atari 5200 database and information
Atari Museum 5200 Super System section
5200
Home video game consoles
Second-generation video game consoles
Products introduced in 1982
65xx-based video game consoles
Discontinued video game consoles
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The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one of the first consoles with backward compatibility. It shipped with a different model of joystick from the 2600-standard CX40 and Pole Position II as the pack-in game. Most of the announced titles at launch were ports of 1981–1983 arcade video games.
Designed by General Computer Corporation, the 7800 has significantly improved graphics hardware over Atari's previous consoles, but the same Television Interface Adaptor chip that launched with the 2600 in 1977 is used to generate audio. In an effort to prevent the flood of poor quality games that contributed to the video game crash of 1983, cartridges had to be digitally signed by Atari.
The Atari 7800 was first announced by Atari, Inc. on May 21, 1984, but a general release was shelved until May 1986 due to the sale of the company. Atari Corporation dropped support for the 7800, along with the 2600 and the Atari 8-bit family, on January 1, 1992.
History
Atari had been facing pressure from Coleco and its ColecoVision console, which supported graphics that more closely mirrored arcade games of the time than either the Atari 2600 or 5200. The Atari 5200 (released as a successor to the Atari 2600) was criticized for not being able to play 2600 games without an adapter.
The Atari 7800 ProSystem was the first console from Atari, Inc. designed by an outside company, General Computer Corporation. It was designed in 1983–84 with an intended mass market rollout in June 1984, but was canceled after the sale of the company to Tramel Technology Ltd on July 2, 1984. The project was originally called the Atari 3600.
With a background in creating arcade games such as Food Fight, GCC designed the new system with a graphics architecture similar to arcade machines of the time. The CPU is a slightly customized 6502 processor, the Atari SALLY, running at 1.79 MHz. By some measures the 7800 is more powerful, and by others less, than the 1983 Nintendo Entertainment System. It uses the 2600's Television Interface Adaptor chip, with the same restrictions, for generating two-channels of audio.
Launch
The 7800 was announced on May 21, 1984. Thirteen games were announced for the system's launch: Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position II, Centipede, Joust, Dig Dug, Nile Flyer (eventually released as Desert Falcon), Robotron: 2084, Galaga, Food Fight, Ballblazer, Rescue on Fractalus! (later canceled), Track & Field, and Xevious.
On July 2, 1984, Warner Communications sold Atari's Consumer Division to Jack Tramiel. All projects were halted during an initial evaluation period. GCC had not been paid for their development of the 7800, and Warner and Tramiel fought over who was accountable. In May 1985, Tramiel relented and paid GCC. This led to additional negotiations regarding the launch titles GCC had developed, then an effort to find someone to lead their new video game division, which was completed in November 1985. The original production run of the Atari 7800 languished in warehouses until it was introduced in January 1986.
The console was released nationwide in May 1986 for $79.95. It launched with titles intended for the 7800's debut in 1984 and was aided by a marketing campaign with a budget in the "low millions" according to Atari Corporation officials. This was substantially less than the $9 million spent by Sega and the $16 million spent by Nintendo. The keyboard and high score cartridge planned by Warner were cancelled.
In February 1987, Computer Entertainer reported that 100,000 Atari 7800 consoles had been sold in the United States, including those which had been warehoused since 1984. This was less than the Master System's 125,000 and the NES's 1.1 million. A complaint from owners in 1986 was the slow release of games. Galaga in August was followed by Xevious in November. By the end of 1986, the 7800 had 10 games, compared to Sega's 20 and Nintendo's 36. Atari would sell over 1 million 7800 consoles by June 1988.
Discontinuation
On January 1, 1992, Atari Corporation announced the end of production and support for the 7800, 2600, and the 8-bit computer family including the Atari XEGS. At least one game, an unreleased port of Toki, was worked on past this date. By the time of the discontinuation, the Nintendo Entertainment System controlled 80% of the North American market while Atari had 12%. In Europe, last stocks of the 7800 were sold until summer/fall of 1995.
Retro Gamer magazine issue 132 reported that according to Atari UK Marketing Manager Darryl Still, "it was very well stocked by European retail; although it never got the consumer traction that the 2600 did, I remember we used to sell a lot of units through mail order catalogues and in the less affluent areas".
Technical specifications
CPU: Atari SALLY (custom variant of the 6502)
1.79 MHz, which drops to 1.19 MHz when the Television Interface Adaptor or (6532 RAM-I/O-Timer) chips are accessed
Unlike a standard 6502, SALLY can be halted in a known state with a single pin to let other devices control the bus.
Sometimes referred to by Atari as "6502C", but not the same as the official MOS Technology 6502C.
RAM: 4 KB (2 6116 2Kx8 RAM ICs)
ROM: built in 4 KB BIOS ROM, 48 KB Cartridge ROM space without bank switching
Graphics: MARIA custom chip
Resolution: 160×240 (160×288 PAL) or 320×240 (320×288 PAL)
Color palette: 256 (16 hues * 16 luma), different graphics modes restricted the number of usable colors and the number of colors per sprite
Direct Memory Access (DMA)
Graphics clock: 7.15 MHz
Line buffer: 200 bytes (double buffering), 160 sprite pixels per scanline, up to 30 sprites per scanline (without background), up to 100 sprites on screen
Sprite/zone sizes: 4 to 160 width, height of 4, 8 or 16 pixels
Colors per sprite: 1 to 12 (1 to 8 visible colors, 1 to 4 transparency bits)
I/O: Joystick and console switch IO handled by 6532 RIOT and TIA
Ports
2 joystick ports
cartridge port
expansion connector
power in
RF output
Sound: TIA as used in the 2600 for video and sound. In 7800 mode it is only used for sound.
At least two games include a POKEY sound chip for improved audio.
Graphics
Graphics are generated by the custom MARIA chip, which uses an approach common in contemporary arcade system boards and is different from other second and third generation consoles. Instead of a limited number of hardware sprites, MARIA treats everything as a sprite described in a series of display lists. Each display list contains pointers to graphics data and color and positioning information.
MARIA supports a palette of 256 colors and graphics modes which are either 160 pixels wide or 320 pixels wide. While the 320 pixel modes theoretically enable the 7800 to create games at higher resolution than the 256 pixel wide graphics found in the Nintendo Entertainment System and Master System, the processing demands of MARIA result in most games using the 160 pixel mode.
Each sprite can have from 1 to 12 colors, with 3 colors plus transparency being the most common. In this format, the sprite references one of 8 palettes, where each palette holds 3 colors. The background–visible when not covered by other objects–can also be assigned a color. In total, 25 colors can appear on a scan line.
The graphics resolution, color palettes, and background color can be adjusted between scan lines. This can be used to render high resolution text in one area of the screen, while displaying more colorful graphics at lower resolution in the gameplay area.
Sound
The 7800 uses the TIA chip for two channel audio, the same chip used in the 1977 Atari VCS, and the sound is of the same quality as that system. To compensate, GCC's engineers allowed games to include a POKEY audio chip in the cartridge. Only Ballblazer and Commando do this.
GCC planned to make a low-cost, high performance sound chip, GUMBY, which could also be placed in 7800 cartridges to enhance its sound capabilities further. This project was cancelled when Atari was sold to Jack Tramiel.
Digitally signed cartridges
Following the large number of low quality, third party games for the Atari 2600, Atari required that cartridges for the 7800 be digitally signed. When a cartridge is inserted into the system, the BIOS generates a signature of the cartridge ROM and compares it to the one stored on the cartridge. If they match, the console operates in 7800 mode, granting the game access to MARIA and other features, otherwise the console operates as a 2600. This digital signature code is not present in PAL 7800s, which use various heuristics to detect 2600 cartridges, due to export restrictions.
Backward compatibility
The 7800's compatibility with the Atari 2600 is made possible by including many of the same chips used in the 2600. When playing an Atari 2600 game, the 7800 uses a Television Interface Adaptor chip to generate graphics and sound. The processor is slowed to 1.19 MHz, to mirror the performance of the 2600's 6507 chip. RAM is limited to 128 bytes and cartridge data is accessed in 4K blocks.
When in 7800 mode (signified by the appearance of the full-screen Atari logo), the graphics are generated entirely by the MARIA graphics processing unit. All system RAM is available and cartridge data is accessed in larger 48K blocks. The system's SALLY 6502 runs at its normal 1.79 MHz. The 2600 chips are used to generate sound and to provide the interfaces to the controllers and console switches.
System revisions
Initial version: two joystick ports on lower front panel. Side expansion port for upgrades and add-ons. Bundled with two CX24 Pro-Line joysticks, AC adapter, switchbox, RCA connecting cable, and Pole Position II cartridge.
Second revision: Slightly revised motherboard. Expansion port connector removed from motherboard but is still etched. Shell has indentation of where expansion port was to be.
Third revision: Same as above but with only a small blemish on the shell where the expansion port was.
Peripherals
The Atari 7800 came bundled with the Atari Pro-Line Joystick, a two-button controller with a joystick for movement. The Pro-Line was developed for the 2600 and advertised in 1983, but delayed until Atari proceeded with the 7800. The right fire button only works as a separate fire button for certain 7800 games; otherwise, it duplicates the left fire button, allowing either button to be used for 2600 games. While physically compatible, the 7800's controllers do not work with the Sega Master System, and Sega's controllers are unable to use the 7800's two-button mode.
In response to criticism over ergonomic issues with the Pro-Line controllers, Atari later released a joypad controller with the European 7800. Similar in style to controllers found on Nintendo and Sega systems, it was not available in the United States.
The Atari XG-1 light gun, bundled with the Atari XEGS and also sold separately, is compatible with the 7800. Atari released five 7800 light gun games: Alien Brigade, Barnyard Blaster, Crossbow, Meltdown, and Sentinel.
Cancelled peripherals
After the acquisition of the Atari Consumer Division by Jack Tramiel in 1984, several expansion options for the system were cancelled:
The High Score Cartridge was designed to save high scores for up to 65 separate games. The cartridge was intended as a pass-through device, similar to the later Game Genie. Nine games were programmed to support the cartridge.
The expansion port, to allow for the addition of a planned computer keyboard and connection to laserdisc players and other peripherals, was removed in the second and third revisions of the 7800.
A dual joystick holder was designed for Robotron: 2084 and future games like Battlezone, but not produced.
Games
While the system can play the over 400 games for the Atari 2600, there were only 59 official releases for the 7800. The lineup emphasized high-quality versions of games from the golden age of arcade video games. Pole Position II, Dig Dug, and Galaga, by the time of the 1986 launch, were three, four, and five years old, respectively. A raster graphics version of 1979's Asteroids was released in 1987. In 1988, Atari published a conversion of Nintendo's Donkey Kong, seven years after the original arcade game and five years after the Atari 8-bit family cartridge. Atari also marketed a line of games called "Super Games" which were arcade and computer games previously not playable on a home console such as One-On-One Basketball and Impossible Mission.
Eleven games were developed and sold by three third-party companies under their own labels (Absolute Entertainment, Activision, and Froggo) with the rest published by Atari Corporation. Most of the games from Atari were developed by outside companies under contract.
Some NES games were developed by companies who had licensed their title from a different arcade manufacturer. While the creator of the NES version would be restricted from making a competitive version of an NES game, the original arcade copyright holder was not precluded from licensing out rights for a home version of an arcade game to multiple systems. Through this loophole, Atari 7800 conversions of Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Commando, Rampage, Xenophobe, Ikari Warriors, and Kung-Fu Master were licensed and developed.
A final batch of games was released by Atari in 1990: Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl, Fatal Run, Meltdown, Midnight Mutants, MotorPsycho, Ninja Golf, Planet Smashers, and Scrapyard Dog. Scrapyard Dog was later released for the Atari Lynx.
Legacy
Atari Flashback
In 2004, the Infogrames-owned version of Atari released the Atari Flashback console. It resembles a miniature Atari 7800 and has five 7800 and fifteen 2600 games built-in. Built using the NES-On-A-Chip hardware instead of recreating the Atari 7800 hardware, it was criticized for failing to properly replicate the actual gaming experience. A subsequent 7800 project was cancelled after prototypes were made.
Game development
The digital signature long prevented aftermarket games from being developed. The signing software was eventually found and released at Classic Gaming Expo in 2001.
Several new Atari 7800 games such as Beef Drop, B*nQ, Combat 1990, CrazyBrix, Failsafe, and Santa Simon have been released..
Source code
The source code for 13 games, the operating system, and the development tools which run on the Atari ST were discovered in a dumpster behind the Atari building in Sunnyvale, California. Commented assembly language source code was made available for Centipede, Commando, Crossbow, Desert Falcon, Dig Dug, Food Fight, Galaga, Hat Trick, Joust, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Stunt Cycle, Robotron: 2084, and Xevious.
See also
History of Atari
List of Atari 7800 games
List of Atari 2600 games
References
External links
AtariAge – Comprehensive Atari 7800 database and information
Atari 7800 Information & Resources
Atari Museum – History of the Atari 7800 ProSystem
Atari 7800 Development Wiki
ProSystem emulator for Microsoft Windows
7800
Home video game consoles
Backward-compatible video game consoles
Third-generation video game consoles
1986 in video gaming
Computer-related introductions in 1986
Products introduced in 1986
Products and services discontinued in 1992
1980s toys
65xx-based video game consoles
Discontinued video game consoles
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The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and the 32-bit 3DO Interactive Multiplayer that launched the same year. Powered by two custom 32-bit Tom and in addition to a Motorola 68000, Atari marketed it as the world's first 64-bit game system, emphasizing its 64-bit bus used by the blitter. The Jaguar launched with Cybermorph as the pack-in game, which received divisive reviews. The system's library ultimately comprised only 50 licensed games.
Development of the Atari Jaguar started in the early 1990s by Flare Technology, which focused on the system after cancellation of the Atari Panther console. The Jaguar was an important system for Atari after the company shifted its focus from computers - having ceased development of its Atari ST - back to consoles. However, the multi-chip architecture, hardware bugs, and poor tools made writing games for the Jaguar difficult. Underwhelming sales further eroded the console's third-party support.
Atari attempted to extend the lifespan of the system with the Atari Jaguar CD add-on, with an additional 13 games, and emphasizing the Jaguar's price of over less than its competitors. With the release of the Sega Saturn and PlayStation in 1995, sales of the Jaguar continued to fall. It sold no more than 150,000 units before it was discontinued in 1996. The commercial failure of the Jaguar prompted Atari to leave the console market.
After Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation properties, the patents of the Jaguar were released into the public domain, with the console declared an open platform. Since its discontinuation, hobbyists have produced games for the system.
History
Development
Atari Corporation's previous home video game console, the Atari 7800, was released in 1986. While it sold 3.77 million units in the U.S. in the period to 1990, it was considered an 'also-ran' and far behind rival Nintendo. Around 1989 work began on a new console leveraging technology from their Atari ST computers. Originally named the Super XE - following the Atari XE Game System - it eventually became the Atari Panther using either 16 or 32-bit architecture. A more advanced system codenamed Jaguar also began work.
Both the Jaguar and Panther were developed by the members of Flare Technology, a company formed by Martin Brennan and John Mathieson. The team had claimed that they could not only make a console superior to the Genesis or the Super NES, but they could also be cost-effective. Impressed by their work on the Konix Multisystem, Atari persuaded them to close Flare and form a new company called Flare II, with Atari providing the funding.
Work on the Jaguar design progressed faster than expected, so Atari canceled the Panther project in 1991 to focus on the more promising Jaguar, and rumors were already circulating of a 1992 launch and its 32-bit or even 64-bit architecture. By this time the Atari ST had long been surpassed in popularity by the Amiga, while both Atari and Commodore became victims of 'Wintel', which would become the dominant computer platform. Support for Atari's legacy 8-bit products were dropped to fully focus on developing the Jaguar console, while their line of ST computers were dropped during the Jaguar's release in 1993.
The Atari Jaguar was unveiled in at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1993, calling it a "multi-media entertainment system".
Launch
The Jaguar was launched on November 23, 1993, at a price of $249.99, under a $500 million manufacturing deal with IBM. The system was initially available only in the test markets of New York City and San Francisco, with the slogan "Get bit by Jaguar", claiming superiority over competing 16-bit and 32-bit systems. During this test launch Atari sold all units hoping it would rally support for the system. A nationwide release followed six months later, in early 1994. The Jaguar struggled to attain a substantial user base. Atari reported that it had shipped 17,000 units as part of the system's initial test market in 1993. By the end of 1994, it reported that it had sold approximately 100,000 units.
Computer Gaming World wrote in January 1994 that the Jaguar was "a great machine in search of a developer/customer base", as Atari had to "overcome the stigma of its name (lack of marketing and customer support, as well as poor developer relations in the past)". Atari had "ventured late into third party software support" for the Jaguar while competing console 3DO's "18 month public relations blitz" would result in "an avalanche of software support", the magazine reported. The small size and poor quality of the Jaguar's game library became the most commonly cited reason for the Jaguar's tepid adoption, as early releases like Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy, Raiden, and Evolution: Dino Dudes also received poor reviews, the latter two for failing to take full advantage of the Jaguar's hardware. Jaguar did eventually earn praise with games such as Tempest 2000, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D. The most successful title during the Jaguar's first year was Alien vs. Predator. However, these occasional successes were seen as insufficient while the Jaguar's competitors were receiving a continual stream of critically acclaimed software; GamePro concluded their rave review of Alien vs. Predator by remarking "If Atari can turn out a dozen more games like AvP, Jaguar owners could truly rest easy and enjoy their purchase." Next Generation commented that "thus far, Atari has spectacularly failed to deliver on the software side, leaving many to question the actual quality and capability of the hardware. With only one or two exceptions – Tempest 2000 is cited most frequently – there have just been no truly great games for the Jaguar up to now." They further noted that while Atari is well known by older gamers, the company had much less overall brand recognition than Sega, Sony, Nintendo, or even The 3DO Company. However, they argued that with its low price point, the Jaguar might still compete if Atari could improve the software situation.
Bit count controversy
Atari tried to downplay competing consoles by proclaiming the Jaguar was the only "64-bit" system; in its marketing in the American market the company used the tagline do the math!, in reference to the 64 number. This claim is questioned by some, because the Motorola 68000 CPU and the Tom and Jerry coprocessors execute 32-bit instruction sets. Atari's reasoning that the 32-bit Tom and Jerry chips work in tandem to add up to a 64-bit system was ridiculed in a mini-editorial by Electronic Gaming Monthly, which commented that "If Sega did the math for the Sega Saturn the way Atari did the math for their 64-bit Jaguar system, the Sega Saturn would be a 112-bit monster of a machine." Next Generation, while giving a mostly negative review of the Jaguar, maintained that it is a true 64-bit system, since the data path from the DRAM to the CPU and Tom and Jerry chips is 64 bits wide.
Arrival of Saturn and PlayStation
In early 1995, Atari announced that they had dropped the price of the Jaguar to $149.99, in order to be more competitive. Atari ran infomercials with enthusiastic salesmen touting the game system. These aired for most of 1995, but did not sell the remaining stock of Jaguar systems.
In a 1995 interview with Next Generation, then-CEO Sam Tramiel declared that the Jaguar was as powerful, if not more powerful, than the newly launched Sega Saturn, and slightly weaker than the upcoming PlayStation. Next Generation received a deluge of letters in response to Tramiel's comments, particularly his threat to bring Sony to court for price dumping if the PlayStation entered the U.S. market at a retail price below $300. Many readers found this threat hollow and hypocritical, since Tramiel noted in the same interview that Atari was selling the Jaguar at a loss. The editor responded that price dumping does not have to do with a product being priced below cost, but its being priced much lower in one country than anotherwhich, as Tramiel said, is illegal. Tramiel and Next Generation agreed that the PlayStation's Japanese price converts to approximately $500. His remark, that the small number of third party Jaguar games was good for Atari's profitability, angered Jaguar owners who were already frustrated at how few games were coming out for the system.
In Atari's 1995 annual report, it noted: In addition, Atari had severely limited financial resources, and so could not create the level of marketing which has historically backed successful gaming consoles.
Decline
By November 1995, mass layoffs and insider statements were fueling journalistic speculation that Atari had ceased both development and manufacturing for the Jaguar and was simply trying to sell off existing stock before exiting the video game industry. Although Atari continued to deny these theories going into 1996, core Jaguar developers such as High Voltage Software and Beyond Games stated that they were no longer receiving communications from Atari regarding future Jaguar projects.
In its 10-K405 SEC Filing, filed April 12, 1996, Atari informed stockholders that its revenues had declined by more than half, from $38.7 million in 1994 to $14.6 million in 1995, then gave them the news on the truly dire nature of the Jaguar:
The filing confirmed that Atari had abandoned the Jaguar in November 1995 and in the subsequent months were concerned chiefly with liquidating its inventory of Jaguar products. On April 8, 1996, Atari Corporation agreed to merge with JTS, Inc. in a reverse takeover, thus forming JTS Corporation. The merger was finalized on July 30.
After the merger, the bulk of Jaguar inventory remained unsold and would be finally moved out to Tiger Software, a private liquidator, on December 23, 1996. On March 13, 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and all of the Atari properties to Hasbro Interactive.
Technical specifications
From the Jaguar Software Reference manual, page 1:
Design specs for the console allude to the GPU or DSP being capable of acting as a CPU, leaving the Motorola 68000 to read controller inputs. Atari's Leonard Tramiel also specifically suggested that the 68000 not be used by developers. In practice, however, many developers use the Motorola 68000 to drive gameplay logic due to the greater developer familiarity of the 68000 and the adequacy of the 68000 for certain types of games. Most critically, a flaw in the memory controller means that certain obscure conventions must be followed for the RISC chips to be able to execute code from RAM.
The system was notoriously difficult to program for, not only because of its two-processor design but development tools were released in an unfinished state and the hardware had crippling bugs.
Processors
Tom chip, 26.59 MHz
Graphics processing unit (GPU) – 32-bit RISC architecture, 4 KB internal RAM, all graphical effects are software-based, with additional instructions intended for 3D operations
Object Processor – 64-bit fixed-function video processor, converts display lists to video output at scan time.
Blitter – 64-bit high speed logic operations, z-buffering and Gouraud shading, with 64-bit internal registers.
DRAM controller, 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit memory management
Jerry chip, 26.59 MHz
Digital Signal Processor – 32-bit RISC architecture, 8 KB internal RAM
Similar RISC core as the GPU, additional instructions intended for audio operations
CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo)
Number of sound channels limited by software
Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals
Full stereo capabilities
Wavetable synthesis and AM synthesis
A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART
Joystick control
Motorola 68000 - system processor "used as a manager".
General purpose 16-/32-bit control processor, 13.295 MHz
Other features
RAM: 2 MB on a 64-bit bus using 4 16-bit fast-page-mode DRAMs (80 ns)
Storage: ROM cartridges – up to 6 MB
DSP-port (JagLink)
Monitor-port (composite/S-Video/RGB)
Antenna-port (UHF/VHF) - fixed at 591 MHz in Europe; not present on French model
Support for ComLynx I/O
NTSC/PAL machines can be identified by their power LED colour, Red: NTSC; Green: PAL.
COJAG arcade games
Atari Games licensed the Atari Jaguar's chipset for use in its arcade games. The system, named COJAG (for "Coin-Op Jaguar"), replaced the 68000 with a 68020 or MIPS R3000-based CPU (depending on the board version), added more RAM, a full 64-bit wide ROM bus (Jaguar ROM bus being 32-bit), and optionally a hard drive (some games such as Freeze are ROM only). It runs the lightgun games Area 51 and Maximum Force, which were released by Atari as dedicated cabinets or as the Area 51 and Maximum Force combo machine. Other games were developed but never released: 3 On 3 Basketball, Fishin' Frenzy, Freeze, and Vicious Circle.
Peripherals
Prior to the launch of the console in November 1993, Atari had announced a variety of peripherals to be released over the console's lifespan. This included a CD-ROM-based console, a dial-up Internet link with support for online gaming, a virtual reality headset, and an MPEG-2 video card. However, due to the poor sales and eventual commercial failure of the Jaguar, most of the peripherals in development were canceled. The only peripherals and add-ons released by Atari for the Jaguar are a redesigned controller, an adapter for four players, a CD console add-on, and a link cable for local area network (LAN) gaming.
The redesigned second controller, the ProController by Atari, added three more face buttons and two triggers. It was created in response to the criticism of the original controller, said to lack enough buttons for fighting games in particular. Sold independently, however, it was never bundled with the system. The Team Tap multitap adds 4-controller support, compatible only with the optionally bundled White Men Can't Jump and NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Eight player gameplay with two Team Taps is possible but unsupported by those games. For LAN multiplayer support, the Jaglink Interface links two Jaguar consoles through a modular extension and a UTP phone cable. It is compatible with three games: AirCars, BattleSphere, and Doom.
In 1994 at the CES, Atari announced that it had partnered with Phylon, Inc. to create the Jaguar Voice/Data Communicator. The unit was delayed and an estimated 100 units were produced, but eventually in 1995 was canceled. The Jaguar Voice Modem or JVM utilizes a 19.9 kbit/s dial up modem to answer incoming phone calls and store up to 18 phone numbers. Players directly dial each other for online play, only compatible with Ultra Vortek which initializes the modem by entering 911 on the key pad at startup.
Jaguar CD
The Jaguar CD is a CD-ROM peripheral for games. It was released in September 1995, two years after the Jaguar's launch. Thirteen CD games were released during its manufacturing lifetime, with more being made later by homebrew developers. Each Jaguar CD unit has a Virtual Light Machine, which displays light patterns corresponding to music, if the user inserts an audio CD into the console. It was developed by Jeff Minter, after experimenting with graphics during the development of Tempest 2000. The program was deemed a spiritual successor to the Atari Video Music, a visualizer released in 1976.
The Memory Track is a cartridge accessory for the Jaguar CD, providing Jaguar CD games with 128 K EEPROM for persistent storage of data such as preferences and saved games. The Atari Jaguar Duo (codenamed Jaguar III) was a proposal to integrate the Jaguar CD to make a new console, a concept similar to the TurboDuo and Genesis CDX. A prototype, described by journalists as resembling a bathroom scale, was unveiled at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, but the console was canceled before production.
Jaguar VR
A virtual reality headset compatible with the console, tentatively titled the Jaguar VR, was unveiled by Atari at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show. The development of the peripheral was a response to Nintendo's virtual reality console, the Virtual Boy, which had been announced the previous year. The headset was developed in cooperation with Virtuality, which had previously created many virtual reality arcade systems, and was already developing a similar headset for practical purposes, named Project Elysium, for IBM. The peripheral was targeted for a commercial release before Christmas 1995. However, the deal with Virtuality was abandoned in October 1995. After Atari's merger with JTS in 1996, all prototypes of the headset were allegedly destroyed. However, two working units, one low-resolution prototype with red and grey-colored graphics and one high-resolution prototype with blue and grey-colored graphics, have since been recovered, and are regularly showcased at retrogaming-themed conventions and festivals. Only one game was developed for the Jaguar VR prototype: a 3D-rendered version of the 1980 arcade game Missile Command, titled Missile Command 3D, and a demo of Virtuality's Zone Hunter was created.
Unlicensed peripherals
An unofficial expansion peripheral for the Atari Jaguar dubbed the "Catbox" was released by the Rockford, Illinois company ICD. It was originally slated to be released early in the Jaguar's life, in the second quarter of 1994, but was not actually released until mid-1995. The ICD CatBox plugs directly into the AV/DSP connectors located in the rear of the Jaguar console and provides three main functions. These are audio, video, and communications. It features six output formats, three for audio (line level stereo, RGB monitor, headphone jack with volume control) and three for video (composite, S-Video, and RGB analog component video) making the Jaguar compatible with multiple high quality monitor systems and multiple monitors at the same time. It is capable of communications methods known as CatNet and RS-232 as well as DSP pass through, allowing the user to connect two or more Jaguars together for multiplayer games either directly or with modems. The ICD CatBox features a polished stainless steel casing and red LEDs in the jaguar's eyes on the logo that indicate communications activity. An IBM AT-type null modem cable may be used to connect two Jaguars together. The CatBox is also compatible with Atari's Jaglink Interface peripheral.
An adaptor for the Jaguar that allows for WebTV access was revealed in 1998; one prototype is known to exist.
Game library
Reception
Reviewing the Jaguar just a few weeks prior to its launch, GamePro gave it a "thumbs sideways". They praised the power of the hardware but criticized the controller, and were dubious of how the software lineup would turn out, commenting that Atari's failure to secure support from key third party publishers such as Capcom was a bad sign. They concluded that "Like the 3DO, the Jaguar is a risky investment – just not quite as expensive."
The Jaguar won GameFan'''s "Best New System" award for 1993.
The small size and poor quality of the Jaguar's game library became the most commonly cited reason for its failure in the marketplace. The pack-in game Cybermorph was one of the first polygon-based games for consoles, but was criticized for design flaws and a weak color palette, and compared unfavorably with the SNES's Star Fox. Other early releases like Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy, Raiden, and Evolution: Dino Dudes also received poor reviews, the latter two for failing to take full advantage of the Jaguar's hardware. Jaguar did eventually earn praise with games such as Tempest 2000, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D. The most successful title during the Jaguar's first year was Alien vs. Predator. However, these occasional successes were seen as insufficient while the Jaguar's competitors were receiving a continual stream of critically acclaimed software; GamePro concluded their rave review of Alien vs. Predator by remarking "If Atari can turn out a dozen more games like AvP, Jaguar owners could truly rest easy and enjoy their purchase." In late 1995 reviews of the Jaguar, Game Players remarked, "The Jaguar suffers from several problems, most importantly the lack of good software." and Next Generation likewise commented that "thus far, Atari has spectacularly failed to deliver on the software side, leaving many to question the actual quality and capability of the hardware. With only one or two exceptions – Tempest 2000 is cited most frequently – there have just been no truly great games for the Jaguar up to now." They further noted that while Atari is well known by older gamers, the company had much less overall brand recognition than Sega, Sony, Nintendo, or even The 3DO Company. However, they argued that with its low price point, the Jaguar might still compete if Atari could improve the software situation. They gave the system two out of five stars. Game Players also stated the despite being 64-bit, the Jaguar is much less powerful than the 3DO, Saturn, and PlayStation, even when supplemented with the Jaguar CD. With such a small library of games to challenge the incumbent 16-bit game consoles, Jaguar's appeal never grew beyond a small gaming audience. Digital Spy commented: "Like many failed hardware ventures, it still maintains something of a cult following but can only be considered a misstep for Atari."
In 2006 IGN editor Craig Harris rated the original Jaguar controller as the worst game controller ever, criticizing the unwarranted recycling of the 1980s "phone keypad" format and the small number of action buttons, which he found particularly unwise given that Atari was actively trying to court fighting game fans to the system. Ed Semrad of Electronic Gaming Monthly commented that many Jaguar games gratuitously used all of the controller's phone keypad buttons, making the controls much more difficult than they needed to be. GamePros The Watch Dog remarked, "The controller usually doesn't use the keypad, and for games that use the keypad extensively (Alien vs. Predator, Doom), a keypad overlay is used to minimize confusion. But yes, it is a lot of buttons for nuttin'." Atari added more action buttons for its Pro Controller, to improve performance in fighting games in particular.
Legacy
Telegames continued to publish games for the Jaguar after it was discontinued, and for a time was the only company to do so. On May 14, 1999, Hasbro Interactive announced that it had released all patents to the Jaguar, declaring it an open platform; this opened the doors for extensive homebrew development. Following the announcement, Songbird Productions joined Telegames in releasing unfinished Jaguar games alongside new games to satisfy the cult following. Hasbro Interactive, along with all the Atari properties, was sold to Infogrames on January 29, 2001.
In the United Kingdom in 2001, Telegames and retailer Game made a deal to bring the Jaguar to Game's retail outlets. It was initially sold for £29.99 new and software ranged between £9.99 for more common games such as Doom and Ruiner Pinball and £39.99 for rarer releases such as Defender 2000 and Checkered Flag. The machine had a presence in the stores until 2007, when remaining consoles were sold off for £9.99 and games were sold for as low as 97p.
Molds
In 1997, Imagin Systems, a manufacturer of dental imaging equipment, purchased the Jaguar cartridge and console molds, including the molds for the CD add-on, from JTS. The console molds could, with minor modification, fit their HotRod camera, and the cartridge molds were reused to create an optional memory expansion card. In a retrospective, Imagin founder Steve Mortenson praised the design, but admitted that their device came at the time of the dental industry's transition to USB, and apart from a few prototypes, the molds went unused.
In December 2014, the molds were purchased from Imagin Systems by Mike Kennedy, owner of the Kickstarter funded Retro Videogame Magazine'', to propose a new crowdfunded video game console, the Retro VGS, later rebranded the Coleco Chameleon after entering a licensing agreement with Coleco. The purchase of the molds was far cheaper than designing and manufacturing entirely new molds, and Kennedy described their acquisition as "the entire reason [the Retro VGS] is possible". However, the project was terminated in March 2016 following criticism of Kennedy and doubts regarding demand for the proposed console. Two "prototypes" were discovered to be fakes and Coleco withdrew from the project. After the project's termination, the molds were sold to Albert Yarusso, the founder of the AtariAge website.
See also
Contiki, portable operating system, including a port for the Jaguar with GUI, TCP/IP, and web browser support.
References
External links
Atari Jaguar review, 1994
Products introduced in 1993
Products and services discontinued in 1996
Jaguar duo
Home video game consoles
Fifth-generation video game consoles
1990s toys
68k-based game consoles
Discontinued video game consoles
Regionless game consoles
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The Atari Lynx is a hybrid 8/16-bit fourth-generation hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handheld game console with a color liquid-crystal display. Powered by a 16 MHz 65C02 8-bit CPU and a custom 16-bit blitter, the Lynx was more advanced than Nintendo's monochrome Game Boy, released two months earlier. It also competed with Sega's Game Gear and NEC's TurboExpress, released the following year.
The system was developed at Epyx by two former designers of the Amiga personal computers. The project was called the Handy Game or simply Handy. In 1991, Atari replaced the Lynx with a smaller model internally referred to as the Lynx II. Atari published a total of 73 games for the Lynx before it was discontinued in 1995.
History
The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. In 1986, two former Amiga designers, R. J. Mical and Dave Needle, had been asked by a former manager at Amiga, David Morse, to design a portable gaming system. Morse now worked at Epyx, a game software company with a recent string of hit games. Morse's son had asked him if he could make a portable gaming system, prompting a meeting with Mical and Needle to discuss the idea. Morse convinced Mical and Needle and they were hired by Epyx to be a part of the design team. Planning and design of the console began in 1986 and was completed in 1987. Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought partners. Nintendo, Sega, and other companies declined, but Atari and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle production and marketing, and Epyx would handle software development. Epyx declared bankruptcy by the end of the year, so Atari essentially owned the entire project. Both Atari and others had to purchase Amigas from Atari arch-rival Commodore in order to develop Lynx software.
The Handy was designed to run games from the cartridge format, and the game data must be copied from ROM to RAM before it can be used. Thus, less RAM is then available and each game's initial loading is slow. There are trace remnants of a cassette tape interface physically capable of being programmed to read a tape. Lynx developers have noted that "there is still reference of the tape and some hardware addresses" and an updated vintage Epyx manual describes the bare existence of what could be utilized for tape support. A 2009 retrospective interview with Mical clarifies that there is no truth to some early reports claiming that games were loaded from tape, and elaborates, "We did think about hard disk a little."
The networking system was originally developed to run over infrared links and codenamed RedEye. This was changed to a cable-based networking system before the final release as the infrared beam was too easily interrupted when players walked through the beam, according to Peter Engelbrite. Engelbrite developed the first recordable eight-player co-op game, and the only eight-player game for the Lynx, Todd's Adventures in Slime World.
Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb stick on the control pad. At Summer 1989 CES, Atari's press demonstration included the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to "Lynx" when distributed to resellers, initially retailing in the US at .
Its launch was successful. Atari reported that it had sold 90% of the 50,000 units shipped in the launch month in the U.S. with a limited launch in New York. US sales in 1990 were approximately 500,000 units according to the Associated Press. In late 1991, it was reported that Atari sales estimates were about 800,000, which Atari claimed was within its expected projections. Lifetime sales by 1995 amount to fewer than 7 million units when combined with the Game Gear. In comparison, 16 million Game Boy units were sold by 1995 because of its ruggedness, half price, much longer battery life, bundling with the smash hit Tetris, and superior game library.
As with the console units, the game cartridge design evolved over the first year of the console's release. The first generation of cartridges are flat, and designed to be stackable for ease of storage. However, this design proved to be very difficult to remove from the console and was replaced by a second design. This style, called "tabbed" or "ridged", adds two small tabs on the underside to aid in removal. The original flat style cartridges can be stacked on top of the newer cartridges, but the newer cartridges can not be easily stacked on each other, nor were they stored easily. Thus a third style, the "curved lip" style was produced, and all official and third-party cartridges during the console's lifespan were released (or re-released) using this style.
In May 1991, Sega launched its Game Gear portable gaming handheld with a color screen. In comparison to the Lynx it had shorter battery life (3–4 hours as opposed to 4-5 for the Lynx), but it is slightly smaller, has significantly more games, and cost $30 less than the Lynx at launch.
Retailers such as Game and Toys "R" Us continued to sell the Lynx well into the mid-1990s on the back of the Atari Jaguar launch, helped by magazines such as Ultimate Future Games which continued to cover the Lynx alongside the new generation of 32-bit and 64-bit consoles.
Lynx II
In July 1991, Atari introduced a new version of the Lynx, internally called the "Lynx II", with a new marketing campaign, new packaging, slightly improved hardware, better battery life, and a sleeker look. It has rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option (which turns off the backlighting). The monaural headphone jack of the original Lynx was replaced with one wired for stereo. The Lynx II was available without any accessories, dropping the price to .
Decline
In 1993, Atari started shifting its focus away from the Lynx in order to prepare for the launch of the Jaguar; a few games were released during that time, including Battlezone 2000. Support for the Lynx was formally discontinued in 1995.
After the respective launches of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation caused the commercial failure of the Jaguar, Atari ceased all game development and hardware manufacturing by early 1996 and would later merge with JTS, Inc. on July 30 of that year.
Features
The Atari Lynx has a backlit color LCD display, switchable right- and left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with other units via Comlynx cable. The maximum stable connection allowed is eight players. Each Lynx needs a copy of the game, and one cable can connect two machines. The cables can be connected into a chain.
The Lynx was cited as the "first gaming console with hardware support for zooming and distortion of sprites". With a 4096 color palette and integrated math and graphics co-processors (including a sprite engine unit), its color graphics display was said to be the key defining feature in the system's competition against Nintendo's monochromatic Game Boy. The fast pseudo-3D graphics features were made possible on a minimal hardware system by co-designer Dave Needle having "invented the technique for planar expansion/shrinking capability" and using stretched, textured, triangles instead of full polygons.
Technical specifications
Mikey (8-bit VLSI custom CMOS chip running at 16 MHz)
VLSI 8-bit VL65NC02 processor (based on the MOS 6502) running at up to 4 MHz (3.6 MHz average)
Sound engine
4 channel sound
8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels × 8-bits/channel = 32 bits commonly quoted) these four sound channels can also switch in analogue sound mode to generate PSG sound.
Video DMA driver for liquid-crystal display
Custom built and designed by Jay Miner and David Morse
160×102 pixels resolution
4,096 color (12-bit) palette
16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline
Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)
Eight system timers (two reserved for LCD timing, one for UART)
Interrupt controller
UART (for Comlynx) (fixed format 8E1, up to 62500 Bd / TurboMode 1,000,000Bd)
512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM
Suzy (16-bit VLSI custom CMOS chip running at )
Unlimited number of blitter "sprites" with collision detection
Hardware sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects
Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data
Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling
Math engine
Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide
Parallel processing of CPU
RAM: 64 KB 120ns DRAM
Cartridges: 128, 256, 512 KB and (with bank-switching) 1 MB
Ports:
Headphone port ( stereo; wired for mono on the original Lynx)
ComLynx (multiple unit communications, serial)
LCD Screen: 3.5" diagonal
Battery holder (six AA) 4–5 hours (Lynx I) 5–6 hours (Lynx II)
Reception
Lynx was reviewed in 1990 in Dragon, which gave it 5 out of 5 stars. The review states that the Lynx "throws the Game Boy into the prehistoric age", and praises the built-in object scaling capabilities, the multiplayer feature of the ComLynx cable, and the strong set of launch games.
Legacy
Telegames released several games in the late 1990s, including a port of Raiden and a platformer called Fat Bobby in 1997, and an action sports game called Hyperdrome in 1999.
On March 13, 1998, nearly three years after the Lynx's discontinuation, JTS Corporation sold all of the Atari assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million. On May 14, 1999, Hasbro, which held on to those properties until selling Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames in 2001, released into the public domain all rights to the Jaguar, opening up the platform for anyone to publish software on without Hasbro's interference. Internet theories say that the Lynx's rights may have been released to the public at the same time as the Jaguar, but this is clearly disputed. Nevertheless, since discontinuation, the Lynx, like the Jaguar, has continued to receive support from a grassroots community which would go on to produce many successful homebrew games such as T-Tris (the first Lynx game with a save-game feature), Alpine Games, and Zaku.
In 2008, Atari was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for pioneering the development of handheld games with the Lynx.
See also
List of Atari Lynx games
History of Atari
References
External links
AtariAge – Comprehensive Lynx Database and information
Guide to Atari Lynx games at Retro Video Gamer
Too Powerful for Its Own Good, Atari's Lynx Remains a Favorite 25 Years Later
Atari Lynx review, 1990
Atari Lynx Hardware Documentation
Atari Lynx Development Wiki
Computer-related introductions in 1989
Discontinued handheld game consoles
Handheld game consoles
Fourth-generation video game consoles
Lynx
1980s toys
1990s toys
65xx-based video game consoles
Public domain in the United States
Regionless game consoles
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Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world.
Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakharov is mostly known for his political activism for individual freedom, human rights, civil liberties and reforms in Russia, for which he was deemed a dissident and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment.
In his memory, the Sakharov Prize was established and is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms.
Biography
Family background and early life
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born in Moscow on 21 May 1921, to a Russian family. His father, Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, was a physics professor at the Second Moscow State University and an amateur pianist. His grandfather, Ivan, was a lawyer in the former Russian Empire who had displayed respect for social awareness and humanitarian principles (including advocating the abolition of capital punishment). Sakharov's mother, Yekaterina Alekseevna Sofiano, was a daughter of Aleksey Semenovich Sofiano, a general in the Tsarist Russian Army.
Sakharov's parents and paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna, largely shaped his personality; his mother and grandmother were members of the Russian Orthodox Church, although his father was a non-believer. When Andrei was about thirteen, he realized that he did not believe in God. However, despite being an atheist, he did believe in a "guiding principle" that transcends the physical laws.
After schooling, Sakharov studied physics at the Moscow State University in 1938 and, following evacuation in 1941 during the Eastern Front with Germany, he graduated in Aşgabat in Turkmenistan. In 1943, he married Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he raised two daughters and a son. Klavdia would later die in 1969. In 1945, he joined the Theoretical Department of Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences under Igor Tamm in Moscow. In 1947, Sakharov was successful in defending this thesis for the Doctor of Sciences (lit. Doktor Nauk), which covered the topic of nuclear transmutation.
Soviet program of nuclear weapons
After World War II, he researched cosmic rays. In mid-1948 he participated in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov and Igor Tamm. Sakharov's study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept in August–September 1948. Adding a shell of natural, unenriched uranium around the deuterium would increase the deuterium concentration at the uranium-deuterium boundary and the overall yield of the device, because the natural uranium would capture neutrons and itself fission as part of the thermonuclear reaction. This idea of a layered fission-fusion-fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the sloika, or layered cake. The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949. After moving to Sarov in 1950, Sakharov played a key role in the development of the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb using a design known as Sakharov's Third Idea in Russia and the Teller–Ulam design in the United States. Before his Third Idea, Sakharov tried a "layer cake" of alternating layers of fission and fusion fuel. The results were disappointing, yielding no more than a typical fission bomb. However the design was seen to be worth pursuing because deuterium is abundant and uranium is scarce, and he had no idea how powerful the US design was. Sakharov realised that in order to cause the explosion of one side of the fuel to symmetrically compress the fusion fuel, a mirror could be used to reflect the radiation. The details had not been officially declassified in Russia when Sakharov was writing his memoirs, but in the Teller–Ulam design, soft X-rays emitted by the fission bomb were focused onto a cylinder of lithium deuteride to compress it symmetrically. This is called radiation implosion. The Teller–Ulam design also had a secondary fission device inside the fusion cylinder to assist with the compression of the fusion fuel and generate neutrons to convert some of the lithium to tritium, producing a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Sakharov's idea was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of the same design which Sakharov worked on was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba of October 1961, which was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated.
Sakharov saw "striking parallels" between his fate and those of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller in the US. Sakharov believed that in this "tragic confrontation of two outstanding people", both deserved respect, because "each of them was certain he had right on his side and was morally obligated to go to the end in the name of truth." While Sakharov strongly disagreed with Teller over nuclear testing in the atmosphere and the Strategic Defense Initiative, he believed that American academics had been unfair to Teller's resolve to get the H-bomb for the United States since "all steps by the Americans of a temporary or permanent rejection of developing thermonuclear weapons would have been seen either as a clever feint, or as the manifestation of stupidity. In both cases, the reaction would have been the same – avoid the trap and immediately take advantage of the enemy's stupidity."
Sakharov never felt that by creating nuclear weapons he had "known sin", in Oppenheimer's expression. He later wrote:
Support for peaceful use of nuclear technology
In 1950 he proposed an idea for a controlled nuclear fusion reactor, the tokamak, which is still the basis for the majority of work in the area. Sakharov, in association with Tamm, proposed confining extremely hot ionized plasma by torus shaped magnetic fields for controlling thermonuclear fusion that led to the development of the tokamak device.
Magneto-implosive generators
In 1951 he invented and tested the first explosively pumped flux compression generators, compressing magnetic fields by explosives. He called these devices MK (for MagnetoKumulative) generators. The radial MK-1 produced a pulsed magnetic field of 25 megagauss (2500 teslas). The resulting helical MK-2 generated 1000 million amperes in 1953.
Sakharov then tested a MK-driven "plasma cannon" where a small aluminum ring was vaporized by huge eddy currents into a stable, self-confined toroidal plasmoid and was accelerated to 100 km/s. Sakharov later suggested replacing the copper coil in MK generators with a large superconductor solenoid to magnetically compress and focus underground nuclear explosions into a shaped charge effect. He theorized this could focus 1023 protons per second on a 1 mm2 surface.
Particle physics and cosmology
After 1965 Sakharov returned to fundamental science and began working on particle physics and physical cosmology.
He tried to explain the baryon asymmetry of the universe; in that regard, he was the first to give a theoretical motivation for proton decay. Proton decay was suggested by Wigner in 1949 and 1952.
Proton decay experiments had been performed since 1954 already. Sakharov was the first to consider CPT-symmetric events occurring before the Big Bang:We can visualize that neutral spinless maximons (or photons) are produced at ''t'' < 0 from contracting matter having an excess of antiquarks, that they pass "one through the other" at the instant ''t'' = 0 when the density is infinite, and decay with an excess of quarks when ''t'' > 0, realizing total CPT symmetry of the universe. All the phenomena at t < 0 are assumed in this hypothesis to be CPT reflections of the phenomena at t > 0. His legacy in this domain are the famous conditions named after him: Baryon number violation, C-symmetry and CP-symmetry violation, and interactions out of thermal equilibrium.
Sakharov was also interested in explaining why the curvature of the universe is so small. This lead him to consider cyclic models, where the universe oscillates between contraction and expansion phases. In those models, after a certain number of cycles the curvature naturally becomes infinite even if it had not started this way: Sakharov considered three starting points, a flat universe with a slightly negative cosmological constant, a universe with a positive curvature and a zero cosmological constant, and a universe with a negative curvature and a slightly negative cosmological constant. Those last two models feature what Sakharov calls a reversal of the time arrow, which can be summarized as follows: He considers times t > 0 after the initial Big Bang singularity at t = 0 (which he calls "Friedman singularity" and denotes Φ) as well as times t < 0 before that singularity. He then assumes that entropy increases when time increases for t > 0 as well as when time decreases for t < 0, which constitutes his reversal of time. Then he considers the case when the universe at t < 0 is the image of the universe at t > 0 under CPT symmetry but also the case when it is not so: the universe has a non-zero CPT charge at t = 0 in this case. Sakharov considers a variant of this model where the reversal of the time arrow occurs at a point of maximum entropy instead of happening at the singularity. In those models there is no dynamic interaction between the universe at t < 0 and t > 0.
In his first model the two universes did not interact, except via local matter accumulation whose density and pressure become high enough to connect the two sheets through a bridge without spacetime between them, but with a continuity of geodesics beyond the Schwarzschild radius with no singularity, allowing an exchange of matter between the two conjugated sheets, based on an idea after Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov. Novikov called such singularities a collapse and an anticollapse, which are an alternative to the couple black hole and white hole in the wormhole model. Sakharov also proposed the idea of induced gravity as an alternative theory of quantum gravity.
Turn to activism
Since the late 1950s Sakharov had become concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. Politically active during the 1960s, Sakharov was against nuclear proliferation. Pushing for the end of atmospheric tests, he played a role in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in Moscow.
Sakharov was also involved in an event with political consequences in 1964, when the Soviet Academy of Sciences nominated for full membership Nikolai Nuzhdin, a follower of Trofim Lysenko (initiator of the Stalin-supported anti-genetics campaign Lysenkoism). Contrary to normal practice, Sakharov, a member of the academy, publicly spoke out against full membership for Nuzhdin and held him responsible for "the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists." In the end, Nuzhdin was not elected, but the episode prompted Nikita Khrushchev to order the KGB to gather compromising material on Sakharov.
The major turn in Sakharov's political evolution came in 1967, when anti-ballistic missile defense became a key issue in US–Soviet relations. In a secret detailed letter to the Soviet leadership of July 21, 1967, Sakharov explained the need to "take the Americans at their word" and accept their proposal for a "bilateral rejection by the USA and the Soviet Union of the development of antiballistic missile defense" because an arms race in the new technology would otherwise increase the likelihood of nuclear war. He also asked permission to publish his manuscript, which accompanied the letter, in a newspaper to explain the dangers posed by that kind of defense. The government ignored his letter and refused to let him initiate a public discussion of ABMs in the Soviet press.
Since 1967, after the Six Day War and the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he actively supported Israel, as he reported more than once in the press, and also maintained friendly relations with refuseniks who later made aliyah.
In May 1968, Sakharov completed an essay, "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom". He described the anti-ballistic missile defense as a major threat of world nuclear war. After the essay was circulated in samizdat and then published outside the Soviet Union, Sakharov was banned from conducting any military-related research and returned to FIAN to study fundamental theoretical physics.
For 12 years, until his exile to Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) in January 1980, Sakharov assumed the role of a widely recognized and open dissident in Moscow. He stood vigil outside closed courtrooms, wrote appeals on behalf of more than 200 individual prisoners, and continued to write essays about the need for democratization.
In 1970, Sakharov was among the three founding members of the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR, along with Valery Chalidze and Andrei Tverdokhlebov. The Committee wrote appeals, collected signatures for petitions and succeeded in affiliating with several international human rights organizations. Its work was the subject of many KGB reports and brought Sakharov under increasing pressure from the government.
Sakharov married a fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner, in 1972.
By 1973, Sakharov was meeting regularly with Western correspondents and holding press conferences in his apartment. He appealed to the US Congress to approve the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a trade bill, which coupled trade tariffs to the Kremlin's willingness to allow freer emigration.
Attacked by Soviet establishment from 1972
In 1972, Sakharov became the target of sustained pressure from his fellow scientists in the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Soviet press. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn came to his defence.
In 1973 and 1974, the Soviet media campaign continued, targeting both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn for their pro-Western, anti-socialist positions.
Sakharov later described that it took "years" for him to "understand how much substitution, deceit, and lack of correspondence with reality there was" in the Soviet ideals. "At first I thought, despite everything that I saw with my own eyes, that the Soviet State was a breakthrough into the future, a kind of prototype for all countries". Then he came, in his words, to "the theory of symmetry: all governments and regimes to a first approximation are bad, all peoples are oppressed, and all are threatened by common dangers.":
Sakharov's ideas on social development led him to put forward the principle of human rights as a new basis of all politics. In his works, he declared that "the principle 'what is not prohibited is allowed' should be understood literally", and defied what he saw as unwritten ideological rules imposed by the Communist Party on the society in spite of a democratic Soviet Constitution (1936):
In a letter written from exile, he cheered up a fellow physicist and free market advocate with the words: "Fortunately, the future is unpredictable and also – because of quantum effects – uncertain." For Sakharov, the indeterminacy of the future supported his belief that he could and should take personal responsibility for it.
Nobel Peace Prize (1975)
In 1973, Sakharov was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1974, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him "a spokesman for the conscience of mankind". In the words of the Nobel Committee's citation: "In a convincing manner Sakharov has emphasised that Man's inviolable rights provide the only safe foundation for genuine and enduring international cooperation."
Sakharov was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to collect the prize. His wife, Yelena Bonner, read his speech at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway. On the day the prize was awarded, Sakharov was in Vilnius, where the human rights activist Sergei Kovalev was being tried. In his Nobel lecture, "Peace, Progress, Human Rights", Sakharov called for an end to the arms race, greater respect for the environment, international cooperation, and universal respect for human rights. He included a list of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in the Soviet Union and stated that he shared the prize with them.
By 1976, the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, was prepared to call Sakharov "Domestic Enemy Number One" before a group of KGB officers.
Internal exile (1980–1986)
Sakharov was arrested on 22 January 1980, following his public protests against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and was sent to the city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, a city that was off limits to foreigners.
Between 1980 and 1986, Sakharov was kept under Soviet police surveillance. In his memoirs, he mentioned that their apartment in Gorky was repeatedly subjected to searches and heists. Sakharov was named the 1980 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.
In May 1984, Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, was detained, and Sakharov began a hunger strike, demanding permission for his wife to travel to the United States for heart surgery. He was forcibly hospitalized and force-fed. He was held in isolation for four months. In August 1984, Bonner was sentenced by a court to five years of exile in Gorky.
In April 1985, Sakharov started a new hunger strike for his wife to travel abroad for medical treatment. He again was taken to a hospital and force-fed. In August, the Politburo discussed what to do about Sakharov. He remained in the hospital until October 1985, when his wife was allowed to travel to the United States. She had heart surgery in the United States and returned to Gorky in June 1986.
In December 1985, the European Parliament established the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, to be given annually for outstanding contributions to human rights.
On 19 December 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had initiated the policies of perestroika and glasnost, called Sakharov to tell him that he and his wife could return to Moscow.
Political leader
In 1988, Sakharov was given the International Humanist Award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He helped to initiate the first independent legal political organizations and became prominent in the Soviet Union's growing political opposition. In March 1989, Sakharov was elected to the new parliament, the All-Union Congress of People's Deputies and co-led the democratic opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group. In November the head of the KGB reported to Gorbachev on Sakharov's encouragement and support for the coal miners' strike in Vorkuta.
In December 1988, Sakharov visited Armenia and Azerbaijan on a fact-finding mission. He concluded, "For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life and death".
Death
Soon after 9 p.m. on 14 December 1989, Sakharov went to his study to take a nap before preparing an important speech he was to deliver the next day in the Congress. His wife went to wake him at 11pm as he had requested but she found Sakharov dead on the floor. According to the notes of Yakov Rapoport, a senior pathologist present at the autopsy, it is most likely that Sakharov died of an arrhythmia consequent to dilated cardiomyopathy at the age of 68. He was interred in the Vostryakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.
Influence
Memorial prizes
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was established in 1988 by the European Parliament in his honour, and is the highest tribute to human rights endeavours awarded by the European Union. It is awarded annually by the parliament to "those who carry the spirit of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov"; to "Laureates who, like Sakharov, dedicate their lives to peaceful struggle for human rights."
An Andrei Sakharov prize has also been awarded by the American Physical Society every second year since 2006 "to recognize outstanding leadership and/or achievements of scientists in upholding human rights".
The Andrei Sakharov Prize for Writer's Civic Courage was established in October 1990.
In 2004, with the approval of Yelena Bonner, an annual Sakharov Prize for journalism was established for reporters and commentators in Russia. Funded by former Soviet dissident Pyotr Vins, now a businessman in the US, the prize is administered by the Glasnost Defence Foundation in Moscow. The prize "for journalism as an act of conscience" has been won over the years by famous journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya and young reporters and editors working far from Russia's media capital, Moscow. The 2015 winner was Yelena Kostyuchenko.
Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center
The Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center, established at Brandeis University in 1993, are now housed at Harvard University.
The documents from that archive were published by the Yale University Press in 2005. These documents are available online.
Most of documents of the archive are letters from the head of the KGB to the Central Committee about activities of Soviet dissidents and recommendations about the interpretation in newspapers. The letters cover the period from 1968 to 1991 (Brezhnev stagnation). The documents characterize not only Sakharov's activity, but that of other dissidents, as well as that of highest-position apparatchiks and the KGB. No Russian equivalent of the KGB archive is available.
Legacy and remembrance
Places
In Moscow, there is Academician Sakharov Avenue and Sakharov Center.
During the 1980s, the block of 16th Street NW between L and M streets, in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. (which later became the Russian ambassador's residence) was renamed "Andrei Sakharov Plaza" as a form of protest against his 1980 arrest and detention.
In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, Sakharov Square, located in the heart of the city, is named after him.
The Sakharov Gardens (est. 1990) are located at the entrance to Jerusalem, Israel, off the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv Highway. There is also a street named after him in Haifa.
In Nizhny Novgorod, there is a Sakharov Museum in the apartment on the first floor of the 12-storeyed house where the Sakharov family lived for seven years; in 2014 his monument was erected near the house.
In Saint Petersburg, his monument stands in Sakharov Square, and there is a Sakharov Park.
In 1979, an asteroid, 1979 Sakharov, was named after him.
A public square in Vilnius in front of the Press House is named after Sakharov. The square was named on 16 March 1991, as the Press House was still occupied by the Soviet Army.
Andreja Saharova iela in the district of Pļavnieki in Riga, Latvia, is named after Sakharov.
Andreij-Sacharow-Platz in downtown Nuremberg is named in honour of Sakharov.
In Belarus, International Sakharov Environmental University was named after him.
Intersection of Ventura Blvd and Laurel Canyon Blvd in Studio City, Los Angeles, is named Andrei Sakharov Square.
In Arnhem, the bridge over the Nederrijn is called the Andrej Sacharovbrug.
The Andrej Sacharovweg is a street in Assen, Netherlands. There are also streets named in his honour in other places in the Netherlands such as Amsterdam, Amstelveen, The Hague, Hellevoetsluis, Leiden, Purmerend, Rotterdam, Utrecht
A street in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Quai Andreï Sakharov in Tournai, Belgium, is named in honour of Sakharov.
In Poland, streets named in his honour in Warsaw, Łódź and Kraków.
Andreï Sakharov Boulevard in the district of Mladost in Sofia, Bulgaria, is named after him.
In New York, a street sign at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and 67th Street reads Sakharov-Bonner Corner, in honor of Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner. The corner is just down the block from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations (which later became the Russian mission) and was the scene of repeated anti-Soviet demonstrations.
In Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, there is Academician Andrei Sakharov street.
Media
In the 1984 made-for-TV film Sakharov starring Jason Robards.
In the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of the Enterprise-D's Shuttlecraft is named after Sakharov, and is featured prominently in several episodes. This follows the Star Trek tradition of naming Shuttlecraft after prominent scientists, and particularly in The Next Generation, physicists.
The fictitious interplanetary spacecraft Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov from the novel 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke is powered by a "Sakharov drive". The novel was published in 1982, when Sakharov was in exile in Nizhny Novgorod, and was dedicated both to Sakharov and to Alexei Leonov.
Russian singer Alexander Gradsky wrote and performed the song "Памяти А. Д. Сахарова" ("In memory of Andrei Sakharov"), which features on his Live In "Russia" 2 (Живем в "России" 2) CD.
The faction leader of the Ecologists in the PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and its prequel is a scientist named Professor Sakharov.
Honours and awards
Hero of Socialist Labour (three times: 12 August 1953; 20 June 1956; 7 March 1962).
Four Orders of Lenin.
Lenin Prize (1956).
Stalin Prize (1953).
Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969)
Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (1973)
In 1980, Sakharov was stripped of all Soviet awards for "anti-Soviet activities". Later, during glasnost, he declined the return of his awards and, consequently, Mikhail Gorbachev did not sign the necessary decree.
Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1974).
Nobel Peace Prize (1975).
Elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1978)
Laurea Honoris Causa of the Sapienza University of Rome (1980).
Grand Cross of Order of the Cross of Vytis (posthumously on January 8, 2003).
Bibliography
Books
Articles and interviews
See also
Sakharov conditions
Sakharov Prize
List of peace activists
Natan Sharansky
Stanislaw Ulam
Omid Kokabee
Mordechai Vanunu
References
Further reading
External links
The Andrei Sakharov Archives at the Houghton Library.
Andrei Sakharov: Soviet Physics, Nuclear Weapons, and Human Rights . Web exhibit at the American Institute of Physics.
Andrei Sakharov: Photo-chronology
Annotated bibliography of Andrei Sakharov from the Alsos Digital Library
Videos
1921 births
1989 deaths
People from Moscow
World War II refugees
Russian physicists
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20th-century Russian writers
Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by the Soviet Union
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Astrobiology is a scientific field within the life and environmental sciences that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe by investigating its deterministic conditions and contingent events. As a discipline, astrobiology is founded on the premise that life may exist beyond Earth.
Research in astrobiology comprises three main areas: the study of habitable environments in the Solar System and beyond, the search for planetary biosignatures of past or present extraterrestrial life, and the study of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth.
The field of astrobiology has its origins in the 20th century with the advent of space exploration and the discovery of exoplanets. Early astrobiology research focused on the search for extraterrestrial life and the study of the potential for life to exist on other planets. In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA began its astrobiology pursuits within the Viking program, which was the first US mission to land on Mars and search for signs of life. This mission, along with other early space exploration missions, laid the foundation for the development of astrobiology as a discipline.
Regarding habitable environments, astrobiology investigates potential locations beyond Earth that could support life, such as Mars, Europa, and exoplanets, through research into the extremophiles populating austere environments on Earth, like volcanic and deep sea environments. Research within this topic is conducted utilising the methodology of the geosciences, especially geobiology, for astrobiological applications.
The search for biosignatures involves the identification of signs of past or present life in the form of organic compounds, isotopic ratios, or microbial fossils. Research within this topic is conducted utilising the methodology of planetary and environmental science, especially atmospheric science, for astrobiological applications, and is often conducted through remote sensing and in situ missions.
Astrobiology also concerns the study of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth to try to understand the conditions that are necessary for life to form on other planets. This research seeks to understand how life emerged from non-living matter and how it evolved to become the diverse array of organisms we see today. Research within this topic is conducted utilising the methodology of paleosciences, especially paleobiology, for astrobiological applications.
Astrobiology is a rapidly developing field with a strong interdisciplinary aspect that holds many challenges and opportunities for scientists. Astrobiology programs and research centres are present in many universities and research institutions around the world, and space agencies like NASA and ESA have dedicated departments and programs for astrobiology research.
Overview
The term astrobiology was first proposed by the Russian astronomer Gavriil Tikhov in 1953. It is etymologically derived from the Greek , "star"; , "life"; and , -logia, "study". A close synonym is exobiology from the Greek Έξω, "external"; , "life"; and , -logia, "study", coined by American molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg; exobiology is considered to have a narrow scope limited to search of life external to Earth. Another associated term is xenobiology, from the Greek ξένος, "foreign"; , "life"; and -λογία, "study", coined by American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in his work The Star Beast; xenobiology is now used in a more specialised sense, referring to 'biology based on foreign chemistry', whether of extraterrestrial or terrestrial (typically synthetic) origin.
While the potential for extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent life, has been explored throughout human history within philosophy and narrative, the question is a verifiable hypothesis and thus a valid line of scientific inquiry; planetary scientist David Grinspoon calls it a field of natural philosophy, grounding speculation on the unknown in known scientific theory.
The modern field of astrobiology can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s with the advent of space exploration, when scientists began to seriously consider the possibility of life on other planets. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, which marked the beginning of the Space Age. This event led to an increase in the study of the potential for life on other planets, as scientists began to consider the possibilities opened up by the new technology of space exploration. In 1959, NASA funded its first exobiology project, and in 1960, NASA founded the Exobiology Program, now one of four main elements of NASA's current Astrobiology Program. In 1971, NASA funded Project Cyclops, part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, to search radio frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum for interstellar communications transmitted by extraterrestrial life outside the Solar System. In the 1960s-1970s, NASA established the Viking program, which was the first US mission to land on Mars and search for metabolic signs of present life; the results were inconclusive.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the field began to expand and diversify as new discoveries and technologies emerged. The discovery of microbial life in extreme environments on Earth, such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents, helped to clarify the feasibility of potential life existing in harsh conditions. The development of new techniques for the detection of biosignatures, such as the use of stable isotopes, also played a significant role in the evolution of the field.
The contemporary landscape of astrobiology emerged in the early 21st century, focused on utilising Earth and environmental science for applications within comparate space environments. Missions included the ESA's Beagle 2, which failed minutes after landing on Mars, NASA's Phoenix lander, which probed the environment for past and present planetary habitability of microbial life on Mars and researched the history of water, and NASA's Curiosity rover, currently probing the environment for past and present planetary habitability of microbial life on Mars.
Theoretical foundations
Planetary habitability
Astrobiological research makes a number of simplifying assumptions when studying the necessary components for planetary habitability.
Carbon and Organic Compounds: Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe and the energy required to make or break a bond is at just the appropriate level for building molecules which are not only stable, but also reactive. The fact that carbon atoms bond readily to other carbon atoms allows for the building of extremely long and complex molecules. As such, astrobiological research presumes that the vast majority of life forms in the Milky Way galaxy are based on carbon chemistries, as are all life forms on Earth. However, theoretical astrobiology entertains the potential for other organic molecular bases for life, thus astrobiological research often focuses on identifying environments that have the potential to support life based on the presence of organic compounds.
Liquid water: Liquid water is a common molecule that provides an excellent environment for the formation of complicated carbon-based molecules, and is generally considered necessary for life as we know it to exist. Thus, astrobiological research presumes that extraterrestrial life similarly depends upon access to liquid water, and often focuses on identifying environments that have the potential to support liquid water. Some researchers posit environments of water-ammonia mixtures as possible solvents for hypothetical types of biochemistry.
Environmental Stability: Where organisms adaptively evolve to the conditions of the environments in which they reside, environmental stability is considered necessary for life to exist. This presupposes the necessity of a stable temperature, pressure, and radiation levels; resultantly, astrobiological research focuses on planets orbiting Sun-like red dwarf stars. This is because very large stars have relatively short lifetimes, meaning that life might not have time to emerge on planets orbiting them; very small stars provide so little heat and warmth that only planets in very close orbits around them would not be frozen solid, and in such close orbits these planets would be tidally locked to the star; whereas the long lifetimes of red dwarfs could allow the development of habitable environments on planets with thick atmospheres. This is significant as red dwarfs are extremely common. (See also: Habitability of red dwarf systems).
Energy source: It is assumed that any life elsewhere in the universe would also require an energy source. Previously, it was assumed that this would necessarily be from a sun-like star, however with developments within extremophile research contemporary astrobiological research often focuses on identifying environments that have the potential to support life based on the availability of an energy source, such as the presence of volcanic activity on a planet or moon that could provide a source of heat and energy.
It is important to note that these assumptions are based on our current understanding of life on Earth and the conditions under which it can exist. As our understanding of life and the potential for it to exist in different environments evolves, these assumptions may change.
Methodology
Astrobiological research concerning the study of habitable environments in our solar system and beyond utilises methodologies within the geosciences. Research within this branch primarily concerns the geobiology of organisms that can survive in extreme environments on Earth, such as in volcanic or deep sea environments, to understand the limits of life, and the conditions under which life might be able to survive on other planets. This includes, but is not limited to;
Deep-sea extremophiles: Researchers are studying organisms that live in the extreme environments of deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. These organisms survive in the absence of sunlight, and some are able to survive in high temperatures and pressures, and use chemical energy instead of sunlight to produce food.
Desert extremophiles: Researchers are studying organisms that can survive in extreme dry, high temperature conditions, such as in deserts.
Microbes in extreme environments: Researchers are investigating the diversity and activity of microorganisms in environments such as deep mines, subsurface soil, cold glaciers and polar ice, and high-altitude environments.
Research also regards the long-term survival of life on Earth, and the possibilities and hazards of life on other planets, including;
Biodiversity and ecosystem resilience: Scientists are studying how the diversity of life and the interactions between different species contribute to the resilience of ecosystems and their ability to recover from disturbances.
Climate change and extinction: Researchers are investigating the impacts of climate change on different species and ecosystems, and how they may lead to extinction or adaptation. This includes the evolution of Earth's climate and geology, and their potential impact on the habitability of the planet in the future, especially for humans.
Human impact on the biosphere: Scientists are studying the ways in which human activities, such as deforestation, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species, are affecting the biosphere and the long-term survival of life on Earth.
Long-term preservation of life: Researchers are exploring ways to preserve samples of life on Earth for long periods of time, such as cryopreservation and genomic preservation, in the event of a catastrophic event that could wipe out most of life on Earth.
Emerging astrobiological research concerning the search for planetary biosignatures of past or present extraterrestrial life utilise methodologies within planetary sciences. These include;
The study of microbial life in the subsurface of Mars: Scientists are using data from Mars rover missions to study the composition of the subsurface of Mars, searching for biosignatures of past or present microbial life.
The study of subsurface oceans on icy moons: Recent discoveries of subsurface oceans on moons such as Europa and Enceladus have opened up new habitability zones thus targets for the search for extraterrestrial life. Currently, missions like the Europa Clipper are being planned to search for biosignatures within these environments.
The study of the atmospheres of planets: Scientists are studying the potential for life to exist in the atmospheres of planets, with a focus on the study of the physical and chemical conditions necessary for such life to exist, namely the detection of organic molecules and biosignature gases; for example, the study of the possibility of life in the atmospheres of exoplanets that orbit red dwarfs and the study of the potential for microbial life in the upper atmosphere of Venus.
Telescopes and remote sensing of exoplanets: The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has opened up new opportunities for the search for biosignatures. Scientists are using telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to search for biosignatures on exoplanets. They are also developing new techniques for the detection of biosignatures, such as the use of remote sensing to search for biosignatures in the atmosphere of exoplanets.
SETI and CETI: Scientists search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations using radio and optical telescopes within the discipline of extraterrestrial intelligence communications (CETI). CETI focuses on composing and deciphering messages that could theoretically be understood by another technological civilization. Communication attempts by humans have included broadcasting mathematical languages, pictorial systems such as the Arecibo message, and computational approaches to detecting and deciphering 'natural' language communication. While some high-profile scientists, such as Carl Sagan, have advocated the transmission of messages, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warned against it, suggesting that aliens may raid Earth for its resources.
Emerging astrobiological research concerning the study of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth utilises methodologies within the palaeosciences. These include;
The study of the early atmosphere: Researchers are investigating the role of the early atmosphere in providing the right conditions for the emergence of life, such as the presence of gases that could have helped to stabilise the climate and the formation of organic molecules.
The study of the early magnetic field: Researchers are investigating the role of the early magnetic field in protecting the Earth from harmful radiation and helping to stabilise the climate. This research has immense astrobiological implications where the subjects of current astrobiological research like Mars lack such a field.
The study of prebiotic chemistry: Scientists are studying the chemical reactions that could have occurred on the early Earth that led to the formation of the building blocks of life- amino acids, nucleotides, and lipids- and how these molecules could have formed spontaneously under early Earth conditions.
The study of impact events: Scientists are investigating the potential role of impact events- especially meteorites- in the delivery of water and organic molecules to early Earth.
The study of the primordial soup: Researchers are investigating the conditions and ingredients that were present on the early Earth that could have led to the formation of the first living organisms, such as the presence of water and organic molecules, and how these ingredients could have led to the formation of the first living organisms. This includes the role of water in the formation of the first cells and in catalysing chemical reactions.
The study of the role of minerals: Scientists are investigating the role of minerals like clay in catalysing the formation of organic molecules, thus playing a role in the emergence of life on Earth.
The study of the role of energy and electricity: Scientists are investigating the potential sources of energy and electricity that could have been available on the early Earth, and their role in the formation of organic molecules, thus the emergence of life.
The study of the early oceans: Scientists are investigating the composition and chemistry of the early oceans and how it may have played a role in the emergence of life, such as the presence of dissolved minerals that could have helped to catalyse the formation of organic molecules.
The study of hydrothermal vents: Scientists are investigating the potential role of hydrothermal vents in the origin of life, as these environments may have provided the energy and chemical building blocks needed for its emergence.
The study of plate tectonics: Scientists are investigating the role of plate tectonics in creating a diverse range of environments on the early Earth.
The study of the early biosphere: Researchers are investigating the diversity and activity of microorganisms in the early Earth, and how these organisms may have played a role in the emergence of life.
The study of microbial fossils: Scientists are investigating the presence of microbial fossils in ancient rocks, which can provide clues about the early evolution of life on Earth and the emergence of the first organisms.
Research
The systematic search for possible life outside Earth is a valid multidisciplinary scientific endeavor. However, hypotheses and predictions as to its existence and origin vary widely, and at the present, the development of hypotheses firmly grounded on science may be considered astrobiology's most concrete practical application. It has been proposed that viruses are likely to be encountered on other life-bearing planets, and may be present even if there are no biological cells.
Research outcomes
, no evidence of extraterrestrial life has been identified. Examination of the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite, which was recovered in Antarctica in 1984 and originated from Mars, is thought by David McKay, as well as few other scientists, to contain microfossils of extraterrestrial origin; this interpretation is controversial.
Yamato 000593, the second largest meteorite from Mars, was found on Earth in 2000. At a microscopic level, spheres are found in the meteorite that are rich in carbon compared to surrounding areas that lack such spheres. The carbon-rich spheres may have been formed by biotic activity according to some NASA scientists.
On 5 March 2011, Richard B. Hoover, a scientist with the Marshall Space Flight Center, speculated on the finding of alleged microfossils similar to cyanobacteria in CI1 carbonaceous meteorites in the fringe Journal of Cosmology, a story widely reported on by mainstream media. However, NASA formally distanced itself from Hoover's claim. According to American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: "At the moment, life on Earth is the only known life in the universe, but there are compelling arguments to suggest we are not alone."
Elements of astrobiology
Astronomy
Most astronomy-related astrobiology research falls into the category of extrasolar planet (exoplanet) detection, the hypothesis being that if life arose on Earth, then it could also arise on other planets with similar characteristics. To that end, a number of instruments designed to detect Earth-sized exoplanets have been considered, most notably NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and ESA's Darwin programs, both of which have been cancelled. NASA launched the Kepler mission in March 2009, and the French Space Agency launched the COROT space mission in 2006. There are also several less ambitious ground-based efforts underway.
The goal of these missions is not only to detect Earth-sized planets but also to directly detect light from the planet so that it may be studied spectroscopically. By examining planetary spectra, it would be possible to determine the basic composition of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere and/or surface. Given this knowledge, it may be possible to assess the likelihood of life being found on that planet. A NASA research group, the Virtual Planet Laboratory, is using computer modeling to generate a wide variety of virtual planets to see what they would look like if viewed by TPF or Darwin. It is hoped that once these missions come online, their spectra can be cross-checked with these virtual planetary spectra for features that might indicate the presence of life.
An estimate for the number of planets with intelligent communicative extraterrestrial life can be gleaned from the Drake equation, essentially an equation expressing the probability of intelligent life as the product of factors such as the fraction of planets that might be habitable and the fraction of planets on which life might arise:
where:
N = The number of communicative civilizations
R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars (stars such as the Sun)
fp = The fraction of those stars with planets (current evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the Sun)
ne = The number of Earth-sized worlds per planetary system
fl = The fraction of those Earth-sized planets where life actually develops
fi = The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops
fc = The fraction of communicative planets (those on which electromagnetic communications technology develops)
L = The "lifetime" of communicating civilizations
However, whilst the rationale behind the equation is sound, it is unlikely that the equation will be constrained to reasonable limits of error any time soon. The problem with the formula is that it is not used to generate or support hypotheses because it contains factors that can never be verified. The first term, R*, number of stars, is generally constrained within a few orders of magnitude. The second and third terms, fp, stars with planets and fe, planets with habitable conditions, are being evaluated for the star's neighborhood. Drake originally formulated the equation merely as an agenda for discussion at the Green Bank conference, but some applications of the formula had been taken literally and related to simplistic or pseudoscientific arguments. Another associated topic is the Fermi paradox, which suggests that if intelligent life is common in the universe, then there should be obvious signs of it.
Another active research area in astrobiology is planetary system formation. It has been suggested that the peculiarities of the Solar System (for example, the presence of Jupiter as a protective shield) may have greatly increased the probability of intelligent life arising on Earth.
Biology
Biology cannot state that a process or phenomenon, by being mathematically possible, has to exist forcibly in an extraterrestrial body. Biologists specify what is speculative and what is not. The discovery of extremophiles, organisms able to survive in extreme environments, became a core research element for astrobiologists, as they are important to understand four areas in the limits of life in planetary context: the potential for panspermia, forward contamination due to human exploration ventures, planetary colonization by humans, and the exploration of extinct and extant extraterrestrial life.
Until the 1970s, life was thought to be entirely dependent on energy from the Sun. Plants on Earth's surface capture energy from sunlight to photosynthesize sugars from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen in the process that is then consumed by oxygen-respiring organisms, passing their energy up the food chain. Even life in the ocean depths, where sunlight cannot reach, was thought to obtain its nourishment either from consuming organic detritus rained down from the surface waters or from eating animals that did. The world's ability to support life was thought to depend on its access to sunlight. However, in 1977, during an exploratory dive to the Galapagos Rift in the deep-sea exploration submersible Alvin, scientists discovered colonies of giant tube worms, clams, crustaceans, mussels, and other assorted creatures clustered around undersea volcanic features known as black smokers. These creatures thrive despite having no access to sunlight, and it was soon discovered that they comprise an entirely independent ecosystem. Although most of these multicellular lifeforms need dissolved oxygen (produced by oxygenic photosynthesis) for their aerobic cellular respiration and thus are not completely independent from sunlight by themselves, the basis for their food chain is a form of bacterium that derives its energy from oxidization of reactive chemicals, such as hydrogen or hydrogen sulfide, that bubble up from the Earth's interior. Other lifeforms entirely decoupled from the energy from sunlight are green sulfur bacteria which are capturing geothermal light for anoxygenic photosynthesis or bacteria running chemolithoautotrophy based on the radioactive decay of uranium. This chemosynthesis revolutionized the study of biology and astrobiology by revealing that life need not be sunlight-dependent; it only requires water and an energy gradient in order to exist.
Biologists have found extremophiles that thrive in ice, boiling water, acid, alkali, the water core of nuclear reactors, salt crystals, toxic waste and in a range of other extreme habitats that were previously thought to be inhospitable for life. This opened up a new avenue in astrobiology by massively expanding the number of possible extraterrestrial habitats. Characterization of these organisms, their environments and their evolutionary pathways, is considered a crucial component to understanding how life might evolve elsewhere in the universe. For example, some organisms able to withstand exposure to the vacuum and radiation of outer space include the lichen fungi Rhizocarpon geographicum and Xanthoria elegans, the bacterium Bacillus safensis, Deinococcus radiodurans, Bacillus subtilis, yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, seeds from Arabidopsis thaliana ('mouse-ear cress'), as well as the invertebrate animal Tardigrade. While tardigrades are not considered true extremophiles, they are considered extremotolerant microorganisms that have contributed to the field of astrobiology. Their extreme radiation tolerance and presence of DNA protection proteins may provide answers as to whether life can survive away from the protection of the Earth's atmosphere.
Jupiter's moon, Europa, and Saturn's moon, Enceladus, are now considered the most likely locations for extant extraterrestrial life in the Solar System due to their subsurface water oceans where radiogenic and tidal heating enables liquid water to exist.
The origin of life, known as abiogenesis, distinct from the evolution of life, is another ongoing field of research. Oparin and Haldane postulated that the conditions on the early Earth were conducive to the formation of organic compounds from inorganic elements and thus to the formation of many of the chemicals common to all forms of life we see today. The study of this process, known as prebiotic chemistry, has made some progress, but it is still unclear whether or not life could have formed in such a manner on Earth. The alternative hypothesis of panspermia is that the first elements of life may have formed on another planet with even more favorable conditions (or even in interstellar space, asteroids, etc.) and then have been carried over to Earth.
The cosmic dust permeating the universe contains complex organic compounds ("amorphous organic solids with a mixed aromatic-aliphatic structure") that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars. Further, a scientist suggested that these compounds may have been related to the development of life on Earth and said that, "If this is the case, life on Earth may have had an easier time getting started as these organics can serve as basic ingredients for life."
More than 20% of the carbon in the universe may be associated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), possible starting materials for the formation of life. PAHs seem to have been formed shortly after the Big Bang, are widespread throughout the universe, and are associated with new stars and exoplanets. PAHs are subjected to interstellar medium conditions and are transformed through hydrogenation, oxygenation and hydroxylation, to more complex organics—"a step along the path toward amino acids and nucleotides, the raw materials of proteins and DNA, respectively".
In October 2020, astronomers proposed the idea of detecting life on distant planets by studying the shadows of trees at certain times of the day to find patterns that could be detected through observation of exoplanets.
Rare Earth hypothesis
The Rare Earth hypothesis postulates that multicellular life forms found on Earth may actually be more of a rarity than scientists assume. According to this hypothesis, life on Earth (and more, multi-cellular life) is possible because of a conjunction of the right circumstances (galaxy and location within it, planetary system, star, orbit, planetary size, atmosphere, etc.); and the chance for all those circumstances to repeat elsewhere may be rare. It provides a possible answer to the Fermi paradox which suggests, "If extraterrestrial aliens are common, why aren't they obvious?" It is apparently in opposition to the principle of mediocrity, assumed by famed astronomers Frank Drake, Carl Sagan, and others. The principle of mediocrity suggests that life on Earth is not exceptional, and it is more than likely to be found on innumerable other worlds.
Missions
Research into the environmental limits of life and the workings of extreme ecosystems is ongoing, enabling researchers to better predict what planetary environments might be most likely to harbor life. Missions such as the Phoenix lander, Mars Science Laboratory, ExoMars, Mars 2020 rover to Mars, and the Cassini probe to Saturn's moons aim to further explore the possibilities of life on other planets in the Solar System.
Viking program
The two Viking landers each carried four types of biological experiments to the surface of Mars in the late 1970s. These were the only Mars landers to carry out experiments looking specifically for metabolism by current microbial life on Mars. The landers used a robotic arm to collect soil samples into sealed test containers on the craft. The two landers were identical, so the same tests were carried out at two places on Mars' surface; Viking 1 near the equator and Viking 2 further north. The result was inconclusive, and is still disputed by some scientists.
Norman Horowitz was the chief of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory bioscience section for the Mariner and Viking missions from 1965 to 1976. Horowitz considered that the great versatility of the carbon atom makes it the element most likely to provide solutions, even exotic solutions, to the problems of survival of life on other planets. However, he also considered that the conditions found on Mars were incompatible with carbon based life.
Beagle 2
Beagle 2 was an unsuccessful British Mars lander that formed part of the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. Its primary purpose was to search for signs of life on Mars, past or present. Although it landed safely, it was unable to correctly deploy its solar panels and telecom antenna.
EXPOSE
EXPOSE is a multi-user facility mounted in 2008 outside the International Space Station dedicated to astrobiology. EXPOSE was developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for long-term spaceflights that allow exposure of organic chemicals and biological samples to outer space in low Earth orbit.
Mars Science Laboratory
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission landed the Curiosity rover that is currently in operation on Mars. It was launched 26 November 2011, and landed at Gale Crater on 6 August 2012. Mission objectives are to help assess Mars' habitability and in doing so, determine whether Mars is or has ever been able to support life, collect data for a future human mission, study Martian geology, its climate, and further assess the role that water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, played in forming minerals on Mars.
Tanpopo
The Tanpopo mission is an orbital astrobiology experiment investigating the potential interplanetary transfer of life, organic compounds, and possible terrestrial particles in the low Earth orbit. The purpose is to assess the panspermia hypothesis and the possibility of natural interplanetary transport of microbial life as well as prebiotic organic compounds. Early mission results show evidence that some clumps of microorganism can survive for at least one year in space. This may support the idea that clumps greater than 0.5 millimeters of microorganisms could be one way for life to spread from planet to planet.
ExoMars rover
ExoMars is a robotic mission to Mars to search for possible biosignatures of Martian life, past or present. This astrobiological mission is currently under development by the European Space Agency (ESA) in partnership with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos); it is planned for a 2022 launch.
Mars 2020
Mars 2020 successfully landed its rover Perseverance in Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021. It will investigate environments on Mars relevant to astrobiology, investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability and potential for preservation of biosignatures and biomolecules within accessible geological materials. The Science Definition Team is proposing the rover collect and package at least 31 samples of rock cores and soil for a later mission to bring back for more definitive analysis in laboratories on Earth. The rover could make measurements and technology demonstrations to help designers of a human expedition understand any hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate how to collect carbon dioxide (CO2), which could be a resource for making molecular oxygen (O2) and rocket fuel.
Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper is a mission planned by NASA for a 2025 launch that will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa and will investigate whether its internal ocean could harbor conditions suitable for life. It will also aid in the selection of future landing sites.
Dragonfly
Dragonfly is a NASA mission scheduled to land on Titan in 2036 to assess its microbial habitability and study its prebiotic chemistry. Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander that will perform controlled flights between multiple locations on the surface, which allows sampling of diverse regions and geological contexts.
Proposed concepts
Icebreaker Life
Icebreaker Life is a lander mission that was proposed for NASA's Discovery Program for the 2021 launch opportunity, but it was not selected for development. It would have had a stationary lander that would be a near copy of the successful 2008 Phoenix and it would have carried an upgraded astrobiology scientific payload, including a 1-meter-long core drill to sample ice-cemented ground in the northern plains to conduct a search for organic molecules and evidence of current or past life on Mars. One of the key goals of the Icebreaker Life mission is to test the hypothesis that the ice-rich ground in the polar regions has significant concentrations of organics due to protection by the ice from oxidants and radiation.
Journey to Enceladus and Titan
Journey to Enceladus and Titan (JET) is an astrobiology mission concept to assess the habitability potential of Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan by means of an orbiter.
Enceladus Life Finder
Enceladus Life Finder (ELF) is a proposed astrobiology mission concept for a space probe intended to assess the habitability of the internal aquatic ocean of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon.
Life Investigation For Enceladus
Life Investigation For Enceladus (LIFE) is a proposed astrobiology sample-return mission concept. The spacecraft would enter into Saturn orbit and enable multiple flybys through Enceladus' icy plumes to collect icy plume particles and volatiles and return them to Earth on a capsule. The spacecraft may sample Enceladus' plumes, the E ring of Saturn, and the upper atmosphere of Titan.
Oceanus
Oceanus is an orbiter proposed in 2017 for the New Frontiers mission No. 4. It would travel to the moon of Saturn, Titan, to assess its habitability. Oceanus objectives are to reveal Titan's organic chemistry, geology, gravity, topography, collect 3D reconnaissance data, catalog the organics and determine where they may interact with liquid water.
Explorer of Enceladus and Titan
Explorer of Enceladus and Titan (E2T) is an orbiter mission concept that would investigate the evolution and habitability of the Saturnian satellites Enceladus and Titan. The mission concept was proposed in 2017 by the European Space Agency.
See also
The Living Cosmos
References
Bibliography
The International Journal of Astrobiology, published by Cambridge University Press, is the forum for practitioners in this interdisciplinary field.
Astrobiology, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is a peer-reviewed journal that explores the origins of life, evolution, distribution, and destiny in the universe.
Loeb, Avi (2021). Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Further reading
D. Goldsmith, T. Owen, The Search For Life in the Universe, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 2001 (3rd edition).
Andy Weir's 2021 novel, Project Hail Mary, centers on astrobiology.
External links
Astrobiology.nasa.gov
UK Centre for Astrobiology
Spanish Centro de Astrobiología
Astrobiology Research at The Library of Congress
Astrobiology Survey – An introductory course on astrobiology
Summary - Search For Life Beyond Earth (NASA; 25 June 2021)
Extraterrestrial life
Origin of life
Astronomical sub-disciplines
Branches of biology
Speculative evolution
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An air show (or airshow, air fair, air tattoo) is a public event where aircraft are exhibited. They often include aerobatics demonstrations, without they are called "static air shows" with aircraft parked on the ground.
The largest air show measured by number of exhibitors and size of exhibit space is Le Bourget, followed by Farnborough, with the Dubai Airshow and Singapore Airshow both claiming third place. The largest air show or fly-in by number of participating aircraft is EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, with approximately 10,000 aircraft participating annually. The biggest military airshow in the world is the Royal International Air Tattoo, at RAF Fairford in England. On the other hand, FIDAE in II Air Brigade of the FACH, next to the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago, Chile, is the largest aerospace fair in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere.
Outline
Some airshows are held as a business venture or as a trade event where aircraft, avionics and other services are promoted to potential customers. Many air shows are held in support of local, national or military charities. Military air firms often organise air shows at military airfields as a public relations exercise to thank the local community, promote military careers and raise the profile of the military.
Air "seasons" vary around the world. The United States enjoys a long season that generally runs from March to November, covering the spring, summer, and fall seasons. Other countries often have much shorter seasons. In Japan air shows are generally events held at Japan Air Self-Defense Force bases regularly throughout the year. The European season usually starts in late April or Early May and is usually over by mid October. The Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand hold their events between January and March. However, for many acts, the "off-season" does not mean a period of inactivity; pilots and performers use this time for maintenance and practice.
The type of displays seen at shows are constrained by a number of factors, including the weather and visibility. Most aviation authorities now publish rules and guidance on minimum display heights and criteria for differing conditions. In addition to the weather, pilots and organizers must also consider local airspace restrictions. Most exhibitors will plan "full", "rolling" and "flat" display for varying weather and airspace conditions.
The types of shows vary greatly. Some are large scale military events with large flying displays and ground exhibitions while others held at small local airstrips can often feature just one or two hours of flying with just a few stalls on the ground. Air displays can be held during day or night with the latter becoming increasingly popular. Air shows often, but do not always, take place over airfields; some have been held over the grounds of stately homes or castles and over the sea at coastal resorts.
The first public international airshow, at which many types of aircraft were displayed and flown, was the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne, held Aug. 22–29, 1909 in Reims. This had been preceded by what may have been the first ever gathering of enthusiasts, June 28 – July 19 of the same year at the airfield at La Brayelle, near Douai.
Attractions
Before World War II, air shows were associated with long-distance air races, often lasting many days and covering thousands of miles. While the Reno Air Races keep this tradition alive, most air shows today primarily feature a series of aerial demos of short duration.
Most air shows feature warbirds, aerobatics, and demonstrations of modern military aircraft, and many air shows offer a variety of other aeronautical attractions as well, such as wing-walking, radio-controlled aircraft, water/slurry drops from firefighting aircraft, simulated helicopter rescues and sky diving.
Specialist aerobatic aircraft have powerful piston engines, light weight and big control surfaces, making them capable of very high roll rates and accelerations. A skilled pilot will be able to climb vertically, perform very tight turns, tumble his aircraft end-over-end and perform manoeuvres during loops.
Larger airshows can be headlined by military jet demonstration teams, such as the United States Navy Blue Angels, United States Air Force Thunderbirds, Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds, Royal Air Force Red Arrows, and Swiss Air Force Patrouille Suisse, among many others.
Solo military demos, also known as tactical demos, feature one aircraft. The demonstration focuses on the capabilities of modern military aircraft. The display will usually demonstrate the aircraft's very short (and often very loud) rolls, fast speeds, slow approach speeds, as well as their ability to quickly make tight turns, to climb quickly, and their ability to be precisely controlled at a large range of speeds. Manoeuvres include aileron rolls, barrel rolls, hesitation rolls, Cuban-8s, tight turns, high-alpha flight, a high-speed pass, double Immelmans, and touch-and-gos. Tactical demos may include simulated bomb drops, sometimes with pyrotechnics on the ground for effect. Aircraft with special characteristics that give them unique capabilities will often display those in their demos; For example, Russian fighters with thrust vectoring may be used to perform the cobra maneuver or the Kulbit, while VTOL aircraft such as the Harrier may display such vertical capabilities or perform complex maneuvers with them. Some military air shows also feature demonstrations of aircraft ordnance in airstrikes and close air support, using either blanks or live munitions.
Safety
Air shows may present some risk to spectators and aviators. Accidents have occurred, sometimes with a large loss of life, such as the 1988 Ramstein air show disaster (70 deaths) in Germany and the 2002 Sknyliv air show disaster (77 deaths) in Ukraine.
Because of these accidents, the various aviation authorities around the world have set rules and guidance for those running and participating in air displays. For example, after the breakup of an aircraft at 1952 Farnborough air show (31 deaths), the separation between display and spectators was increased. Air displays are often monitored by aviation authorities to ensure safe procedures.
In the United Kingdom, local authorities will first need to approve any application for an event to which the public is admitted. No approval, no event. The first priority must be to arrange insurance cover and details can be obtained from your local authority. An added complication is a whole new raft of legislation concerning Health & Safety in particular Corporate Manslaughter, which can involve the event organiser being charged with a criminal offence if any of the insurances and risk assessments are not fully completed well in advance of the event. If this very basic step is not completed then any further activity should be halted until it is.
Rules govern the distance from the crowds that aircraft must fly. These vary according to the rating of the pilot/crew, the type of aircraft and the way the aircraft is being flown. For instance, slower, lighter aircraft are usually allowed closer and lower to the crowd than larger, faster types. Also, a fighter jet flying straight and level will be able to do so closer to the crowd and lower than if it were performing a roll or a loop.
Pilots can get authorizations for differing types of displays (i.e. limbo flying, basic aerobatics to unlimited aerobatics) and to differing minimum base heights above the ground. To gain such authorizations, the pilots will have to demonstrate to an examiner that they can perform to those limits without endangering themselves, ground crew or spectators.
Despite display rules and guidances, accidents have continued to happen. However, air show accidents are rare and where there is proper supervision air shows have impressive safety records. Each year, organizations such as International Council of Air Shows and European Airshow Council meet and discuss various subjects including air show safety where accidents are discussed and lessons learned.
See also
Fly-in
Flypast
Barnstorming
List of airshow accidents
List of air shows
Teardrop turn
Whifferdill turn
Bessie Coleman
References
Further reading
Brett Holman, "The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the world wars", Contemporary British History, vol. 33, no. 4 (2019), pp. 483–506.
Air Show Accidents: "Reviewing the Notams Before the Show to Avoid Accidents"
External links
International Council of Air Shows
Experimental Aircraft Association Calendar
Royal Aero Club Events
Flightglobal's Upcoming air shows
USAF Thunderbirds
Canadian Forces Snowbirds
History of transport events
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The Australian Army is the principal land warfare force of Australia, a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. The Army is commanded by the Chief of Army (CA), who is subordinate to the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) who commands the ADF. The CA is also directly responsible to the Minister for Defence, with the Department of Defence administering the ADF and the Army.
Formed in 1901, as the Commonwealth Military Forces, through the amalgamation of the colonial forces of Australia following the Federation of Australia. Although Australian soldiers have been involved in a number of minor and major conflicts throughout Australia's history, only during the Second World War has Australian territory come under direct attack.
The Australian Army was initially composed almost completely of part–time soldiers, where the vast majority were in units of the Citizens Military Force (CMF or Militia) (1901–1980) during peacetime, with limits set on the regular Army. Since all reservists were barred from forcibly serving overseas, volunteer expeditionary forces (1st AIF, ANMEF, 2nd AIF) were formed to enable the Army to send large numbers of soldiers to serve overseas during periods of war. This period lasted from federation until post–1947, when a standing peacetime regular army was formed and the Australian Army Reserve (1980–present) began to decline in importance.
During its history, the Australian Army has fought in a number of major wars, including the Second Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Malayan Emergency, Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, Vietnam War, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 1947, the Australian Army has also been involved in many peacekeeping operations, usually under the auspices of the United Nations. Today, it participates in multilateral and unilateral military exercises and provides emergency disaster relief and humanitarian aid in response to domestic and international crises.
History
Formation
Formed in March 1901, following federation, the Australian Army initially consisted of the six, disbanded and separate, colonial military forces' land components. Due to the Army being continuation of the colonial armies, it became immediately embroiled in conflict as contingents had been committed to fight for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the Second Boer War. The Army gained command of these contingents and even supplied federal units to reinforce their commitment at the request of the British government.
The Defence Act 1903, established the operation and command structure of the Australian Army. In 1911, the Universal Service Scheme was implemented, introducing conscription for the first time in Australia, with males aged 14–26 assigned into cadet and CMF units; though the scheme did not prescribe or allow overseas service outside the states and territories of Australia. This restriction would be primarily, and continually, bypassed through the process of raising separate volunteer forces until the mid-20th century; this solution was not without its drawbacks, as it caused logistical dilemmas.
World War I
After the declaration of war on the Central Powers, the Australian Army raised the all volunteer First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) which had an initial recruitment of 52,561 out of a promised 20,000 men. A smaller expeditionary force, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF), dealt with the issue of the German Pacific holdings. ANMEF recruitment began on 10 August 1914, and operations started 10 days later. On 11 September, the ANMEF landed at Rabaul to secure German New Guinea, with no German outposts in the Pacific left by November 1914. During the AIF's preparations to depart Australia, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers; thereby receiving declarations of war from the Allies of World War I in early November 1914.
After initial recruitment and training, the AIF departed for Egypt where they underwent further preparations, and where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was formed. Their presence in Egypt was due to the planned Gallipoli campaign, an invasion of the Ottoman Empire via Gallipoli. On 25 April, the AIF landed at ANZAC Cove, which signaled the start of Australia's contribution to the campaign. Following little initial success, fighting quickly devolved into trench warfare, which precipitated a stalemate. On 15 December 1915, after eight months of fighting, the evacuation of Gallipoli commenced; it was completed 5 days later with no casualties recorded. After regrouping in Egypt, the AIF was split into two groups and further expanded with reinforcements. This division would see a majority of the Australian Light Horse fight the Ottomans in Arabia and the Levant, whereas
the rest of the AIF would go to the Western Front.
Western Front
The AIF arrived in France with the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Divisions; which comprised, in part, I ANZAC Corps and, in full, II ANZAC Corps. The 3rd Division would not arrive until November 1916, as it underwent training in England after its transfer from Australia. In July 1916, the AIF commenced operations with the Battle of the Somme, and more specifically with the Attack at Fromelles. Soon after, the 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions became tied down in actions at the Battle of Pozières and Mouquet Farm. In around six weeks, the operations caused 28,000 Australian casualties. Due to these losses and pressure from the United Kingdom to maintain the AIF's manpower, Prime Minister Billy Hughes introduced the first conscription plebiscite. It was defeated by a narrow margin and created a bitter divide on the issue of conscription throughout the 20th century.
Following the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917, which was better defended and eased manpower restraints, the first Australian assault on the Hindenburg Line occurred on 11 April 1917 with the First Battle of Bullecourt. On 20 September, the Australian contingent joined the Third Battle of Ypres with the Battle of Menin Road, and continued on to fight in the Battle of Polygon Wood, which lasted until 3 October; in total, these tow operations cost roughly 11,000 in Australian casualties. Until 15 November 1917, multiple attacks at the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge and the Battle of Passchendaele occurred, but, failed to take their objectives following the start of the rain and subsequent muddying of the fields.
On 21 March 1918, the Germans attempted a breakout through the Michael Offensive, which was part of the much larger German spring offensive; the AIF suffered 15,000 casualties due to this effort. During this operation, Australian troops conducted a series of local defences and offensives to hold and retake Villers–Brettoneux over the period 4 to 25 April 1918. After the cessation of offensives by the German Army, the Australian Corps began participating in "Peaceful penetration" operations, which were localised raids designed to harass and gain small tracts of territory; these proved so effective that several major operational objectives were captured.
On 4 July 1918, the Battle of Hamel saw the first successful use of tanks alongside Australians, with the battleplan of John Monash completed three minutes over the planned 90 minute operation. Following this success, the Battle of Amiens was launched on 8 August 1918, in conjunction with the Canadian Corps and the British III Corps, and concluded on 12 August 1918; General Erich Ludendorff described it as "the black day of the German Army". On 29 August 1918, following territorial advances and pursuits, the AIF attacked Pèronne and subsequently initiated the Battle of Mont St Quentin. Another operation around Épehy was planned for 18 September 1918, which aimed to retake the British trenches and, potentially, capture their most ambitious objective of the Hindenburg's outpost line – which they achieved.
Following news of a three-month furlough for certain soldiers, seven AIF battalions were disbanded; consequently, members of these battalions mutinied. Soon after the penetration of the Hindenburg Line, plans for the breakthrough of the main trench, with the Australian Corps as the vanguard, were completed. However, due to manpower issues, only the 3rd and 5th Divisions participated, with the American Expeditionary Forces' 27th and 30th Divisions given as reinforcements. On 29 September, following a three day long bombardment, the Battle of the Hindenburg Line commenced, wherein the corps attacked and captured more of the line. On 5 October 1918, after furious fighting, the Australian Corps was withdrawn from the front, as the entire corps had been operating continuously since 8 August 1918. They would not return to the battlefield, as Germany signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ultimately ended the war on the Western Front.
Middle East
The Australian mounted units, composed of the ANZAC Mounted Division and eventually the Australian Mounted Division, participated in the Sinai and Palestine campaign. They were originally stationed there to protect the Suez Canal from the Turks, and following the threat of its capture passing, they started offensive operations and helped in the re-conquest of the Sinai Desert. This was followed by the Battles of Gaza, wherein on the 31 October 1917 the 4th and 12th Light Horse took Beersheba through the last charge of the Light Horse. They continued on to capture Jerusalem on 10 December 1917 and then eventually Damascus on 1 October 1918 whereby, a few days later on 10 October 1918, the Ottoman Empire surrendered.
Interbellum
Repatriation efforts were implemented between the armistice and the end of 1919, which occurred after the disbandment of the Australian Imperial Force. In 1921, CMF units were renumbered to that of the AIF, to perpetuate the honours and numerical identities of the units involved in WW1. During this period there was a complacency towards matters of defence, due to the devastating effects of the previous war on the Australian psyche. Following the election of Prime Minister James Scullin in 1929, two events occurred that substantially affected the armed forces: conscription was abolished and the economic effects of the Great Depression started to be felt in Australia. The economic ramifications of the depression led to decisions that decreased defence expenditure and manpower for the army. Since conscription was repealed, to reflect the new volunteer nature of the Citizens Forces, the CMF was renamed to the Militia.
World War II
Following the declaration of war on Nazi Germany and her allies by the United Kingdom, and the subsequent confirmation by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 3 September 1939, the Australian Army raised the Second Australian Imperial Force, a 20,000-strong volunteer expeditionary force, which initially consisted of the 6th Division; later increased to include the 7th and 9th Divisions, alongside the 8th Division which was sent to Singapore. In October 1939, compulsory military training recommenced for unmarried men aged 21, who had to complete three months of training.
The 2nd AIF commenced its first operations in North Africa with Operation Compass, that began with the Battle of Bardia. This was followed by supplying Australian units to defend against the Axis in the Battle of Greece. After the evacuation of Greece, Australian troops took part in the Battle of Crete which, though more successful, still failed and another withdrawal was ordered. During the Greek Campaign, the Allies were pushed back to Egypt and the Siege of Tobruk began. Tobruk's primary defence personnel were Australians of the 9th Division; the so-called 'Rats of Tobruk'. Additionally, the AIF participated in the Syria–Lebanon campaign. The 9th Division fought in the First and Second Battle of El Alamein before also being shipped home to fight the Japanese.
Pacific
In December 1941, following the Bombing of Pearl Harbour, Australia declared war on Japan. Consequently, the AIF was requested to return home, as the subsequent rapid conquest of Southeast Asia extremely concerned Australian policymakers, and the militia was mobilised. After the Fall of Singapore, and the consequent capture of the entire 8th Division as POWs, this concern only grew. These events hastened the relief of the Rats of Tobruk, while the other divisions were immediately recalled to reinforce New Guinea. General conscription was reintroduced, though service was again limited to Australian possessions, which caused tension between the AIF and Militia. This was in addition to the CMF's perceived inferior fighting ability, with these grievances earning the Militia their nicknames of "koalas" and "chocos" or "chocolate soldiers".
The Imperial Japanese Navy's failure in the Battle of the Coral Sea, was the impetus for the Imperial Japanese Army to try to capture Port Moresby via the Owen Stanley Range. On 21 July 1942, the Japanese began the Kokoda Campaign after landing at Gona; attempts to defeat them by Australian battalions were met with eventual success. Resultant offensive operations concluded with the Japanese being driven out of New Guinea entirely. In parallel with these defences, the Battle of Milne Bay was waged, and when the Japanese were repulsed, it was considered their first significant reversal for the war. In November 1942, the campaign ended after the Japanese withdrawal, with Australian advances leading to the Battle of Buna–Gona.
In early 1943, the Salamaua–Lae campaign began, with operations against the entrenched Japanese aimed towards recapturing the eponymous towns. This culminated in the capture of Lae, held by the 7th Division in early September 1943, from a successful combined amphibious landing at Lae and an airborne landing at Nadzab. The seaborne assault was notable as it was the first large–scale amphibious operation since Gallipoli. Subsequently, Salamaua was taken days later on 11 September 1943, by a separate joint Australia–US attack. The Battle of Lae was additionally part of the wider Huon Peninsula campaign. Following Lae's capture, the Battle of Finschhafen commenced with a relatively swift control of objectives, with subsequent Japanese counterattacks beaten off. On 17 November 1943, a major offensive that began with the Battle of Sattelberg, continued with the Battle of Wareo, and concluded with the Battle of Sio on 15 January 1944, was unleashed. The momentum of this advance was continued by the 8th Brigade, as they pursued the enemy in retreat, which culminated with the Battle of Madang.
In mid-1944, Australian forces took over the garrisoning of Torokina from the US with this changeover giving Australian command responsibility over the Bougainville campaign. Soon after arriving in November of the same year, the commander of II Corps, Lieutenant-General Stanley Savige, began an offensive to retake the island with the 3rd Division alongside the 11th and 23rd Brigades. The campaign lasted until the Japanese surrender, with controversy surrounding its little apparent significance to the war's conclusion, and the number of casualties incurred; this was one of Australia's most costliest campaigns in the Second World War.
In October 1944, Australian participation in the Aitape–Wewak campaign began with the replacement of US forces at Aitape with the Australian 6th Division. US forces had previously captured the position, and had held it passively, though Australian command found this unsuitable. On 2 November 1944, the 2/6th Cavalry Commando Regiment was tasked with patrolling the area, wherein minor engagements were reported. In early December, the commandos were sent inland to establish access to the Torricelli Range, while the 19th Brigade handled patrolling, consequently, the amount of fierce fighting and territory secured increased. Following this success, thought was given for the capture of Maprik and Wewak, though supply became a major issue in this period. On 10 February 1945, the campaign's major offensive was underway, which resulted in both falling in quick succession on 22 April 1945. Smaller operations to secure the area continued, and all significant actions ceased by July.
The Borneo campaign was a series of three distinct amphibious operations that were undertaken by the 7th and 9th Divisions. The campaign began with the Battle of Tarakan on 1 May 1945, followed six weeks later by the Battle of Labuan, and concluded with the Battle of Balikpapan. The purpose of capturing Tarakan was to establish airfields, and the island was taken seven weeks following the initial amphibious landing. On 10 June 1945, the operation at Labuan commenced, and was tasked to secure resources and a naval base, and would continue until Japan's surrender. On 1 July 1945, the Balikpapan engagement commenced, with all its major objectives being acquired by war's end; this operation remains the largest amphibious operation undertaken by Australian forces, with 33,000 Australian servicemen participating. On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, ending the Second World War.
Cold War
Korean War
After the surrender of Japan, Australia provided a contingent to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) which included the 34th Brigade. The units that composed the brigade would eventually become the nucleus of the regular army, with the battalions and brigade being renumbered to reflect this change. Following the start of the Korean War, the Australian Army committed troops to fight against the North Korean forces; the units came from the Australian contribution to BCOF. The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) arrived in Pusan on 28 September 1950. Australian troop numbers would increase and continue to be deployed up until the armistice, with 3RAR being eventually joined by the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR). For a brief period, between 1951 and 1959, the Menzies Government reinstituted conscription and compulsory military training with the National Service Scheme, which required all males of eighteen years of age to serve for specified period in either the Australian Regular Army (ARA) or CMF.
Malayan Emergency
The Australian military entered the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) in October 1955, committing the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) to fight alongside Commonwealth forces. The 2RAR fought against the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), a communist led guerrilla army whose goal was to turn Malaya into a socialist republic, and whose leaders had previously been trained and funded by Britain to resist the Japanese occupation of Malaya. Australian military operations in Malaya consisted of patrolling actions and guarding infrastructure, though they rarely saw combat as the emergency was nearly over by the time of their deployment. All three original Royal Australian Regiment battalions would complete at least one tour before the end of operations. In August 1963, Australia ended deployments to Malaya, three years after the emergency's official end.
Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation
In 1962, the Borneo Confrontation began, due to Indonesia's opposition to the formation of Malaysia. It was an undeclared war that entailed a series of border conflicts between Indonesian-backed forces and British–Malaysian allies. Initial Australian support in the conflict began, and continued throughout, with the training and supply of Malaysian troops; Australian soldiers only saw combat during defensive operations. In January 1965, permission was granted for the deployment of 3RAR, with extensive operations conducted in Sarawak from March until their withdrawal in July 1965. The subsequent deployment of 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (4RAR), in April 1966, was less intensive, with the battalion withdrawn in August. This is not to mention the efforts of several other corps and units in the conflict.
Vietnam War
The Australian Army commenced its involvement in the Vietnam War by sending military advisors in 1962, which was then increased by sending in combat troops, specifically 1RAR, on 27 May 1965. Just before the official start of hostilities, the Australian Army was augmented with the reintroduction of conscription, which was based on a 'birthday ballot' selection process for all registered 20-year-old males. These men were required to register, unless they gave a legitimate reason for their exemption, else they faced penalties. This scheme would prove to be one of the most controversial implementations of conscription in Australia, with large protests against its adoption.
In March 1966, the Australian Army increased its commitment again with the replacement of 1RAR with the 1st Australian Task Force, a force in which all nine battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment would serve. One of the heaviest actions of the war occurred in August 1966, with the Battle of Long Tan, wherein D Company, 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6RAR) successfully fended off an enemy force, estimated at 2,000 men, for four hours. In 1968, Australian forces defended against the Tet Offensive, a Viet Cong military operation, and repulsed them with few casualties. The contribution of personnel to the war was gradually wound down, starting in late-1970 and ending in 1972; the official declaration of the end of Australia's involvement in the war was made on 11 January 1973.
Activities in Africa
Following the Vietnam War, there was a significant hiatus of operational activity by the Australian Army. In late 1979, in the largest deployment of the decade, the Army committed 151 troops to the Commonwealth Monitoring Force, which monitored the transition of Rhodesia to universal suffrage. A decade later in 1989, Australia deployed 300 army engineer personnel as the Australian contribution to the United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia. The mission helped transition the country to independence from South African control.
Recent history (1990–present)
Peacekeeping
Following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990, a coalition of countries sponsored by the United Nations Security Council, of which Australia was a part, gave a deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait of the 15 January 1991. Iraq refused to retreat and thus full conflict and the Gulf War began two days later on 17 January 1991. In January 1993, the Australian Army deployed 26 personnel on an ongoing rotational basis to the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), as part of a non-United Nations peacekeeping organisation that observes and enforces the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
Australia's largest peacekeeping deployment began in 1999 with the International Force for East Timor, while other ongoing operations include peacekeeping in the Sinai (as part of MFO), and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (as part of Operation Paladin since 1956). Humanitarian relief after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake in Aceh Province, Indonesia, Operation Sumatra Assist, ended on 24 March 2005.
Afghanistan and Iraq
Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, Australia promised troops to any military operations that the US commenced in response to the attacks. Subsequently, the Australian Army committed combat troops to Afghanistan in Operation Slipper. This combat role continued until the end of 2013 when it was replaced by a training contingent operating under Operation Highroad until 2021.
After the Gulf War the UN imposed heavy restrictions on Iraq to stop them producing any Weapon of mass destruction. In the early 21st century, the US accused Iraq of possessing these weapons and promoted unsubstantiated allegations, and requested that the UN invade the country in response, a motion which Australia supported. The UN denied this motion, however, it did not stop a coalition, that Australia joined, invading the country; thus starting the Iraq War on 19 March 2003.
Between April 2015 and June 2020, the Army deployed a 300-strong element to Iraq, designated as Task Group Taji, as part of Operation Okra. In support of a capacity building mission, Task Group Taji's main role was to provide training to Iraqi forces, during which Australian troops have served alongside counterparts from New Zealand.
In 2020 an investigation of allegations of war crimes committed during Australian military operations in Afghanistan was concluded with the release of the Brereton Report. The report identified 25 ADF personnel that were involved directly or indirectly in the murder of 39 civilians and prisoners, with 19 referred to the Australian Federal Police to be criminally investigated. A 'warrior culture' in the SAS was specifically criticised with investigators 'frustrated by outright deceit by those who knew the truth and, not infrequently, misguided resistance to inquiries and investigations by their superiors'.
Organisation
1st Division
Beginning 1 July 2023, the division was renamed the 1st (Australian) Division. The 1st, 3rd and 7th Brigades were placed under the direct control of the division's headquarters. This reform aimed to improve the connections between the divisional headquarters and the brigades it commands during deployments.
1 Brigade – Light Combat Brigade based in Darwin.
3 Brigade – Armoured Combat Brigade based in Townsville.
7 Brigade – Motorised Combat Brigade based in Brisbane.
Forces Command
Forces Command controls for administrative purposes all non-combat assets of the Australian Army. It's focus is on unifying all training establishments to create a base for scaling and mobilisation:
2 Brigade – Health Brigade based across Australia.
6 Brigade (CS&ISTAR) – Mixed brigade based in Sydney.
8 Brigade – training brigade with units around Australia.
17 Sustainment Brigade – Logistic brigade based in Sydney.
Additionally, Forces Command includes the following training establishments:
Army Recruit Training Centre at Kapooka, NSW;
Royal Military College, Duntroon in the ACT;
Combined Arms Training Centre at Puckapunyal, Victoria;
Army Logistic Training Centre at Bonegilla and Bandiana, Victoria;
Defence Command Support Training Centre at Macleod, Victoria
2nd Division
Administers the reserve forces from its headquarters located in Sydney.
4 Brigade – based in Victoria and Tasmania.
5 Brigade – based in New South Wales.
9 Brigade – Integrated Combat Brigade based in South Australia.
11 Brigade – based in Queensland.
13 Brigade – based in Western Australia.
Aviation
Army Aviation Command is responsible for the Australian Army's helicopters and training, aviation safety and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Army Aviation Command comprises:
16 Aviation Brigade – brigade based in Gallipoli Barracks at Enoggera, Brisbane.
Army Aviation Training Centre at Oakey, Queensland
Special Forces
Special Operations Command is a command formation of equal status to the other commands in the ADF and includes all of Army's special forces units. Special Operations Command comprises:
Special Forces Group - a brigade-level headquarters.
Colours, standards and guidons
Infantry, and some other combat units of the Australian Army carry flags called the King's Colour and the Regimental Colour, known as "the Colours". Armoured units carry Standards and Guidons – flags smaller than Colours and traditionally carried by Cavalry, Lancer, Light Horse and Mounted Infantry units. The 1st Armoured Regiment is the only unit in the Australian Army to carry a Standard, in the tradition of heavy armoured units. Artillery units' guns are considered to be their Colours, and on parade are provided with the same respect. Non-combat units (combat service support corps) do not have Colours, as Colours are battle flags and so are only available to combat units. As a substitute, many have Standards or Banners. Units awarded battle honours have them emblazoned on their Colours, Standards and Guidons. They are a link to the unit's past and a memorial to the fallen. Artillery do not have Battle Honours – their single Honour is "Ubique" which means "Everywhere" – although they can receive Honour Titles.
The Army is the guardian of the National Flag and as such, unlike the Royal Australian Air Force, does not have a flag or Colours. The Army, instead, has a banner, known as the Army Banner. To commemorate the centenary of the Army, the Governor General Sir William Deane, presented the Army with a new Banner at a parade in front of the Australian War Memorial on 10 March 2001. The banner was presented to the Regimental Sergeant Major of the Army (RSM-A), Warrant Officer Peter Rosemond.
The Army Banner bears the Australian Coat of Arms on the obverse, with the dates "1901–2001" in gold in the upper hoist. The reverse bears the "rising sun" badge of the Australian Army, flanked by seven campaign honours on small gold-edged scrolls: South Africa, World War I, World War II, Korea, Malaya-Borneo, South Vietnam, and Peacekeeping. The banner is trimmed with gold fringe, has gold and crimson cords and tassels, and is mounted on a pike with the usual British royal crest finial.
Personnel
Strength
As of June 2022 the Army had 28,387 permanent (regular) members and 20,742 reservists (part-time); all of whom are volunteers. As of June 2022, women made up 15.11% of the Army, with a target set for 18% 2025. Gender based restrictions for frontline combat or training roles were lifted in January 2013. Also as of June 2022, Indigenous Australians made up 3.7% of the Army.
Rank and insignia
The ranks of the Australian Army are based on the ranks of the British Army, and carry mostly the same actual insignia. For officers the ranks are identical except for the shoulder title "Australia". The Non-Commissioned Officer insignia are the same up until Warrant Officer, where they are stylised for Australia (for example, using the Australian, rather than the British coat of arms).
The ranks of the Australian Army are as follows:
Uniforms and Dress
The Australian Army uniforms are detailed in the Australian Army Dress Manual and are grouped into nine general categories, each ranging from ceremonial dress, to general duties dress, to battle dress (in addition there are a number of special categories specific to uniforms that are only worn when posted to specific locations, like ADFA or RMC-D), these are further divided into individual 'Dress Orders' denoted by alphabetical suffixes that detail the specific items of clothing, embellishment and accoutrements, i.e. Dress Order No. 1A - 'Ceremonial Parade Service Dress', Dress Order No. 2G - 'General Duty Office Dress', Dress Order No 4C ‘Combat Dress (AMCU)’ . The slouch hat or beret are the regular service and general duties hat, while the field hat, or combat helmet is for use in the field, while training, on exercise, or on operations. In Dec 2013 the Chief of Army reversed a previous ban on berets as general duties headwear for all personnel except Special Forces personnel (SASR, CDO Regiments). Australian Multi-cam Camouflage Uniform is the camouflage pattern for Australian Army camouflage uniforms, and was introduced in 2014, replacing the Disruptive Pattern Camouflage Uniform (DPCU), and Disruptive Pattern Desert Uniform (DPDU) for all Australian Army orders of dress.
Equipment
Firearms and artillery
Vehicles
Support
Aircraft
Bases
The Army's operational headquarters, Forces Command, is located at Victoria Barracks in Sydney. The Australian Army's three regular brigades are based at Robertson Barracks near Darwin, Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, and Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane. The Deployable Joint Force Headquarters is also located at Gallipoli Barracks.
Other important Army bases include the Army Aviation Centre near Oakey, Queensland, Holsworthy Barracks near Sydney, Lone Pine Barracks in Singleton, New South Wales and Woodside Barracks near Adelaide, South Australia. The SASR is based at Campbell Barracks Swanbourne, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.
Puckapunyal, north of Melbourne, houses the Australian Army's Combined Arms Training Centre, Land Warfare Development Centre, and three of the five principal Combat Arms schools. Further barracks include Steele Barracks in Sydney, Keswick Barracks in Adelaide, and Irwin Barracks at Karrakatta in Perth. Dozens of Australian Army Reserve depots are located across Australia.
Australian Army Journal
Since June 1948, the Australian Army has published its own journal titled the Australian Army Journal. The journal's first editor was Colonel Eustace Keogh, and initially, it was intended to assume the role that the Army Training Memoranda had filled during the Second World War, although its focus, purpose, and format has shifted over time. Covering a broad range of topics including essays, book reviews and editorials, with submissions from serving members as well as professional authors, the journal's stated goal is to provide "...the primary forum for Army's professional discourse... [and]... debate within the Australian Army... [and improve the]... intellectual rigor of that debate by adhering to a strict and demanding standard of quality". In 1976, the journal was placed on hiatus as the Defence Force Journal began publication; however, publishing of the Australian Army Journal began again in 1999 and since then the journal has been published largely on a quarterly basis, with only minimal interruptions.
See also
Australian Defence Force ranks and insignia
Australian military slang
Battle and theatre honours of the Australian Army
Conscription in Australia
List of Australian Army units
List of Australian military memorials
List of military weapons of Australia
Army (newspaper)
References
Citations
Notes
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Australian Army Dress Manual - AL5 (2013)
1901 establishments in Australia
Cold War history of Australia
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The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the regional Internet registry for the United States, Canada, and many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands. ARIN manages the distribution of Internet number resources, including IPv4 and IPv6 address space and AS numbers. ARIN opened for business on December 22, 1997 after incorporating on April 18, 1997. ARIN is a nonprofit corporation with headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, United States.<ref>"Chantilly CDP, Virginia ." U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved on September 16, 2009.</ref>
ARIN is one of five regional Internet registries in the world. Like the other regional Internet registries, ARIN:
Provides services related to the technical coordination and management of Internet number resources
Facilitates policy development by its members and stakeholders
Participates in the international Internet community
Is a nonprofit, community-based organization
Is governed by an executive board elected by its membership
Services
ARIN provides services related to the technical coordination and management of Internet number resources. The nature of these services is described in ARIN's mission statement:Applying the principles of stewardship, ARIN, a nonprofit corporation, allocates Internet Protocol resources; develops consensus-based policies; and facilitates the advancement of the Internet through information and educational outreach.These services are grouped in three areas: Registration, Organization, and Policy Development.
Registration services
Registration services pertain to the technical coordination and inventory management of Internet number resources. Services include:
IPv4 address allocation and assignment
IPv6 address allocation and assignment
AS number assignment
Directory services including:
Registration transaction information (WHOIS)
Routing information (Internet routing registry)
DNS (Reverse)
For information on requesting Internet number resources from ARIN, see https://www.arin.net/resources/index.html. This section includes the request templates, specific distribution policies, and guidelines for requesting and managing Internet number resources.
Organization services
Organization services pertain to interaction between stakeholders, ARIN members, and ARIN. Services include:
Elections
Members meetings
Information publication and dissemination
Education and training
Policy development services
Policy development services facilitate the development of policy for the technical coordination and management of Internet number resources.
All ARIN policies are set by the community. Everyone is encouraged to participate in the policy development process at public policy meetings and on the Public Policy Mailing List. The ARIN Board of Trustees ratifies policies only after:
discussion on mailing lists and at meetings;
ARIN Advisory Council recommendation;
community consensus in favor of the policy; and
full legal and fiscal review.
Membership is not required to participate in ARIN's policy development process or to apply for Internet number resources.
Services include:
Maintaining discussion e-mail lists
Conducting public policy meetings
Publishing policy documents
Organizational structure
ARIN consists of the Internet community within its region, its members, a 7-member Board of Trustees, a 15-member Advisory Council, and a professional staff of about 50. The board of trustees and Advisory Council are elected by ARIN members for three-year terms.
Board of trustees
The ARIN membership elects the Board of Trustees (BoT), which has ultimate responsibility for the business affairs and financial health of ARIN, and manages ARIN's operations in a manner consistent with the guidance received from the Advisory Council and the goals set by the registry's members. The BoT is responsible for determining the disposition of all revenues received to ensure all services are provided in an equitable manner. The BoT ratifies proposals generated from the membership and submitted through the Advisory Council. Executive decisions are carried out following approval by the BoT. The BoT consists of 7 members consisting of a President and CEO, a chairman, a Treasurer, and others.
Advisory Council
In addition to the BoT, ARIN has an advisory council that advises ARIN and the BoT on IP address allocation policy and related matters. Adhering to the procedures in the Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process, the advisory council forwards consensus-based policy proposals to the BoT for ratification. The advisory council consists of 15 elected members consisting of a Chair, Vice Chair, and others.
History
The organization was formed in December 1997 to "provide IP registration services as an independent, nonprofit corporation." Until this time, IP address registration (outside of RIPE and APNIC regions) was done in accordance with policies set by the IETF by Network Solutions corporation as part of the InterNIC project. The National Science Foundation approved the plan for the creation of the not-for-profit organization to "give the users of IP numbers (mostly Internet service providers, corporations and other large institutions) a voice in the policies by which they are managed and allocated within the North American region."''. As part of the transition, Network Solutions corporation transitioned these tasks as well as initial staff and computer infrastructure to ARIN.
The initial Board of Trustees consisted of Scott Bradner, John Curran, Kim Hubbard, Don Telage, Randy Bush, Raymundo Vega Aguilar, and Jon Postel (IANA) as an ex-officio member.
The first president of ARIN was Kim Hubbard, from 1997 until 2000. Kim was succeeded by Raymond "Ray" Plzak until the end of 2008. Trustee John Curran was acting president until July 1 of 2009 when he assumed the CEO role permanently.
Until late 2002 it served Mexico, Central America, South America and all of the Caribbean. LACNIC now handles parts of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also, Sub-Saharan Africa was part of its region until April 2005, when AfriNIC was officially recognized by ICANN as the fifth regional Internet registry.
On 24 September 2015 ARIN has declared exhaustion of the ARIN IPv4 addresses pool.
Service region
The countries in the ARIN service region are:
Former service regions
ARIN formerly covered Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe until AfriNIC was formed.
ARIN formerly covered Argentina, Aruba, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Dutch West Indies, Ecuador, El Salvador, Falkland Islands (UK), French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela until LACNIC was formed.
References
External links
ARIN Home Page
Regional Internet registries
Internet in Canada
Internet in the United States
Internet exchange points in North America
Organizations based in Virginia
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Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services. Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Directory. However, it ultimately became an umbrella title for various directory-based identity-related services.
A domain controller is a server running the Active Directory Domain Service (AD DS) role. It authenticates and authorizes all users and computers in a Windows domain-type network, assigning and enforcing security policies for all computers and installing or updating software. For example, when a user logs into a computer part of a Windows domain, Active Directory checks the submitted username and password and determines whether the user is a system administrator or a non-admin user. Furthermore, it allows the management and storage of information, provides authentication and authorization mechanisms, and establishes a framework to deploy other related services: Certificate Services, Active Directory Federation Services, Lightweight Directory Services, and Rights Management Services.
Active Directory uses Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) versions 2 and 3, Microsoft's version of Kerberos, and DNS.
Robert R. King defined it in the following way:
History
Like many information-technology efforts, Active Directory originated out of a democratization of design using Requests for Comments (RFCs). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) oversees the RFC process and has accepted numerous RFCs initiated by widespread participants. For example, LDAP underpins Active Directory. Also, X.500 directories and the Organizational Unit preceded the Active Directory concept that uses those methods. The LDAP concept began to emerge even before the founding of Microsoft in April 1975, with RFCs as early as 1971. RFCs contributing to LDAP include RFC 1823 (on the LDAP API, August 1995), RFC 2307, RFC 3062, and RFC 4533.
Microsoft previewed Active Directory in 1999, released it first with Windows 2000 Server edition, and revised it to extend functionality and improve administration in Windows Server 2003. Active Directory support was also added to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0 via patch, with some unsupported features. Additional improvements came with subsequent versions of Windows Server. In Windows Server 2008, Microsoft added further services to Active Directory, such as Active Directory Federation Services. The part of the directory in charge of managing domains, which was a core part of the operating system, was renamed Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) and became a server role like others. "Active Directory" became the umbrella title of a broader range of directory-based services. According to Byron Hynes, everything related to identity was brought under Active Directory's banner.
Active Directory Services
Active Directory Services consist of multiple directory services. The best known is Active Directory Domain Services, commonly abbreviated as AD DS or simply AD.
Domain Services
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is the foundation of every Windows domain network. It stores information about domain members, including devices and users, verifies their credentials, and defines their access rights. The server running this service is called a domain controller. A domain controller is contacted when a user logs into a device, accesses another device across the network, or runs a line-of-business Metro-style app sideloaded into a machine.
Other Active Directory services (excluding LDS, as described below) and most Microsoft server technologies rely on or use Domain Services; examples include Group Policy, Encrypting File System, BitLocker, Domain Name Services, Remote Desktop Services, Exchange Server, and SharePoint Server.
The self-managed Active Directory DS must be distinct from managed Azure AD DS, a cloud product.
Lightweight Directory Services
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), previously called Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), implements the LDAP protocol for AD DS. It runs as a service on Windows Server and offers the same functionality as AD DS, including an equal API. However, AD LDS does not require the creation of domains or domain controllers. It provides a Data Store for storing directory data and a Directory Service with an LDAP Directory Service Interface. Unlike AD DS, multiple AD LDS instances can operate on the same server.
Certificate Services
Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) establishes an on-premises public key infrastructure. It can create, validate, revoke and perform other similar actions, public key certificates for internal uses of an organization. These certificates can be used to encrypt files (when used with Encrypting File System), emails (per S/MIME standard), and network traffic (when used by virtual private networks, Transport Layer Security protocol or IPSec protocol).
AD CS predates Windows Server 2008, but its name was simply Certificate Services.
AD CS requires an AD DS infrastructure.
Federation Services
Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) is a single sign-on service. With an AD FS infrastructure in place, users may use several web-based services (e.g. internet forum, blog, online shopping, webmail) or network resources using only one set of credentials stored at a central location, as opposed to having to be granted a dedicated set of credentials for each service. AD FS uses many popular open standards to pass token credentials such as SAML, OAuth or OpenID Connect. AD FS supports encryption and signing of SAML assertions. AD FS's purpose is an extension of that of AD DS: The latter enables users to authenticate with and use the devices that are part of the same network, using one set of credentials. The former enables them to use the same set of credentials in a different network.
As the name suggests, AD FS works based on the concept of federated identity.
AD FS requires an AD DS infrastructure, although its federation partner may not.
Rights Management Services
Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS), previously known as Rights Management Services or RMS before Windows Server 2008, is server software that allows for information rights management, included with Windows Server. It uses encryption and selective denial to restrict access to various documents, such as corporate e-mails, Microsoft Word documents, and web pages. It also limits the operations authorized users can perform on them, such as viewing, editing, copying, saving, or printing. IT administrators can create pre-set templates for end users for convenience, but end users can still define who can access the content and what actions they can take.
Logical structure
Active Directory is a service comprising a database and executable code. It is responsible for managing requests and maintaining the database. The Directory System Agent is the executable part, a set of Windows services and processes that run on Windows 2000 and later. Accessing the objects in Active Directory databases is possible through various interfaces such as LDAP, ADSI, messaging API, and Security Accounts Manager services.
Objects used
Active Directory structures consist of information about objects classified into two categories: resources (such as printers) and security principals (which include user or computer accounts and groups). Each security principal is assigned a unique security identifier (SID). An object represents a single entity, such as a user, computer, printer, or group, along with its attributes. Some objects may even contain other objects within them. Each object has a unique name, and its definition is a set of characteristics and information by a schema, which determines the storage in the Active Directory.
Administrators can extend or modify the schema using the schema object when needed. However, because each schema object is integral to the definition of Active Directory objects, deactivating or changing them can fundamentally alter or disrupt a deployment. Modifying the schema affects the entire system automatically, and new objects cannot be deleted, only deactivated. Changing the schema usually requires planning.
Forests, trees, and domains
In an Active Directory network, the framework that holds objects has different levels: the forest, tree, and domain. Domains within a deployment contain objects stored in a single replicable database, and the DNS name structure identifies their domains, the namespace. A domain is a logical group of network objects such as computers, users, and devices that share the same Active Directory database.
On the other hand, a tree is a collection of domains and domain trees in a contiguous namespace linked in a transitive trust hierarchy. The forest is at the top of the structure, a collection of trees with a standard global catalog, directory schema, logical structure, and directory configuration. The forest is a secure boundary that limits access to users, computers, groups, and other objects.
Organizational units
The objects held within a domain can be grouped into organizational units (OUs). OUs can provide hierarchy to a domain, ease its administration, and can resemble the organization's structure in managerial or geographical terms. OUs can contain other OUs—domains are containers in this sense. Microsoft recommends using OUs rather than domains for structure and simplifying the implementation of policies and administration. The OU is the recommended level at which to apply group policies, which are Active Directory objects formally named group policy objects (GPOs), although policies can also be applied to domains or sites (see below). The OU is the level at which administrative powers are commonly delegated, but delegation can be performed on individual objects or attributes as well.
Organizational units do not each have a separate namespace. As a consequence, for compatibility with Legacy NetBios implementations, user accounts with an identical sAMAccountName are not allowed within the same domain even if the accounts objects are in separate OUs. This is because sAMAccountName, a user object attribute, must be unique within the domain. However, two users in different OUs can have the same common name (CN), the name under which they are stored in the directory itself such as "fred.staff-ou.domain" and "fred.student-ou.domain", where "staff-ou" and "student-ou" are the OUs.
In general, the reason for this lack of allowance for duplicate names through hierarchical directory placement is that Microsoft primarily relies on the principles of NetBIOS, which is a flat-namespace method of network object management that, for Microsoft software, goes all the way back to Windows NT 3.1 and MS-DOS LAN Manager. Allowing for duplication of object names in the directory, or completely removing the use of NetBIOS names, would prevent backward compatibility with legacy software and equipment. However, disallowing duplicate object names in this way is a violation of the LDAP RFCs on which Active Directory is supposedly based.
As the number of users in a domain increases, conventions such as "first initial, middle initial, last name" (Western order) or the reverse (Eastern order) fail for common family names like Li (李), Smith or Garcia. Workarounds include adding a digit to the end of the username. Alternatives include creating a separate ID system of unique employee/student ID numbers to use as account names in place of actual users' names and allowing users to nominate their preferred word sequence within an acceptable use policy.
Because duplicate usernames cannot exist within a domain, account name generation poses a significant challenge for large organizations that cannot be easily subdivided into separate domains, such as students in a public school system or university who must be able to use any computer across the network.
Shadow groups
In Microsoft's Active Directory, OUs do not confer access permissions, and objects placed within OUs are not automatically assigned access privileges based on their containing OU. It represents a design limitation specific to Active Directory, and other competing directories, such as Novell NDS, can set access privileges through object placement within an OU.
Active Directory requires a separate step for an administrator to assign an object in an OU as a group member also within that OU. Using only the OU location to determine access permissions is unreliable since the entity might not have been assigned to the group object for that OU yet.
A common workaround for an Active Directory administrator is to write a custom PowerShell or Visual Basic script to automatically create and maintain a user group for each OU in their Directory. The scripts run periodically to update the group to match the OU's account membership. However, they cannot instantly update the security groups anytime the directory changes, as occurs in competing directories, as security is directly implemented into the Directory. Such groups are known as shadow groups. Once created, these shadow groups are selectable in place of the OU in the administrative tools. Microsoft's Server 2008 Reference documentation mentions shadow groups but does not provide instructions on creating them. Additionally, there are no available server methods or console snap-ins for managing these groups.
An organization must determine the structure of its information infrastructure by dividing it into one or more domains and top-level OUs. This decision is critical and can base on various models such as business units, geographical locations, IT service, object type, or a combination of these models. The immediate purpose of organizing OUs is to simplify administrative delegation and, secondarily, to apply group policies. It's important to note that while OUs serve as an administrative boundary, the forest itself is the only security boundary. All other domains must trust any administrator in the forest to maintain security.
Partitions
The Active Directory database is organized in partitions, each holding specific object types and following a particular replication pattern. Microsoft often refers to these partitions as 'naming contexts. The 'Schema' partition defines object classes and attributes within the forest. The 'Configuration' partition contains information on the physical structure and configuration of the forest (such as the site topology). Both replicate all domains in the forest. The 'Domain' partition holds all objects created in that domain and replicates only within it.
Physical structure
Sites are physical (rather than logical) groupings defined by one or more IP subnets. AD also defines connections, distinguishing low-speed (e.g., WAN, VPN) from high-speed (e.g., LAN) links. Site definitions are independent of the domain and OU structure and are shared across the forest. Sites play a crucial role in managing network traffic created by replication and directing clients to their nearest domain controllers (DCs). Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 uses the site topology for mail routing. Administrators can also define policies at the site level.
The Active Directory information is physically held on one or more peer domain controllers, replacing the NT PDC/BDC model. Each DC has a copy of the Active Directory. Member servers joined to Active Directory that are not domain controllers are called Member Servers. In the domain partition, a group of objects acts as copies of domain controllers set up as global catalogs. These global catalog servers offer a comprehensive list of all objects located in the forest.
Global Catalog servers replicate all objects from all domains to themselves, providing an international listing of entities in the forest. However, to minimize replication traffic and keep the GC's database small, only selected attributes of each object are replicated, called the partial attribute set (PAS). The PAS can be modified by modifying the schema and marking features for replication to the GC. Earlier versions of Windows used NetBIOS to communicate. Active Directory is fully integrated with DNS and requires TCP/IP—DNS. To fully operate, the DNS server must support SRV resource records, also known as service records.
Replication
Active Directory uses multi-master replication to synchronize changes, meaning replicas pull changes from the server where the change occurred rather than being pushed to them. The Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC) uses defined sites to manage traffic and create a replication topology of site links. Intra-site replication occurs frequently and automatically due to change notifications, which prompt peers to begin a pull replication cycle. Replication intervals between different sites are usually less consistent and don't usually use change notifications. However, it's possible to set it up to be the same as replication between locations on the same network if needed.
Each DS3, T1, and ISDN link can have a cost, and the KCC alters the site link topology accordingly. Replication may occur transitively through several site links on same-protocol site link bridges if the price is low. However, KCC automatically costs a direct site-to-site link lower than transitive connections. A bridgehead server in each zone can send updates to other DCs in the exact location to replicate changes between sites. To configure replication for Active Directory zones, activate DNS in the domain based on the site.
To replicate Active Directory, Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) over IP (RPC/IP) are used. SMTP is used to replicate between sites but only for modifications in the Schema, Configuration, or Partial Attribute Set (Global Catalog) GCs. It's not suitable for reproducing the default Domain partition.
Implementation
Generally, a network utilizing Active Directory has more than one licensed Windows server computer. Backup and restore of Active Directory are possible for a network with a single domain controller. However, Microsoft recommends more than one domain controller to provide automatic failover protection of the directory. Domain controllers are ideally single-purpose for directory operations only and should not run any other software or role.
Since certain Microsoft products, like SQL Server and Exchange, can interfere with the operation of a domain controller, isolation of these products on additional Windows servers is advised. Combining them can complicate the configuration and troubleshooting of the domain controller or the other installed software more complex. If planning to implement Active Directory, a business should purchase multiple Windows server licenses to have at least two separate domain controllers. Administrators should consider additional domain controllers for performance or redundancy and individual servers for tasks like file storage, Exchange, and SQL Server since this will guarantee that all server roles are adequately supported.
One way to lower the physical hardware costs is by using virtualization. However, for proper failover protection, Microsoft recommends not running multiple virtualized domain controllers on the same physical hardware.
Database
The Active-Directory database, the directory store, in Windows 2000 Server uses the JET Blue-based Extensible Storage Engine (ESE98). Each domain controller's database is limited to 16 terabytes and 2 billion objects (but only 1 billion security principals). Microsoft has created NTDS databases with more than 2 billion objects. NT4's Security Account Manager could support up to 40,000 objects. It has two main tables: the data table and the link table. Windows Server 2003 added a third main table for security descriptor single instancing.
Programs may access the features of Active Directory via the COM interfaces provided by Active Directory Service Interfaces.
Trusting
To allow users in one domain to access resources in another, Active Directory uses trusts.
Trusts inside a forest are automatically created when domains are created. The forest sets the default boundaries of trust, and implicit, transitive trust is automatic for all domains within a forest.
Terminology
One-way trust
One domain allows access to users on another domain, but the other domain does not allow access to users on the first domain.
Two-way trust
Two domains allow access to users on both domains.
Trusted domain
The domain that is trusted; whose users have access to the trusting domain.
Transitive trust
A trust that can extend beyond two domains to other trusted domains in the forest.
Intransitive trust
A one way trust that does not extend beyond two domains.
Explicit trust
A trust that an admin creates. It is not transitive and is one way only.
Cross-link trust
An explicit trust between domains in different trees or the same tree when a descendant/ancestor (child/parent) relationship does not exist between the two domains.
Shortcut
Joins two domains in different trees, transitive, one- or two-way.
Forest trust
Applies to the entire forest. Transitive, one- or two-way.
Realm
Can be transitive or nontransitive (intransitive), one- or two-way.
External
Connect to other forests or non-Active Directory domains. Nontransitive, one- or two-way.
PAM trust
A one-way trust used by Microsoft Identity Manager from a (possibly low-level) production forest to a (Windows Server 2016 functionality level) 'bastion' forest, which issues time-limited group memberships.
Management tools
Microsoft Active Directory management tools include:
Active Directory Administrative Center (Introduced with Windows Server 2012 and above),
Active Directory Users and Computers,
Active Directory Domains and Trusts,
Active Directory Sites and Services,
ADSI Edit,
Local Users and Groups,
Active Directory Schema snap-ins for Microsoft Management Console (MMC),
SysInternals ADExplorer
These management tools may not provide enough functionality for efficient workflow in large environments. Some third-party tools extend the administration and management capabilities. They provide essential features for a more convenient administration process, such as automation, reports, integration with other services, etc.
Unix integration
Varying levels of interoperability with Active Directory can be achieved on most Unix-like operating systems (including Unix, Linux, Mac OS X or Java and Unix-based programs) through standards-compliant LDAP clients, but these systems usually do not interpret many attributes associated with Windows components, such as Group Policy and support for one-way trusts.
Third parties offer Active Directory integration for Unix-like platforms, including:
PowerBroker Identity Services, formerly Likewise (BeyondTrust, formerly Likewise Software) – Allows a non-Windows client to join Active Directory
ADmitMac (Thursby Software Systems)
Samba (free software under GPLv3) – Can act as a domain controller
The schema additions shipped with Windows Server 2003 R2 include attributes that map closely enough to RFC 2307 to be generally usable. The reference implementation of RFC 2307, nss_ldap and pam_ldap provided by PADL.com, support these attributes directly. The default schema for group membership complies with RFC 2307bis (proposed). Windows Server 2003 R2 includes a Microsoft Management Console snap-in that creates and edits the attributes.
An alternative option is to use another directory service as non-Windows clients authenticate to this while Windows Clients authenticate to Active Directory. Non-Windows clients include 389 Directory Server (formerly Fedora Directory Server, FDS), ViewDS v7.2 XML Enabled Directory, and Sun Microsystems Sun Java System Directory Server. The latter two are both able to perform two-way synchronization with Active Directory and thus provide a "deflected" integration.
Another option is to use OpenLDAP with its translucent overlay, which can extend entries in any remote LDAP server with additional attributes stored in a local database. Clients pointed at the local database see entries containing both the remote and local attributes, while the remote database remains completely untouched.
Administration (querying, modifying, and monitoring) of Active Directory can be achieved via many scripting languages, including PowerShell, VBScript, JScript/JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Free and non-free Active Directory administration tools can help to simplify and possibly automate Active Directory management tasks.
Since October 2017 Amazon AWS offers integration with Microsoft Active Directory.
See also
AGDLP (implementing role based access controls using nested groups)
Apple Open Directory
Flexible single master operation
FreeIPA
List of LDAP software
System Security Services Daemon (SSSD)
Univention Corporate Server
References
External links
Microsoft Technet: White paper: Active Directory Architecture (Single technical document that gives an overview about Active Directory.)
Microsoft Technet: Detailed description of Active Directory on Windows Server 2003
Microsoft MSDN Library: [MS-ADTS]: Active Directory Technical Specification (part of the Microsoft Open Specification Promise)
Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)
Microsoft MSDN: [AD-LDS]: Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Microsoft TechNet: [AD-LDS]: Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Microsoft MSDN: Active Directory Schema
Microsoft TechNet: Understanding Schema
Microsoft TechNet Magazine: Extending the Active Directory Schema
Microsoft MSDN: Active Directory Certificate Services
Microsoft TechNet: Active Directory Certificate Services
Directory services
Public key infrastructure
Microsoft server technology
Windows components
Windows 2000
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Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, and was deployed in many other countries too, including Israel in 1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America (and other locales) through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February 18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in Pakistan by October 2004, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.
History
The first cellular network efforts began at Bell Labs and with research conducted at Motorola.
In 1960, John F. Mitchell
became Motorola's chief engineer for its mobile-communication products, and oversaw the development and marketing of the first pager to use transistors.
Motorola had long produced mobile telephones for automobiles, but these large and heavy models consumed too much power to allow their use without the automobile's engine running. Mitchell's team, which included the gifted Dr. Martin Cooper, developed portable cellular telephony. Cooper and Mitchell were among the Motorola employees granted a patent for this work in 1973. The first call on the prototype connected, reportedly, to a wrong number.
While Motorola was developing a cellular phone, from 1968 to 1983 Bell Labs worked out a system called Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), which became the first cellular network standard in the United States. The first system was successfully deployed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1979. Motorola and others designed and built the cellular phones for this and other cellular systems.
Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, led a team that produced the first cellular handset in 1973 and made the first phone call from it. In 1983 Motorola introduced the DynaTAC 8000x, the first commercially available cellular phone small enough to be easily carried. He later introduced the so-called Bag Phone.
In 1992, the first smartphone, called IBM Simon, used AMPS. Frank Canova led its design at IBM and it was demonstrated that year at the COMDEX computer-industry trade-show. A refined version of the product was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. The Simon was the first device that can be properly referred to as a "smartphone", even though that term was not yet coined.
Technology
AMPS is a first-generation cellular technology that uses separate frequencies, or "channels", for each conversation. It therefore required considerable bandwidth for a large number of users. In general terms, AMPS was very similar to the older "0G" Improved Mobile Telephone Service it replaced, but used considerably more computing power to select frequencies, hand off conversations to land lines, and handle billing and call setup.
What really separated AMPS from older systems is the "back end" call setup functionality. In AMPS, the cell centers could flexibly assign channels to handsets based on signal strength, allowing the same frequency to be re-used, without interference, if locations were separated enough. The channels were grouped so a specific set was different of the one used on the cell nearby. This allowed a larger number of phones to be supported over a geographical area. AMPS pioneers coined the term "cellular" because of its use of small hexagonal "cells" within a system.
AMPS suffered from many weaknesses compared to today's digital technologies. As an analog standard, it was susceptible to static and noise, and there was no protection from 'eavesdropping' using a scanner or an older TV set that could tune into channels 70-83.
Cloning
In the 1990s, an epidemic of "cloning" cost the cellular carriers millions of dollars. An eavesdropper with specialized equipment could intercept a handset's ESN (Electronic Serial Number) and MDN or CTN (Mobile Directory Number or Cellular Telephone Number). The Electronic Serial Number, a 12-digit number sent by the handset to the cellular system for billing purposes, uniquely identified that phone on the network. The system then allowed or disallowed calls and/or features based on its customer file. A person intercepting an ESN/MDN pair could clone the combination onto a different phone and use it in other areas for making calls without paying.
Cellular phone cloning became possible with off-the-shelf technology in the 1990s. Would-be cloners required three key items :
A radio receiver, such as the Icom PCR-1000, that could tune into the Reverse Channel (the frequency on which AMPS phones transmit data to the tower)
A PC with a sound card and a software program called Banpaia
A phone that could easily be used for cloning, such as the Oki 900
The radio, when tuned to the proper frequency, would receive the signal transmitted by the cell phone to be cloned, containing the phone's ESN/MDN pair. This signal would feed into the sound-card audio-input of the PC, and Banpaia would decode the ESN/MDN pair from this signal and display it on the screen. The hacker could then copy that data into the Oki 900 phone and reboot it, after which the phone network could not distinguish the Oki from the original phone whose signal had been received. This gave the cloner, through the Oki phone, the ability to use the mobile-phone service of the legitimate subscriber whose phone was cloned – just as if that phone had been physically stolen, except that the subscriber retained his or her phone, unaware that the phone had been cloned—at least until that subscriber received his or her next bill.
The problem became so large that some carriers required the use of a PIN before making calls. Eventually, the cellular companies initiated a system called RF Fingerprinting, whereby it could determine subtle differences in the signal of one phone from another and shut down some cloned phones. Some legitimate customers had problems with this though if they made certain changes to their own phone, such as replacing the battery and/or antenna.
The Oki 900 could listen in to AMPS phone-calls right out-of-the-box with no hardware modifications.
Standards
AMPS was originally standardized by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as EIA/TIA/IS-3. EIA/TIA/IS-3 was superseded by EIA/TIA-553 and TIA interim standard with digital technologies, the cost of wireless service is so low that the problem of cloning has virtually disappeared.
Frequency bands
AMPS cellular service operated in the 850 MHz Cellular band. For each market area, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed two licensees (networks) known as "A" and "B" carriers. Each carrier within a market used a specified "block" of frequencies consisting of 21 control channels and 395 voice channels. Originally, the B (wireline) side license was usually owned by the local phone company, and the A (non-wireline) license was given to wireless telephone providers.
At the inception of cellular in 1983, the FCC had granted each carrier within a market 333 channel pairs (666 channels total). By the late 1980s, the cellular industry's subscriber base had grown into the millions across America and it became necessary to add channels for additional capacity. In 1989, the FCC granted carriers an expansion from the previous 666 channels to the final 832 (416 pairs per carrier). The additional frequencies were from the band held in reserve for future (inevitable) expansion. These frequencies were immediately adjacent to the existing cellular band. These bands had previously been allocated to UHF TV channels 70–83.
Each duplex channel was composed of 2 frequencies. 416 of these were in the 824–849 MHz range for transmissions from mobile stations to the base stations, paired with 416 frequencies in the 869–894 MHz range for transmissions from base stations to the mobile stations. Each cell site used a different subset of these channels than its neighbors to avoid interference. This significantly reduced the number of channels available at each site in real-world systems. Each AMPS channel had a one way bandwidth of 30 kHz, for a total of 60 kHz for each duplex channel.
Laws were passed in the US which prohibited the FCC type acceptance and sale of any receiver which could tune the frequency ranges occupied by analog AMPS cellular services. Though the service is no longer offered, these laws remain in force (although they may no longer be enforced).
Narrowband AMPS
In 1991, Motorola proposed an AMPS enhancement known as narrowband AMPS (NAMPS or N-AMPS).
Digital AMPS
Later, many AMPS networks were partially converted to D-AMPS, often referred to as TDMA (though TDMA is a generic term that applies to many 2G cellular systems). D-AMPS, commercially deployed since 1993, was a digital, 2G standard used mainly by AT&T Mobility and U.S. Cellular in the United States, Rogers Wireless in Canada, Telcel in Mexico, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) in Brazil, VimpelCom in Russia, Movilnet in Venezuela, and Cellcom in Israel. In most areas, D-AMPS is no longer offered and has been replaced by more advanced digital wireless networks.
Successor technologies
AMPS and D-AMPS have now been phased out in favor of either CDMA2000 or GSM, which allow for higher capacity data transfers for services such as WAP, Multimedia Messaging System (MMS), and wireless Internet access. There are some phones capable of supporting AMPS, D-AMPS and GSM all in one phone (using the GAIT standard).
Analog AMPS being replaced by digital
In 2002, the FCC decided to no longer require A and B carriers to support AMPS service as of February 18, 2008. All AMPS carriers have converted to a digital standard such as CDMA2000 or GSM. Digital technologies such as GSM and CDMA2000 support multiple voice calls on the same channel and offer enhanced features such as two-way text messaging and data services.
Unlike in the United States, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and Industry Canada have not set any requirement for maintaining AMPS service in Canada. Rogers Wireless has dismantled their AMPS (along with IS-136) network; the networks were shut down May 31, 2007. Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility, who operated AMPS networks in Canada, announced that they would observe the same timetable as outlined by the FCC in the United States, and as a result would not begin to dismantle their AMPS networks until after February 2008.
OnStar relied heavily on North American AMPS service for its subscribers because, when the system was developed, AMPS offered the most comprehensive wireless coverage in the US. In 2006, ADT asked the FCC to extend the AMPS deadline due to many of their alarm systems still using analog technology to communicate with the control centers. Cellular companies who own an A or B license (such as Verizon and Alltel) were required to provide analog service until February 18, 2008. After that point, however, most cellular companies were eager to shut down AMPS and use the remaining channels for digital services. OnStar transitioned to digital service with the help of data transport technology developed by Airbiquity, but warned customers who could not be upgraded to digital service that their service would permanently expire on January 1, 2008.
Commercial deployments of AMPS by country
See also
History of mobile phones
Citations
References
Interview of Joel Engel
History of mobile phones
Mobile radio telephone systems
Telecommunications-related introductions in 1983
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Aerodynamics ( aero (air) + (dynamics)) is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dynamics and its subfield of gas dynamics, and is an important domain of study in aeronautics. The term aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, the difference being that "gas dynamics" applies to the study of the motion of all gases, and is not limited to air. The formal study of aerodynamics began in the modern sense in the eighteenth century, although observations of fundamental concepts such as aerodynamic drag were recorded much earlier. Most of the early efforts in aerodynamics were directed toward achieving heavier-than-air flight, which was first demonstrated by Otto Lilienthal in 1891. Since then, the use of aerodynamics through mathematical analysis, empirical approximations, wind tunnel experimentation, and computer simulations has formed a rational basis for the development of heavier-than-air flight and a number of other technologies. Recent work in aerodynamics has focused on issues related to compressible flow, turbulence, and boundary layers and has become increasingly computational in nature.
History
Modern aerodynamics only dates back to the seventeenth century, but aerodynamic forces have been harnessed by humans for thousands of years in sailboats and windmills, and images and stories of flight appear throughout recorded history, such as the Ancient Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus. Fundamental concepts of continuum, drag, and pressure gradients appear in the work of Aristotle and Archimedes.
In 1726, Sir Isaac Newton became the first person to develop a theory of air resistance, making him one of the first aerodynamicists. Dutch-Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli followed in 1738 with Hydrodynamica in which he described a fundamental relationship between pressure, density, and flow velocity for incompressible flow known today as Bernoulli's principle, which provides one method for calculating aerodynamic lift. In 1757, Leonhard Euler published the more general Euler equations which could be applied to both compressible and incompressible flows. The Euler equations were extended to incorporate the effects of viscosity in the first half of the 1800s, resulting in the Navier–Stokes equations. The Navier–Stokes equations are the most general governing equations of fluid flow but are difficult to solve for the flow around all but the simplest of shapes.
In 1799, Sir George Cayley became the first person to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight (weight, lift, drag, and thrust), as well as the relationships between them, and in doing so outlined the path toward achieving heavier-than-air flight for the next century. In 1871, Francis Herbert Wenham constructed the first wind tunnel, allowing precise measurements of aerodynamic forces. Drag theories were developed by Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Gustav Kirchhoff, and Lord Rayleigh. In 1889, Charles Renard, a French aeronautical engineer, became the first person to reasonably predict the power needed for sustained flight. Otto Lilienthal, the first person to become highly successful with glider flights, was also the first to propose thin, curved airfoils that would produce high lift and low drag. Building on these developments as well as research carried out in their own wind tunnel, the Wright brothers flew the first powered airplane on December 17, 1903.
During the time of the first flights, Frederick W. Lanchester, Martin Kutta, and Nikolai Zhukovsky independently created theories that connected circulation of a fluid flow to lift. Kutta and Zhukovsky went on to develop a two-dimensional wing theory. Expanding upon the work of Lanchester, Ludwig Prandtl is credited with developing the mathematics behind thin-airfoil and lifting-line theories as well as work with boundary layers.
As aircraft speed increased designers began to encounter challenges associated with air compressibility at speeds near the speed of sound. The differences in airflow under such conditions lead to problems in aircraft control, increased drag due to shock waves, and the threat of structural failure due to aeroelastic flutter. The ratio of the flow speed to the speed of sound was named the Mach number after Ernst Mach who was one of the first to investigate the properties of the supersonic flow. Macquorn Rankine and Pierre Henri Hugoniot independently developed the theory for flow properties before and after a shock wave, while Jakob Ackeret led the initial work of calculating the lift and drag of supersonic airfoils. Theodore von Kármán and Hugh Latimer Dryden introduced the term transonic to describe flow speeds between the critical Mach number and Mach 1 where drag increases rapidly. This rapid increase in drag led aerodynamicists and aviators to disagree on whether supersonic flight was achievable until the sound barrier was broken in 1947 using the Bell X-1 aircraft.
By the time the sound barrier was broken, aerodynamicists' understanding of the subsonic and low supersonic flow had matured. The Cold War prompted the design of an ever-evolving line of high-performance aircraft. Computational fluid dynamics began as an effort to solve for flow properties around complex objects and has rapidly grown to the point where entire aircraft can be designed using computer software, with wind-tunnel tests followed by flight tests to confirm the computer predictions. Understanding of supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics has matured since the 1960s, and the goals of aerodynamicists have shifted from the behaviour of fluid flow to the engineering of a vehicle such that it interacts predictably with the fluid flow. Designing aircraft for supersonic and hypersonic conditions, as well as the desire to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of current aircraft and propulsion systems, continues to motivate new research in aerodynamics, while work continues to be done on important problems in basic aerodynamic theory related to flow turbulence and the existence and uniqueness of analytical solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations.
Fundamental concepts
Understanding the motion of air around an object (often called a flow field) enables the calculation of forces and moments acting on the object. In many aerodynamics problems, the forces of interest are the fundamental forces of flight: lift, drag, thrust, and weight. Of these, lift and drag are aerodynamic forces, i.e. forces due to air flow over a solid body. Calculation of these quantities is often founded upon the assumption that the flow field behaves as a continuum. Continuum flow fields are characterized by properties such as flow velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, which may be functions of position and time. These properties may be directly or indirectly measured in aerodynamics experiments or calculated starting with the equations for conservation of mass, momentum, and energy in air flows. Density, flow velocity, and an additional property, viscosity, are used to classify flow fields.
Flow classification
Flow velocity is used to classify flows according to speed regime. Subsonic flows are flow fields in which the air speed field is always below the local speed of sound. Transonic flows include both regions of subsonic flow and regions in which the local flow speed is greater than the local speed of sound. Supersonic flows are defined to be flows in which the flow speed is greater than the speed of sound everywhere. A fourth classification, hypersonic flow, refers to flows where the flow speed is much greater than the speed of sound. Aerodynamicists disagree on the precise definition of hypersonic flow.
Compressible flow accounts for varying density within the flow. Subsonic flows are often idealized as incompressible, i.e. the density is assumed to be constant. Transonic and supersonic flows are compressible, and calculations that neglect the changes of density in these flow fields will yield inaccurate results.
Viscosity is associated with the frictional forces in a flow. In some flow fields, viscous effects are very small, and approximate solutions may safely neglect viscous effects. These approximations are called inviscid flows. Flows for which viscosity is not neglected are called viscous flows. Finally, aerodynamic problems may also be classified by the flow environment. External aerodynamics is the study of flow around solid objects of various shapes (e.g. around an airplane wing), while internal aerodynamics is the study of flow through passages inside solid objects (e.g. through a jet engine).
Continuum assumption
Unlike liquids and solids, gases are composed of discrete molecules which occupy only a small fraction of the volume filled by the gas. On a molecular level, flow fields are made up of the collisions of many individual of gas molecules between themselves and with solid surfaces. However, in most aerodynamics applications, the discrete molecular nature of gases is ignored, and the flow field is assumed to behave as a continuum. This assumption allows fluid properties such as density and flow velocity to be defined everywhere within the flow.
The validity of the continuum assumption is dependent on the density of the gas and the application in question. For the continuum assumption to be valid, the mean free path length must be much smaller than the length scale of the application in question. For example, many aerodynamics applications deal with aircraft flying in atmospheric conditions, where the mean free path length is on the order of micrometers and where the body is orders of magnitude larger. In these cases, the length scale of the aircraft ranges from a few meters to a few tens of meters, which is much larger than the mean free path length. For such applications, the continuum assumption is reasonable. The continuum assumption is less valid for extremely low-density flows, such as those encountered by vehicles at very high altitudes (e.g. 300,000 ft/90 km) or satellites in Low Earth orbit. In those cases, statistical mechanics is a more accurate method of solving the problem than is continuum aerodynamics. The Knudsen number can be used to guide the choice between statistical mechanics and the continuous formulation of aerodynamics.
Conservation laws
The assumption of a fluid continuum allows problems in aerodynamics to be solved using fluid dynamics conservation laws. Three conservation principles are used:
Conservation of mass Conservation of mass requires that mass is neither created nor destroyed within a flow; the mathematical formulation of this principle is known as the mass continuity equation.
Conservation of momentum The mathematical formulation of this principle can be considered an application of Newton's Second Law. Momentum within a flow is only changed by external forces, which may include both surface forces, such as viscous (frictional) forces, and body forces, such as weight. The momentum conservation principle may be expressed as either a vector equation or separated into a set of three scalar equations (x,y,z components).
Conservation of energy The energy conservation equation states that energy is neither created nor destroyed within a flow, and that any addition or subtraction of energy to a volume in the flow is caused by heat transfer, or by work into and out of the region of interest.
Together, these equations are known as the Navier–Stokes equations, although some authors define the term to only include the momentum equation(s). The Navier–Stokes equations have no known analytical solution and are solved in modern aerodynamics using computational techniques. Because computational methods using high speed computers were not historically available and the high computational cost of solving these complex equations now that they are available, simplifications of the Navier–Stokes equations have been and continue to be employed. The Euler equations are a set of similar conservation equations which neglect viscosity and may be used in cases where the effect of viscosity is expected to be small. Further simplifications lead to Laplace's equation and potential flow theory. Additionally, Bernoulli's equation is a solution in one dimension to both the momentum and energy conservation equations.
The ideal gas law or another such equation of state is often used in conjunction with these equations to form a determined system that allows the solution for the unknown variables.
Branches of aerodynamics
Aerodynamic problems are classified by the flow environment or properties of the flow, including flow speed, compressibility, and viscosity. External aerodynamics is the study of flow around solid objects of various shapes. Evaluating the lift and drag on an airplane or the shock waves that form in front of the nose of a rocket are examples of external aerodynamics. Internal aerodynamics is the study of flow through passages in solid objects. For instance, internal aerodynamics encompasses the study of the airflow through a jet engine or through an air conditioning pipe.
Aerodynamic problems can also be classified according to whether the flow speed is below, near or above the speed of sound. A problem is called subsonic if all the speeds in the problem are less than the speed of sound, transonic if speeds both below and above the speed of sound are present (normally when the characteristic speed is approximately the speed of sound), supersonic when the characteristic flow speed is greater than the speed of sound, and hypersonic when the flow speed is much greater than the speed of sound. Aerodynamicists disagree over the precise definition of hypersonic flow; a rough definition considers flows with Mach numbers above 5 to be hypersonic.
The influence of viscosity on the flow dictates a third classification. Some problems may encounter only very small viscous effects, in which case viscosity can be considered to be negligible. The approximations to these problems are called inviscid flows. Flows for which viscosity cannot be neglected are called viscous flows.
Incompressible aerodynamics
An incompressible flow is a flow in which density is constant in both time and space. Although all real fluids are compressible, a flow is often approximated as incompressible if the effect of the density changes cause only small changes to the calculated results. This is more likely to be true when the flow speeds are significantly lower than the speed of sound. Effects of compressibility are more significant at speeds close to or above the speed of sound. The Mach number is used to evaluate whether the incompressibility can be assumed, otherwise the effects of compressibility must be included.
Subsonic flow
Subsonic (or low-speed) aerodynamics describes fluid motion in flows which are much lower than the speed of sound everywhere in the flow. There are several branches of subsonic flow but one special case arises when the flow is inviscid, incompressible and irrotational. This case is called potential flow and allows the differential equations that describe the flow to be a simplified version of the equations of fluid dynamics, thus making available to the aerodynamicist a range of quick and easy solutions.
In solving a subsonic problem, one decision to be made by the aerodynamicist is whether to incorporate the effects of compressibility. Compressibility is a description of the amount of change of density in the flow. When the effects of compressibility on the solution are small, the assumption that density is constant may be made. The problem is then an incompressible low-speed aerodynamics problem. When the density is allowed to vary, the flow is called compressible. In air, compressibility effects are usually ignored when the Mach number in the flow does not exceed 0.3 (about 335 feet (102 m) per second or 228 miles (366 km) per hour at 60 °F (16 °C)). Above Mach 0.3, the problem flow should be described using compressible aerodynamics.
Compressible aerodynamics
According to the theory of aerodynamics, a flow is considered to be compressible if the density changes along a streamline. This means that – unlike incompressible flow – changes in density are considered. In general, this is the case where the Mach number in part or all of the flow exceeds 0.3. The Mach 0.3 value is rather arbitrary, but it is used because gas flows with a Mach number below that value demonstrate changes in density of less than 5%. Furthermore, that maximum 5% density change occurs at the stagnation point (the point on the object where flow speed is zero), while the density changes around the rest of the object will be significantly lower. Transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flows are all compressible flows.
Transonic flow
The term Transonic refers to a range of flow velocities just below and above the local speed of sound (generally taken as Mach 0.8–1.2). It is defined as the range of speeds between the critical Mach number, when some parts of the airflow over an aircraft become supersonic, and a higher speed, typically near Mach 1.2, when all of the airflow is supersonic. Between these speeds, some of the airflow is supersonic, while some of the airflow is not supersonic.
Supersonic flow
Supersonic aerodynamic problems are those involving flow speeds greater than the speed of sound. Calculating the lift on the Concorde during cruise can be an example of a supersonic aerodynamic problem.
Supersonic flow behaves very differently from subsonic flow. Fluids react to differences in pressure; pressure changes are how a fluid is "told" to respond to its environment. Therefore, since sound is, in fact, an infinitesimal pressure difference propagating through a fluid, the speed of sound in that fluid can be considered the fastest speed that "information" can travel in the flow. This difference most obviously manifests itself in the case of a fluid striking an object. In front of that object, the fluid builds up a stagnation pressure as impact with the object brings the moving fluid to rest. In fluid traveling at subsonic speed, this pressure disturbance can propagate upstream, changing the flow pattern ahead of the object and giving the impression that the fluid "knows" the object is there by seemingly adjusting its movement and is flowing around it. In a supersonic flow, however, the pressure disturbance cannot propagate upstream. Thus, when the fluid finally reaches the object it strikes it and the fluid is forced to change its properties – temperature, density, pressure, and Mach number—in an extremely violent and irreversible fashion called a shock wave. The presence of shock waves, along with the compressibility effects of high-flow velocity (see Reynolds number) fluids, is the central difference between the supersonic and subsonic aerodynamics regimes.
Hypersonic flow
In aerodynamics, hypersonic speeds are speeds that are highly supersonic. In the 1970s, the term generally came to refer to speeds of Mach 5 (5 times the speed of sound) and above. The hypersonic regime is a subset of the supersonic regime. Hypersonic flow is characterized by high temperature flow behind a shock wave, viscous interaction, and chemical dissociation of gas.
Associated terminology
The incompressible and compressible flow regimes produce many associated phenomena, such as boundary layers and turbulence.
Boundary layers
The concept of a boundary layer is important in many problems in aerodynamics. The viscosity and fluid friction in the air is approximated as being significant only in this thin layer. This assumption makes the description of such aerodynamics much more tractable mathematically.
Turbulence
In aerodynamics, turbulence is characterized by chaotic property changes in the flow. These include low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and flow velocity in space and time. Flow that is not turbulent is called laminar flow.
Aerodynamics in other fields
Engineering design
Aerodynamics is a significant element of vehicle design, including road cars and trucks where the main goal is to reduce the vehicle drag coefficient, and racing cars, where in addition to reducing drag the goal is also to increase the overall level of downforce. Aerodynamics is also important in the prediction of forces and moments acting on sailing vessels. It is used in the design of mechanical components such as hard drive heads. Structural engineers resort to aerodynamics, and particularly aeroelasticity, when calculating wind loads in the design of large buildings, bridges, and wind turbines.
The aerodynamics of internal passages is important in heating/ventilation, gas piping, and in automotive engines where detailed flow patterns strongly affect the performance of the engine.
Environmental design
Urban aerodynamics are studied by town planners and designers seeking to improve amenity in outdoor spaces, or in creating urban microclimates to reduce the effects of urban pollution. The field of environmental aerodynamics describes ways in which atmospheric circulation and flight mechanics affect ecosystems.
Aerodynamic equations are used in numerical weather prediction.
Ball-control in sports
Sports in which aerodynamics are of crucial importance include soccer, table tennis, cricket, baseball, and golf, in which most players can control the trajectory of the ball using the "Magnus effect".
See also
Aeronautics
Aerostatics
Aviation
Insect flight – how bugs fly
List of aerospace engineering topics
List of engineering topics
Nose cone design
Fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics
References
Further reading
General aerodynamics
Subsonic aerodynamics
Obert, Ed (2009). . Delft; About practical aerodynamics in industry and the effects on design of aircraft. .
Transonic aerodynamics
Supersonic aerodynamics
Hypersonic aerodynamics
History of aerodynamics
Aerodynamics related to engineering
Ground vehicles
Fixed-wing aircraft
Helicopters
Missiles
Model aircraft
Related branches of aerodynamics
Aerothermodynamics
Aeroelasticity
Boundary layers
Turbulence
External links
NASA Beginner's Guide to Aerodynamics
Aerodynamics for Students
Aerodynamics for Pilots
Aerodynamics and Race Car Tuning
Aerodynamic Related Projects
eFluids Bicycle Aerodynamics
Application of Aerodynamics in Formula One (F1)
Aerodynamics in Car Racing
Aerodynamics of Birds
NASA Aerodynamics Index
Dynamics
Energy in transport
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In physics, angular momentum (sometimes called moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important physical quantity because it is a conserved quantity – the total angular momentum of a closed system remains constant. Angular momentum has both a direction and a magnitude, and both are conserved. Bicycles and motorcycles, flying discs, rifled bullets, and gyroscopes owe their useful properties to conservation of angular momentum. Conservation of angular momentum is also why hurricanes form spirals and neutron stars have high rotational rates. In general, conservation limits the possible motion of a system, but it does not uniquely determine it.
The three-dimensional angular momentum for a point particle is classically represented as a pseudovector , the cross product of the particle's position vector (relative to some origin) and its momentum vector; the latter is in Newtonian mechanics. Unlike linear momentum, angular momentum depends on where this origin is chosen, since the particle's position is measured from it.
Angular momentum is an extensive quantity; that is, the total angular momentum of any composite system is the sum of the angular momenta of its constituent parts. For a continuous rigid body or a fluid, the total angular momentum is the volume integral of angular momentum density (angular momentum per unit volume in the limit as volume shrinks to zero) over the entire body.
Similar to conservation of linear momentum, where it is conserved if there is no external force, angular momentum is conserved if there is no external torque. Torque can be defined as the rate of change of angular momentum, analogous to force. The net external torque on any system is always equal to the total torque on the system; in other words, the sum of all internal torques of any system is always 0 (this is the rotational analogue of Newton's third law of motion). Therefore, for a closed system (where there is no net external torque), the total torque on the system must be 0, which means that the total angular momentum of the system is constant. The change in angular momentum for a particular interaction is called angular impulse, sometimes twirl. Angular impulse is the angular analog of (linear) impulse.
Examples
The trivial case of the angular momentum of a body in an orbit is given by
where is the mass of the orbiting object, is the orbit's frequency and is the orbit's radius.
The angular momentum of a uniform rigid sphere rotating around its axis instead is given by
where is the sphere's mass, is the frequency of rotation and is the sphere's radius.
Thus, for example, the orbital angular momentum of the Earth with respect to the Sun is about 2.66 × 1040 kg⋅m2⋅s−1, while its rotational angular momentum is about 7.05 × 1033 kg⋅m2⋅s−1.
In the case of a uniform rigid sphere rotating around its axis, if, instead of its mass, its density is known, the angular momentum is given by
where is the sphere's density, is the frequency of rotation and is the sphere's radius.
In the simplest case of a spinning disk, the angular momentum is given by
where is the disk's mass, is the frequency of rotation and is the disk's radius.
If instead the disk rotates about its diameter (e.g. coin toss), its angular momentum is given by
Definition in classical mechanics
Just as for angular velocity, there are two special types of angular momentum of an object: the spin angular momentum is the angular momentum about the object's centre of mass, while the orbital angular momentum is the angular momentum about a chosen center of rotation. The Earth has an orbital angular momentum by nature of revolving around the Sun, and a spin angular momentum by nature of its daily rotation around the polar axis. The total angular momentum is the sum of the spin and orbital angular momenta. In the case of the Earth the primary conserved quantity is the total angular momentum of the solar system because angular momentum is exchanged to a small but important extent among the planets and the Sun. The orbital angular momentum vector of a point particle is always parallel and directly proportional to its orbital angular velocity vector ω, where the constant of proportionality depends on both the mass of the particle and its distance from origin. The spin angular momentum vector of a rigid body is proportional but not always parallel to the spin angular velocity vector Ω, making the constant of proportionality a second-rank tensor rather than a scalar.
Orbital angular momentum in two dimensions
Angular momentum is a vector quantity (more precisely, a pseudovector) that represents the product of a body's rotational inertia and rotational velocity (in radians/sec) about a particular axis. However, if the particle's trajectory lies in a single plane, it is sufficient to discard the vector nature of angular momentum, and treat it as a scalar (more precisely, a pseudoscalar). Angular momentum can be considered a rotational analog of linear momentum. Thus, where linear momentum is proportional to mass and linear speed
angular momentum is proportional to moment of inertia and angular speed measured in radians per second.
Unlike mass, which depends only on amount of matter, moment of inertia depends also on the position of the axis of rotation and the distribution of the matter. Unlike linear velocity, which does not depend upon the choice of origin, orbital angular velocity is always measured with respect to a fixed origin. Therefore, strictly speaking, should be referred to as the angular momentum relative to that center.
In the case of circular motion of a single particle, we can use and to expand angular momentum as reducing to:
the product of the radius of rotation and the linear momentum of the particle , where is the linear (tangential) speed.
This simple analysis can also apply to non-circular motion if one uses the component of the motion perpendicular to the radius vector:
where is the perpendicular component of the motion. Expanding, rearranging, and reducing, angular momentum can also be expressed,
where is the length of the moment arm, a line dropped perpendicularly from the origin onto the path of the particle. It is this definition, , to which the term moment of momentum refers.
Scalar angular momentum from Lagrangian mechanics
Another approach is to define angular momentum as the conjugate momentum (also called canonical momentum) of the angular coordinate expressed in the Lagrangian of the mechanical system. Consider a mechanical system with a mass constrained to move in a circle of radius in the absence of any external force field. The kinetic energy of the system is
And the potential energy is
Then the Lagrangian is
The generalized momentum "canonically conjugate to" the coordinate is defined by
Orbital angular momentum in three dimensions
To completely define orbital angular momentum in three dimensions, it is required to know the rate at which the position vector sweeps out angle, the direction perpendicular to the instantaneous plane of angular displacement, and the mass involved, as well as how this mass is distributed in space. By retaining this vector nature of angular momentum, the general nature of the equations is also retained, and can describe any sort of three-dimensional motion about the center of rotation – circular, linear, or otherwise. In vector notation, the orbital angular momentum of a point particle in motion about the origin can be expressed as:
where
is the moment of inertia for a point mass,
is the orbital angular velocity of the particle about the origin,
is the position vector of the particle relative to the origin, and ,
is the linear velocity of the particle relative to the origin, and
is the mass of the particle.
This can be expanded, reduced, and by the rules of vector algebra, rearranged:
which is the cross product of the position vector and the linear momentum of the particle. By the definition of the cross product, the vector is perpendicular to both and . It is directed perpendicular to the plane of angular displacement, as indicated by the right-hand rule – so that the angular velocity is seen as counter-clockwise from the head of the vector. Conversely, the vector defines the plane in which and lie.
By defining a unit vector perpendicular to the plane of angular displacement, a scalar angular speed results, where
and
where is the perpendicular component of the motion, as above.
The two-dimensional scalar equations of the previous section can thus be given direction:
and for circular motion, where all of the motion is perpendicular to the radius .
In the spherical coordinate system the angular momentum vector expresses as
Angular momentum in any number of dimensions
Angular momentum can be defined in terms of the cross product only in three dimensions. Defining it as the bivector , where is the exterior product, is valid in any number of dimensions. This exterior product is equivalent to an antisymmetric tensor of degree 2, which also applies in any number of dimensions. Namely, if is a position vector and is the linear momentum vector, then we can define
In the general case of summed angular momenta from multiple particles, this antisymmetric tensor has independent components (degrees of freedom), where is the number of dimensions. In the usual three-dimensional case it has 3 independent components, which allows us to identify it with a 3 dimensional pseudovector . The components of this vector relate to the components of the rank 2 tensor as follows:
Analogy to linear momentum
Angular momentum can be described as the rotational analog of linear momentum. Like linear momentum it involves elements of mass and displacement. Unlike linear momentum it also involves elements of position and shape.
Many problems in physics involve matter in motion about some certain point in space, be it in actual rotation about it, or simply moving past it, where it is desired to know what effect the moving matter has on the point—can it exert energy upon it or perform work about it? Energy, the ability to do work, can be stored in matter by setting it in motion—a combination of its inertia and its displacement. Inertia is measured by its mass, and displacement by its velocity. Their product,
is the matter's momentum. Referring this momentum to a central point introduces a complication: the momentum is not applied to the point directly. For instance, a particle of matter at the outer edge of a wheel is, in effect, at the end of a lever of the same length as the wheel's radius, its momentum turning the lever about the center point. This imaginary lever is known as the moment arm. It has the effect of multiplying the momentum's effort in proportion to its length, an effect known as a moment. Hence, the particle's momentum referred to a particular point,
is the angular momentum, sometimes called, as here, the moment of momentum of the particle versus that particular center point. The equation combines a moment (a mass turning moment arm ) with a linear (straight-line equivalent) speed . Linear speed referred to the central point is simply the product of the distance and the angular speed versus the point: another moment. Hence, angular momentum contains a double moment: Simplifying slightly, the quantity is the particle's moment of inertia, sometimes called the second moment of mass. It is a measure of rotational inertia.
The above analogy of the translational momentum and rotational momentum can be expressed in vector form:
for linear motion
for rotation
The direction of momentum is related to the direction of the velocity for linear movement. The direction of angular momentum is related to the angular velocity of the rotation.
Because moment of inertia is a crucial part of the spin angular momentum, the latter necessarily includes all of the complications of the former, which is calculated by multiplying elementary bits of the mass by the squares of their distances from the center of rotation. Therefore, the total moment of inertia, and the angular momentum, is a complex function of the configuration of the matter about the center of rotation and the orientation of the rotation for the various bits.
For a rigid body, for instance a wheel or an asteroid, the orientation of rotation is simply the position of the rotation axis versus the matter of the body. It may or may not pass through the center of mass, or it may lie completely outside of the body. For the same body, angular momentum may take a different value for every possible axis about which rotation may take place. It reaches a minimum when the axis passes through the center of mass.
For a collection of objects revolving about a center, for instance all of the bodies of the Solar System, the orientations may be somewhat organized, as is the Solar System, with most of the bodies' axes lying close to the system's axis. Their orientations may also be completely random.
In brief, the more mass and the farther it is from the center of rotation (the longer the moment arm), the greater the moment of inertia, and therefore the greater the angular momentum for a given angular velocity. In many cases the moment of inertia, and hence the angular momentum, can be simplified by,
where is the radius of gyration, the distance from the axis at which the entire mass may be considered as concentrated.
Similarly, for a point mass the moment of inertia is defined as,
where is the radius of the point mass from the center of rotation,
and for any collection of particles as the sum,
Angular momentum's dependence on position and shape is reflected in its units versus linear momentum: kg⋅m2/s or N⋅m⋅s for angular momentum versus kg⋅m/s or N⋅s for linear momentum. When calculating angular momentum as the product of the moment of inertia times the angular velocity, the angular velocity must be expressed in radians per second, where the radian assumes the dimensionless value of unity. (When performing dimensional analysis, it may be productive to use orientational analysis which treats radians as a base unit, but this is not done in the International system of units). The units if angular momentum can be interpreted as torque⋅time. An object with angular momentum of can be reduced to zero angular velocity by an angular impulse of .
The plane perpendicular to the axis of angular momentum and passing through the center of mass is sometimes called the invariable plane, because the direction of the axis remains fixed if only the interactions of the bodies within the system, free from outside influences, are considered. One such plane is the invariable plane of the Solar System.
Angular momentum and torque
Newton's second law of motion can be expressed mathematically,
or force = mass × acceleration. The rotational equivalent for point particles may be derived as follows:
which means that the torque (i.e. the time derivative of the angular momentum) is
Because the moment of inertia is , it follows that , and which, reduces to
This is the rotational analog of Newton's second law. Note that the torque is not necessarily proportional or parallel to the angular acceleration (as one might expect). The reason for this is that the moment of inertia of a particle can change with time, something that cannot occur for ordinary mass.
Conservation of angular momentum
General considerations
A rotational analog of Newton's third law of motion might be written, "In a closed system, no torque can be exerted on any matter without the exertion on some other matter of an equal and opposite torque about the same axis." Hence, angular momentum can be exchanged between objects in a closed system, but total angular momentum before and after an exchange remains constant (is conserved).
Seen another way, a rotational analogue of Newton's first law of motion might be written, "A rigid body continues in a state of uniform rotation unless acted by an external influence." Thus with no external influence to act upon it, the original angular momentum of the system remains constant.
The conservation of angular momentum is used in analyzing central force motion. If the net force on some body is directed always toward some point, the center, then there is no torque on the body with respect to the center, as all of the force is directed along the radius vector, and none is perpendicular to the radius. Mathematically, torque because in this case and are parallel vectors. Therefore, the angular momentum of the body about the center is constant. This is the case with gravitational attraction in the orbits of planets and satellites, where the gravitational force is always directed toward the primary body and orbiting bodies conserve angular momentum by exchanging distance and velocity as they move about the primary. Central force motion is also used in the analysis of the Bohr model of the atom.
For a planet, angular momentum is distributed between the spin of the planet and its revolution in its orbit, and these are often exchanged by various mechanisms. The conservation of angular momentum in the Earth–Moon system results in the transfer of angular momentum from Earth to Moon, due to tidal torque the Moon exerts on the Earth. This in turn results in the slowing down of the rotation rate of Earth, at about 65.7 nanoseconds per day, and in gradual increase of the radius of Moon's orbit, at about 3.82 centimeters per year.
The conservation of angular momentum explains the angular acceleration of an ice skater as they bring their arms and legs close to the vertical axis of rotation. By bringing part of the mass of their body closer to the axis, they decrease their body's moment of inertia. Because angular momentum is the product of moment of inertia and angular velocity, if the angular momentum remains constant (is conserved), then the angular velocity (rotational speed) of the skater must increase.
The same phenomenon results in extremely fast spin of compact stars (like white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes) when they are formed out of much larger and slower rotating stars.
Conservation is not always a full explanation for the dynamics of a system but is a key constraint. For example, a spinning top is subject to gravitational torque making it lean over and change the angular momentum about the nutation axis, but neglecting friction at the point of spinning contact, it has a conserved angular momentum about its spinning axis, and another about its precession axis. Also, in any planetary system, the planets, star(s), comets, and asteroids can all move in numerous complicated ways, but only so that the angular momentum of the system is conserved.
Noether's theorem states that every conservation law is associated with a symmetry (invariant) of the underlying physics. The symmetry associated with conservation of angular momentum is rotational invariance. The fact that the physics of a system is unchanged if it is rotated by any angle about an axis implies that angular momentum is conserved.
Relation to Newton's second law of motion
While angular momentum total conservation can be understood separately from Newton's laws of motion as stemming from Noether's theorem in systems symmetric under rotations, it can also be understood simply as an efficient method of calculation of results that can also be otherwise arrived at directly from Newton's second law, together with laws governing the forces of nature (such as Newton's third law, Maxwell's equations and Lorentz force). Indeed, given initial conditions of position and velocity for every point, and the forces at such a condition, one may use Newton's second law to calculate the second derivative of position, and solving for this gives full information on the development of the physical system with time. Note, however, that this is no longer true in quantum mechanics, due to the existence of particle spin, which is angular momentum that cannot be described by the cumulative effect of point-like motions in space.
As an example, consider decreasing of the moment of inertia, e.g. when a figure skater is pulling in their hands, speeding up the circular motion. In terms of angular momentum conservation, we have, for angular momentum L, moment of inertia I and angular velocity ω:
Using this, we see that the change requires an energy of:
so that a decrease in the moment of inertia requires investing energy.
This can be compared to the work done as calculated using Newton's laws. Each point in the rotating body is accelerating, at each point of time, with radial acceleration of:
Let us observe a point of mass m, whose position vector relative to the center of motion is perpendicular to the z-axis at a given point of time, and is at a distance z. The centripetal force on this point, keeping the circular motion, is:
Thus the work required for moving this point to a distance dz farther from the center of motion is:
For a non-pointlike body one must integrate over this, with m replaced by the mass density per unit z. This gives:
which is exactly the energy required for keeping the angular momentum conserved.
Note, that the above calculation can also be performed per mass, using kinematics only. Thus the phenomena of figure skater accelerating tangential velocity while pulling their hands in, can be understood as follows in layman's language: The skater's palms are not moving in a straight line, so they are constantly accelerating inwards, but do not gain additional speed because the accelerating is always done when their motion inwards is zero. However, this is different when pulling the palms closer to the body: The acceleration due to rotation now increases the speed; but because of the rotation, the increase in speed does not translate to a significant speed inwards, but to an increase of the rotation speed.
In Lagrangian formalism
In Lagrangian mechanics, angular momentum for rotation around a given axis, is the conjugate momentum of the generalized coordinate of the angle around the same axis. For example, , the angular momentum around the z axis, is:
where is the Lagrangian and is the angle around the z axis.
Note that , the time derivative of the angle, is the angular velocity . Ordinarily, the Lagrangian depends on the angular velocity through the kinetic energy: The latter can be written by separating the velocity to its radial and tangential part, with the tangential part at the x-y plane, around the z-axis, being equal to:
where the subscript i stands for the i-th body, and m, vT and ωz stand for mass, tangential velocity around the z-axis and angular velocity around that axis, respectively.
For a body that is not point-like, with density ρ, we have instead:
where integration runs over the area of the body, and Iz is the moment of inertia around the z-axis.
Thus, assuming the potential energy does not depend on ωz (this assumption may fail for electromagnetic systems), we have the angular momentum of the ith object:
We have thus far rotated each object by a separate angle; we may also define an overall angle θz by which we rotate the whole system, thus rotating also each object around the z-axis, and have the overall angular momentum:
From Euler–Lagrange equations it then follows that:
Since the lagrangian is dependent upon the angles of the object only through the potential, we have:
which is the torque on the ith object.
Suppose the system is invariant to rotations, so that the potential is independent of an overall rotation by the angle θz (thus it may depend on the angles of objects only through their differences, in the form ). We therefore get for the total angular momentum:
And thus the angular momentum around the z-axis is conserved.
This analysis can be repeated separately for each axis, giving conversation of the angular momentum vector. However, the angles around the three axes cannot be treated simultaneously as generalized coordinates, since they are not independent; in particular, two angles per point suffice to determine its position. While it is true that in the case of a rigid body, fully describing it requires, in addition to three translational degrees of freedom, also specification of three rotational degrees of freedom; however these cannot be defined as rotations around the Cartesian axes (see Euler angles). This caveat is reflected in quantum mechanics in the non-trivial commutation relations of the different components of the angular momentum operator.
In Hamiltonian formalism
Equivalently, in Hamiltonian mechanics the Hamiltonian can be described as a function of the angular momentum. As before, the part of the kinetic energy related to rotation around the z-axis for the ith object is:
which is analogous to the energy dependence upon momentum along the z-axis, .
Hamilton's equations relate the angle around the z-axis to its conjugate momentum, the angular momentum around the same axis:
The first equation gives
And so we get the same results as in the Lagrangian formalism.
Note, that for combining all axes together, we write the kinetic energy as:
where pr is the momentum in the radial direction, and the moment of inertia is a 3-dimensional matrix; bold letters stand for 3-dimensional vectors.
For point-like bodies we have:
This form of the kinetic energy part of the Hamiltonian is useful in analyzing central potential problems, and is easily transformed to a quantum mechanical work frame (e.g. in the hydrogen atom problem).
Angular momentum in orbital mechanics
While in classical mechanics the language of angular momentum can be replaced by Newton's laws of motion, it is particularly useful for motion in central potential such as planetary motion in the solar system. Thus, the orbit of a planet in the solar system is defined by its energy, angular momentum and angles of the orbit major axis relative to a coordinate frame.
In astrodynamics and celestial mechanics, a quantity closely related to angular momentum is defined as
called specific angular momentum. Note that Mass is often unimportant in orbital mechanics calculations, because motion of a body is determined by gravity. The primary body of the system is often so much larger than any bodies in motion about it that the gravitational effect of the smaller bodies on it can be neglected; it maintains, in effect, constant velocity. The motion of all bodies is affected by its gravity in the same way, regardless of mass, and therefore all move approximately the same way under the same conditions.
Solid bodies
Angular momentum is also an extremely useful concept for describing rotating rigid bodies such as a gyroscope or a rocky planet.
For a continuous mass distribution with density function ρ(r), a differential volume element dV with position vector r within the mass has a mass element dm = ρ(r)dV. Therefore, the infinitesimal angular momentum of this element is:
and integrating this differential over the volume of the entire mass gives its total angular momentum:
In the derivation which follows, integrals similar to this can replace the sums for the case of continuous mass.
Collection of particles
For a collection of particles in motion about an arbitrary origin, it is informative to develop the equation of angular momentum by resolving their motion into components about their own center of mass and about the origin. Given,
is the mass of particle ,
is the position vector of particle w.r.t. the origin,
is the velocity of particle w.r.t. the origin,
is the position vector of the center of mass w.r.t. the origin,
is the velocity of the center of mass w.r.t. the origin,
is the position vector of particle w.r.t. the center of mass,
is the velocity of particle w.r.t. the center of mass,
The total mass of the particles is simply their sum,
The position vector of the center of mass is defined by,
By inspection,
and
The total angular momentum of the collection of particles is the sum of the angular momentum of each particle,
Expanding ,
Expanding ,
It can be shown that (see sidebar),
and
therefore the second and third terms vanish,
The first term can be rearranged,
and total angular momentum for the collection of particles is finally,
The first term is the angular momentum of the center of mass relative to the origin. Similar to , below, it is the angular momentum of one particle of mass M at the center of mass moving with velocity V. The second term is the angular momentum of the particles moving relative to the center of mass, similar to , below. The result is general—the motion of the particles is not restricted to rotation or revolution about the origin or center of mass. The particles need not be individual masses, but can be elements of a continuous distribution, such as a solid body.
Rearranging equation () by vector identities, multiplying both terms by "one", and grouping appropriately,
gives the total angular momentum of the system of particles in terms of moment of inertia and angular velocity ,
Single particle case
In the case of a single particle moving about the arbitrary origin,
and equations () and () for total angular momentum reduce to,
Case of a fixed center of mass
For the case of the center of mass fixed in space with respect to the origin,
and equations () and () for total angular momentum reduce to,
Angular momentum in general relativity
In modern (20th century) theoretical physics, angular momentum (not including any intrinsic angular momentum – see below) is described using a different formalism, instead of a classical pseudovector. In this formalism, angular momentum is the 2-form Noether charge associated with rotational invariance. As a result, angular momentum is not conserved for general curved spacetimes, unless it happens to be asymptotically rotationally invariant.
In classical mechanics, the angular momentum of a particle can be reinterpreted as a plane element:
in which the exterior product (∧) replaces the cross product (×) (these products have similar characteristics but are nonequivalent). This has the advantage of a clearer geometric interpretation as a plane element, defined using the vectors x and p, and the expression is true in any number of dimensions. In Cartesian coordinates:
or more compactly in index notation:
The angular velocity can also be defined as an anti-symmetric second order tensor, with components ωij. The relation between the two anti-symmetric tensors is given by the moment of inertia which must now be a fourth order tensor:
Again, this equation in L and ω as tensors is true in any number of dimensions. This equation also appears in the geometric algebra formalism, in which L and ω are bivectors, and the moment of inertia is a mapping between them.
In relativistic mechanics, the relativistic angular momentum of a particle is expressed as an anti-symmetric tensor of second order:
in terms of four-vectors, namely the four-position X and the four-momentum P, and absorbs the above L together with the moment of mass, i.e., the product of the relativistic mass of the particle and its centre of mass, which can be thought of as describing the motion of its centre of mass, since mass–energy is conserved.
In each of the above cases, for a system of particles the total angular momentum is just the sum of the individual particle angular momenta, and the centre of mass is for the system.
Angular momentum in quantum mechanics
In quantum mechanics, angular momentum (like other quantities) is expressed as an operator, and its one-dimensional projections have quantized eigenvalues. Angular momentum is subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, implying that at any time, only one projection (also called "component") can be measured with definite precision; the other two then remain uncertain. Because of this, the axis of rotation of a quantum particle is undefined. Quantum particles do possess a type of non-orbital angular momentum called "spin", but this angular momentum does not correspond to a spinning motion. In relativistic quantum mechanics the above relativistic definition becomes a tensorial operator.
Spin, orbital, and total angular momentum
The classical definition of angular momentum as can be carried over to quantum mechanics, by reinterpreting r as the quantum position operator and p as the quantum momentum operator. L is then an operator, specifically called the orbital angular momentum operator. The components of the angular momentum operator satisfy the commutation relations of the Lie algebra so(3). Indeed, these operators are precisely the infinitesimal action of the rotation group on the quantum Hilbert space. (See also the discussion below of the angular momentum operators as the generators of rotations.)
However, in quantum physics, there is another type of angular momentum, called spin angular momentum, represented by the spin operator S. Spin is often depicted as a particle literally spinning around an axis, but this is a misleading and inaccurate picture: spin is an intrinsic property of a particle, unrelated to any sort of motion in space and fundamentally different from orbital angular momentum. All elementary particles have a characteristic spin (possibly zero), and almost all elementary particles have nonzero spin. For example electrons have "spin 1/2" (this actually means "spin ħ/2"), photons have "spin 1" (this actually means "spin ħ"), and pi-mesons have spin 0.
Finally, there is total angular momentum J, which combines both the spin and orbital angular momentum of all particles and fields. (For one particle, .) Conservation of angular momentum applies to J, but not to L or S; for example, the spin–orbit interaction allows angular momentum to transfer back and forth between L and S, with the total remaining constant. Electrons and photons need not have integer-based values for total angular momentum, but can also have half-integer values.
In molecules the total angular momentum F is the sum of the rovibronic (orbital) angular momentum N, the electron spin angular momentum S, and the nuclear spin angular momentum I. For electronic singlet states the rovibronic angular momentum is denoted J rather than N. As explained by Van Vleck, the components of the molecular rovibronic angular momentum referred to molecule-fixed axes have different commutation relations from those for the components about space-fixed axes.
Quantization
In quantum mechanics, angular momentum is quantized – that is, it cannot vary continuously, but only in "quantum leaps" between certain allowed values. For any system, the following restrictions on measurement results apply, where is the reduced Planck constant and is any Euclidean vector such as x, y, or z:
The reduced Planck constant is tiny by everyday standards, about 10−34 J s, and therefore this quantization does not noticeably affect the angular momentum of macroscopic objects. However, it is very important in the microscopic world. For example, the structure of electron shells and subshells in chemistry is significantly affected by the quantization of angular momentum.
Quantization of angular momentum was first postulated by Niels Bohr in his model of the atom and was later predicted by Erwin Schrödinger in his Schrödinger equation.
Uncertainty
In the definition , six operators are involved: The position operators , , , and the momentum operators , , . However, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle tells us that it is not possible for all six of these quantities to be known simultaneously with arbitrary precision. Therefore, there are limits to what can be known or measured about a particle's angular momentum. It turns out that the best that one can do is to simultaneously measure both the angular momentum vector's magnitude and its component along one axis.
The uncertainty is closely related to the fact that different components of an angular momentum operator do not commute, for example . (For the precise commutation relations, see angular momentum operator.)
Total angular momentum as generator of rotations
As mentioned above, orbital angular momentum L is defined as in classical mechanics: , but total angular momentum J is defined in a different, more basic way: J is defined as the "generator of rotations". More specifically, J is defined so that the operator
is the rotation operator that takes any system and rotates it by angle about the axis . (The "exp" in the formula refers to operator exponential.) To put this the other way around, whatever our quantum Hilbert space is, we expect that the rotation group SO(3) will act on it. There is then an associated action of the Lie algebra so(3) of SO(3); the operators describing the action of so(3) on our Hilbert space are the (total) angular momentum operators.
The relationship between the angular momentum operator and the rotation operators is the same as the relationship between Lie algebras and Lie groups in mathematics. The close relationship between angular momentum and rotations is reflected in Noether's theorem that proves that angular momentum is conserved whenever the laws of physics are rotationally invariant.
Angular momentum in electrodynamics
When describing the motion of a charged particle in an electromagnetic field, the canonical momentum P (derived from the Lagrangian for this system) is not gauge invariant. As a consequence, the canonical angular momentum L = r × P is not gauge invariant either. Instead, the momentum that is physical, the so-called kinetic momentum (used throughout this article), is (in SI units)
where e is the electric charge of the particle and A the magnetic vector potential of the electromagnetic field. The gauge-invariant angular momentum, that is kinetic angular momentum, is given by
The interplay with quantum mechanics is discussed further in the article on canonical commutation relations.
Angular momentum in optics
In classical Maxwell electrodynamics the Poynting vector
is a linear momentum density of electromagnetic field.
The angular momentum density vector is given by a vector product
as in classical mechanics:
The above identities are valid locally, i.e. in each space point in a given moment .
Angular momentum in nature and the cosmos
Tropical cyclones and other related weather phenomena involve conservation of angular momentum in order to explain the dynamics. Winds revolve slowly around low pressure systems, mainly due to the coriolis effect. If the low pressure intensifies and the slowly circulating air is drawn toward the center, the molecules must speed up in order to conserve angular momentum. By the time they reach the center, the speeds become destructive.
Johannes Kepler determined the laws of planetary motion without knowledge of conservation of momentum. However, not long after his discovery their derivation was determined from conservation of angular momentum. Planets move more slowly the further they are out in their elliptical orbits, which is explained intuitively by the fact that orbital angular momentum is proportional to the radius of the orbit. Since the mass does not change and the angular momentum is conserved, the velocity drops.
Tidal acceleration is an effect of the tidal forces between an orbiting natural satellite (e.g. the Moon) and the primary planet that it orbits (e.g. Earth). The gravitational torque between the Moon and the tidal bulge of Earth causes the Moon to be constantly promoted to a slightly higher orbit (~3.8 cm per year) and Earth to be decelerated (by −25.858 ± 0.003″/cy²) in its rotation (the length of the day increases by ~1.7 ms per century, +2.3 ms from tidal effect and −0.6 ms from post-glacial rebound). The Earth loses angular momentum which is transferred to the Moon such that the overall angular momentum is conserved.
Angular momentum in engineering and technology
Examples of using conservation of angular momentum for practical advantage are abundant. In engines such as steam engines or internal combustion engines, a flywheel is needed to efficiently convert the lateral motion of the pistons to rotational motion.
Inertial navigation systems explicitly use the fact that angular momentum is conserved with respect to the inertial frame of space. Inertial navigation is what enables submarine trips under the polar ice cap, but are also crucial to all forms of modern navigation.
Rifled bullets use the stability provided by conservation of angular momentum to be more true in their trajectory. The invention of rifled firearms and cannons gave their users significant strategic advantage in battle, and thus were a technological turning point in history.
History
Isaac Newton, in the Principia, hinted at angular momentum in his examples of the first law of motion,A top, whose parts by their cohesion are perpetually drawn aside from rectilinear motions, does not cease its rotation, otherwise than as it is retarded by the air. The greater bodies of the planets and comets, meeting with less resistance in more free spaces, preserve their motions both progressive and circular for a much longer time.He did not further investigate angular momentum directly in the Principia, saying:From such kind of reflexions also sometimes arise the circular motions of bodies about their own centres. But these are cases which I do not consider in what follows; and it would be too tedious to demonstrate every particular that relates to this subject.However, his geometric proof of the law of areas is an outstanding example of Newton's genius, and indirectly proves angular momentum conservation in the case of a central force.
The Law of Areas
Newton's derivation
As a planet orbits the Sun, the line between the Sun and the planet sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time. This had been known since Kepler expounded his second law of planetary motion. Newton derived a unique geometric proof, and went on to show that the attractive force of the Sun's gravity was the cause of all of Kepler's laws.
During the first interval of time, an object is in motion from point A to point B. Undisturbed, it would continue to point c during the second interval. When the object arrives at B, it receives an impulse directed toward point S. The impulse gives it a small added velocity toward S, such that if this were its only velocity, it would move from B to V during the second interval. By the rules of velocity composition, these two velocities add, and point C is found by construction of parallelogram BcCV. Thus the object's path is deflected by the impulse so that it arrives at point C at the end of the second interval. Because the triangles SBc and SBC have the same base SB and the same height Bc or VC, they have the same area. By symmetry, triangle SBc also has the same area as triangle SAB, therefore the object has swept out equal areas SAB and SBC in equal times.
At point C, the object receives another impulse toward S, again deflecting its path during the third interval from d to D. Thus it continues to E and beyond, the triangles SAB, SBc, SBC, SCd, SCD, SDe, SDE all having the same area. Allowing the time intervals to become ever smaller, the path ABCDE approaches indefinitely close to a continuous curve.
Note that because this derivation is geometric, and no specific force is applied, it proves a more general law than Kepler's second law of planetary motion. It shows that the Law of Areas applies to any central force, attractive or repulsive, continuous or non-continuous, or zero.
Conservation of angular momentum in the Law of Areas
The proportionality of angular momentum to the area swept out by a moving object can be understood by realizing that the bases of the triangles, that is, the lines from S to the object, are equivalent to the radius , and that the heights of the triangles are proportional to the perpendicular component of velocity . Hence, if the area swept per unit time is constant, then by the triangular area formula , the product and therefore the product are constant: if and the base length are decreased, and height must increase proportionally. Mass is constant, therefore angular momentum is conserved by this exchange of distance and velocity.
In the case of triangle SBC, area is equal to (SB)(VC). Wherever C is eventually located due to the impulse applied at B, the product (SB)(VC), and therefore remain constant. Similarly so for each of the triangles.
Another areal proof of conservation of momentum for any central force uses Mamikon's sweeping tangents theorem.
After Newton
Leonhard Euler, Daniel Bernoulli, and Patrick d'Arcy all understood angular momentum in terms of conservation of areal velocity, a result of their analysis of Kepler's second law of planetary motion. It is unlikely that they realized the implications for ordinary rotating matter.
In 1736 Euler, like Newton, touched on some of the equations of angular momentum in his Mechanica without further developing them.
Bernoulli wrote in a 1744 letter of a "moment of rotational motion", possibly the first conception of angular momentum as we now understand it.
In 1799, Pierre-Simon Laplace first realized that a fixed plane was associated with rotation—his invariable plane.
Louis Poinsot in 1803 began representing rotations as a line segment perpendicular to the rotation, and elaborated on the "conservation of moments".
In 1852 Léon Foucault used a gyroscope in an experiment to display the Earth's rotation.
William J. M. Rankine's 1858 Manual of Applied Mechanics defined angular momentum in the modern sense for the first time:...a line whose length is proportional to the magnitude of the angular momentum, and whose direction is perpendicular to the plane of motion of the body and of the fixed point, and such, that when the motion of the body is viewed from the extremity of the line, the radius-vector of the body seems to have right-handed rotation.In an 1872 edition of the same book, Rankine stated that "The term angular momentum was introduced by Mr. Hayward," probably referring to R.B. Hayward's article On a Direct Method of estimating Velocities, Accelerations, and all similar Quantities with respect to Axes moveable in any manner in Space with Applications, which was introduced in 1856, and published in 1864. Rankine was mistaken, as numerous publications feature the term starting in the late 18th to early 19th centuries. However, Hayward's article apparently was the first use of the term and the concept seen by much of the English-speaking world. Before this, angular momentum was typically referred to as "momentum of rotation" in English.
See also
Footnotes
References
Further reading
.
External links
"What Do a Submarine, a Rocket and a Football Have in Common? Why the prolate spheroid is the shape for success" (Scientific American, November 8, 2010)
Conservation of Angular Momentum – a chapter from an online textbook
Angular Momentum in a Collision Process – derivation of the three-dimensional case
Angular Momentum and Rolling Motion – more momentum theory
Mechanical quantities
Rotation
Conservation laws
Moment (physics)
Angular momentum
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Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945), sometimes abbreviated to Suu Kyi, is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since the party's founding in 1988, and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s.
The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and
St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children.
Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticized the military junta. In the 1990 elections, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the military government (the State Peace and Development Council – SPDC) refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had been detained before the elections and remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. In 1999, Time magazine named her one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence. She survived an assassination attempt in the 2003 Depayin massacre when at least 70 people associated with the NLD were killed.
Her party boycotted the 2010 elections, resulting in a decisive victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Aung San Suu Kyi became a Pyithu Hluttaw MP while her party won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the 2012 by-elections. In the 2015 elections, her party won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Assembly of the Union—well more than the 67% supermajority needed to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and second vice president in the presidential electoral college. Although she was prohibited from becoming the president due to a clause in the constitution—her late husband and children are foreign citizens—she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor of Myanmar, a role akin to a prime minister or a head of government.
When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that Myanmar's military has committed massacres. Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists. In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya.
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won the November 2020 Myanmar general election, was arrested on 1 February 2021 following a coup d'état that returned the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) to power and sparked protests across the country. Several charges were filed against her, and on 6 December 2021, she was sentenced to four years in prison on two of them. Later, on 10 January 2022, she was sentenced to an additional four years on another set of charges. On 12 October 2022, she was convicted of two further charges of corruption and she was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrent to each other. On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence was of 33 years in prison, later reduced to 27 years. The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.
Name
Aung San Suu Kyi, like other Burmese names, includes no surname, but is only a personal name, in her case derived from three relatives: "Aung San" from her father, "Suu" from her paternal grandmother, and "Kyi" from her mother Khin Kyi.
In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi is often referred to as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw, literally meaning "aunt", is not part of her name but is an honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to "Madam". She is sometimes addressed as Daw Suu or Amay Suu ("Mother Suu") by her supporters.
Personal life
Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon (now Yangon), British Burma. According to Peter Popham, she was born in a small village outside Rangoon called Hmway Saung. Her father, Aung San, allied with the Japanese during World War II. Aung San founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence from the United Kingdom in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. She is a niece of Thakin Than Tun who was the husband of Khin Khin Gyi, the elder sister of her mother Khin Kyi.
She grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo, in Rangoon. Aung San Lin died at the age of eight when he drowned in an ornamental lake on the grounds of the house. Her elder brother emigrated to San Diego, California, becoming a United States citizen. After Aung San Lin's death, the family moved to a house by Inya Lake where Aung San Suu Kyi met people of various backgrounds, political views, and religions. She was educated in Methodist English High School (now Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon) for much of her childhood in Burma, where she was noted as having a talent for learning languages. She speaks four languages: Burmese, English, French, and Japanese. She is a Theravada Buddhist.
Aung San Suu Kyi's mother, Khin Kyi, gained prominence as a political figure in the newly formed Burmese government. She was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960, and Aung San Suu Kyi followed her there. She studied in the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in New Delhi, and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College, a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, with a degree in politics in 1964. Suu Kyi continued her education at St Hugh's College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967, graduating with a third-class degree that was promoted per tradition to an MA in 1968. After graduating, she lived in New York City with family friend Ma Than E, who was once a popular Burmese pop singer. She worked at the United Nations for three years, primarily on budget matters, writing daily to her future husband, Dr. Michael Aris. On 1 January 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi and Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture and literature, living abroad in Bhutan, were married. The following year, she gave birth to their first son, Alexander Aris, in London; their second son, Kim, was born in 1977. Between 1985 and 1987, Aung San Suu Kyi was working toward a Master of Philosophy degree in Burmese literature as a research student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She was elected as an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's in 1990. For two years, she was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Shimla, India. She also worked for the government of the Union of Burma.
In 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma to tend for her ailing mother. Aris' visit in Christmas 1995 was the last time that he and Aung San Suu Kyi met, as she remained in Burma and the Burmese dictatorship denied him any further entry visas. Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 which was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organizations, including the United States, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II, the Burmese government would not grant Aris a visa, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the military junta's assurance that she could return.
Aris died on his 53rd birthday on 27 March 1999. Since 1989, when his wife was first placed under house arrest, he had seen her only five times, the last of which was for Christmas in 1995. She was also separated from her children, who live in the United Kingdom, until 2011.
On 2 May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi's dilapidated lakeside bungalow lost its roof and electricity, while the cyclone also left entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta submerged. Plans to renovate and repair the house were announced in August 2009. Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.
Political career
Political beginning
Coincidentally, when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, the long-time military leader of Burma and head of the ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down. Mass demonstrations for democracy followed that event on 8 August 1988 (8–8–88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 24 August 1988, she made her first public appearance at the Yangon General Hospital, addressing protestors from a podium. On 26 August, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government. However, in September 1988, a new military junta took power.
Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and also by the Buddhist concepts, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, but was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused. Despite her philosophy of non-violence, a group of ex-military commanders and senior politicians who joined NLD during the crisis believed that she was too confrontational and left NLD. However, she retained enormous popularity and support among NLD youths with whom she spent most of her time.
During the crisis, the previous democratically elected Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, initiated to form an interim government and invited opposition leaders to join him. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signaled his readiness to recognize the interim government. However, Aung San Suu Kyi categorically rejected U Nu's plan by saying "the future of the opposition would be decided by masses of the people". Ex-Brigadier General Aung Gyi, another influential politician at the time of the 8888 crisis and the first chairman in the history of the NLD, followed the suit and rejected the plan after Aung San Suu Kyi's refusal. Aung Gyi later accused several NLD members of being communists and resigned from the party.
1990 general election and Nobel Peace Prize
In 1990, the military junta called a general election, in which the National League for Democracy (NLD) received 59% of the votes, guaranteeing NLD 80% of the parliament seats. Some claim that Aung San Suu Kyi would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home on University Avenue () in Rangoon, during which time she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize one year later. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize's US$1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people. Around this time, Aung San Suu Kyi chose nonviolence as an expedient political tactic, stating in 2007, "I do not hold to nonviolence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons."
The decision of the Nobel Committee mentions:
In 1995 Aung San Suu Kyi delivered the keynote address at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
1996 attack
On 9 November 1996, the motorcade that Aung San Suu Kyi was traveling in with other National League for Democracy leaders Tin Oo and Kyi Maung, was attacked in Yangon. About 200 men swooped down on the motorcade, wielding metal chains, metal batons, stones and other weapons. The car that Aung San Suu Kyi was in had its rear window smashed, and the car with Tin Oo and Kyi Maung had its rear window and two backdoor windows shattered. It is believed the offenders were members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) who were allegedly paid Ks.500/- (@ USD $0.50) each to participate. The NLD lodged an official complaint with the police, and according to reports the government launched an investigation, but no action was taken. (Amnesty International 120297)
House arrest
Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for a total of 15 years over a 21-year period, on numerous occasions, since she began her political career, during which time she was prevented from meeting her party supporters and international visitors. In an interview, she said that while under house arrest she spent her time reading philosophy, politics and biographies that her husband had sent her. She also passed the time playing the piano and was occasionally allowed visits from foreign diplomats as well as from her personal physician.
Although under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi was granted permission to leave Burma under the condition that she never return, which she refused: "As a mother, the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons, but I was always aware of the fact that others had given up more than me. I never forget that my colleagues who are in prison suffer not only physically, but mentally for their families who have no security outside – in the larger prison of Burma under authoritarian rule."
The media were also prevented from visiting Aung San Suu Kyi, as occurred in 1998 when journalist Maurizio Giuliano, after photographing her, was stopped by customs officials who then confiscated all his films, tapes and some notes. In contrast, Aung San Suu Kyi did have visits from government representatives, such as during her autumn 1994 house arrest when she met the leader of Burma, General Than Shwe and General Khin Nyunt on 20 September in the first meeting since she had been placed in detention. On several occasions during her house arrest, she had periods of poor health and as a result was hospitalized.
The Burmese government detained and kept Aung San Suu Kyi imprisoned because it viewed her as someone "likely to undermine the community peace and stability" of the country, and used both Article 10(a) and 10(b) of the 1975 State Protection Act (granting the government the power to imprison people for up to five years without a trial), and Section 22 of the "Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts" as legal tools against her. She continuously appealed her detention, and many nations and figures continued to call for her release and that of 2,100 other political prisoners in the country. On 12 November 2010, days after the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won elections conducted after a gap of 20 years, the junta finally agreed to sign orders allowing Aung San Suu Kyi's release, and her house arrest term came to an end on 13 November 2010.
United Nations involvement
The United Nations (UN) has attempted to facilitate dialogue between the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi. On 6 May 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the UN, the government released her; a government spokesman said that she was free to move "because we are confident that we can trust each other". Aung San Suu Kyi proclaimed "a new dawn for the country". However, on 30 May 2003 in an incident similar to the 1996 attack on her, a government-sponsored mob attacked her caravan in the northern village of Depayin, murdering and wounding many of her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver, Kyaw Soe Lin, but was arrested upon reaching Ye-U. The government imprisoned her at Insein Prison in Rangoon. After she underwent a hysterectomy in September 2003, the government again placed her under house arrest in Rangoon.
The results from the UN facilitation have been mixed; Razali Ismail, UN special envoy to Burma, met with Aung San Suu Kyi. Ismail resigned from his post the following year, partly because he was denied re-entry to Burma on several occasions. Several years later in 2006, Ibrahim Gambari, UN Undersecretary-General (USG) of Department of Political Affairs, met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the first visit by a foreign official since 2004. He also met with her later the same year. On 2 October 2007 Gambari returned to talk to her again after seeing Than Shwe and other members of the senior leadership in Naypyidaw. State television broadcast Aung San Suu Kyi with Gambari, stating that they had met twice. This was Aung San Suu Kyi's first appearance in state media in the four years since her current detention began.
The United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention published an Opinion that Aung San Suu Kyi's deprivation of liberty was arbitrary and in contravention of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and requested that the authorities in Burma set her free, but the authorities ignored the request at that time. The U.N. report said that according to the Burmese Government's reply, "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has not been arrested, but has only been taken into protective custody, for her own safety", and while "it could have instituted legal action against her under the country's domestic legislation ... it has preferred to adopt a magnanimous attitude, and is providing her with protection in her own interests".
Such claims were rejected by Brig-General Khin Yi, Chief of Myanmar Police Force (MPF). On 18 January 2007, the state-run paper New Light of Myanmar accused Aung San Suu Kyi of tax evasion for spending her Nobel Prize money outside the country. The accusation followed the defeat of a US-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Burma as a threat to international security; the resolution was defeated because of strong opposition from China, which has strong ties with the military junta (China later voted against the resolution, along with Russia and South Africa).
In November 2007, it was reported that Aung San Suu Kyi would meet her political allies National League for Democracy along with a government minister. The ruling junta made the official announcement on state TV and radio just hours after UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari ended his second visit to Burma. The NLD confirmed that it had received the invitation to hold talks with Aung San Suu Kyi. However, the process delivered few concrete results.
On 3 July 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon went to Burma to pressure the junta into releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and to institute democratic reform. However, on departing from Burma, Ban Ki-moon said he was "disappointed" with the visit after junta leader Than Shwe refused permission for him to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, citing her ongoing trial. Ban said he was "deeply disappointed that they have missed a very important opportunity".
Periods under detention
20 July 1989: Placed under house arrest in Rangoon under martial law that allows for detention without charge or trial for three years.
10 July 1995: Released from house arrest.
23 September 2000: Placed under house arrest.
6 May 2002: Released after 19 months.
30 May 2003: Arrested following the Depayin massacre, she was held in secret detention for more than three months before being returned to house arrest.
25 May 2007: House arrest extended by one year despite a direct appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to General Than Shwe.
24 October 2007: Reached 12 years under house arrest, solidarity protests held at 12 cities around the world.
27 May 2008: House arrest extended for another year, which is illegal under both international law and Burma's own law.
11 August 2009: House arrest extended for 18 more months because of "violation" arising from the May 2009 trespass incident.
13 November 2010: Released from house arrest.
2007 anti-government protests
Protests led by Buddhist monks began on 19 August 2007 following steep fuel price increases, and continued each day, despite the threat of a crackdown by the military.
On 22 September 2007, although still under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi made a brief public appearance at the gate of her residence in Yangon to accept the blessings of Buddhist monks who were marching in support of human rights. It was reported that she had been moved the following day to Insein Prison (where she had been detained in 2003), but meetings with UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari near her Rangoon home on 30 September and 2 October established that she remained under house arrest.
2009 trespass incident
On 3 May 2009, an American man, identified as John Yettaw, swam across Inya Lake to her house uninvited and was arrested when he made his return trip three days later. He had attempted to make a similar trip two years earlier, but for unknown reasons was turned away. He later claimed at trial that he was motivated by a divine vision requiring him to notify her of an impending terrorist assassination attempt. On 13 May, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested for violating the terms of her house arrest because the swimmer, who pleaded exhaustion, was allowed to stay in her house for two days before he attempted the swim back. Aung San Suu Kyi was later taken to Insein Prison, where she could have faced up to five years' confinement for the intrusion. The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and her two maids began on 18 May and a small number of protesters gathered outside. Diplomats and journalists were barred from attending the trial; however, on one occasion, several diplomats from Russia, Thailand and Singapore and journalists were allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. The prosecution had originally planned to call 22 witnesses. It also accused John Yettaw of embarrassing the country. During the ongoing defence case, Aung San Suu Kyi said she was innocent. The defence was allowed to call only one witness (out of four), while the prosecution was permitted to call 14 witnesses. The court rejected two character witnesses, NLD members Tin Oo and Win Tin, and permitted the defence to call only a legal expert. According to one unconfirmed report, the junta was planning to, once again, place her in detention, this time in a military base outside the city. In a separate trial, Yettaw said he swam to Aung San Suu Kyi's house to warn her that her life was "in danger". The national police chief later confirmed that Yettaw was the "main culprit" in the case filed against Aung San Suu Kyi. According to aides, Aung San Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday in jail sharing biryani rice and chocolate cake with her guards.
Her arrest and subsequent trial received worldwide condemnation by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Security Council, Western governments, South Africa, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member. The Burmese government strongly condemned the statement, as it created an "unsound tradition" and criticised Thailand for meddling in its internal affairs. The Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted in the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar as saying that the incident "was trumped up to intensify international pressure on Burma by internal and external anti-government elements who do not wish to see the positive changes in those countries' policies toward Burma". Ban responded to an international campaign by flying to Burma to negotiate, but Than Shwe rejected all of his requests.
On 11 August 2009, the trial concluded with Aung San Suu Kyi being sentenced to imprisonment for three years with hard labour. This sentence was commuted by the military rulers to further house arrest of 18 months. On 14 August, US Senator Jim Webb visited Burma, visiting with junta leader Gen. Than Shwe and later with Aung San Suu Kyi. During the visit, Webb negotiated Yettaw's release and deportation from Burma. Following the verdict of the trial, lawyers of Aung San Suu Kyi said they would appeal against the 18-month sentence. On 18 August, United States President Barack Obama asked the country's military leadership to set free all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi. In her appeal, Aung San Suu Kyi had argued that the conviction was unwarranted. However, her appeal against the August sentence was rejected by a Burmese court on 2 October 2009. Although the court accepted the argument that the 1974 constitution, under which she had been charged, was null and void, it also said the provisions of the 1975 security law, under which she has been kept under house arrest, remained in force. The verdict effectively meant that she would be unable to participate in the elections scheduled to take place in 2010—the first in Burma in two decades. Her lawyer stated that her legal team would pursue a new appeal within 60 days.
Late 2000s: International support for release
Aung San Suu Kyi has received vocal support from Western nations in Europe, Australia and North and South America, as well as India, Israel, Japan the Philippines and South Korea. In December 2007, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously 400–0 to award Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal; the Senate concurred on 25 April 2008. On 6 May 2008, President George W. Bush signed legislation awarding Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal. She is the first recipient in American history to receive the prize while imprisoned. More recently, there has been growing criticism of her detention by Burma's neighbours in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. At one point Malaysia warned Burma that it faced expulsion from ASEAN as a result of the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. Other nations including South Africa, Bangladesh and the Maldives also called for her release. The United Nations has urged the country to move towards inclusive national reconciliation, the restoration of democracy, and full respect for human rights. In December 2008, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the human rights situation in Burma and calling for Aung San Suu Kyi's release—80 countries voting for the resolution, 25 against and 45 abstentions. Other nations, such as China and Russia, are less critical of the regime and prefer to cooperate only on economic matters. Indonesia has urged China to push Burma for reforms. However, Samak Sundaravej, former Prime Minister of Thailand, criticised the amount of support for Aung San Suu Kyi, saying that "Europe uses Aung San Suu Kyi as a tool. If it's not related to Aung San Suu Kyi, you can have deeper discussions with Myanmar."
Vietnam, however, did not support calls by other ASEAN member states for Myanmar to free Aung San Suu Kyi, state media reported Friday, 14 August 2009. The state-run Việt Nam News said Vietnam had no criticism of Myanmar's decision 11 August 2009 to place Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for the next 18 months, effectively barring her from elections scheduled for 2010. "It is our view that the Aung San Suu Kyi trial is an internal affair of Myanmar", Vietnamese government spokesman Le Dung stated on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In contrast with other ASEAN member states, Dung said Vietnam has always supported Myanmar and hopes it will continue to implement the "roadmap to democracy" outlined by its government.
Nobel Peace Prize winners (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan, Rigoberta Menchú, Prof. Elie Wiesel, US President Barack Obama, Betty Williams, Jody Williams and former US President Jimmy Carter) called for the rulers of Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi to "create the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all concerned parties and ethnic groups to achieve an inclusive national reconciliation with the direct support of the United Nations". Some of the money she received as part of the award helped fund higher education grants to Burmese students through the London-based charity Prospect Burma.
It was announced prior to the 2010 Burmese general election that Aung San Suu Kyi may be released "so she can organize her party", However, Aung San Suu Kyi was not allowed to run. On 1 October 2010 the government announced that she would be released on 13 November 2010.
US President Barack Obama personally advocated the release of all political prisoners, especially Aung San Suu Kyi, during the US-ASEAN Summit of 2009.
The US Government hoped that successful general elections would be an optimistic indicator of the Burmese government's sincerity towards eventual democracy. The Hatoyama government which spent 2.82 billion yen in 2008, has promised more Japanese foreign aid to encourage Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi in time for the elections; and to continue moving towards democracy and the rule of law.
In a personal letter to Aung San Suu Kyi, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown cautioned the Burmese government of the potential consequences of rigging elections as "condemning Burma to more years of diplomatic isolation and economic stagnation".
Aung San Suu Kyi met with many heads of state and opened a dialog with the Minister of Labor Aung Kyi (not to be confused with Aung San Suu Kyi). She was allowed to meet with senior members of her NLD party at the State House, however these meetings took place under close supervision.
2010 release
On the evening of 13 November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. This was the date her detention had been set to expire according to a court ruling in August 2009 and came six days after a widely criticised general election. She appeared in front of a crowd of her supporters, who rushed to her house in Rangoon when nearby barricades were removed by the security forces. Aung San Suu Kyi had been detained for 15 of the past 21 years. The government newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported the release positively, saying she had been granted a pardon after serving her sentence "in good conduct". The New York Times suggested that the military government may have released Aung San Suu Kyi because it felt it was in a confident position to control her supporters after the election.
Her son Kim Aris was granted a visa in November 2010 to see his mother shortly after her release, for the first time in 10 years. He visited again on 5 July 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Bagan, her first trip outside Yangon since 2003. Her son visited again on 8 August 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Pegu, her second trip.
Discussions were held between Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese government during 2011, which led to a number of official gestures to meet her demands. In October, around a tenth of Burma's political prisoners were freed in an amnesty and trade unions were legalised.
In November 2011, following a meeting of its leaders, the NLD announced its intention to re-register as a political party to contend 48 by-elections necessitated by the promotion of parliamentarians to ministerial rank. Following the decision, Aung San Suu Kyi held a telephone conference with US President Barack Obama, in which it was agreed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would make a visit to Burma, a move received with caution by Burma's ally China. On 1 December 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi met with Hillary Clinton at the residence of the top-ranking US diplomat in Yangon.
On 21 December 2011, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra met Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangoon, marking Aung San Suu Kyi's "first-ever meeting with the leader of a foreign country".
On 5 January 2012, British Foreign Minister William Hague met Aung San Suu Kyi and his Burmese counterpart. This represented a significant visit for Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi studied in the UK and maintains many ties there, whilst Britain is Burma's largest bilateral donor.
During Aung San Suu Kyi's visit to Europe, she visited the Swiss parliament, collected her 1991 Nobel Prize in Oslo and her honorary degree from the University of Oxford.
2012 by-elections
In December 2011, there was speculation that Aung San Suu Kyi would run in the 2012 national by-elections to fill vacant seats. On 18 January 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi formally registered to contest a Pyithu Hluttaw (lower house) seat in the Kawhmu Township constituency in special parliamentary elections to be held on 1 April 2012. The seat was previously held by Soe Tint, who vacated it after being appointed Construction Deputy Minister, in the 2010 election. She ran against Union Solidarity and Development Party candidate Soe Min, a retired army physician and native of Twante Township.
On 3 March 2012, at a large campaign rally in Mandalay, Aung San Suu Kyi unexpectedly left after 15 minutes, because of exhaustion and airsickness.
In an official campaign speech broadcast on Burmese state television's MRTV on 14 March 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi publicly campaigned for reform of the 2008 Constitution, removal of restrictive laws, more adequate protections for people's democratic rights, and establishment of an independent judiciary. The speech was leaked online a day before it was broadcast. A paragraph in the speech, focusing on the Tatmadaw's repression by means of law, was censored by authorities.
Aung San Suu Kyi also called for international media to monitor the by-elections, while publicly pointing out irregularities in official voter lists, which include deceased individuals and exclude other eligible voters in the contested constituencies. On 21 March 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was quoted as saying "Fraud and rule violations are continuing and we can even say they are increasing."
When asked whether she would assume a ministerial post if given the opportunity, she said the following:
On 26 March 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi suspended her nationwide campaign tour early, after a campaign rally in Myeik (Mergui), a coastal town in the south, citing health problems due to exhaustion and hot weather.
On 1 April 2012, the NLD announced that Aung San Suu Kyi had won the vote for a seat in Parliament. A news broadcast on state-run MRTV, reading the announcements of the Union Election Commission, confirmed her victory, as well as her party's victory in 43 of the 45 contested seats, officially making Aung San Suu Kyi the Leader of the Opposition in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw.
Although she and other MP-elects were expected to take office on 23 April when the Hluttaws resumed session, National League for Democracy MP-elects, including Aung San Suu Kyi, said they might not take their oaths because of its wording; in its present form, parliamentarians must vow to "safeguard" the constitution. In an address on Radio Free Asia, she said "We don't mean we will not attend the parliament, we mean we will attend only after taking the oath ... Changing that wording in the oath is also in conformity with the Constitution. I don't expect there will be any difficulty in doing it."
On 2 May 2012, National League for Democracy MP-elects, including Aung San Suu Kyi, took their oaths and took office, though the wording of the oath was not changed. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Suu Kyi and her colleagues decided they could do more by joining as lawmakers than maintaining their boycott on principle."
On 9 July 2012, she attended the Parliament for the first time as a lawmaker.
2015 general election
On 16 June 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was finally able to deliver her Nobel acceptance speech (Nobel lecture) at Oslo's City Hall, two decades after being awarded the peace prize. In September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi received in person the United States Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest Congressional award. Although she was awarded this medal in 2008, at the time she was under house arrest, and was unable to receive the medal. Aung San Suu Kyi was greeted with bipartisan support at Congress, as part of a coast-to-coast tour in the United States. In addition, Aung San Suu Kyi met President Barack Obama at the White House. The experience was described by Aung San Suu Kyi as "one of the most moving days of my life". In 2014, she was listed as the 61st-most-powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
On 6 July 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi announced on the World Economic Forum's website that she wanted to run for the presidency in Myanmar's 2015 elections. The current Constitution, which came into effect in 2008, bars her from the presidency because she is the widow and mother of foreigners—provisions that appeared to be written specifically to prevent her from being eligible.
The NLD won a sweeping victory in those elections, winning at least 255 seats in the House of Representatives and 135 seats in the House of Nationalities. In addition, Aung San Suu Kyi won re-election to the House of Representatives. Under the 2008 constitution, the NLD needed to win at least a two-thirds majority in both houses to ensure that its candidate would become president. Before the elections, Aung San Suu Kyi announced that even though she is constitutionally barred from the presidency, she would hold the real power in any NLD-led government. On 30 March 2016 she became Minister for the President's Office, for Foreign Affairs, for Education and for Electric Power and Energy in President Htin Kyaw's government; later she relinquished the latter two ministries and President Htin Kyaw appointed her State Counsellor, a position akin to a Prime Minister created especially for her. The position of State Counsellor was approved by the House of Nationalities on 1 April 2016 and the House of Representatives on 5 April 2016. The next day, her role as State Counsellor was established.
State counsellor and foreign minister (2016–2021)
As soon as she became foreign minister, she invited Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni in April and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in May and discussed how to have good diplomatic relationships with these countries.
Initially, upon accepting the State Counsellor position, she granted amnesty to the students who were arrested for opposing the National Education Bill, and announced the creation of the commission on Rakhine State, which had a long record of persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority. However, soon Aung San Suu Kyi's government did not manage with the ethnic conflicts in Shan and Kachin states, where thousands of refugees fled to China, and by 2017 the persecution of the Rohingya by the government forces escalated to the point that it is not uncommonly called a genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi, when interviewed, has denied the allegations of ethnic cleansing. She has also refused to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, instead taking steps to issue ID cards for residency but no guarantees of citizenship.
Her tenure as State Counsellor of Myanmar has drawn international criticism for her failure to address her country's economic and ethnic problems, particularly the plight of the Rohingya following the 25 August 2017 ARSA attacks (described as "certainly one of the biggest refugee crises and cases of ethnic cleansing since the Second World War"), for the weakening of freedom of the press and for her style of leadership, described as imperious and "distracted and out of touch".
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Myanmar, Suu Kyi chaired a National Central Committee responsible for coordinating the country's pandemic response.
Response to the genocide of Rohingya Muslims and refugees
In 2017, critics called for Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel prize to be revoked, citing her silence over the genocide of Rohingya people in Myanmar.
Some activists criticised Aung San Suu Kyi for her silence on the 2012 Rakhine State riots (later repeated during the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis), and her indifference to the plight of the Rohingya, Myanmar's persecuted Muslim minority. In 2012, she told reporters she did not know if the Rohingya could be regarded as Burmese citizens. In a 2013 interview with the BBC's Mishal Husain, Aung San Suu Kyi did not condemn violence against the Rohingya and denied that Muslims in Myanmar have been subject to ethnic cleansing, insisting that the tensions were due to a "climate of fear" caused by "a worldwide perception that global Muslim power is 'very great. She did condemn "hate of any kind" in the interview. According to Peter Popham, in the aftermath of the interview, she expressed anger at being interviewed by a Muslim. Husain had challenged Aung San Suu Kyi that almost all of the impact of violence was against the Rohingya, in response to Aung San Suu Kyi's claim that violence was happening on both sides, and Peter Popham described her position on the issue as one of purposeful ambiguity for political gain.
However, she said that she wanted to work towards reconciliation and she cannot take sides as violence has been committed by both sides. According to The Economist, her "halo has even slipped among foreign human-rights lobbyists, disappointed at her failure to make a clear stand on behalf of the Rohingya minority". However, she has spoken out "against a ban on Rohingya families near the Bangladeshi border having more than two children".
In a 2015 BBC News article, reporter Jonah Fisher suggested that Aung San Suu Kyi's silence over the Rohingya issue is due to a need to obtain support from the majority Bamar ethnicity as she is in "the middle of a general election campaign". In May 2015, the Dalai Lama publicly called upon her to do more to help the Rohingya in Myanmar, claiming that he had previously urged her to address the plight of the Rohingya in private during two separate meetings and that she had resisted his urging. In May 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi asked the newly appointed United States Ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, not to refer to the Rohingya by that name as they "are not recognized as among the 135 official ethnic groups" in Myanmar. This followed Bamar protests at Marciel's use of the word "Rohingya".
In 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of failing to protect Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims during the Rohingya genocide. State crime experts from Queen Mary University of London warned that Aung San Suu Kyi is "legitimising genocide" in Myanmar. Despite continued persecution of the Rohingya well into 2017, Aung San Suu Kyi was "not even admitting, let alone trying to stop, the army's well-documented campaign of rape, murder and destruction against Rohingya villages". On 4 September 2017, Yanghee Lee, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, criticised Aung San Suu Kyi's response to the "really grave" situation in Rakhine, saying: "The de facto leader needs to step in—that is what we would expect from any government, to protect everybody within their own jurisdiction." The BBC reported that "Her comments came as the number of Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh reached 87,000, according to UN estimates", adding that "her sentiments were echoed by Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, who said she was waiting to hear from Ms Suu Kyi—who has not commented on the crisis since it erupted". The next day George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, called on readers to sign a change.org petition to have the Nobel peace prize revoked, criticising her silence on the matter and asserting "whether out of prejudice or out of fear, she denies to others the freedoms she rightly claimed for herself. Her regime excludes—and in some cases seeks to silence—the very activists who helped to ensure her own rights were recognised." The Nobel Foundation replied that there existed no provision for revoking a Nobel Prize. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow peace prize holder, also criticised Aung San Suu Kyi's silence: in an open letter published on social media, he said: "If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep ... It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country." On 13 September it was revealed that Aung San Suu Kyi would not be attending a UN General Assembly debate being held the following week to discuss the humanitarian crisis, with a Myanmar government spokesman stating "perhaps she has more pressing matters to deal with".
In October 2017, Oxford City Council announced that, following a unanimous cross-party vote, the honour of Freedom of the City, granted in 1997 in recognition of her "long struggle for democracy", was to be withdrawn following evidence emerging from the United Nations which meant that she was "no longer worthy of the honour". A few days later, Munsur Ali, a councillor for City of London Corporation, tabled a motion to rescind the Freedom of the City of London: the motion was supported by Catherine McGuinness, chair of the corporation's policy and resources committee, who expressed "distress ... at the situation in Burma and the atrocities committed by the Burmese military". On 13 November 2017, Bob Geldof returned his Freedom of the City of Dublin award in protest over Aung San Suu Kyi also holding the accolade, stating that he does not "wish to be associated in any way with an individual currently engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of north-west Burma". Calling Aung San Suu Kyi a "handmaiden to genocide", Geldof added that he would take pride in his award being restored if it is first stripped from her. The Dublin City Council voted 59–2 (with one abstention) to revoke Aung San Suu Kyi's Freedom of the City award over Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya people in December 2017, though Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál Mac Donncha denied the decision was influenced by protests by Geldof and members of U2. At the same meeting, the Councillors voted 37–7 (with 5 abstentions) to remove Geldof's name from the Roll of Honorary Freemen.
In March 2018, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum revoked Aung San Suu Kyi's Elie Wiesel Award, awarded in 2012, citing her failure "to condemn and stop the military's brutal campaign" against Rohingya Muslims.
In May 2018, Aung San Suu Kyi was considered complicit in the crimes against Rohingyas in a report by Britain's International Development Committee.
In August 2018, it was revealed that Aung San Suu Kyi would be stripped of her Freedom of Edinburgh award over her refusal to speak out against the crimes committed against the Rohingya. She had received the award in 2005 for promoting peace and democracy in Burma. This will be only the second time that anyone has ever been stripped of the award, after Charles Stewart Parnell lost it in 1890 due to a salacious affair. Also in August, a UN report, while describing the violence as genocide, added that Aung San Suu Kyi did as little as possible to prevent it.
In early October 2018, both the Canadian Senate and its House of Commons voted unanimously to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary citizenship. This decision was caused by the Government of Canada's determination that the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar's government amounts to genocide.
On 11 November 2018, Amnesty International announced it was revoking her Ambassador of Conscience award.
In December 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice at The Hague where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya. In a speech of over 3,000 words, Aung San Suu Kyi did not use the term "Rohingya" in describing the ethnic group. She stated that the allegations of genocide were "incomplete and misleading", claiming that the situation was actually a Burmese military response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. She also questioned how there could be "genocidal intent" when the Burmese government had opened investigations and also encouraged Rohingya to return after being displaced. However, experts have largely criticized the Burmese investigations as insincere, with the military declaring itself innocent and the government preventing a visit from investigators from the United Nations. Many Rohingya have also not returned due to perceiving danger and a lack of rights in Myanmar.
In January 2020, the International Court of Justice decided that there was a "real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the rights" of the Rohingya. The court also took the view that the Burmese government's efforts to remedy the situation "do not appear sufficient" to protect the Rohingya. Therefore, the court ordered the Burmese government to take "all measures within its power" to protect the Rohingya from genocidal actions. The court also instructed the Burmese government to preserve evidence and report back to the court at timely intervals about the situation.
Arrests and prosecution of journalists
In December 2017, two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were arrested while investigating the Inn Din massacre of Rohingyas. Suu Kyi publicly commented in June 2018 that the journalists "weren't arrested for covering the Rakhine issue", but because they had broken Myanmar's Official Secrets Act. As the journalists were then on trial for violating the Official Secrets Act, Aung San Suu Kyi's presumption of their guilt was criticized by rights groups for potentially influencing the verdict. American diplomat Bill Richardson said that he had privately discussed the arrest with Suu Kyi, and that Aung San Suu Kyi reacted angrily and labelled the journalists "traitors". A police officer testified that he was ordered by superiors to use entrapment to frame and arrest the journalists; he was later jailed and his family evicted from their home in the police camp. The judge found the journalists guilty in September 2018 and to be jailed for seven years. Aung San Suu Kyi reacted to widespread international criticism of the verdict by stating: "I don't think anyone has bothered to read" the judgement as it had "nothing to do with freedom of expression at all", but the Official Secrets Act. She also challenged critics to "point out where there has been a miscarriage of justice", and told the two Reuters journalists that they could appeal their case to a higher court.
In September 2018, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report that since Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the NLD, came to power, the arrests and criminal prosecutions of journalists in Myanmar by the government and military, under laws which are too vague and broad, have "made it impossible for journalists to do their job without fear or favour."
2021 arrest and trial
On 1 February 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested and deposed by the Myanmar military, along with other leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, after the Myanmar military declared the November 2020 general election results fraudulent. A 1 February court order authorized her detainment for 15 days, stating that soldiers searching her Naypyidaw villa had uncovered imported communications equipment lacking proper paperwork. Aung San Suu Kyi was transferred to house arrest on the same evening, and on 3 February was formally charged with illegally importing ten or more walkie-talkies. She faces up to three years in prison for the charges. According to The New York Times, the charge "echoed previous accusations of esoteric legal crimes (and) arcane offenses" used by the military against critics and rivals. As of 9 February, Aung San Suu Suu Kyi continues to be held incommunicado, without access to international observers or legal representation of her choice.
US President Joe Biden raised the threat of new sanctions as a result of the Myanmar military coup. In a statement, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres believes "These developments represent a serious blow to democratic reforms in Myanmar." Volkan Bozkir, President of the UN General Assembly, also voiced his concerns, having tweeted "Attempts to undermine democracy and rule of law are unacceptable", and called for the "immediate release" of the detained NLD party leaders.
On 1 April 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with the fifth offence in relation to violating the official secrets act. According to her lawyer, it is the most serious charge brought against her after the coup and could carry a sentence of up to 14 years in prison if convicted. On 12 April 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi was hit with another charge, this time "under section 25 of the natural disaster management law". According to her lawyer, it is her sixth indictment. She appeared in court via video link and now faces five charges in the capital Naypyidaw and one in Yangon.
On 28 April 2021, the National Unity Government (NUG), in which Aung San Suu Kyi symbolically retained her position, anticipated that there would be no talks with the junta until all political prisoners, including her, are set free. This move by her supporters come after an ASEAN-supported consensus with the junta leadership in the past days. However, on 8 May 2021, the junta designated NUG as a terrorist organization and warned citizens not to cooperate, nor to give aid to the parallel government, stripping Aung San Suu Kyi of her symbolic position. On 10 May 2021, her lawyer said she would appear in court in person for the first time since her arrest after the Supreme Court ruled that she could attend in person and meet her lawyers. She had been previously only allowed to do so remotely from her home. On 21 May 2021, a military junta commission was formed to dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) on grounds of election fraud in the November 2020 election. On 22 May 2021, during his first interview since the coup, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing reported that she was in good health at her home and that she would appear in court in a matter of days. On 23 May 2021, the European Union expressed support for Aung San Suu Kyi's party and condemned the commission aimed at dissolving the party, echoing the NLD's statement released earlier in the week.
On 24 May 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in person in court for the first time since the coup to face the "incitement to sedition" charge against her. During the 30-minute hearing, she said that she was not fully aware of what was going on outside as she had no access to full information from the outside and refused to respond on the matters. She was also quoted on the possibility of her party’s forced dissolution as "Our party grew out of the people so it will exist as long as people support it." In her meeting with her lawyers, Aung San Suu Kyi also wished people "good health".
On 2 June 2021, it was reported that the military had moved her (as well as Win Myint) from their homes to an unknown location.
On 10 June 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with corruption, the most serious charge brought against her, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years' imprisonment. Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyers say the charges are made to keep her out of the public eye.
On 14 June 2021, the trial against Aung San Suu Kyi began. Any conviction would prevent her from running for office again. Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyers attempted to have prosecution testimony against her on the sedition charge disqualified but the motion was denied by the judge.
On 13 September 2021, court proceedings were to resume against her, but it was postponed due to Aung San Suu Kyi presenting "minor health issues" that impeded her from attending the court in person.
On 4 October 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi asked the judge to reduce her times of court appearances because of her fragile health. Aung San Suu Kyi described her health as "strained".
In November, the Myanmar courts deferred the first verdicts in the trial without further explanation or giving dates. In the same month, she was again charged with corruption, related to the purchase and rental of a helicopter, bringing the total of charges to nearly a dozen.
On 6 December 2021, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 4 years in jail. Suu Kyi, who is still facing multiple charges and further sentences, was sentenced on the charge of inciting dissent and violating COVID-19 protocols. Following a partial pardon by the chief of the military government, Aung San Suu Kyi's four-year sentence was reduced to two years' imprisonment.
On 10 January 2022, the military court in Myanmar sentenced Suu Kyi to an additional four years in prison on a number of charges including "importing and owning walkie-talkies" and "breaking coronavirus rules". The trials, which are closed to the public, the media, and any observers, were described as a "courtroom circus of secret proceedings on bogus charges" by the deputy director for Asia of Human Rights Watch.
On 27 April 2022, Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to five years in jail on corruption charges.
On 22 June 2022, junta authorities ordered that all further legal proceedings against Suu Kyi will take place in prison venues, instead of a courtroom. No explanation of the decision was given. Citing unidentified sources, the BBC reported that Suu Kyi was also moved on 22 June from house arrest, where she had had close companions, to solitary confinement in a specially-built area inside a prison in Nay Pyi Taw. This is the same prison in which Win Myint had similarly been placed in solitary confinement. The military confirmed that Suu Kyi had been moved to prison.
On 15 August 2022, sources following Aung San Suu Kyi's court proceedings said that she was sentenced to an additional six years' imprisonment after being found guilty on four corruption charges, bringing her overall sentences to 17 years in prison. In September 2022, she was convicted of election fraud and breaching the state's secrets act and sentenced to a total of six years in prison for both convictions, increasing her overall sentence to 23 years in prison. By 12 October 2022, she had been sentenced to 26 years imprisonment on ten charges in total, including five corruption charges. On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence is of 33 years in prison.
On 12 July 2023, Thailand's foreign minister Don Pramudwinai said at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Jakarta that he met with Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to Myanmar. On 1 August 2023, the military junta granted Suu Kyi a partial pardon, reducing her sentence to a total of 27 years in prison. Prior to the pardon, she was moved from prison to a VIP government residence, according to an official from NLD party.
However, it was reported that since the beginning of September 2023, she is back in prison. The exact time when she was sent back to prison is unknown. Since January, Aung San Suu Kyi and her lawyers are trying to get six corruption charges overturned. To this date, the requests are repeatedly denied.
Political beliefs
Asked what democratic models Myanmar could look to, she said: "We have many, many lessons to learn from various places, not just the Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Indonesia." She also cited "eastern Europe and countries, which made the transition from communist autocracy to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Latin American countries, which made the transition from military governments. And we cannot of course forget South Africa, because although it wasn't a military regime, it was certainly an authoritarian regime." She added: "We wish to learn from everybody who has achieved a transition to democracy, and also ... our great strong point is that, because we are so far behind everybody else, we can also learn which mistakes we should avoid."
In a nod to the deep US political divide between Republicans led by Mitt Romney and the Democrats by Obama—then battling to win the 2012 presidential election—she stressed, "Those of you who are familiar with American politics I'm sure understand the need for negotiated compromise."
Related organisations
Freedom Now, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organisation, was retained in 2006 by a member of her family to help secure Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest. The organisation secured several opinions from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that her detention was in violation of international law; engaged in political advocacy such as spearheading a letter from 112 former Presidents and Prime Ministers to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging him to go to Burma to seek her release, which he did six weeks later; and published numerous op-eds and spoke widely to the media about her ongoing detention. Its representation of her ended when she was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been an honorary board member of International IDEA and ARTICLE 19 since her detention, and has received support from these organisations.
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), both located in Belgium, granted her the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.
In 2003, the Freedom Forum recognised Aung San Suu Kyi's efforts to promote democracy peacefully with the Al Neuharth Free Spirit of the Year Award, in which she was presented over satellite because she was under house arrest. She was awarded one million dollars.
In June of each year, the U.S. Campaign for Burma organises hundreds of "Arrest Yourself" house parties around the world in support of Aung San Suu Kyi. At these parties, the organisers keep themselves under house arrest for 24 hours, invite their friends, and learn more about Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Freedom Campaign, a joint effort between the Human Rights Action Center and US Campaign for Burma, looks to raise worldwide attention to the struggles of Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma.
The Burma Campaign UK is a UK-based NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) that aims to raise awareness of Burma's struggles and follow the guidelines established by the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi.
St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied, had a Burmese theme for their annual ball in support of her in 2006. The university later awarded her an honorary doctorate in civil law on 20 June 2012 during her visit to her alma mater.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the official patron of The Rafto Human Rights House in Bergen, Norway. She received the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize in 1990.
She was made an honorary free person of the City of Dublin, Ireland in November 1999, although a space had been left on the roll of signatures to symbolize her continued detention. This was subsequently revoked on 13 December 2017.
In November 2005 the human rights group Equality Now proposed Aung Sun Suu Kyi as a potential candidate, among other qualifying women, for the position of U.N. Secretary General. In the proposed list of qualified women Aung San Suu Kyi was recognised by Equality Now as the Prime Minister-Elect of Burma.
The UN' special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, met Aung San Suu Kyi on 10 March 2008 before wrapping up his trip to the military-ruled country.
Aung San Suu Kyi was an honorary member of The Elders, a group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. Her ongoing detention meant that she was unable to take an active role in the group, so The Elders placed an empty chair for her at their meetings. The Elders have consistently called for the release of all political prisoners in Burma. Upon her election to parliament, she stepped down from her post.
In 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was given an honorary doctorate from the University of Johannesburg.
In 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi was named the Guest Director of the 45th Brighton Festival.
She was part of the international jury of Human Rights Defenders and Personalities who helped to choose a universal Logo for Human Rights in 2011.
In June 2011, the BBC announced that Aung San Suu Kyi was to deliver the 2011 Reith Lectures. The BBC covertly recorded two lectures with Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, which were then smuggled out of the country and brought back to London. The lectures were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service on 28 June 2011 and 5 July 2011.
8 March 2012, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird presented Aung San Suu Kyi a certificate of honorary Canadian citizenship and an informal invitation to visit Canada. The honorary citizenship was revoked in September 2018 due to the Rohingya conflict.
In April 2012, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the first leader of a major world power to visit Aung San Suu Kyi and the first British prime minister to visit Burma since the 1950s. In his visit, Cameron invited Aung San Suu Kyi to Britain where she would be able to visit her 'beloved' Oxford, an invitation which she later accepted. She visited Britain on 19 June 2012.
In 2012 she received the Honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford.
In May 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi received the inaugural Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent of the Human Rights Foundation.
29 May 2012 PM Manmohan Singh of India visited Aung San Suu Kyi. In his visit, PM invited Aung San Suu Kyi to India as well. She started her six-day visit to India on 16 November 2012, where among the places she visited was her alma mater Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi.
In 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi set up the charity Daw Khin Kyi Foundation to improve health, education and living standards in underdeveloped parts of Myanmar. The charity was named after Aung San Suu Kyi's mother. Htin Kyaw played a leadership role in the charity before his election as President of Myanmar. The charity runs a Hospitality and Catering Training Academy in Kawhmu Township, in Yangon Region, and runs a mobile library service which in 2014 had 8000 members.
Seoul National University in South Korea conferred an honorary doctorate degree to Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2013.
University of Bologna, Italy conferred an honorary doctorate degree in philosophy to Aung San Suu Kyi in October 2013.
Monash University, The Australian National University, University of Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney conferred an honorary degree to Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2013.
In popular culture
The life of Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris is portrayed in Luc Besson's 2011 film The Lady, in which they are played by Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis. Yeoh visited Aung San Suu Kyi in 2011 before the film's release in November. In the John Boorman's 1995 film Beyond Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi was played by Adelle Lutz.
Irish songwriters Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan released in 2005 the single "Unplayed Piano", in support of the Free Aung San Suu Kyi 60th Birthday Campaign that was happening at the time. U2's Bono wrote the song "Walk On" in tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi (and wore a shirt with her name and image upon it), and he publicized her plight during the U2 360° Tour, 2009–2011. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter composed a song titled "Aung San Suu Kyi". It appears on his albums 1+1 (with pianist Herbie Hancock) and Footprints Live!.
Health problems
Aung San Suu Kyi underwent surgery for a gynecological condition in September 2003 at Asia Royal Hospital during her house arrest. She also underwent minor foot surgery in December 2013 and eye surgery in April 2016. In June 2012, her doctor Tin Myo Win said that she had no serious health problems, but weighed only , had low blood pressure, and could become weak easily.
After being arrested and detained on 1 February 2021, there were concerns that Aung San Suu Kyi's health is deteriorating. However, according to military's spokesperson Zaw Min Tun, special attention is given to her health and living condition. Don Pramudwinai also said that "she was in good health, both physically and mentally".
Although a junta spokesperson claimed that she is in good health, since being sent back to prison in September 2023, it is reported that her health condition is worsening and "suffering a series of toothache and unable to eat". Her request to see a dentist had been denied. Her son is urging the junta to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to receive medical assistance.
Books
Freedom from Fear (1991)
Letters from Burma (1991)
Let's Visit Nepal (1985) (ISBN 978-0222009814)
Honours
List of honours of Aung San Suu Kyi
See also
List of civil rights leaders
List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University
State Counsellor of Myanmar
List of foreign ministers in 2017
List of current foreign ministers
Notes
References
Bibliography
Miller, J. E. (2001). Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing. Routledge.
Reid, R., Grosberg, M. (2005). Myanmar (Burma). Lonely Planet. .
Stewart, Whitney (1997). Aung San Suu Kyi: Fearless Voice of Burma. Twenty-First Century Books. .
Further reading
Combs, Daniel. Until the World Shatters: Truth, Lies, and the Looting of Myanmar (2021).
Aung San Suu Kyi (Modern Peacemakers) (2007) by Judy L. Hasday,
The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner (2002) by Barbara Victor, , or 1998 hardcover:
The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (2012) by Peter Popham,
Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (2007) by Justin Wintle,
Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators (2006) by David Wallechinsky,
Aung San Suu Kyi (Trailblazers of the Modern World) (2004) by William Thomas,
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2002) by Naomi Klein
Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series) (1999) by Gustaaf Houtman,
Aung San Suu Kyi: Standing Up for Democracy in Burma (Women Changing the World) (1998) by Bettina Ling
Prisoner for Peace: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy (Champions of Freedom Series) (1994) by John Parenteau,
Des femmes prix Nobel de Marie Curie à Aung San Suu Kyi, 1903–1991 (1992) by Charlotte Kerner, Nicole Casanova, Gidske Anderson,
Aung San Suu Kyi, towards a new freedom (1998) by Chin Geok Ang
Aung San Suu Kyi's struggle: Its principles and strategy (1997) by Mikio Oishi
Finding George Orwell in Burma (2004) by Emma Larkin
Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember (2005) by John McCain, Mark Salter. Random House
Under the Dragon: A Journey Through Burma (1998/2010) by Rory MacLean
External links
Aung San Suu Kyi's website (Site appears to be inactive. Last posting was in July 2014)
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Prime Ministers of Myanmar
21st-century women prime ministers
1945 births
20th-century Burmese women writers
20th-century Burmese writers
21st-century Burmese politicians
21st-century Burmese women politicians
21st-century Burmese women writers
21st-century Burmese writers
Alumni of SOAS University of London
Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford
Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by Myanmar
Buddhist pacifists
Burmese activists
Burmese democracy activists
Burmese human rights activists
Burmese Nobel laureates
Burmese pacifists
Burmese prisoners and detainees
Burmese revolutionaries
Burmese socialists
Burmese Theravada Buddhists
Burmese women activists
Burmese women diplomats
Burmese women in politics
Civil rights activists
Congressional Gold Medal recipients
Family of Aung San
Fellows of St Hugh's College, Oxford
Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
Female foreign ministers
Female heads of government
Foreign ministers of Myanmar
Gandhians
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
Honorary Companions of the Order of Australia
International Simón Bolívar Prize recipients
Lady Shri Ram College alumni
Leaders ousted by a coup
Living people
Members of Pyithu Hluttaw
National League for Democracy politicians
Nobel Peace Prize laureates
Nonviolence advocates
Olof Palme Prize laureates
Activists from Yangon
Politicians from Yangon
People stripped of honorary degrees
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Prisoners and detainees of Myanmar
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Sakharov Prize laureates
Women civil rights activists
Women government ministers of Myanmar
Women Nobel laureates
Women opposition leaders
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Aircraft spotting, or planespotting, is a hobby consisting of tracking the movement of aircraft, which is usually accomplished by photography or videography. Besides monitoring aircraft, planespotting enthusiasts (who are usually called planespotters) also record information regarding airports, air traffic control communications, airline routes, and more.
History and evolution
Aviation enthusiasts have been watching airplanes and other aircraft since aviation began. However, as a hobby (distinct from active/wartime work), planespotting did not appear until the second half of the 20th century.
During World War II and the subsequent Cold War some countries encouraged their citizens to become "planespotters" in an "observation corps" or similar public body for reasons of public security. Britain had the Royal Observer Corps which operated between 1925 and 1995. A journal called The Aeroplane Spotter was published in January 1940. The publication included a glossary that was refined in 2010 and published online.
The development of technology and global resources enabled a revolution in plane-spotting. Point and shoot cameras, DSLRs & walkie talkies significantly changed the hobby. With the help of the internet, websites such as FlightAware and Flightradar24 have made it possible for spotters to track and locate specific aircraft from all across the world. Websites specifically for aircraft, such as airliners.net, and social networking services, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, allow spotters to record their sightings and upload their photos or see pictures of aircraft spotted by other people worldwide.
Techniques
When spotting aircraft, observers generally notice the key attributes of an aircraft, such as a distinctive noise from its engine, the number of contrails it is producing, or its callsign. Observers can also assess the size of the aircraft and the number, type, and position of its engines. Another distinctive attribute is the position of wings relative to the fuselage and the degree to which they are swept rearwards. The wings may be above the fuselage, below it, or fixed at midpoint. The number of wings indicates whether it is a monoplane, biplane or triplane. The position of the tailplane relative to the fin(s) and the shape of the fin are other attributes. The configuration of the landing gear can be distinctive, as well as the size and shape of the cockpit and passenger windows along with the layout of emergency exits and doors.
Other features include the speed, cockpit placement, colour scheme or special equipment that changes the silhouette of the aircraft. Taken together these traits will enable the identification of an aircraft. If the observer is familiar with the airfield being used by the aircraft and its normal traffic patterns, he or she is more likely to leap quickly to a decision about the aircraft's identity – they may have seen the same type of aircraft from the same angle many times. This is particularly prevalent if the aircraft spotter is spotting commercial aircraft, operated by airlines that have a limited fleet.
Spotters use equipment such as ADS-B decoders to track the movements of aircraft. The two most famous devices used are the AirNav Systems RadarBox and Kinetic Avionics SBS series. Both of them read and process the radar data and show the movements on a computer screen. Another tool that spotters can use are apps such as FlightRadar24 or Flightaware, where they can look at arrival and departure schedules and track the location of aircraft that have their transponder on. Most of the decoders also allow the exporting of logs from a certain route or airport.
Spotting styles
Some spotters will note and compile the markings, a national insignia or airline livery or logo, a squadron badge or code letters in the case of a military aircraft. Published manuals allow more information to be deduced, such as the delivery date or the manufacturer's construction number. Camouflage markings differ, depending on the surroundings in which that aircraft is expected to operate.
In general, most spotters attempt to see as many aircraft of a given type, a particular airline, or a particular subset of aircraft such as business jets, commercial airliners, military and/or general aviation aircraft. Some spotters attempt to see every airframe and are known as "frame spotters." Others are keen to see every registration worn by each aircraft.
Ancillary activities might include listening-in to air traffic control transmissions (using radio scanners, where that is legal), liaising with other "spotters" to clear up uncertainties as to what aircraft have been seen at specific times or in particular places. Several internet mailing list groups have been formed to help communicate aircraft seen at airports, queries and anomalies. These groups can cater to certain regions, certain aircraft types, or may appeal to a wider audience. The result is that information on aircraft movements can be delivered worldwide in a real-time fashion to spotters.
The hobbyist might travel long distances to visit different airports, to see an unusual aircraft, or to view the remains of aircraft withdrawn from use. Air shows usually draw large numbers of spotters as they are opportunities to enter airfields and air bases worldwide that are usually closed to the public and to see displayed aircraft at close range. Some aircraft may be placed in the care of museums (see Aviation archaeology) – or perhaps be cannibalized in order to repair a similar aircraft already preserved.
Aircraft registrations can be found in books, with online resources, or in monthly magazines from enthusiast groups. Most spotters maintained books of different aircraft fleets and would underline or check each aircraft seen. Each year, a revised version of the books would be published and the spotter would need to re-underline every aircraft seen. With the development of commercial aircraft databases spotters were finally able to record their sightings in an electronic database and produce reports that emulated the underlined books.
Legal ramifications
The legal repercussions of the hobby were dramatically shown in November 2001 when fourteen aircraft spotters (twelve British, two Dutch) were arrested by Greek police after being observed at an open day at the Greek Air Force base at Kalamata. They were charged with espionage and faced a possible 20-year prison sentence if found guilty. After being held for six weeks, they were eventually released on $11,696 (£9,000) bail, and the charges reduced to the misdemeanor charge of illegal information collection. Confident of their innocence they returned for their trial in April, 2002 and were stunned to be found guilty, with eight of the group sentenced to three years, the rest for one year. At their appeal a year later, all were acquitted.
As airport watch groups
In the wake of the targeting of airports by terrorists, enthusiasts' organisations and police in the UK have cooperated in creating a code of conduct for planespotters, in a similar vein to guidelines devised for train spotters. By asking enthusiasts to contact police if spotters believe they see or hear something suspicious, this is an attempt to allow enthusiasts to continue their hobby while increasing security around airports. Birmingham and Stansted pioneered this approach in Britain and prior to the 2012 London Olympics, RAF Northolt introduced a Flightwatch scheme based on the same cooperative principles. These changes are also being made abroad in countries such as Australia, where aviation enthusiasts are reporting suspicious or malicious actions to police.
The organisation of such groups has now been echoed in parts of North America. For example, the Bensenville, Illinois police department have sponsored an Airport Watch group at the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Members are issued identification cards and given training to accurately record and report unusual activities around the airport perimeter. (Members are not permitted airside.) Meetings are attended and supported by the FBI, Chicago Department of Aviation and the TSA who also provide regular training to group members. The Bensenville program was modeled on similar programs in Toronto, Ottawa and Minneapolis.
In 2009, a similar airport watch group was organized between airport security and local aircraft spotters at Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. As of 2016, the group has 46 members and a special phone number to use to contact police if suspicious activity is seen around the airport area.
Extraordinary rendition
Following the events of 9/11, information collected by planespotters helped uncover what is known as extraordinary rendition by the CIA. Information on unusual movements of rendition aircraft provided data that was mapped by critical geographers such as Trevor Paglen and the Institute for Applied Autonomy. These data and maps led first to news reports and then to a number of governmental and inter-governmental investigations.
See also
Bus spotting
Car spotting
Train spotting
Satellite watching
References
External links
SpottersWiki: The Ultimate Airport Spotting Guide
Airport Spotting Websites & Resources
Spotter Guide
JetPhotos (part of the Flightradar24)
Planespotters.net
Spotters.Aero (Ukrainian Spotter's Site)
Aviation photography
Observation hobbies
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Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a specific good or service, but there are wide range of uses, the most common being the commercial advertisement.
Commercial advertisements often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding", which associates a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers. On the other hand, ads that intend to elicit an immediate sale are known as direct-response advertising. Non-commercial entities that advertise more than consumer products or services include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies. Non-profit organizations may use free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement. Advertising may also help to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful.
In the 19th century, soap businesses were among the first to employ large-scale advertising campaigns. Thomas J. Barratt was hired by Pears to be its brand manager—the first of its kind—and in addition to creating slogans and images he recruited West End stage actress and socialite Lillie Langtry to become the poster-girl for Pears, making her the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. Modern advertising originated with the techniques introduced with tobacco advertising in the 1920s, most significantly with the campaigns of Edward Bernays, considered the founder of modern, "Madison Avenue" advertising.
Worldwide spending on advertising in 2015 amounted to an estimated . Advertising's projected distribution for 2017 was 40.4% on TV, 33.3% on digital, 9% on newspapers, 6.9% on magazines, 5.8% on outdoor and 4.3% on radio. Internationally, the largest ("Big Five") advertising agency groups are Omnicom, WPP, Publicis, Interpublic, and Dentsu.
In Latin, advertere means "to turn towards".
History
Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC.
In ancient China, the earliest advertising known was oral, as recorded in the Classic of Poetry (11th to 7th centuries BC) of bamboo flutes played to sell confectionery. Advertisement usually takes in the form of calligraphic signboards and inked papers. A copper printing plate dated back to the Song dynasty used to print posters in the form of a square sheet of paper with a rabbit logo with "Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop" and "We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine-quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time" written above and below is considered the world's earliest identified printed advertising medium.
In Europe, as the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general population was unable to read, instead of signs that read "cobbler", "miller", "tailor", or "blacksmith", images associated with their trade would be used such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horseshoe, a candle or even a bag of flour. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts. The first compilation of such advertisements was gathered in "Les Crieries de Paris", a thirteenth-century poem by Guillaume de la Villeneuve.
18th-19th century: Newspaper Advertising
In the 18th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after. However, false advertising and so-called "quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content.
In the United States, newspapers grew quickly in the first few decades of the 19th century, in part due to advertising. By 1822, the United States had more newspaper readers than any other country. About half of the content of these newspapers consisted of advertising, usually local advertising, with half of the daily newspapers in the 1810s using the word "advertiser" in their name.
In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles. Around 1840, Volney B. Palmer established the roots of the modern day advertising agency in Philadelphia. In 1842 Palmer bought large amounts of space in various newspapers at a discounted rate then resold the space at higher rates to advertisers. The actual ad – the copy, layout, and artwork – was still prepared by the company wishing to advertise; in effect, Palmer was a space broker. The situation changed when the first full-service advertising agency of N.W. Ayer & Son was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia. Ayer & Son offered to plan, create, and execute complete advertising campaigns for its customers. By 1900 the advertising agency had become the focal point of creative planning, and advertising was firmly established as a profession.
Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers.
Late 19th century: Modern Advertising
Thomas J. Barratt of London has been called "the father of modern advertising". Working for the Pears soap company, Barratt created an effective advertising campaign for the company products, which involved the use of targeted slogans, images and phrases. One of his slogans, "Good morning. Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century. In 1882, Barratt recruited English actress and socialite Lillie Langtry to become the poster-girl for Pears, making her the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product.
Becoming the company's brand manager in 1865, listed as the first of its kind by the Guinness Book of Records, Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful advertising and these were widely circulated in his day. He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product's availability through saturation campaigns. He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them. An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today. Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present taste."
Enhanced advertising revenues was one effect of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Thanks to the revolution and the consumers it created, by the mid-19th century biscuits and chocolate became products for the masses, and British biscuit manufacturers were among the first to introduce branding to distinguish grocery products. One the world's first global brands, Huntley & Palmers biscuits were sold in 172 countries in 1900, and their global reach was reflected in their advertisements.
20th century
As a result of massive industrialization, advertising increased dramatically in the United States. In 1919 it was 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, and it averaged 2.2 percent of GDP between then and at least 2007, though it may have declined dramatically since the Great Recession.
Industry could not benefit from its increased productivity without a substantial increase in consumer spending. This contributed to the development of mass marketing designed to influence the population's economic behavior on a larger scale. In the 1910s and 1920s, advertisers in the U.S. adopted the doctrine that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – "sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, became associated with the method and is sometimes called the founder of modern advertising and public relations. Bernays claimed that:In other words, selling products by appealing to the rational minds of customers (the main method used prior to Bernays) was much less effective than selling products based on the unconscious desires that Bernays felt were the true motivators of human action. "Sex sells" became a controversial issue, with techniques for titillating and enlarging the audience posing a challenge to conventional morality.
In the 1920s, under Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the American government promoted advertising. Hoover himself delivered an address to the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World in 1925 called 'Advertising Is a Vital Force in Our National Life." In October 1929, the head of the U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Julius Klein, stated "Advertising is the key to world prosperity." This was part of the "unparalleled" collaboration between business and government in the 1920s, according to a 1933 European economic journal.
The tobacco companies became major advertisers in order to sell packaged cigarettes. The tobacco companies pioneered the new advertising techniques when they hired Bernays to create positive associations with tobacco smoking.
Advertising was also used as a vehicle for cultural assimilation, encouraging workers to exchange their traditional habits and community structure in favor of a shared "modern" lifestyle. An important tool for influencing immigrant workers was the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers (AAFLN). The AAFLN was primarily an advertising agency but also gained heavily centralized control over much of the immigrant press.
At the turn of the 20th century, advertising was one of the few career choices for women. Since women were responsible for most household purchasing done, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women's insight during the creative process. In fact, the first American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product. Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message "A skin you love to touch".
In the 1920s, psychologists Walter D. Scott and John B. Watson contributed applied psychological theory to the field of advertising. Scott said, "Man has been called the reasoning animal but he could with greater truthfulness be called the creature of suggestion. He is reasonable, but he is to a greater extent suggestible". He demonstrated this through his advertising technique of a direct command to the consumer.
Radio from the 1920s
In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers, followed by non-profit organizations such as schools, clubs and civic groups who also set up their own stations. Retailer and consumer goods manufacturers quickly recognized radio's potential to reach consumers in their home and soon adopted advertising techniques that would allow their messages to stand out; slogans, mascots, and jingles began to appear on radio in the 1920s and early television in the 1930s.
The rise of mass media communications allowed manufacturers of branded goods to bypass retailers by advertising directly to consumers. This was a major paradigm shift which forced manufacturers to focus on the brand and stimulated the need for superior insights into consumer purchasing, consumption and usage behaviour; their needs, wants and aspirations. The earliest radio drama series were sponsored by soap manufacturers and the genre became known as a soap opera. Before long, radio station owners realized they could increase advertising revenue by selling 'air-time' in small time allocations which could be sold to multiple businesses. By the 1930s, these advertising spots, as the packets of time became known, were being sold by the station's geographical sales representatives, ushering in an era of national radio advertising.
By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize the way in which consumers were developing personal relationships with their brands in a social/psychological/anthropological sense. Advertisers began to use motivational research and consumer research to gather insights into consumer purchasing. Strong branded campaigns for Chrysler and Exxon/Esso, using insights drawn research methods from psychology and cultural anthropology, led to some of the most enduring campaigns of the 20th century.
Commercial television in the 1950s
In the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network began the modern practice of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors. Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time to several businesses. This eventually became the standard for the commercial television industry in the United States. However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour. In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show – up to and including having one's advertising agency actually writing the show. The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Cable television from the 1980s
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV. Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought. As cable and satellite television became increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada.
Internet from the 1990s
With the advent of the ad server, online advertising grew, contributing to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, some websites, including the search engine Google, changed online advertising by personalizing ads based on web browsing behavior. This has led to other similar efforts and an increase in interactive advertising.
The share of advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media since 1925. In 1925, the main advertising media in America were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998, television and radio had become major advertising media; by 2017, the balance between broadcast and online advertising had shifted, with online spending exceeding broadcast. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower – about 2.4 percent.
Guerrilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. This type of advertising is unpredictable, which causes consumers to buy the product or idea. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various campaigns utilizing social network services such as Facebook or Twitter.
The advertising business model has also been adapted in recent years. In media for equity, advertising is not sold, but provided to start-up companies in return for equity. If the company grows and is sold, the media companies receive cash for their shares.
Domain name registrants (usually those who register and renew domains as an investment) sometimes "park" their domains and allow advertising companies to place ads on their sites in return for per-click payments. These ads are typically driven by pay per click search engines like Google or Yahoo, but ads can sometimes be placed directly on targeted domain names through a domain lease or by making contact with the registrant of a domain name that describes a product. Domain name registrants are generally easy to identify through WHOIS records that are publicly available at registrar websites.
Classification
Advertising may be categorized in a variety of ways, including by style, target audience, geographic scope, medium, or purpose. For example, in print advertising, classification by style can include display advertising (ads with design elements sold by size) vs. classified advertising (ads without design elements sold by the word or line). Advertising may be local, national or global. An ad campaign may be directed toward consumers or to businesses. The purpose of an ad may be to raise awareness (brand advertising), or to elicit an immediate sale (direct response advertising). The term above the line (ATL) is used for advertising involving mass media; more targeted forms of advertising and promotion are referred to as below the line (BTL). The two terms date back to 1954 when Procter & Gamble began paying their advertising agencies differently from other promotional agencies. In the 2010s, as advertising technology developed, a new term, through the line (TTL) began to come into use, referring to integrated advertising campaigns.
Traditional media
Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards and forehead advertising, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any situation in which an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.
Television Television advertising is one of the most expensive types of advertising; networks charge large amounts for commercial airtime during popular events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television – with an audience of over 108 million and studies showing that 50% of those only tuned in to see the advertisements. During the 2014 edition of this game, the average thirty-second ad cost US$4 million, and $8 million was charged for a 60-second spot. Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. Virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life. This technique is especially used in televised sporting events. Virtual product placement is also possible. An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer. The name blends the words "information" and "commercial". The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the target sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number or website. Infomercials describe and often demonstrate products, and commonly have testimonials from customers and industry professionals.
Radio Radio advertisements are broadcast as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for airing the commercials. While radio has the limitation of being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite this as an advantage. Radio is an expanding medium that can be found on air, and also online. According to Arbitron, radio has approximately 241.6 million weekly listeners, or more than 93 percent of the U.S. population.
Online Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Online ads are delivered by an ad server. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, in pay per click text ads, rich media ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam. A newer form of online advertising is Native Ads; they go in a website's news feed and are supposed to improve user experience by being less intrusive. However, some people argue this practice is deceptive.
Domain names Domain name advertising is most commonly done through pay per click web search engines, however, advertisers often lease space directly on domain names that generically describe their products. When an Internet user visits a website by typing a domain name directly into their web browser, this is known as "direct navigation", or "type in" web traffic. Although many Internet users search for ideas and products using search engines and mobile phones, a large number of users around the world still use the address bar. They will type a keyword into the address bar such as "geraniums" and add ".com" to the end of it. Sometimes they will do the same with ".org" or a country-code Top Level Domain (TLD such as ".co.uk" for the United Kingdom or ".ca" for Canada). When Internet users type in a generic keyword and add .com or another top-level domain (TLD) ending, it produces a targeted sales lead. Domain name advertising was originally developed by Oingo (later known as Applied Semantics), one of Google's early acquisitions.
Product placements is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise's character John Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics", because the film is set far in the future. I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond films, most notably Casino Royale. In "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front. Blade Runner includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola billboard.
Print Print advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics. One form of print advertising is classified advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly targeted ad paid by the word or line. Another form of print advertising is the display ad, which is generally a larger ad with design elements that typically run in an article section of a newspaper.
Outdoor
Billboards, also known as hoardings in some parts of the world, are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large numbers of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and in stadiums. The form known as street advertising first came to prominence in the UK by Street Advertising Services to create outdoor advertising on street furniture and pavements. Working with products such as Reverse Graffiti, air dancers and 3D pavement advertising, for getting brand messages out into public spaces. Sheltered outdoor advertising combines outdoor with indoor advertisement by placing large mobile, structures (tents) in public places on temporary bases. The large outer advertising space aims to exert a strong pull on the observer, the product is promoted indoors, where the creative decor can intensify the impression. Mobile billboards are generally vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be on dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes preselected by clients, they can also be specially equipped cargo trucks or, in some cases, large banners strewn from planes. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example, continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements. Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including: target advertising, one-day and long-term campaigns, conventions, sporting events, store openings and similar promotional events, and big advertisements from smaller companies.
Point-of-sale In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout counters (a.k.a. POP – point of purchase display), eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video displays.
Novelties Advertising printed on small tangible items such as coffee mugs, T-shirts, pens, bags, and such is known as novelty advertising. Some printers specialize in printing novelty items, which can then be distributed directly by the advertiser, or items may be distributed as part of a cross-promotion, such as ads on fast food containers.
Celebrity endorsements Advertising in which a celebrity endorses a product or brand leverages celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products or to promote specific stores' or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products. The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however; one mistake by a celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand. For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana. Celebrities such as Britney Spears have advertised for multiple products including Pepsi, Candies from Kohl's, Twister, NASCAR, and Toyota.
Aerial Using aircraft, balloons or airships to create or display advertising media. Skywriting is a notable example.
New media approaches
A new advertising approach is known as advanced advertising, which is data-driven advertising, using large quantities of data, precise measuring tools and precise targeting. Advanced advertising also makes it easier for companies which sell ad-space to attribute customer purchases to the ads they display or broadcast.
Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward the usage of the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo.
Online advertising began with unsolicited bulk e-mail advertising known as "e-mail spam". Spam has been a problem for e-mail users since 1978. As new online communication channels became available, advertising followed. The first banner ad appeared on the World Wide Web in 1994. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.
In online display advertising, display ads generate awareness quickly. Unlike search, which requires someone to be aware of a need, display advertising can drive awareness of something new and without previous knowledge. Display works well for direct response. Display is not only used for generating awareness, it is used for direct response campaigns that link to a landing page with a clear 'call to action'.
As the mobile phone became a new mass medium in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in Finland, mobile advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached $2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.
More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns. A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content. 83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.
Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station.
Unpaid advertising (also called "publicity advertising"), can include personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, "Xerox" = "photocopier", "Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly, "Hoover" = vacuum cleaner, and "Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage). However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object. Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a generic trademark – turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.
Early in its life, The CW aired short programming breaks called "Content Wraps", to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break. The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero II, CoverGirl, and Toyota.
A new promotion concept has appeared, "ARvertising", advertising on augmented reality technology.
Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (propaganda).
Rise in new media
With the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Pop-up, Flash, banner, pop-under, advergaming, and email advertisements (all of which are often unwanted or spam in the case of email) are now commonplace. Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them. In the last three quarters of 2009, mobile and Internet advertising grew by 18% and 9% respectively, while older media advertising saw declines: −10.1% (TV), −11.7% (radio), −14.8% (magazines) and −18.7% (newspapers). Between 2008 and 2014, U.S. newspapers lost more than half their print advertising revenue.
Niche marketing
Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche market using niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of the long tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible. However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products. Among others, Comcast Spotlight is one such advertiser employing this method in their video on demand menus. These advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a particular business or practice, from their home. This causes the viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.
Niche marketing could also be helped by bringing the issue of colour into advertisements. Different colours play major roles when it comes to marketing strategies, for example, seeing the blue can promote a sense of calmness and gives a sense of security which is why many social networks such as Facebook use blue in their logos.
Google AdSense is an example of niche marketing. Google calculates the primary purpose of a website and adjusts ads accordingly; it uses keywords on the page (or even in emails) to find the general ideas of topics disused and places ads that will most likely be clicked on by viewers of the email account or website visitors.
Crowdsourcing
The concept of crowdsourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated advertisements. User-generated ads are created by people, as opposed to an advertising agency or the company themselves, often resulting from brand sponsored advertising competitions. For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, allowing people to create their own Doritos commercials. Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs. Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays relaunched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl. The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads. In fact, the winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were found by Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to be the "most buzzed-about". Another example of companies using crowdsourcing successfully is the beverage company Jones Soda that encourages consumers to participate in the label design themselves.
This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated advertising competitions on behalf of a company. Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions for brands such as Google, Nike, Hershey's, General Mills, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Zinio, and Mini Cooper. Crowdsourcing remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the advertising industry is still unclear.
Globalization
Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global. For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximising local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company's speed of implementation. Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.
Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region. The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad contribute to its success is how economies of scale are maximized. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market. Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.
Foreign public messaging
Foreign governments, particularly those that own marketable commercial products or services, often promote their interests and positions through the advertising of those goods because the target audience is not only largely unaware of the forum as a vehicle for foreign messaging but also willing to receive the message while in a mental state of absorbing information from advertisements during television commercial breaks, while reading a periodical, or while passing by billboards in public spaces. A prime example of this messaging technique is advertising campaigns to promote international travel. While advertising foreign destinations and services may stem from the typical goal of increasing revenue by drawing more tourism, some travel campaigns carry the additional or alternative intended purpose of promoting good sentiments or improving existing ones among the target audience towards a given nation or region. It is common for advertising promoting foreign countries to be produced and distributed by the tourism ministries of those countries, so these ads often carry political statements and/or depictions of the foreign government's desired international public perception. Additionally, a wide range of foreign airlines and travel-related services which advertise separately from the destinations, themselves, are owned by their respective governments; examples include, though are not limited to, the Emirates airline (Dubai), Singapore Airlines (Singapore), Qatar Airways (Qatar), China Airlines (Taiwan/Republic of China), and Air China (People's Republic of China). By depicting their destinations, airlines, and other services in a favorable and pleasant light, countries market themselves to populations abroad in a manner that could mitigate prior public impressions.
Diversification
In the realm of advertising agencies, continued industry diversification has seen observers note that "big global clients don't need big global agencies any more". This is reflected by the growth of non-traditional agencies in various global markets, such as Canadian business TAXI and SMART in Australia and has been referred to as "a revolution in the ad world".
New technology
The ability to record shows on digital video recorders (such as TiVo) allow watchers to record the programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials. Additionally, as more seasons of pre-recorded box sets are offered for sale of television programs; fewer people watch the shows on TV. However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive additional profits from these sets.
To counter this effect, a variety of strategies have been employed. Many advertisers have opted for product placement on TV shows like Survivor. Other strategies include integrating advertising with internet-connected program guidess (EPGs), advertising on companion devices (like smartphones and tablets) during the show, and creating mobile apps for TV programs. Additionally, some like brands have opted for social television sponsorship.
The emerging technology of drone displays has recently been used for advertising purposes.
Education
In recent years there have been several media literacy initiatives, and more specifically concerning advertising, that seek to empower citizens in the face of media advertising campaigns.
Advertising education has become popular with bachelor, master and doctorate degrees becoming available in the emphasis. A surge in advertising interest is typically attributed to the strong relationship advertising plays in cultural and technological changes, such as the advance of online social networking. A unique model for teaching advertising is the student-run advertising agency, where advertising students create campaigns for real companies. Organizations such as the American Advertising Federation establish companies with students to create these campaigns.
Purposes
Advertising is at the front of delivering the proper message to customers and prospective customers. The purpose of advertising is to inform the consumers about their product and convince customers that a company's services or products are the best, enhance the image of the company, point out and create a need for products or services, demonstrate new uses for established products, announce new products and programs, reinforce the salespeople's individual messages, draw customers to the business, and to hold existing customers.
Sales promotions and brand loyalty
Sales promotions are another way to advertise. Sales promotions are double purposed because they are used to gather information about what type of customers one draws in and where they are, and to jump start sales. Sales promotions include things like contests and games, sweepstakes, product giveaways, samples coupons, loyalty programs, and discounts. The ultimate goal of sales promotions is to stimulate potential customers to action.
Criticisms
While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited commercial e-mail and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. This increasing difficulty in limiting exposure to specific audiences can result in negative backlash for advertisers. In tandem with these criticisms, the advertising industry has seen low approval rates in surveys and negative cultural portrayals.
One of the most controversial criticisms of advertisement in the present day is that of the predominance of advertising of foods high in sugar, fat, and salt specifically to children. Critics claim that food advertisements targeting children are exploitive and are not sufficiently balanced with proper nutritional education to help children understand the consequences of their food choices. Additionally, children may not understand that they are being sold something, and are therefore more impressionable. Michelle Obama has criticized large food companies for advertising unhealthy foods largely towards children and has requested that food companies either limit their advertising to children or advertise foods that are more in line with dietary guidelines. The other criticisms include the change that are brought by those advertisements on the society and also the deceiving ads that are aired and published by the corporations. Cosmetic and health industry are the ones which exploited the highest and created reasons of concern.
A 2021 study found that for more than 80% of brands, advertising had a negative return on investment. Unsolicited ads have been criticized as attention theft.
Regulation
There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of advertising. Some examples include restrictions for advertising alcohol, tobacco or gambling imposed in many countries, as well as the bans around advertising to children, which exist in parts of Europe. Advertising regulation focuses heavily on the veracity of the claims and as such, there are often tighter restrictions placed around advertisements for food and healthcare products.
The advertising industries within some countries rely less on laws and more on systems of self-regulation. Advertisers and the media agree on a code of advertising standards that they attempt to uphold. The general aim of such codes is to ensure that any advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'. Some self-regulatory organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding the standards or codes like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK.
In the UK, most forms of outdoor advertising such as the display of billboards is regulated by the UK Town and County Planning system. Currently, the display of an advertisement without consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2,500 per offense. In the US, many communities believe that many forms of outdoor advertising blight the public realm. As long ago as the 1960s in the US, there were attempts to ban billboard advertising in the open countryside. Cities such as São Paulo have introduced an outright ban with London also having specific legislation to control unlawful displays.
Some governments restrict the languages that can be used in advertisements, but advertisers may employ tricks to try avoiding them. In France for instance, advertisers sometimes print English words in bold and French translations in fine print to deal with Article 120 of the 1994 Toubon Law limiting the use of English.
The advertising of pricing information is another topic of concern for governments. In the United States for instance, it is common for businesses to only mention the existence and amount of applicable taxes at a later stage of a transaction. In Canada and New Zealand, taxes can be listed as separate items, as long as they are quoted up-front. In most other countries, the advertised price must include all applicable taxes, enabling customers to easily know how much it will cost them.
Theory
Hierarchy-of-effects models
Various competing models of hierarchies of effects attempt to provide a theoretical underpinning to advertising practice.
The model of Clow and Baack clarifies the objectives of an advertising campaign and for each individual advertisement. The model postulates six steps a buyer moves through when making a purchase:
Awareness
Knowledge
Liking
Preference
Conviction
Purchase
Means-end theory suggests that an advertisement should contain a message or means that leads the consumer to a desired end-state.
Leverage points aim to move the consumer from understanding a product's benefits to linking those benefits with personal values.
Marketing mix
The marketing mix was proposed by professor E. Jerome McCarthy in the 1960s. It consists of four basic elements called the "four Ps". Product is the first P representing the actual product. Price represents the process of determining the value of a product. Place represents the variables of getting the product to the consumer such as distribution channels, market coverage and movement organization. The last P stands for Promotion which is the process of reaching the target market and convincing them to buy the product.
In the 1990s, the concept of four Cs was introduced as a more customer-driven replacement of four P's. There are two theories based on four Cs: Lauterborn's four Cs (consumer, cost, communication, convenience)
and Shimizu's four Cs (commodity, cost, communication, channel) in the 7Cs Compass Model (Co-marketing). Communications can include advertising, sales promotion, public relations, publicity, personal selling, corporate identity, internal communication, SNS, and MIS.
Research
Advertising research is a specialized form of research that works to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising. It entails numerous forms of research which employ different methodologies. Advertising research includes pre-testing (also known as copy testing) and post-testing of ads and/or campaigns.
Pre-testing includes a wide range of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including: focus groups, in-depth target audience interviews (one-on-one interviews), small-scale quantitative studies and physiological measurement. The goal of these investigations is to better understand how different groups respond to various messages and visual prompts, thereby providing an assessment of how well the advertisement meets its communications goals.
Post-testing employs many of the same techniques as pre-testing, usually with a focus on understanding the change in awareness or attitude attributable to the advertisement. With the emergence of digital advertising technologies, many firms have begun to continuously post-test ads using real-time data. This may take the form of A/B split-testing or multivariate testing.
Continuous ad tracking and the Communicus System are competing examples of post-testing advertising research types.
Semiotics
Meanings between consumers and marketers depict signs and symbols that are encoded in everyday objects. Semiotics is the study of signs and how they are interpreted. Advertising has many hidden signs and meanings within brand names, logos, package designs, print advertisements, and television advertisements. Semiotics aims to study and interpret the message being conveyed in (for example) advertisements. Logos and advertisements can be interpreted at two levels – known as the surface level and the underlying level. The surface level uses signs creatively to create an image or personality for a product. These signs can be images, words, fonts, colors, or slogans. The underlying level is made up of hidden meanings. The combination of images, words, colors, and slogans must be interpreted by the audience or consumer. The "key to advertising analysis" is the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the object and the signified is the mental concept. A product has a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the color, brand name, logo design, and technology. The signified has two meanings known as denotative and connotative. The denotative meaning is the meaning of the product. A television's denotative meaning might be that it is high definition. The connotative meaning is the product's deep and hidden meaning. A connotative meaning of a television would be that it is top-of-the-line.
Apple's commercials used a black silhouette of a person that was the age of Apple's target market. They placed the silhouette in front of a blue screen so that the picture behind the silhouette could be constantly changing. However, the one thing that stays the same in these ads is that there is music in the background and the silhouette is listening to that music on a white iPod through white headphones. Through advertising, the white color on a set of earphones now signifies that the music device is an iPod. The white color signifies almost all of Apple's products.
The semiotics of gender plays a key influence on the way in which signs are interpreted. When considering gender roles in advertising, individuals are influenced by three categories. Certain characteristics of stimuli may enhance or decrease the elaboration of the message (if the product is perceived as feminine or masculine). Second, the characteristics of individuals can affect attention and elaboration of the message (traditional or non-traditional gender role orientation). Lastly, situational factors may be important to influence the elaboration of the message.
There are two types of marketing communication claims-objective and subjective. Objective claims stem from the extent to which the claim associates the brand with a tangible product or service feature. For instance, a camera may have auto-focus features. Subjective claims convey emotional, subjective, impressions of intangible aspects of a product or service. They are non-physical features of a product or service that cannot be directly perceived, as they have no physical reality. For instance the brochure has a beautiful design. Males tend to respond better to objective marketing-communications claims while females tend to respond better to subjective marketing communications claims.
Voiceovers are commonly used in advertising. Most voiceovers are done by men, with figures of up to 94% having been reported. There have been more female voiceovers in recent years, but mainly for food, household products, and feminine-care products.
Gender effects on comprehension
According to a 1977 study by David Statt, females process information comprehensively, while males process information through heuristic devices such as procedures, methods or strategies for solving problems, which could have an effect on how they interpret advertising. According to this study, men prefer to have available and apparent cues to interpret the message, whereas females engage in more creative, associative, imagery-laced interpretation. Later research by a Danish team found that advertising attempts to persuade men to improve their appearance or performance, whereas its approach to women aims at transformation toward an impossible ideal of female presentation. In Paul Suggett's article "The Objectification of Women in Advertising" he discusses the negative impact that these women in advertisements, who are too perfect to be real, have on women, as well as men, in real life. Advertising's manipulation of women's aspiration to these ideal types as portrayed in film, in erotic art, in advertising, on stage, within music videos and through other media exposures requires at least a conditioned rejection of female reality and thereby takes on a highly ideological cast. Studies show that these expectations of women and young girls negatively affect their views about their bodies and appearances. These advertisements are directed towards men. Not everyone agrees: one critic viewed this monologic, gender-specific interpretation of advertising as excessively skewed and politicized. There are some companies like Dove and aerie that are creating commercials to portray more natural women, with less post production manipulation, so more women and young girls are able to relate to them.
More recent research by Martin (2003) reveals that males and females differ in how they react to advertising depending on their mood at the time of exposure to the ads and on the affective tone of the advertising. When feeling sad, males prefer happy ads to boost their mood. In contrast, females prefer happy ads when they are feeling happy. The television programs in which ads are embedded influence a viewer's mood state. Susan Wojcicki, author of the article "Ads that Empower Women don't just Break Stereotypes—They're also Effective" discusses how advertising to women has changed since the first Barbie commercial, where a little girl tells the doll that, she wants to be just like her. Little girls grow up watching advertisements of scantily clad women advertising things from trucks to burgers and Wojcicki states that this shows girls that they are either arm candy or eye candy.
Alternatives
Other approaches to revenue include donations, paid subscriptions, microtransactions, and data monetization. Websites and applications are "ad-free" when not using advertisements at all for revenue. For example, the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia provides free content by receiving funding from charitable donations.
"Fathers" of advertising
Late 1700s – Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) – "father of advertising in America"
Late 1800s – Thomas J. Barratt (1841–1914) of London – called "the father of modern advertising" by T.F.G. Coates
Early 1900s – J. Henry ("Slogan") Smythe, Jr of Philadelphia – "world's best known slogan writer"
Early 1900s – Albert Lasker (1880–1952) – the "father of modern advertising"; defined advertising as "salesmanship in print, driven by a reason why"
Mid-1900s – David Ogilvy (1911–1999) – advertising tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, known as the "father of advertising"
Influential thinkers in advertising theory and practice
N. W. Ayer & Son – probably the first advertising agency to use mass media (i.e. telegraph) in a promotional campaign
Claude C. Hopkins (1866–1932) – popularised the use of test campaigns, especially coupons in direct mail, to track the efficiency of marketing spend
Ernest Dichter (1907–1991) – developed the field of motivational research, used extensively in advertising
E. St. Elmo Lewis (1872–1948) – developed the first hierarchy of effects model (AIDA) used in sales and advertising
Arthur Nielsen (1897–1980) – founded one of the earliest international advertising agencies and developed ratings for radio & TV
David Ogilvy (1911–1999) – pioneered the positioning concept and advocated of the use of brand image in advertising
Charles Coolidge Parlin (1872–1942) – regarded as the pioneer of the use of marketing research in advertising
Rosser Reeves (1910–1984) – developed the concept of the unique selling proposition (USP) and advocated the use of repetition in advertising
Al Ries (1926–2022) – advertising executive, author and credited with coining the term "positioning" in the late 1960s
Daniel Starch (1883–1979) – developed the Starch score method of measuring print media effectiveness (still in use)
J Walter Thompson – one of the earliest advertising agencies
See also
Advertisements in schools
Advertorial
Annoyance factor
Bibliography of advertising
Branded content
Commercial speech
Comparative advertising
Conquesting
Copywriting
Demo mode
Direct-to-consumer advertising
Family in advertising
Graphic design
Gross rating point
History of Advertising Trust
Informative advertising
Integrated marketing communications
List of advertising awards
Local advertising
Market overhang
Media planning
Meta-advertising
Mobile marketing
Performance-based advertising
Promotional mix
Senior media creative
Shock advertising
Viral marketing
World Federation of Advertisers
References
Notes
Further reading
Arens, William, and Michael Weigold. Contemporary Advertising: And Integrated Marketing Communications (2012)
Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective (10th ed. 2014)
Biocca, Frank. Television and Political Advertising: Volume I: Psychological Processes (Routledge, 2013)
Chandra, Ambarish, and Ulrich Kaiser. "Targeted advertising in magazine markets and the advent of the internet." Management Science 60.7 (2014) pp: 1829–1843.
Chen, Yongmin, and Chuan He. "Paid placement: Advertising and search on the internet*." The Economic Journal 121#556 (2011): F309–F328. online
Johnson-Cartee, Karen S., and Gary Copeland. Negative political advertising: Coming of age (2013)
McAllister, Matthew P. and Emily West, eds. HardcoverThe Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (2013)
McFall, Elizabeth Rose Advertising: a cultural economy (2004), cultural and sociological approaches to advertising
Moriarty, Sandra, and Nancy Mitchell. Advertising & IMC: Principles and Practice (10th ed. 2014)
Okorie, Nelson. The Principles of Advertising: concepts and trends in advertising (2011)
Reichert, Tom, and Jacqueline Lambiase, eds. Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the erotic appeal (Routledge, 2014)
Sheehan, Kim Bartel. Controversies in contemporary advertising (Sage Publications, 2013)
Vestergaard, Torben and Schrøder, Kim. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985.
Splendora, Anthony. "Discourse", a Review of Vestergaard and Schrøder, The Language of Advertising in Language in Society Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 445–449
History
Brandt, Allan. The Cigarette Century (2009)
Crawford, Robert. But Wait, There's More!: A History of Australian Advertising, 1900–2000 (2008)
Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Fox, Stephen R. The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators (University of Illinois Press, 1984)
Friedman, Walter A. Birth of a Salesman (Harvard University Press, 2005), In the United States
Jacobson, Lisa. Raising consumers: Children and the American mass market in the early twentieth century (Columbia University Press, 2013)
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the presidency: A history and criticism of presidential campaign advertising (Oxford University Press, 1996)
Laird, Pamela Walker. Advertising progress: American business and the rise of consumer marketing (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.)
Lears, Jackson. Fables of abundance: A cultural history of advertising in America (1995)
Liguori, Maria Chiara. "North and South: Advertising Prosperity in the Italian Economic Boom Years." Advertising & Society Review (2015) 15#4
Meyers, Cynthia B. A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio (2014)
Mazzarella, William. Shoveling smoke: Advertising and globalization in contemporary India (Duke University Press, 2003)
Moriarty, Sandra, et al. Advertising: Principles and practice (Pearson Australia, 2014), Australian perspectives
Nevett, Terence R. Advertising in Britain: a history (1982)
Oram, Hugh. The advertising book: The history of advertising in Ireland (MOL Books, 1986)
Presbrey, Frank. "The history and development of advertising." Advertising & Society Review (2000) 1#1 online
Saunders, Thomas J. "Selling under the Swastika: Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany." German History (2014): ghu058.
Short, John Phillip. "Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany." Enterprise and Society (2014): khu013.
Sivulka, Juliann. Soap, sex, and cigarettes: A cultural history of American advertising (Cengage Learning, 2011)
Spring, Dawn. "The Globalization of American Advertising and Brand Management: A Brief History of the J. Walter Thompson Company, Proctor and Gamble, and US Foreign Policy." Global Studies Journal (2013). 5#4
Stephenson, Harry Edward, and Carlton McNaught. The Story of Advertising in Canada: A Chronicle of Fifty Years (Ryerson Press, 1940)
Tungate, Mark. Adland: a global history of advertising (Kogan Page Publishers, 2007.)
West, Darrell M. Air Wars: Television Advertising and Social Media in Election Campaigns, 1952–2012 (Sage, 2013)
External links
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University
Duke University Libraries Digital Collections:
Ad*Access, over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements, dated 1911–1955, includes World War II propaganda.
Emergence of Advertising in America, 9,000 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1940, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.
AdViews, vintage television commercials
ROAD 2.0, 30,000 outdoor advertising images
Medicine & Madison Avenue, documents advertising of medical and pharmaceutical products
Art & Copy, a 2009 documentary film about the advertising industry
Articles containing video clips
Communication design
Promotion and marketing communications
Business models
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In the field of artificial intelligence, the most difficult problems are informally known as AI-complete or AI-hard, implying that the difficulty of these computational problems, assuming intelligence is computational, is equivalent to that of solving the central artificial intelligence problem—making computers as intelligent as people, or strong AI. To call a problem AI-complete reflects an attitude that it would not be solved by a simple specific algorithm.
AI-complete problems are hypothesised to include computer vision, natural language understanding, and dealing with unexpected circumstances while solving any real-world problem.
Currently, AI-complete problems cannot be solved with modern computer technology alone, but would also require human computation. This property could be useful, for example, to test for the presence of humans as CAPTCHAs aim to do, and for computer security to circumvent brute-force attacks.
History
The term was coined by Fanya Montalvo by analogy with NP-complete and NP-hard in complexity theory, which formally describes the most famous class of difficult problems. Early uses of the term are in Erik Mueller's 1987 PhD dissertation and in Eric Raymond's 1991 Jargon File.
AI-complete problems
AI-complete problems are hypothesized to include:
AI peer review (composite natural language understanding, automated reasoning, automated theorem proving, formalized logic expert system)
Bongard problems
Computer vision (and subproblems such as object recognition)
Natural language understanding (and subproblems such as text mining, machine translation, and word-sense disambiguation)
Autonomous driving
Dealing with unexpected circumstances while solving any real world problem, whether it's navigation or planning or even the kind of reasoning done by expert systems.
Machine translation
To translate accurately, a machine must be able to understand the text. It must be able to follow the author's argument, so it must have some ability to reason. It must have extensive world knowledge so that it knows what is being discussed — it must at least be familiar with all the same commonsense facts that the average human translator knows. Some of this knowledge is in the form of facts that can be explicitly represented, but some knowledge is unconscious and closely tied to the human body: for example, the machine may need to understand how an ocean makes one feel to accurately translate a specific metaphor in the text. It must also model the authors' goals, intentions, and emotional states to accurately reproduce them in a new language. In short, the machine is required to have wide variety of human intellectual skills, including reason, commonsense knowledge and the intuitions that underlie motion and manipulation, perception, and social intelligence. Machine translation, therefore, is believed to be AI-complete: it may require strong AI to be done as well as humans can do it.
Software brittleness
Current AI systems can solve very simple and/or restricted versions of AI-complete problems, but never in their full generality. When AI researchers attempt to "scale up" their systems to handle more complicated, real-world situations, the programs tend to become excessively brittle without commonsense knowledge or a rudimentary understanding of the situation: they fail as unexpected circumstances outside of its original problem context begin to appear. When human beings are dealing with new situations in the world, they are helped immensely by the fact that they know what to expect: they know what all things around them are, why they are there, what they are likely to do and so on. They can recognize unusual situations and adjust accordingly. A machine without strong AI has no other skills to fall back on.
DeepMind published a work in May 2022 in which they trained a single model to do several things at the same time. The model, named Gato, can "play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its context whether to output text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens."
Formalization
Computational complexity theory deals with the relative computational difficulty of computable functions. By definition, it does not cover problems whose solution is unknown or has not been characterised formally. Since many AI problems have no formalisation yet, conventional complexity theory does not allow the definition of AI-completeness.
To address this problem, a complexity theory for AI has been proposed. It is based on a model of computation that splits the computational burden between a computer and a human: one part is solved by computer and the other part solved by human. This is formalised by a human-assisted Turing machine. The formalisation defines algorithm complexity, problem complexity and reducibility which in turn allows equivalence classes to be defined.
The complexity of executing an algorithm with a human-assisted Turing machine is given by a pair , where the first element represents the complexity of the human's part and the second element is the complexity of the machine's part.
Results
The complexity of solving the following problems with a human-assisted Turing machine is:
Optical character recognition for printed text:
Turing test:
for an -sentence conversation where the oracle remembers the conversation history (persistent oracle):
for an -sentence conversation where the conversation history must be retransmitted:
for an -sentence conversation where the conversation history must be retransmitted and the person takes linear time to read the query:
ESP game:
Image labelling (based on the Arthur–Merlin protocol):
Image classification: human only: , and with less reliance on the human: .
See also
ASR-complete
List of unsolved problems in computer science
Synthetic intelligence
Practopoiesis
References
Artificial intelligence
Computational problems
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Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures". Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern astronomy is a scientific discipline, while archaeoastronomy considers symbolically rich cultural interpretations of phenomena in the sky by other cultures. It is often twinned with ethnoastronomy, the anthropological study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy is also closely associated with historical astronomy, the use of historical records of heavenly events to answer astronomical problems and the history of astronomy, which uses written records to evaluate past astronomical practice.
Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, statistics and probability, and history. Because these methods are diverse and use data from such different sources, integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term difficulty for archaeoastronomers. Archaeoastronomy fills complementary niches in landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology. Material evidence and its connection to the sky can reveal how a wider landscape can be integrated into beliefs about the cycles of nature, such as Mayan astronomy and its relationship with agriculture. Other examples which have brought together ideas of cognition and landscape include studies of the cosmic order embedded in the roads of settlements.
Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods. The meanings of the sky vary from culture to culture; nevertheless there are scientific methods which can be applied across cultures when examining ancient beliefs. It is perhaps the need to balance the social and scientific aspects of archaeoastronomy which led Clive Ruggles to describe it as "a field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other".
History
Two hundred years before John Michell wrote the above, there were no archaeoastronomers and there were no professional archaeologists, but there were astronomers and antiquarians. Some of their works are considered precursors of archaeoastronomy; antiquarians interpreted the astronomical orientation of the ruins that dotted the English countryside as William Stukeley did of Stonehenge in 1740, while John Aubrey in 1678 and Henry Chauncy in 1700 sought similar astronomical principles underlying the orientation of churches. Late in the nineteenth century astronomers such as Richard Proctor and Charles Piazzi Smyth investigated the astronomical orientations of the pyramids.
The term archaeoastronomy was advanced by Elizabeth Chesley Baity (following the suggestion of Euan MacKie) in 1973, but as a topic of study it may be much older, depending on how archaeoastronomy is defined. Clive Ruggles says that Heinrich Nissen, working in the mid-nineteenth century was arguably the first archaeoastronomer. Rolf Sinclair says that Norman Lockyer, working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, could be called the 'father of archaeoastronomy'. Euan MacKie would place the origin even later, stating: "...the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s".
In the 1960s the work of the engineer Alexander Thom and that of the astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who proposed that Stonehenge was a Neolithic computer, inspired new interest in the astronomical features of ancient sites. The claims of Hawkins were largely dismissed, but this was not the case for Alexander Thom's work, whose survey results of megalithic sites hypothesized widespread practice of accurate astronomy in the British Isles. Euan MacKie, recognizing that Thom's theories needed to be tested, excavated at the Kintraw standing stone site in Argyllshire in 1970 and 1971 to check whether the latter's prediction of an observation platform on the hill slope above the stone was correct. There was an artificial platform there and this apparent verification of Thom's long alignment hypothesis (Kintraw was diagnosed as an accurate winter solstice site) led him to check Thom's geometrical theories at the Cultoon stone circle in Islay, also with a positive result. MacKie therefore broadly accepted Thom's conclusions and published new prehistories of Britain. In contrast a re-evaluation of Thom's fieldwork by Clive Ruggles argued that Thom's claims of high accuracy astronomy were not fully supported by the evidence. Nevertheless, Thom's legacy remains strong, Edwin C. Krupp wrote in 1979, "Almost singlehandedly he has established the standards for archaeo-astronomical fieldwork and interpretation, and his amazing results have stirred controversy during the last three decades." His influence endures and practice of statistical testing of data remains one of the methods of archaeoastronomy.
The approach in the New World, where anthropologists began to consider more fully the role of astronomy in Amerindian civilizations, was markedly different. They had access to sources that the prehistory of Europe lacks such as ethnographies and the historical records of the early colonizers. Following the pioneering example of Anthony Aveni, this allowed New World archaeoastronomers to make claims for motives which in the Old World would have been mere speculation. The concentration on historical data led to some claims of high accuracy that were comparatively weak when compared to the statistically led investigations in Europe.
This came to a head at a meeting sponsored by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Oxford in 1981. The methodologies and research questions of the participants were considered so different that the conference proceedings were published as two volumes. Nevertheless, the conference was considered a success in bringing researchers together and Oxford conferences have continued every four or five years at locations around the world. The subsequent conferences have resulted in a move to more interdisciplinary approaches with researchers aiming to combine the contextuality of archaeological research, which broadly describes the state of archaeoastronomy today, rather than merely establishing the existence of ancient astronomies, archaeoastronomers seek to explain why people would have an interest in the night sky.
Relations to other disciplines
Archaeoastronomy has long been seen as an interdisciplinary field that uses written and unwritten evidence to study the astronomies of other cultures. As such, it can be seen as connecting other disciplinary approaches for investigating ancient astronomy: astroarchaeology (an obsolete term for studies that draw astronomical information from the alignments of ancient architecture and landscapes), history of astronomy (which deals primarily with the written textual evidence), and ethnoastronomy (which draws on the ethnohistorical record and contemporary ethnographic studies).
Reflecting Archaeoastronomy's development as an interdisciplinary subject, research in the field is conducted by investigators trained in a wide range of disciplines. Authors of recent doctoral dissertations have described their work as concerned with the fields of archaeology and cultural anthropology; with various fields of history including the history of specific regions and periods, the history of science and the history of religion; and with the relation of astronomy to art, literature and religion. Only rarely did they describe their work as astronomical, and then only as a secondary category.
Both practicing archaeoastronomers and observers of the discipline approach it from different perspectives. Other researchers relate archaeoastronomy to the history of science, either as it relates to a culture's observations of nature and the conceptual framework they devised to impose an order on those observations or as it relates to the political motives which drove particular historical actors to deploy certain astronomical concepts or techniques. Art historian Richard Poss took a more flexible approach, maintaining that the astronomical rock art of the North American Southwest should be read employing "the hermeneutic traditions of western art history and art criticism" Astronomers, however, raise different questions, seeking to provide their students with identifiable precursors of their discipline, and are especially concerned with the important question of how to confirm that specific sites are, indeed, intentionally astronomical.
The reactions of professional archaeologists to archaeoastronomy have been decidedly mixed. Some expressed incomprehension or even hostility, varying from a rejection by the archaeological mainstream of what they saw as an archaeoastronomical fringe to an incomprehension between the cultural focus of archaeologists and the quantitative focus of early archaeoastronomers. Yet archaeologists have increasingly come to incorporate many of the insights from archaeoastronomy into archaeology textbooks and, as mentioned above, some students wrote archaeology dissertations on archaeoastronomical topics.
Since archaeoastronomers disagree so widely on the characterization of the discipline, they even dispute its name. All three major international scholarly associations relate archaeoastronomy to the study of culture, using the term Astronomy in Culture or a translation. Michael Hoskin sees an important part of the discipline as fact-collecting, rather than theorizing, and proposed to label this aspect of the discipline Archaeotopography. Ruggles and Saunders proposed Cultural Astronomy as a unifying term for the various methods of studying folk astronomies. Others have argued that astronomy is an inaccurate term, what are being studied are cosmologies and people who object to the use of logos have suggested adopting the Spanish cosmovisión.
When debates polarise between techniques, the methods are often referred to by a colour code, based on the colours of the bindings of the two volumes from the first Oxford Conference, where the approaches were first distinguished. Green (Old World) archaeoastronomers rely heavily on statistics and are sometimes accused of missing the cultural context of what is a social practice. Brown (New World) archaeoastronomers in contrast have abundant ethnographic and historical evidence and have been described as 'cavalier' on matters of measurement and statistical analysis. Finding a way to integrate various approaches has been a subject of much discussion since the early 1990s.
Methodology
There is no one way to do archaeoastronomy. The divisions between archaeoastronomers tend not to be between the physical scientists and the social scientists. Instead, it tends to depend on the location and/or kind of data available to the researcher. In the Old World, there is little data but the sites themselves; in the New World, the sites were supplemented by ethnographic and historic data. The effects of the isolated development of archaeoastronomy in different places can still often be seen in research today. Research methods can be classified as falling into one of two approaches, though more recent projects often use techniques from both categories.
Green archaeoastronomy
Green archaeoastronomy is named after the cover of the book Archaeoastronomy in the Old World. It is based primarily on statistics and is particularly apt for prehistoric sites where the social evidence is relatively scant compared to the historic period. The basic methods were developed by Alexander Thom during his extensive surveys of British megalithic sites.
Thom wished to examine whether or not prehistoric peoples used high-accuracy astronomy. He believed that by using horizon astronomy, observers could make estimates of dates in the year to a specific day. The observation required finding a place where on a specific date the Sun set into a notch on the horizon. A common theme is a mountain that blocked the Sun, but on the right day would allow the tiniest fraction to re-emerge on the other side for a 'double sunset'. The animation below shows two sunsets at a hypothetical site, one the day before the summer solstice and one at the summer solstice, which has a double sunset.
To test this idea he surveyed hundreds of stone rows and circles. Any individual alignment could indicate a direction by chance, but he planned to show that together the distribution of alignments was non-random, showing that there was an astronomical intent to the orientation of at least some of the alignments. His results indicated the existence of eight, sixteen, or perhaps even thirty-two approximately equal divisions of the year. The two solstices, the two equinoxes and four cross-quarter days, days halfway between a solstice and the equinox were associated with the medieval Celtic calendar. While not all these conclusions have been accepted, it has had an enduring influence on archaeoastronomy, especially in Europe.
Euan MacKie has supported Thom's analysis, to which he added an archaeological context by comparing Neolithic Britain to the Mayan civilization to argue for a stratified society in this period. To test his ideas he conducted a couple of excavations at proposed prehistoric observatories in Scotland. Kintraw is a site notable for its four-meter high standing stone. Thom proposed that this was a foresight to a point on the distant horizon between Beinn Shianaidh and Beinn o'Chaolias on Jura. This, Thom argued, was a notch on the horizon where a double sunset would occur at midwinter. However, from ground level, this sunset would be obscured by a ridge in the landscape, and the viewer would need to be raised by two meters: another observation platform was needed. This was identified across a gorge where a platform was formed from small stones. The lack of artifacts caused concern for some archaeologists and the petrofabric analysis was inconclusive, but further research at Maes Howe and on the Bush Barrow Lozenge led MacKie to conclude that while the term 'science' may be anachronistic, Thom was broadly correct upon the subject of high-accuracy alignments.
In contrast Clive Ruggles has argued that there are problems with the selection of data in Thom's surveys. Others have noted that the accuracy of horizon astronomy is limited by variations in refraction near the horizon. A deeper criticism of Green archaeoastronomy is that while it can answer whether there was likely to be an interest in astronomy in past times, its lack of a social element means that it struggles to answer why people would be interested, which makes it of limited use to people asking questions about the society of the past. Keith Kintigh wrote: "To put it bluntly, in many cases it doesn't matter much to the progress of anthropology whether a particular archaeoastronomical claim is right or wrong because the information doesn't inform the current interpretive questions." Nonetheless, the study of alignments remains a staple of archaeoastronomical research, especially in Europe.
Brown archaeoastronomy
In contrast to the largely alignment-oriented statistically led methods of green archaeoastronomy, brown archaeoastronomy has been identified as being closer to the history of astronomy or to cultural history, insofar as it draws on historical and ethnographic records to enrich its understanding of early astronomies and their relations to calendars and ritual. The many records of native customs and beliefs made by Spanish chroniclers and ethnographic researchers means that brown archaeoastronomy is often associated with studies of astronomy in the Americas.
One famous site where historical records have been used to interpret sites is Chichen Itza. Rather than analyzing the site and seeing which targets appear popular, archaeoastronomers have instead examined the ethnographic records to see what features of the sky were important to the Mayans and then sought archaeological correlates. One example which could have been overlooked without historical records is the Mayan interest in the planet Venus. This interest is attested to by the Dresden codex which contains tables with information about Venus's appearances in the sky. These cycles would have been of astrological and ritual significance as Venus was associated with Quetzalcoatl or Xolotl. Associations of architectural features with settings of Venus can be found in Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and probably some other Mesoamerican sites.
The Temple of the Warriors bears iconography depicting feathered serpents associated with Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan. This means that the building's alignment towards the place on the horizon where Venus first appears in the evening sky (when it coincides with the rainy season) may be meaningful. However, since both the date and the azimuth of this event change continuously, a solar interpretation of this orientation is much more likely.
Aveni claims that another building associated with the planet Venus in the form of Kukulcan, and the rainy season at Chichen Itza is the Caracol. This is a building with a circular tower and doors facing the cardinal directions. The base faces the most northerly setting of Venus. Additionally the pillars of a stylobate on the building's upper platform were painted black and red. These are colours associated with Venus as an evening and morning star. However the windows in the tower seem to have been little more than slots, making them poor at letting light in, but providing a suitable place to view out. In their discussion of the credibility of archaeoastronomical sites, Cotte and Ruggles considered the interpretation that the Caracol is an observatory site was debated among specialists, meeting the second of their four levels of site credibility.
Aveni states that one of the strengths of the brown methodology is that it can explore astronomies invisible to statistical analysis and offers the astronomy of the Incas as another example. The empire of the Incas was conceptually divided using ceques, radial routes emanating from the capital at Cusco. Thus there are alignments in all directions which would suggest there is little of astronomical significance, However, ethnohistorical records show that the various directions do have cosmological and astronomical significance with various points in the landscape being significant at different times of the year. In eastern Asia archaeoastronomy has developed from the history of astronomy and much archaeoastronomy is searching for material correlates of the historical record. This is due to the rich historical record of astronomical phenomena which, in China, stretches back into the Han dynasty, in the second century BC.
A criticism of this method is that it can be statistically weak. Schaefer in particular has questioned how robust the claimed alignments in the Caracol are. Because of the wide variety of evidence, which can include artefacts as well as sites, there is no one way to practice archaeoastronomy. Despite this it is accepted that archaeoastronomy is not a discipline that sits in isolation. Because archaeoastronomy is an interdisciplinary field, whatever is being investigated should make sense both archaeologically and astronomically. Studies are more likely to be considered sound if they use theoretical tools found in archaeology like analogy and homology and if they can demonstrate an understanding of accuracy and precision found in astronomy. Both quantitative analyses and interpretations based on ethnographic analogies and other contextual evidence have recently been applied in systematic studies of architectural orientations in the Maya area and in other parts of Mesoamerica.
Source materials
Because archaeoastronomy is about the many and various ways people interacted with the sky, there are a diverse range of sources giving information about astronomical practices.
Alignments
A common source of data for archaeoastronomy is the study of alignments. This is based on the assumption that the axis of alignment of an archaeological site is meaningfully oriented towards an astronomical target. Brown archaeoastronomers may justify this assumption through reading historical or ethnographic sources, while green archaeoastronomers tend to prove that alignments are unlikely to be selected by chance, usually by demonstrating common patterns of alignment at multiple sites.
An alignment is calculated by measuring the azimuth, the angle from north, of the structure and the altitude of the horizon it faces The azimuth is usually measured using a theodolite or a compass. A compass is easier to use, though the deviation of the Earth's magnetic field from true north, known as its magnetic declination must be taken into account. Compasses are also unreliable in areas prone to magnetic interference, such as sites being supported by scaffolding. Additionally a compass can only measure the azimuth to a precision of a half a degree.
A theodolite can be considerably more accurate if used correctly, but it is also considerably more difficult to use correctly. There is no inherent way to align a theodolite with North and so the scale has to be calibrated using astronomical observation, usually the position of the Sun. Because the position of celestial bodies changes with the time of day due to the Earth's rotation, the time of these calibration observations must be accurately known, or else there will be a systematic error in the measurements. Horizon altitudes can be measured with a theodolite or a clinometer.
Artifacts
For artifacts such as the Sky Disc of Nebra, alleged to be a Bronze Age artefact depicting the cosmos, the analysis would be similar to typical post-excavation analysis as used in other sub-disciplines in archaeology. An artefact is examined and attempts are made to draw analogies with historical or ethnographical records of other peoples. The more parallels that can be found, the more likely an explanation is to be accepted by other archaeologists.
A more mundane example is the presence of astrological symbols found on some shoes and sandals from the Roman Empire. The use of shoes and sandals is well known, but Carol van Driel-Murray has proposed that astrological symbols etched onto sandals gave the footwear spiritual or medicinal meanings. This is supported through citation of other known uses of astrological symbols and their connection to medical practice and with the historical records of the time.
Another well-known artefact with an astronomical use is the Antikythera mechanism. In this case analysis of the artefact, and reference to the description of similar devices described by Cicero, would indicate a plausible use for the device. The argument is bolstered by the presence of symbols on the mechanism, allowing the disc to be read.
Art and inscriptions
Art and inscriptions may not be confined to artefacts, but also appear painted or inscribed on an archaeological site. Sometimes inscriptions are helpful enough to give instructions to a site's use. For example, a Greek inscription on a stele (from Itanos) has been translated as:"Patron set this up for Zeus Epopsios. Winter solstice. Should anyone wish to know: off 'the little pig' and the stele the sun turns." From Mesoamerica come Mayan and Aztec codices. These are folding books made from Amatl, processed tree bark on which are glyphs in Mayan or Aztec script. The Dresden codex contains information regarding the Venus cycle, confirming its importance to the Mayans.
More problematic are those cases where the movement of the Sun at different times and seasons causes light and shadow interactions with petroglyphs. A widely known example is the Sun Dagger of Fajada Butte at which a glint of sunlight passes over a spiral petroglyph. The location of a dagger of light on the petroglyph varies throughout the year. At the summer solstice a dagger can be seen through the heart of the spiral; at the winter solstice two daggers appear to either side of it. It is proposed that this petroglyph was created to mark these events. Recent studies have identified many similar sites in the US Southwest and Northwestern Mexico. It has been argued that the number of solstitial markers at these sites provides statistical evidence that they were intended to mark the solstices. The Sun Dagger site on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, stands out for its explicit light markings that record all the key events of both the solar and lunar cycles: summer solstice, winter solstice, equinox, and the major and minor lunar standstills of the Moon's 18.6 year cycle. In addition at two other sites on Fajada Butte, there are five light markings on petroglyphs recording the summer and winter solstices, equinox and solar noon. Numerous buildings and interbuilding alignments of the great houses of Chaco Canyon and outlying areas are oriented to the same solar and lunar directions that are marked at the Sun Dagger site.
If no ethnographic nor historical data are found which can support this assertion then acceptance of the idea relies upon whether or not there are enough petroglyph sites in North America that such a correlation could occur by chance. It is helpful when petroglyphs are associated with existing peoples. This allows ethnoastronomers to question informants as to the meaning of such symbols.
Ethnographies
As well as the materials left by peoples themselves, there are also the reports of other who have encountered them. The historical records of the Conquistadores are a rich source of information about the pre-Columbian Americans. Ethnographers also provide material about many other peoples.
Aveni uses the importance of zenith passages as an example of the importance of ethnography. For peoples living between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn there are two days of the year when the noon Sun passes directly overhead and casts no shadow. In parts of Mesoamerica this was considered a significant day as it would herald the arrival of rains, and so play a part in the cycle of agriculture. This knowledge is still considered important amongst Mayan Indians living in Central America today. The ethnographic records suggested to archaeoastronomers that this day may have been important to the ancient Mayans. There are also shafts known as 'zenith tubes' which illuminate subterranean rooms when the Sun passes overhead found at places like Monte Albán and Xochicalco. It is only through the ethnography that we can speculate that the timing of the illumination was considered important in Mayan society. Alignments to the sunrise and sunset on the day of the zenith passage have been claimed to exist at several sites. However, it has been shown that, since there are very few orientations that can be related to these phenomena, they likely have different explanations.
Ethnographies also caution against over-interpretation of sites. At a site in Chaco Canyon can be found a pictograph with a star, crescent and hand. It has been argued by some astronomers that this is a record of the 1054 Supernova. However recent reexaminations of related 'supernova petroglyphs' raises questions about such sites in general. Cotte and Ruggles used the Supernova petroglyph as an example of a completely refuted site and anthropological evidence suggests other interpretations. The Zuni people, who claim a strong ancestral affiliation with Chaco, marked their sun-watching station with a crescent, star, hand and sundisc, similar to those found at the Chaco site.
Ethnoastronomy is also an important field outside of the Americas. For example, anthropological work with Aboriginal Australians is producing much information about their Indigenous astronomies and about their interaction with the modern world.
Recreating the ancient sky
Once the researcher has data to test, it is often necessary to attempt to recreate ancient sky conditions to place the data in its historical environment.
Declination
To calculate what astronomical features a structure faced a coordinate system is needed. The stars provide such a system. On a clear night observe the stars spinning around the celestial pole can be observed. This point is +90° of the North Celestial Pole or −90° observing the Southern Celestial Pole. The concentric circles the stars trace out are lines of celestial latitude, known as declination. The arc connecting the points on the horizon due East and due West (if the horizon is flat) and all points midway between the Celestial Poles is the Celestial Equator which has a declination of 0°. The visible declinations vary depending where you are on the globe. Only an observer on the North Pole of Earth would be unable to see any stars from the Southern Celestial Hemisphere at night (see diagram below). Once a declination has been found for the point on the horizon that a building faces it is then possible to say whether a specific body can be seen in that direction.
Solar positioning
While the stars are fixed to their declinations the Sun is not. The rising point of the Sun varies throughout the year. It swings between two limits marked by the solstices a bit like a pendulum, slowing as it reaches the extremes, but passing rapidly through the midpoint. If an archaeoastronomer can calculate from the azimuth and horizon height that a site was built to view a declination of +23.5° then he or she need not wait until 21 June to confirm the site does indeed face the summer solstice. For more information see History of solar observation.
Lunar positioning
The Moon's appearance is considerably more complex. Its motion, like the Sun, is between two limits—known as lunistices rather than solstices. However, its travel between lunistices is considerably faster. It takes a sidereal month to complete its cycle rather than the year-long trek of the Sun. This is further complicated as the lunistices marking the limits of the Moon's movement move on an 18.6 year cycle. For slightly over nine years the extreme limits of the Moon are outside the range of sunrise. For the remaining half of the cycle the Moon never exceeds the limits of the range of sunrise. However, much lunar observation was concerned with the phase of the Moon. The cycle from one New Moon to the next runs on an entirely different cycle, the Synodic month. Thus when examining sites for lunar significance the data can appear sparse due to the extremely variable nature of the Moon. See Moon for more details.
Stellar positioning
Finally there is often a need to correct for the apparent movement of the stars. On the timescale of human civilisation the stars have largely maintained the same position relative to each other. Each night they appear to rotate around the celestial poles due to the Earth's rotation about its axis. However, the Earth spins rather like a spinning top. Not only does the Earth rotate, it wobbles. The Earth's axis takes around 25,800 years to complete one full wobble. The effect to the archaeoastronomer is that stars did not rise over the horizon in the past in the same places as they do today. Nor did the stars rotate around Polaris as they do now. In the case of the Egyptian pyramids, it has been shown they were aligned towards Thuban, a faint star in the constellation of Draco. The effect can be substantial over relatively short lengths of time, historically speaking. For instance a person born on 25 December in Roman times would have been born with the Sun in the constellation Capricorn. In the modern period a person born on the same date would have the Sun in Sagittarius due to the precession of the equinoxes.
Transient phenomena
Additionally there are often transient phenomena, events which do not happen on an annual cycle. Most predictable are events like eclipses. In the case of solar eclipses these can be used to date events in the past. A solar eclipse mentioned by Herodotus enables us to date a battle between the Medes and the Lydians, which following the eclipse failed to happen, to 28 May, 585 BC. Other easily calculated events are supernovae whose remains are visible to astronomers and therefore their positions and magnitude can be accurately calculated.
Some comets are predictable, most famously Halley's Comet. Yet as a class of object they remain unpredictable and can appear at any time. Some have extremely lengthy orbital periods which means their past appearances and returns cannot be predicted. Others may have only ever passed through the Solar System once and so are inherently unpredictable.
Meteor showers should be predictable, but some meteors are cometary debris and so require calculations of orbits which are currently impossible to complete. Other events noted by ancients include aurorae, sun dogs and rainbows all of which are as impossible to predict as the ancient weather, but nevertheless may have been considered important phenomena.
Major topics of archaeoastronomical research
The use of calendars
A common justification for the need for astronomy is the need to develop an accurate calendar for agricultural reasons. Ancient texts like Hesiod's Works and Days, an ancient farming manual, would appear to partially confirm this: astronomical observations are used in combination with ecological signs, such as bird migrations to determine the seasons. Ethnoastronomical studies of the Hopi of the southwestern United States indicate that they carefully observed the rising and setting positions of the Sun to determine the proper times to plant crops. However, ethnoastronomical work with the Mursi of Ethiopia shows that their luni-solar calendar was somewhat haphazard, indicating the limits of astronomical calendars in some societies. All the same, calendars appear to be an almost universal phenomenon in societies as they provide tools for the regulation of communal activities.
One such example is the Tzolk'in calendar of 260 days. Together with the 365-day year, it was used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, forming part of a comprehensive calendrical system, which combined a series of astronomical observations and ritual cycles. Archaeoastronomical studies throughout Mesoamerica have shown that the orientations of most structures refer to the Sun and were used in combination with the 260-day cycle for scheduling agricultural activities and the accompanying rituals. The distribution of dates and intervals marked by orientations of monumental ceremonial complexes in the area along the southern Gulf Coast in Mexico, dated to about 1100 to 700 BCE, represents the earliest evidence of the use of this cycle.
Other peculiar calendars include ancient Greek calendars. These were nominally lunar, starting with the New Moon. In reality the calendar could pause or skip days with confused citizens inscribing dates by both the civic calendar and ton theoi, by the moon. The lack of any universal calendar for ancient Greece suggests that coordination of panhellenic events such as games or rituals could be difficult and that astronomical symbolism may have been used as a politically neutral form of timekeeping. Orientation measurements in Greek temples and Byzantine churches have been associated to deity's name day, festivities, and special events.
Myth and cosmology
Another motive for studying the sky is to understand and explain the universe. In these cultures myth was a tool for achieving this, and the explanations, while not reflecting the standards of modern science, are cosmologies.
The Incas arranged their empire to demonstrate their cosmology. The capital, Cusco, was at the centre of the empire and connected to it by means of ceques, conceptually straight lines radiating out from the centre. These ceques connected the centre of the empire to the four suyus, which were regions defined by their direction from Cusco. The notion of a quartered cosmos is common across the Andes. Gary Urton, who has conducted fieldwork in the Andean villagers of Misminay, has connected this quartering with the appearance of the Milky Way in the night sky. In one season it will bisect the sky and in another bisect it in a perpendicular fashion.
The importance of observing cosmological factors is also seen on the other side of the world. The Forbidden City in Beijing is laid out to follow cosmic order though rather than observing four directions. The Chinese system was composed of five directions: North, South, East, West and Centre. The Forbidden City occupied the centre of ancient Beijing. One approaches the Emperor from the south, thus placing him in front of the circumpolar stars. This creates the situation of the heavens revolving around the person of the Emperor. The Chinese cosmology is now better known through its export as feng shui.
There is also much information about how the universe was thought to work stored in the mythology of the constellations. The Barasana of the Amazon plan part of their annual cycle based on observation of the stars. When their constellation of the Caterpillar-Jaguar (roughly equivalent to the modern Scorpius) falls they prepare to catch the pupating caterpillars of the forest as they fall from the trees. The caterpillars provide food at a season when other foods are scarce.
A more well-known source of constellation myth are the texts of the Greeks and Romans. The origin of their constellations remains a matter of vigorous and occasionally fractious debate.
The loss of one of the sisters, Merope, in some Greek myths may reflect an astronomical event wherein one of the stars in the Pleiades disappeared from view by the naked eye.
Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the History of Science in the School of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with Hertha von Dechend believed that the old mythological stories handed down from antiquity were not random fictitious tales but were accurate depictions of celestial cosmology clothed in tales to aid their oral transmission. The chaos, monsters and violence in ancient myths are representative of the forces that shape each age. They believed that ancient myths are the remains of preliterate astronomy that became lost with the rise of the Greco-Roman civilization. Santillana and von Dechend in their book Hamlet's Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969) clearly state that ancient myths have no historical or factual basis other than a cosmological one encoding astronomical phenomena, especially the precession of the equinoxes. Santillana and von Dechend's approach is not widely accepted.
Displays of power
By including celestial motifs in clothing it becomes possible for the wearer to make claims the power on Earth is drawn from above. It has been said that the Shield of Achilles described by Homer is also a catalogue of constellations. In North America shields depicted in Comanche petroglyphs appear to include Venus symbolism.
Solsticial alignments also can be seen as displays of power. When viewed from a ceremonial plaza on the Island of the Sun (the mythical origin place of the Sun) in Lake Titicaca, the Sun was seen to rise at the June solstice between two towers on a nearby ridge. The sacred part of the island was separated from the remainder of it by a stone wall and ethnographic records indicate that access to the sacred space was restricted to members of the Inca ruling elite. Ordinary pilgrims stood on a platform outside the ceremonial area to see the solstice Sun rise between the towers.
In Egypt the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak has been the subject of much study. Evaluation of the site, taking into account the change over time of the obliquity of the ecliptic show that the Great Temple was aligned on the rising of the midwinter Sun. The length of the corridor down which sunlight would travel would have limited illumination at other times of the year.
In a later period the Serapeum of Alexandria was also said to have contained a solar alignment so that, on a specific sunrise, a shaft of light would pass across the lips of the statue of Serapis thus symbolising the Sun saluting the god.
Major sites of archaeoastronomical interest
Clive Ruggles and Michel Cotte recently edited a book on heritage sites of astronomy and archaeoastronomy which discussed a worldwide sample of astronomical and archaeoastronomical sites and provided criteria for the classification of archaeoastronomical sites.
Newgrange
Newgrange is a passage tomb in the Republic of Ireland dating from around 3,300 to 2,900 BC For a few days around the Winter Solstice light shines along the central passageway into the heart of the tomb. What makes this notable is not that light shines in the passageway, but that it does not do so through the main entrance. Instead it enters via a hollow box above the main doorway discovered by Michael O'Kelly. It is this roofbox which strongly indicates that the tomb was built with an astronomical aspect in mind. In their discussion of the credibility of archaeoastronomical sites, Cotte and Ruggles gave Newgrange as an example of a Generally accepted site, the highest of their four levels of credibility. Clive Ruggles notes:
Egypt
Since the first modern measurements of the precise cardinal orientations of the pyramids by Flinders Petrie, various astronomical methods have been proposed for the original establishment of these orientations. It was recently proposed that this was done by observing the positions of two stars in the Plough / Big Dipper which was known to Egyptians as the thigh. It is thought that a vertical alignment between these two stars checked with a plumb bob was used to ascertain where north lay. The deviations from true north using this model reflect the accepted dates of construction.
Some have argued that the pyramids were laid out as a map of the three stars in the belt of Orion, although this theory has been criticized by reputable astronomers. The site was instead probably governed by a spectacular hierophany which occurs at the summer solstice, when the Sun, viewed from the Sphinx terrace, forms—together with the two giant pyramids—the symbol Akhet, which was also the name of the Great Pyramid. Further, the south east corners of all the three pyramids align towards the temple of Heliopolis, as first discovered by the Egyptologist Mark Lehner.
The astronomical ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut (BC) contains the Celestial Diagram depicting circumpolar constellations in the form of discs. Each disc is divided into 24 sections suggesting a 24-hour time period. Constellations are portrayed as sacred deities of Egypt. The observation of lunar cycles is also evident.
El Castillo
El Castillo, also known as Kukulcán's Pyramid, is a Mesoamerican step-pyramid built in the centre of Mayan center of Chichen Itza in Mexico. Several architectural features have suggested astronomical elements. Each of the stairways built into the sides of the pyramid has 91 steps. Along with the extra one for the platform at the top, this totals 365 steps, which is possibly one for each day of the year (365.25) or the number of lunar orbits in 10,000 rotations (365.01).
A visually striking effect is seen every March and September as an unusual shadow occurs around the equinoxes. Light and shadow phenomena have been proposed to explain a possible architectural hierophany involving the sun at Chichén Itzá in a Maya Toltec structure dating to about 1000 CE. A shadow appears to descend the west balustrade of the northern stairway. The visual effect is of a serpent descending the stairway, with its head at the base in light. Additionally the western face points to sunset around 25 May, traditionally the date of transition from the dry to the rainy season. The intended alignment was, however, likely incorporated in the northern (main) facade of the temple, as it corresponds to sunsets on May 20 and July 24, recorded also by the central axis of Castillo at Tulum. The two dates are separated by 65 and 300 days, and it has been shown that the solar orientations in Mesoamerica regularly correspond to dates separated by calendrically significant intervals (multiples of 13 and 20 days). In their discussion of the credibility of archaeoastronomical sites, Cotte and Ruggles used the "equinox hierophany" at Chichén Itzá as an example of an Unproven site, the third of their four levels of credibility.
Stonehenge
Many astronomical alignments have been claimed for Stonehenge, a complex of megaliths and earthworks in the Salisbury Plain of England. The most famous of these is the midsummer alignment, where the Sun rises over the Heel Stone. However, this interpretation has been challenged by some archaeologists who argue that the midwinter alignment, where the viewer is outside Stonehenge and sees the Sun setting in the henge, is the more significant alignment, and the midsummer alignment may be a coincidence due to local topography. In their discussion of the credibility of archaeoastronomical sites, Cotte and Ruggles gave Stonehenge as an example of a Generally accepted site, the highest of their four levels of credibility.
As well as solar alignments, there are proposed lunar alignments. The four station stones mark out a rectangle. The short sides point towards the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. The long sides if viewed towards the south-east, face the most southerly rising of the Moon. Aveni notes that these lunar alignments have never gained the acceptance that the solar alignments have received. The Heel Stone azimuth is one-seventh of circumference, matching the latitude of Avebury, while summer solstice sunrise azimuth is no longer equal to the construction era direction.
Maeshowe
This is an architecturally outstanding Neolithic chambered tomb on the mainland of Orkney, Scotland—probably dating to the early 3rd millennium BC, and where the setting Sun at midwinter shines down the entrance passage into the central chamber (see Newgrange). In the 1990s further investigations were carried out to discover whether this was an accurate or an approximate solar alignment. Several new aspects of the site were discovered. In the first place the entrance passage faces the hills of the island Hoy, about 10 miles away. Secondly, it consists of two straight lengths, angled at a few degrees to each other. Thirdly, the outer part is aligned towards the midwinter sunset position on a level horizon just to the left of Ward Hill on Hoy. Fourthly the inner part points directly at the Barnhouse standing stone about 400m away and then to the right end of the summit of Ward Hill, just before it dips down to the notch between it at Cuilags to the right. This indicated line points to sunset on the first Sixteenths of the solar year (according to A. Thom) before and after the winter solstice and the notch at the base of the right slope of the Hill is at the same declination. Fourthly a similar 'double sunset' phenomenon is seen at the right end of Cuilags, also on Hoy; here the date is the first Eighth of the year before and after the winter solstice, at the beginning of November and February respectively—the Old Celtic festivals of Samhain and Imbolc. This alignment is not indicated by an artificial structure but gains plausibility from the other two indicated lines. Maeshowe is thus an extremely sophisticated calendar site which must have been positioned carefully in order to use the horizon foresights in the ways described.
Uxmal
Uxmal is a Mayan city in the Puuc Hills of Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The Governor's Palace at Uxmal is often used as an exemplar of why it is important to combine ethnographic and alignment data. The palace is aligned with an azimuth of 118° on the pyramid of Cehtzuc. This alignment corresponds approximately to the southernmost rising and, with a much greater precision, to the northernmost setting of Venus; both phenomena occur once every eight years. By itself this would not be sufficient to argue for a meaningful connection between the two events. The palace has to be aligned in one direction or another and why should the rising of Venus be any more important than the rising of the Sun, Moon, other planets, Sirius et cetera? The answer given is that not only does the palace point towards significant points of Venus, it is also covered in glyphs which stand for Venus and Mayan zodiacal constellations. Moreover, the great northerly extremes of Venus always occur in late April or early May, coinciding with the onset of the rainy season. The Venus glyphs placed in the cheeks of the Maya rain god Chac, most likely referring to the concomitance of these phenomena, support the west-working orientation scheme.
Chaco Canyon
In Chaco Canyon, the center of the ancient Pueblo culture in the American Southwest, numerous solar and lunar light markings and architectural and road alignments have been documented. These findings date to the 1977 discovery of the Sun Dagger site by Anna Sofaer. Three large stone slabs leaning against a cliff channel light and shadow markings onto two spiral petroglyphs on the cliff wall, marking the solstices, equinoxes and the lunar standstills of the 18.6 year cycle of the moon. Subsequent research by the Solstice Project and others demonstrated that numerous building and interbuilding alignments of the great houses of Chaco Canyon are oriented to solar, lunar and cardinal directions. In addition, research shows that the Great North Road, a thirty-five mile engineered "road", was constructed not for utilitarian purposes but rather to connect the ceremonial center of Chaco Canyon with the direction north.
Lascaux Cave
In recent years, new research has suggested that the Lascaux cave paintings in France may incorporate prehistoric star charts. Michael Rappenglueck of the University of Munich argues that some of the non-figurative dot clusters and dots within some of the figurative images correlate with the constellations of Taurus, the Pleiades and the grouping known as the "Summer Triangle". Based on her own study of the astronomical significance of Bronze Age petroglyphs in the Vallée des Merveilles and her extensive survey of other prehistoric cave painting sites in the region—most of which appear to have been selected because the interiors are illuminated by the setting Sun on the day of the winter solstice—French researcher Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez has further proposed that the gallery of figurative images in the Great Hall represents an extensive star map and that key points on major figures in the group correspond to stars in the main constellations as they appeared in the Paleolithic. Appliying phylogenetics to myths of the Cosmic Hunt, Julien d'Huy suggested that the palaeolithic version of this story could be the following: there is an animal that is a horned herbivore, especially an elk. One human pursues this ungulate. The hunt locates or gets to the sky. The animal is alive when it is transformed into a constellation. It forms the Big Dipper. This story may be represented in the famous Lascaux shaft 'scene'
Fringe archaeoastronomy
Archaeoastronomy owes something of this poor reputation among scholars to its occasional misuse to advance a range of pseudo-historical accounts. During the 1930s, Otto S. Reuter compiled a study entitled Germanische Himmelskunde, or "Teutonic Skylore". The astronomical orientations of ancient monuments claimed by Reuter and his followers would place the ancient Germanic peoples ahead of the Ancient Near East in the field of astronomy, demonstrating the intellectual superiority of the "Aryans" (Indo-Europeans) over the Semites.
More recently Gallagher, Pyle, and Fell interpreted inscriptions in West Virginia as a description in Celtic Ogham alphabet of the supposed winter solstitial marker at the site. The controversial translation was supposedly validated by a problematic archaeoastronomical indication in which the winter solstice Sun shone on an inscription of the Sun at the site. Subsequent analyses criticized its cultural inappropriateness, as well as its linguistic and archaeoastronomical claims, to describe it as an example of "cult archaeology".
Archaeoastronomy is sometimes related to the fringe discipline of Archaeocryptography, when its followers attempt to find underlying mathematical orders beneath the proportions, size, and placement of archaeoastronomical sites such as Stonehenge and the Pyramid of Kukulcán at Chichen Itza.
India
Since the 19th century, numerous scholars have sought to use archaeoastronomical calculations to demonstrate the antiquity of Ancient Indian Vedic culture, computing the dates of astronomical observations ambiguously described in ancient poetry to as early as 4000 BC. David Pingree, a historian of Indian astronomy, condemned "the scholars who perpetrate wild theories of prehistoric science and call themselves archaeoastronomers."
Organisations and publications
There are currently three academic organisations for scholars of archaeoastronomy. ISAACthe International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culturewas founded in 1995 and now sponsors the Oxford conferences and Archaeoastronomy – the Journal of Astronomy in Culture. SEAC – La Société Européenne pour l'Astronomie dans la Culture
is slightly older; it was created in 1992. SEAC holds annual conferences in Europe and publishes refereed conference proceedings on an annual basis. There is also SIACLa Sociedad Interamericana de Astronomía en la Cultura, primarily a Latin American organisation which was founded in 2003. In 2009, the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest (SCAAS) was founded, a regional organisation focusing on the astronomies of the native peoples of the Southwestern United States; it has since held seven meetings and workshops. Two new organisations focused on regional archaeoastronomy were founded in 2013: ASIA – the Australian Society for Indigenous Astronomy in Australia and SMART – the Society of Māori Astronomy Research and Traditions in New Zealand. Additionally, in 2017, the Romanian Society for Cultural Astronomy ex was founded. It holds an annual international conference and has published the first monograph on archaeo- and ethnoastronomy in Romania (2019).
Additionally the Journal for the History of Astronomy publishes many archaeoastronomical papers. For twenty-seven volumes (from 1979 to 2002) it published an annual supplement Archaeoastronomy. The Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand), Culture & Cosmos (University of Wales, UK) and Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry (University of Aegean, Greece) also publish papers on archaeoastronomy.
Various national archaeoastronomical projects have been undertaken. Among them is the program at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research named "Archaeo Astronomy in Indian Context" that has made interesting findings in this field.
See also
References
Citations
Bibliography
. reprinted in Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000), pp. 30–39.
Three volumes; 217 articles.
Šprajc, Ivan (2015). Governor's Palace at Uxmal. In: Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, ed. by Clive L. N. Ruggles, New York: Springer, pp. 773–81
Šprajc, Ivan, and Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava (2013). Astronomía en la arquitectura de Chichén Itzá: una reevaluación. Estudios de Cultura Maya XLI: 31–60.
Further reading
External links
Astronomy before History - A chapter from The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Michael Hoskin ed., 1999.
Clive Ruggles: images, bibliography, software, and synopsis of his course at the University of Leicester.
Traditions of the Sun – NASA and others exploring the world's ancient observatories.
Ancient Observatories: Timeless Knowledge NASA Poster on ancient (and modern) observatories.
Astronomy is the most ancient of the sciences. (About Kazakh folk astronomy)
Ancient astronomy
Astronomical sub-disciplines
Archaeological sub-disciplines
Traditional knowledge
Articles containing video clips
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An ammeter (abbreviation of Ampere meter) is an instrument used to measure the current in a circuit. Electric currents are measured in amperes (A), hence the name. For direct measurement, the ammeter is connected in series with the circuit in which the current is to be measured. An ammeter usually has low resistance so that it does not cause a significant voltage drop in the circuit being measured.
Instruments used to measure smaller currents, in the milliampere or microampere range, are designated as milliammeters or microammeters. Early ammeters were laboratory instruments that relied on the Earth's magnetic field for operation. By the late 19th century, improved instruments were designed which could be mounted in any position and allowed accurate measurements in electric power systems. It is generally represented by letter 'A' in a circuit.
History
The relation between electric current, magnetic fields and physical forces was first noted by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820, who observed a compass needle was deflected from pointing North when a current flowed in an adjacent wire. The tangent galvanometer was used to measure currents using this effect, where the restoring force returning the pointer to the zero position was provided by the Earth's magnetic field. This made these instruments usable only when aligned with the Earth's field. Sensitivity of the instrument was increased by using additional turns of wire to multiply the effect – the instruments were called "multipliers".
The word rheoscope as a detector of electrical currents was coined by Sir Charles Wheatstone about 1840 but is no longer used to describe electrical instruments. The word makeup is similar to that of rheostat (also coined by Wheatstone) which was a device used to adjust the current in a circuit. Rheostat is a historical term for a variable resistance, though unlike rheoscope may still be encountered.
Types
Some instruments are panel meters, meant to be mounted on some sort of control panel. Of these, the flat, horizontal or vertical type is often called an edgewise meter.
Moving-coil
The D'Arsonval galvanometer is a moving coil ammeter. It uses magnetic deflection, where current passing through a coil placed in the magnetic field of a permanent magnet causes the coil to move. The modern form of this instrument was developed by Edward Weston, and uses two spiral springs to provide the restoring force. The uniform air gap between the iron core and the permanent magnet poles make the deflection of the meter linearly proportional to current. These meters have linear scales. Basic meter movements can have full-scale deflection for currents from about 25 microamperes to 10 milliamperes.
Because the magnetic field is polarised, the meter needle acts in opposite directions for each direction of current. A DC ammeter is thus sensitive to which polarity it is connected in; most are marked with a positive terminal, but some have centre-zero mechanisms
and can display currents in either direction. A moving coil meter indicates the average (mean) of a varying current through it,
which is zero for AC. For this reason, moving-coil meters are only usable directly for DC, not AC.
This type of meter movement is extremely common for both ammeters and other meters derived from them, such as voltmeters and ohmmeters.
Moving magnet
Moving magnet ammeters operate on essentially the same principle as moving coil, except that the coil is mounted in the meter case, and a permanent magnet moves the needle. Moving magnet Ammeters are able to carry larger currents than moving coil instruments, often several tens of Amperes, because the coil can be made of thicker wire and the current does not have to be carried by the hairsprings. Indeed, some Ammeters of this type do not have hairsprings at all, instead using a fixed permanent magnet to provide the restoring force.
Electrodynamic
An electrodynamic ammeter uses an electromagnet instead of the permanent magnet of the d'Arsonval movement. This instrument can respond to both alternating and direct current and also indicates true RMS for AC. See Wattmeter for an alternative use for this instrument.
Moving-iron
Moving iron ammeters use a piece of iron which moves when acted upon by the electromagnetic force of a fixed coil of wire. The moving-iron meter was invented by Austrian engineer Friedrich Drexler in 1884.
This type of meter responds to both direct and alternating currents (as opposed to the moving-coil ammeter, which works on direct current only). The iron element consists of a moving vane attached to a pointer, and a fixed vane, surrounded by a coil. As alternating or direct current flows through the coil and induces a magnetic field in both vanes, the vanes repel each other and the moving vane deflects against the restoring force provided by fine helical springs. The deflection of a moving iron meter is proportional to the square of the current. Consequently, such meters would normally have a nonlinear scale, but the iron parts are usually modified in shape to make the scale fairly linear over most of its range. Moving iron instruments indicate the RMS value of any AC waveform applied. Moving iron ammeters are commonly used to measure current in industrial frequency AC circuits.
Hot-wire
In a hot-wire ammeter, a current passes through a wire which expands as it heats. Although these instruments have slow response time and low accuracy, they were sometimes used in measuring radio-frequency current.
These also measure true RMS for an applied AC.
Digital
In much the same way as the analogue ammeter formed the basis for a wide variety of derived meters, including voltmeters, the basic mechanism for a digital meter is a digital voltmeter mechanism, and other types of meter are built around this.
Digital ammeter designs use a shunt resistor to produce a calibrated voltage proportional to the current flowing. This voltage is then measured by a digital voltmeter, through use of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC); the digital display is calibrated to display the current through the shunt. Such instruments are often calibrated to indicate the RMS value for a sine wave only, but many designs will indicate true RMS within limitations of the wave crest factor.
Integrating
There is also a range of devices referred to as integrating ammeters.
In these ammeters the current is summed over time, giving as a result the product of current and time; which is proportional to the electrical charge transferred with that current. These can be used for metering energy (the charge needs to be multiplied by the voltage to give energy) or for estimating the charge of a battery or capacitor.
Picoammeter
A picoammeter, or pico ammeter, measures very low electric current, usually from the picoampere range at the lower end to the milliampere range at the upper end. Picoammeters are used where the current being measured is below the limits of sensitivity of other devices, such as multimeters.
Most picoammeters use a "virtual short" technique and have several different measurement ranges that must be switched between to cover multiple decades of measurement. Other modern picoammeters use log compression and a "current sink" method that eliminates range switching and associated voltage spikes.
Special design and usage considerations must be observed in order to reduce leakage current which may swamp measurements such as special insulators and driven shields. Triaxial cable is often used for probe connections.
Application
Ammeters must be connected in series with the circuit to be measured. For relatively small currents (up to a few amperes), an ammeter may pass the whole of the circuit current. For larger direct currents, a shunt resistor carries most of the circuit current and a small, accurately-known fraction of the current passes through the meter movement. For alternating current circuits, a current transformer may be used to provide a convenient small current to drive an instrument, such as 1 or 5 amperes, while the primary current to be measured is much larger (up to thousands of amperes). The use of a shunt or current transformer also allows convenient location of the indicating meter without the need to run heavy circuit conductors up to the point of observation. In the case of alternating current, the use of a current transformer also isolates the meter from the high voltage of the primary circuit. A shunt provides no such isolation for a direct-current ammeter, but where high voltages are used it may be possible to place the ammeter in the "return" side of the circuit which may be at low potential with respect to earth.
Ammeters must not be connected directly across a voltage source since their internal resistance is very low and excess current would flow. Ammeters are designed for a low voltage drop across their terminals, much less than one volt; the extra circuit losses produced by the ammeter are called its "burden" on the measured circuit(I).
Ordinary Weston-type meter movements can measure only milliamperes at most, because the springs and practical coils can carry only limited currents. To measure larger currents, a resistor called a shunt is placed in parallel with the meter. The resistances of shunts is in the integer to fractional milliohm range. Nearly all of the current flows through the shunt, and only a small fraction flows through the meter. This allows the meter to measure large currents. Traditionally, the meter used with a shunt has a full-scale deflection (FSD) of , so shunts are typically designed to produce a voltage drop of when carrying their full rated current.
To make a multi-range ammeter, a selector switch can be used to connect one of a number of shunts across the meter. It must be a make-before-break switch to avoid damaging current surges through the meter movement when switching ranges.
A better arrangement is the Ayrton shunt or universal shunt, invented by William E. Ayrton, which does not require a make-before-break switch. It also avoids any inaccuracy because of contact resistance. In the figure, assuming for example, a movement with a full-scale voltage of 50 mV and desired current ranges of 10 mA, 100 mA, and 1 A, the resistance values would be: R1 = 4.5 ohms, R2 = 0.45 ohm, R3 = 0.05 ohm. And if the movement resistance is 1000 ohms, for example, R1 must be adjusted to 4.525 ohms.
Switched shunts are rarely used for currents above 10 amperes.
Zero-center ammeters are used for applications requiring current to be measured with both polarities, common in scientific and industrial equipment. Zero-center ammeters are also commonly placed in series with a battery. In this application, the charging of the battery deflects the needle to one side of the scale (commonly, the right side) and the discharging of the battery deflects the needle to the other side. A special type of zero-center ammeter for testing high currents in cars and trucks has a pivoted bar magnet that moves the pointer, and a fixed bar magnet to keep the pointer centered with no current. The magnetic field around the wire carrying current to be measured deflects the moving magnet.
Since the ammeter shunt has a very low resistance, mistakenly wiring the ammeter in parallel with a voltage source will cause a short circuit, at best blowing a fuse, possibly damaging the instrument and wiring, and exposing an observer to injury.
In AC circuits, a current transformer can be used to convert the large current in the main circuit into a smaller current more suited to a meter. Some designs of transformer are able to directly convert the magnetic field around a conductor into a small AC current, typically either or at full rated current, that can be easily read by a meter. In a similar way, accurate AC/DC non-contact ammeters have been constructed using Hall effect magnetic field sensors. A portable hand-held clamp-on ammeter is a common tool for maintenance of industrial and commercial electrical equipment, which is temporarily clipped over a wire to measure current. Some recent types have a parallel pair of magnetically soft probes that are placed on either side of the conductor.
See also
Clamp meter
Class of accuracy in electrical measurements
Electric circuit
Electrical measurements
Electrical current#Measurement
Electronics
List of electronics topics
Measurement category
Multimeter
Ohmmeter
Rheoscope
Voltmeter
Notes
References
External links
— from Lessons in Electric Circuits series main page
Electrical meters
Electronic test equipment
Flow meters
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An anxiolytic (; also antipanic or anti-anxiety agent) is a medication or other intervention that reduces anxiety. This effect is in contrast to anxiogenic agents which increase anxiety. Anxiolytic medications are used for the treatment of anxiety disorders and their related psychological and physical symptoms.
Nature of anxiety
Anxiety is a naturally-occurring emotion and response. When anxiety levels exceed the tolerability of a person, anxiety disorders may occur. People with anxiety disorders can exhibit fear responses, such as defensive behaviors, high levels of alertness, and negative emotions. Those with anxiety disorders may have concurrent psychological disorders, such as depression. Anxiety disorders are classified using six possible clinical assessments:
Different types of anxiety disorders will share some general symptoms while having their own distinctive symptoms. This explains why people with different types of anxiety disorders will respond differently to different classes of anti-anxiety medications.
Etiology
The etiology of anxiety disorder remains unknown. There are several contributing factors that are still yet to be proved to cause anxiety disorders. These factors include childhood anxiety, drug induction by central stimulant drugs, metabolic diseases or having depressive disorder.
Medications
Anti-anxiety medication is any drug that can be taken or prescribed for the treatment of anxiety disorders, which may be mediated by neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the central nervous system. Anti-anxiety medication can be classified into six types according to their different mechanisms: antidepressants, benzodiazepines, azapirones, antiepileptics, antipsychotics, and beta blockers.
Antidepressants include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). SSRIs are used in all types of anxiety disorders while SNRIs are used for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Both of them are considered as first-line anti-anxiety medications. TCAs are second-line treatment as they cause more significant adverse effects when compared to the first-line treatment. Benzodiazepines are effective in emergent and short-term treatment of anxiety disorders due to their fast onset but carry the risk of dependence. Buspirone is indicated for GAD, which has much slower onset but with the advantage of less sedating and withdrawal effects.
History
The first monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), iproniazid, was discovered accidentally when developing the new antitubercular drug isoniazid. The drug was found to induce euphoria and improve the patient's appetite and sleep quality.
The first tricyclic antidepressant, imipramine, was originally developed and studied to be an antihistamine alongside other first-generation antihistamines of the time, such as promethazine. TCAs can increase the level of norepinephrine and serotonin by inhibiting their reuptake transport proteins. The majority of TCAs exert greater effect on norepinephrine, which leads to side effects like drowsiness and memory loss.
In order to be more effective on serotonin agonism and avoid anticholinergic and antihistaminergic side effects, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) were researched and introduced to treat anxiety disorders. The first SSRI, fluoxetine (Prozac), was discovered in 1974 and approved by FDA in 1987. After that, other SSRIs like sertraline (Zoloft), paroxetine (Paxil), and escitalopram (Lexapro) have entered the market.
The first serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), venlafaxine (Effexor), entered the market in 1993. SNRIs can target serotonin and norepinephrine transporters while avoiding imposing significant effects on other adrenergic (α1, α2, and β), histamine (H1), muscarinic, dopamine, or postsynaptic serotonin receptors.
Classifications
There are six groups of anti-anxiety medications available that have been proven to be clinically significant in treatment of anxiety disorders. The groups of medications are as follows.
Antidepressants
Medications that are indicated for both anxiety disorders and depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are new generations of antidepressants. They have a much lower adverse effect profile than older antidepressants like monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and tricyclic antidepressant (TCAs). Therefore, SSRIs and SNRIs are now the first-line agent in treating long term anxiety disorders, given their applications and significance in all six types of disorders.
Benzodiazepines
Benzodiazepines are used for acute anxiety and could be added along with current use of SSRIs to stabilize a treatment. Long-term use in treatment plans is not recommended. Different kinds of benzodiazepine will vary in its pharmacological profile, including its strength of effect and time taken for metabolism. The choice of the benzodiazepine will depend on the corresponding profiles.
Benzodiazepines are used for emergent or short-term management. They are not recommended as the first-line anti-anxiety drugs, but they can be used in combination with SSRIs/SNRIs during the initial treatment stage. Indications include panic disorder, sleep disorders, seizures, acute behavioral disturbance, muscle spasm and premedication and sedation for procedures.
Azapirones
Buspirone can be useful in GAD but not particularly effective in treating phobias, panic disorder or social anxiety disorders. It is a safer option for long-term use as it does not cause dependence like benzodiazepines.
Antiepileptics
Antiepileptics are rarely prescribed as an off-label treatment for anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders. There have been some suggestions that they may help with GAD, panic disorder and phobic symptoms but there is currently not enough research or conclusive data suggesting they are more effective than a placebo.
Antipsychotics
Olanzapine and risperidone are atypical antipsychotics which are also effective in GAD and PTSD treatment. However, there is a higher chance of experiencing adverse effects than the other anti-anxiety medications.
Beta-adrenoceptor antagonists
Propranolol is originally used for high blood pressure and heart diseases. It can also be used to treat anxiety with symptoms like tremor or increased heart rate. They work on the nervous system and alleviate the symptoms as a relief. Propranolol is also commonly used for public speaking when one is nervous.
Mechanism of action
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI)
Both SSRIs and SNRIs are reuptake inhibitors of a class of nerve signal transduction chemical called neurotransmitters. Serotonin and norepinephrine are neurotransmitters that are related to nervous control in mood regulation. The level of neurotransmitters are regulated by the nerve through reuptake to avoid accumulation of the neurotransmitter at the endings of nerve fiber. By reuptaking the produced neurotransmitter, the level will go back down and ready to go back up upon excitation from a new nerve signal. However the level of patients with anxiety disorders are usually low or their nerve fibers are insensitive to the neurotransmitters. SSRIs and SNRIs will then block the channel of reuptake and increase the level of the neurotransmitter. The nerve fibers will originally inhibit further production of neurotransmitters upon the increase. However the prolonged increase will eventually desensitize the nerve about the change in level. Therefore, the action of both SSRIs and SNRIs will take 4–6 weeks to exert their full effect.
Benzodiazepine
Benzodiazepines bind selectively to the GABA receptor, which is the receptor protein found in the nervous system and is in control of the nervous response. Benzodiazepine will increase the entry of chloride ions into the cells by improving the binding between GABA and GABA receptors and then the better opening of the channel for chloride ion passage. The high level of chloride ion inside the nerve cells makes the nerve more difficult to depolarize and inhibit further nerve signal transduction. The excitability of the nerves then reduces and the nervous system slows down. Therefore, the drug can alleviate symptoms of anxiety disorder and make the person less nervous.
Clinical use
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of medications used in the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, OCD and some personality disorders. SSRIs are the first-line anti-anxiety medications. Serotonin is one of the crucial neurotransmitters in mood enhancement, and increasing serotonin level produces an anti-anxiety effect. SSRIs increase the serotonin level in the brain by inhibiting serotonin uptake pumps on serotonergic systems, without interactions with other receptors and ion channels. SSRIs are beneficial in both acute response and long-term maintenance treatment for both depression and anxiety disorder.
SSRIs can increase anxiety initially due to negative feedback through the serotonergic autoreceptors; for this reason a concurrent benzodiazepine can be used until the anxiolytic effect of the SSRI occurs.
The SSRIs paroxetine and escitalopram are USFDA approved to treat generalized anxiety disorder.
Therapeutic use
Adverse effect
The common early side effects of SSRIs include nausea and loose stool, which can be solved by discontinuing the treatment. Headache, dizziness, insomnia are the common early side effects as well.
Sexual dysfunction, anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, and reduced libido are common adverse side effects of SSRIs. Sometimes they may persist after the cessation of treatment.
Withdrawal symptoms like dizziness, headache and flu-like symptoms (fatigue/myalgia/loose stool) may occur if SSRI is stopped suddenly. The brain is incapable of upregulating the receptors to sufficient levels especially after discontinuation of the drugs with short half life like paroxetine. Both fluoxetine and its active metabolite have a long half life therefore it causes the least withdrawal symptoms.
Serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors
Serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRIs) include venlafaxine and duloxetine drugs. Venlafaxine, in extended release form, and duloxetine, are indicated for the treatment of GAD. SNRIs are as effective as SSRIs in the treatment of anxiety disorders.
Tricyclic antidepressants
Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) have anxiolytic effects; however, side effects are often more troubling or severe and overdose is dangerous. They are considered effective, but have generally been replaced by antidepressants that cause different adverse effects. Examples include imipramine, doxepin, amitriptyline, nortriptyline and desipramine.
Therapeutic use
Contraindication
TCAs may cause drug poisoning in patients with hypotension, cardiovascular diseases and arrhythmias.
Tetracyclic antidepressants
Mirtazapine has demonstrated anxiolytic effect comparable to SSRIs while rarely causing or exacerbating anxiety. Mirtazapine's anxiety reduction tends to occur significantly faster than SSRIs.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) are first-generation antidepressants effective for anxiety treatment but their dietary restrictions, adverse effect profile and availability of newer medications have limited their use. MAOIs include phenelzine, isocarboxazid and tranylcypromine. Pirlindole is a reversible MAOI that lacks dietary restriction.
Barbiturates
Barbiturates are powerful anxiolytics but the risk of abuse and addiction is high. Many experts consider these drugs obsolete for treating anxiety but valuable for the short-term treatment of severe insomnia, though only after benzodiazepines or non-benzodiazepines have failed.
Benzodiazepines
Benzodiazepines are prescribed to quell panic attacks. Benzodiazepines are also prescribed in tandem with an antidepressant for the latent period of efficacy associated with many ADs for anxiety disorder. There is risk of benzodiazepine withdrawal and rebound syndrome if BZDs are rapidly discontinued. Tolerance and dependence may occur. The risk of abuse in this class of medication is smaller than in that of barbiturates. Cognitive and behavioral adverse effects are possible.
Benzodiazepines include:
alprazolam (Xanax), bromazepam,
chlordiazepoxide (Librium),
clonazepam (Klonopin),
diazepam (Valium),
lorazepam (Ativan),
oxazepam,
temazepam, and Triazolam.
Therapeutic use
Adverse effect
Benzodiazepines lead to central nervous system depression, resulting in common adverse effects like drowsiness, oversedation, light-headedness. Memory impairment can be a common adverse effect especially in elderly, hypersalivation, ataxia, slurred speech, psychomotor effects.
Sympatholytics
Sympatholytics are a group of anti-hypertensives which inhibit activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Beta blockers reduce anxiety by decreasing heart rate and preventing shaking. Beta blockers include propranolol, oxprenolol, and metoprolol. The alpha-1 agonist prazosin could be effective for PTSD. The alpha-2 agonists clonidine and guanfacine have demonstrated both anxiolytic and anxiogenic effects.
Miscellaneous
Buspirone
Buspirone (Buspar) is a 5-HT1A receptor agonist used to treated generalized anxiety disorder. If an individual has taken a benzodiazepine, buspirone will be less effective.
Pregabalin
Pregabalin (Lyrica) produces anxiolytic effect after one week of use comparable to lorazepam, alprazolam, and venlafaxine with more consistent psychic and somatic anxiety reduction. Unlike BZDs, it does not disrupt sleep architecture nor does it cause
cognitive or psychomotor impairment.
Hydroxyzine
Hydroxyzine (Atarax) is an antihistamine originally approved for clinical use by the FDA in 1956. Hydroxyzine has a calming effect which helps ameliorate anxiety. Hydroxyzine efficacy is comparable to benzodiazepines in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.
Phenibut
Phenibut (Anvifen, Fenibut, Noofen) is an anxiolytic used in Russia. Phenibut is a GABAB receptor agonist, as well as an antagonist at α2δ subunit-containing voltage-dependent calcium channels (VDCCs), similarly to gabapentinoids like gabapentin and pregabalin. The medication is not approved by the FDA for use in the United States, but is sold online as a supplement.
Temgicoluril
Temgicoluril (Mebicar) is an anxiolytic produced in Latvia and used in Eastern Europe. Temgicoluril has an effect on the structure of limbic-reticular activity, particularly on the hypothalamus, as well as on all four basic neuromediator systems – γ aminobutyric acid (GABA), choline, serotonin and adrenergic activity. Temgicoluril decreases noradrenaline, increases serotonin, and exerts no effect on dopamine.
Fabomotizole
Fabomotizole (Afobazole) is an anxiolytic drug launched in Russia in the early 2000s. Its mechanism of action is poorly-defined, with GABAergic, NGF and BDNF release promoting, MT1 receptor agonism, MT3 receptor antagonism, and sigma receptor agonism thought to have some involvement.
Bromantane
Bromantane is a stimulant drug with anxiolytic properties developed in Russia during the late 1980s. Bromantane acts mainly by facilitating the biosynthesis of dopamine, through indirect genomic upregulation of relevant enzymes (tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AAAD)).
Emoxypine
Emoxypine is an antioxidant that is also a purported anxiolytic. Its chemical structure resembles that of pyridoxine, a form of vitamin B6.
Menthyl isovalerate
Menthyl isovalerate is a flavoring food additive marketed as a sedative and anxiolytic drug in Russia under the name Validol.
Racetams
Some racetam based drugs such as aniracetam can have an antianxiety effect.
Alpidem
Alpidem is a nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytic with similar anxiolytic effectiveness as benzodiazepines but reduced sedation and cognitive, memory, and motor impairment. It was marketed briefly in France but was withdrawn from the market due to liver toxicity.
Etifoxine
Etifoxine has similar anxiolytic effects as benzodiazepine drugs, but does not produce the same levels of sedation and ataxia. Further, etifoxine does not affect memory and vigilance, and does not induce rebound anxiety, drug dependence, or withdrawal symptoms.
Alcohol
Alcohol is sometimes used as an anxiolytic by self-medication. fMRI can measure the anxiolytic effects of alcohol in the human brain.
Alternatives to medication
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder, while exposure therapy is the recommended treatment for anxiety related phobias. Healthcare providers can guide those with anxiety disorder by referring them to self-help resources. Sometimes medication is combined with psychotherapy but research has not found a benefit of combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy versus monotherapy.
If CBT is found ineffective, both the Canadian and American medical associations then suggest the use of medication.
See also
Categories
References
External links
Anxiety disorder treatment
Drug classes defined by psychological effects
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Antipsychotics, also known as neuroleptics, are a class of psychotropic medication primarily used to manage psychosis (including delusions, hallucinations, paranoia or disordered thought), principally in schizophrenia but also in a range of other psychotic disorders. They are also the mainstay together with mood stabilizers in the treatment of bipolar disorder.
Prior research has shown that use of any antipsychotic is associated with smaller brain tissue volumes, including white matter reduction and that this brain shrinkage is dose dependent and time dependent. A more recent controlled trial suggests that second generation antipsychotics combined with intensive psychosocial therapy may potentially prevent pallidal brain volume loss in first episode psychosis.
The use of antipsychotics may result in many unwanted side effects such as involuntary movement disorders, gynecomastia, impotence, weight gain and metabolic syndrome. Long-term use can produce adverse effects such as tardive dyskinesia, tardive dystonia, and tardive akathisia.
Prevention of these adverse effects is possible through concomitant medication strategies including use of beta-blockers. Currently, treatments for tardive diseases are not well established.
First-generation antipsychotics (e.g. chlorpromazine), known as typical antipsychotics, were first introduced in the 1950s, and others were developed until the early 1970s. Second-generation antipsychotics, known as atypical antipsychotics, were introduced firstly with clozapine in the early 1970s followed by others (e.g. risperidone). Both generations of medication block receptors in the brain for dopamine, but atypicals tend to act on serotonin receptors as well. Neuroleptic, originating from (neuron) and (take hold of)—thus meaning "which takes the nerve"—refers to both common neurological effects and side effects.
Medical uses
Antipsychotics are most frequently used for the following conditions:
Schizophrenia
Schizoaffective disorder most commonly in conjunction with either an antidepressant (in the case of the depressive subtype) or a mood stabiliser (in the case of the bipolar subtype). Antipsychotics can also be used as standalone mood stabiliser medications.
Bipolar disorder (acute mania and mixed episodes) may be treated with either typical or atypical antipsychotics, although atypical antipsychotics are usually preferred because they tend to have more favourable adverse effect profiles and, according to a recent meta-analysis, they tend to have a lower liability for causing conversion from mania to depression.
Psychotic depression. In this indication it is a common practice for the psychiatrist to prescribe a combination of an atypical antipsychotic and an antidepressant as this practice is best supported by the evidence.
Treatment resistant depression as an adjunct to standard antidepressant therapy.
Antipsychotics are generally not recommended for treating behavioral problems associated with dementia, given that the risk of use tends to be greater than the potential benefit. The same can be said for insomnia, in which they are not recommended as first-line therapy. There are evidence-based indications for using antipsychotics in children (e.g. tic disorder, bipolar disorder, psychosis), but the use of antipsychotics outside of those contexts (e.g. to treat behavioral problems) warrants significant caution.
Antipsychotics are used to treat tics associated with Tourette syndrome. Aripiprazole, an atypical antipsychotic, is used as add-on medication to ameliorate sexual dysfunction as a symptom of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants in women. Quetiapine is used to treat generalized anxiety disorder.
Schizophrenia
Antipsychotic drug treatment is a key component of schizophrenia treatment recommendations by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the American Psychiatric Association, and the British Society for Psychopharmacology. The main aim of treatment with antipsychotics is to reduce the positive symptoms of psychosis, that include delusions and hallucinations. There is mixed evidence to support a significant impact of antipsychotic use on primary negative symptoms (such as apathy, lack of emotional affect, and lack of interest in social interactions) or on cognitive symptoms (memory impairments, reduced ability to plan and execute tasks). In general, the efficacy of antipsychotic treatment in reducing positive symptoms appears to increase with the severity of baseline symptoms. All antipsychotic medications work relatively the same way: by antagonizing D2 dopamine receptors. However, there are some differences when it comes to typical and atypical antipsychotics. For example, atypical antipsychotic medications have been seen to lower the neurocognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia more than conventional antipsychotics, although the reasoning and mechanics of this are still unclear to researchers.
Applications of antipsychotic drugs in the treatment of schizophrenia include prophylaxis for those showing symptoms that suggest that they are at high risk of developing psychosis; treatment of first-episode psychosis; maintenance therapy (a form of prophylaxis, maintenance therapy aims to maintain therapeutic benefit and prevent symptom relapse); and treatment of recurrent episodes of acute psychosis.
Prevention of psychosis and symptom improvement
Test batteries such as the PACE (Personal Assessment and Crisis Evaluation Clinic) and COPS (Criteria of Prodromal Syndromes), which measure low-level psychotic symptoms and cognitive disturbances, are used to evaluate people with early, low-level symptoms of psychosis. Test results are combined with family history information to identify patients in the "high-risk" group; they are considered to have a 20–40% risk of progression to frank psychosis within two years. These patients are often treated with low doses of antipsychotic drugs with the goal of reducing their symptoms and preventing progression to frank psychosis. While generally useful for reducing symptoms, clinical trials to date show little evidence that early use of antipsychotics improves long-term outcomes in those with prodromal symptoms, either alone or in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy.
First-episode psychosis
First-episode psychosis (FEP) is the first time that psychotic symptoms are presented. NICE recommends that all people presenting with first-episode psychosis be treated with both an antipsychotic drug and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). NICE further recommends that those expressing a preference for CBT alone be informed that combination treatment is more effective. A diagnosis of schizophrenia is not made at this time as it takes longer to be determined by both DSM-5 and ICD-11, and only around 60% of those presenting with a first episode of psychosis will later be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The conversion rate for a first episode of drug induced psychosis to bipolar disorder or schizophrenia is lower, with 30% of people converting to either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. NICE makes no distinction between substance-induced psychosis and any other form of psychosis. The rate of conversion differs for different classes of drugs.
Pharmacological options for the specific treatment of FEP have been discussed in recent reviews. The goals of treatment for FEP include reducing symptoms and potentially improving long-term treatment outcomes. Randomized clinical trials have provided evidence for the efficacy of antipsychotic drugs in achieving the former goal, with first-generation and second generation antipsychotics showing about equal efficacy. The evidence that early treatment has a favorable effect on long-term outcomes is equivocal.
Recurrent psychotic episodes
Placebo-controlled trials of both first- and second-generation antipsychotic drugs consistently demonstrate the superiority of active drugs over placebos in suppressing psychotic symptoms. A large meta-analysis of 38 trials of antipsychotic drugs in schizophrenia with acute psychotic episodes showed an effect size of about 0.5. There is little or no difference in efficacy among approved antipsychotic drugs, including both first- and second-generation agents. The efficacy of such drugs is suboptimal. Few patients achieve complete resolution of symptoms. Response rates, calculated using various cutoff values for symptom reduction, are low, and their interpretation is complicated by high placebo response rates and selective publication of clinical trial results.
Maintenance therapy
The majority of patients treated with an antipsychotic drug will experience a response within four weeks. The goals of continuing treatment are to maintain suppression of symptoms, prevent relapse, improve quality of life, and support engagement in psychosocial therapy.
Maintenance therapy with antipsychotic drugs is clearly superior to placebo in preventing relapse but is associated with weight gain, movement disorders, and high dropout rates. A 3-year trial following persons receiving maintenance therapy after an acute psychotic episode found that 33% obtained long-lasting symptom reduction, 13% achieved remission, and only 27% experienced satisfactory quality of life. The effect of relapse prevention on long term outcomes is uncertain, as historical studies show little difference in long term outcomes before and after the introduction of antipsychotic drugs.
While maintenance therapy clearly reduces the rate of relapses requiring hospitalization, a large observational study in Finland found that, in people that eventually discontinued antipsychotics, the risk of being hospitalized again for a mental health problem or dying increased the longer they were dispensed (and presumably took) antipsychotics prior to stopping therapy. If people did not stop taking antipsychotics, they remained at low risk for relapse and hospitalization compared to those that did. The authors speculated that the difference may be because the people that discontinued treatment after a longer time had more severe mental illness than those that discontinued antipsychotic therapy sooner.
A significant challenge in the use of antipsychotic drugs for the prevention of relapse is the poor rate of adherence. In spite of the relatively high rates of adverse effects associated with these drugs, some evidence, including higher dropout rates in placebo arms compared to treatment arms in randomized clinical trials, suggests that most patients who discontinue treatment do so because of suboptimal efficacy. If someone experiences psychotic symptoms due to nonadherence, they may be compelled to receive treatment through a process called involuntary commitment, in which they can be forced to accept treatment (including antipsychotics). A person can also be committed to treatment outside of a hospital, called outpatient commitment.
Antipsychotics in long-acting injectable (LAI), or "depot", form have been suggested as a method of decreasing medication nonadherence (sometimes also called non-compliance). NICE advises LAIs be offered to patients when preventing covert, intentional nonadherence is a clinical priority. LAIs are used to ensure adherence in outpatient commitment. A meta-analysis found that LAIs resulted in lower rates of rehospitalization with a hazard ratio of 0.83; however, these results were not statistically significant (the 95% confidence interval was 0.62 to 1.11).
Bipolar disorder
Antipsychotics are routinely used, often in conjunction with mood stabilisers such as lithium/valproate, as a first-line treatment for manic and mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder. The reason for this combination is the therapeutic delay of the aforementioned mood stabilisers (for valproate therapeutic effects are usually seen around five days after treatment is commenced whereas lithium usually takes at least a week before the full therapeutic effects are seen) and the comparatively rapid antimanic effects of antipsychotic drugs. The antipsychotics have a documented efficacy when used alone in acute mania/mixed episodes.
At least five atypical antipsychotics (lumateperone, cariprazine, lurasidone, olanzapine, and quetiapine) have also been found to possess efficacy in the treatment of bipolar depression as a monotherapy, whereas only olanzapine and quetiapine have been proven to be effective broad-spectrum (i.e. against all three types of relapse—manic, mixed and depressive) prophylactic (or maintenance) treatments in patients with bipolar disorder. A recent Cochrane review also found that olanzapine had a less favourable risk/benefit ratio than lithium as a maintenance treatment for bipolar disorder.
The American Psychiatric Association and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommend antipsychotics for managing acute psychotic episodes in schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and as a longer-term maintenance treatment for reducing the likelihood of further episodes. They state that response to any given antipsychotic can be variable so that trials may be necessary, and that lower doses are to be preferred where possible. A number of studies have looked at levels of "compliance" or "adherence" with antipsychotic regimes and found that discontinuation (stopping taking them) by patients is associated with higher rates of relapse, including hospitalization.
Dementia
Psychosis and agitation develop in as many as 80 percent of people living in nursing homes. Despite a lack of FDA approval and black-box warnings, atypical antipsychotics are very often prescribed to people with dementia. An assessment for an underlying cause of behavior is needed before prescribing antipsychotic medication for symptoms of dementia. Antipsychotics in old age dementia showed a modest benefit compared to placebo in managing aggression or psychosis, but this is combined with a fairly large increase in serious adverse events. Thus, antipsychotics should not be used routinely to treat dementia with aggression or psychosis, but may be an option in a few cases where there is severe distress or risk of physical harm to others. Psychosocial interventions may reduce the need for antipsychotics. In 2005, the FDA issued an advisory warning of an increased risk of death when atypical antipsychotics are used in dementia. In the subsequent 5 years, the use of atypical antipsychotics to treat dementia decreased by nearly 50%.
Major depressive disorder
A number of atypical antipsychotics have some benefits when used in addition to other treatments in major depressive disorder. Aripiprazole, quetiapine extended-release, and olanzapine (when used in conjunction with fluoxetine) have received the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labelling for this indication. There is, however, a greater risk of side effects with their use compared to using traditional antidepressants. The greater risk of serious side effects with antipsychotics is why, e.g., quetiapine was denied approval as monotherapy for major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, and instead was only approved as an adjunctive treatment in combination with traditional antidepressants.
Other
Besides the above uses antipsychotics may be used for obsessive–compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders, Tourette syndrome, autism and agitation in those with dementia. Evidence however does not support the use of atypical antipsychotics in eating disorders or personality disorder. The atypical antipsychotic risperidone may be useful for obsessive–compulsive disorder. The use of low doses of antipsychotics for insomnia, while common, is not recommended as there is little evidence of benefit as well as concern regarding adverse effects. Some of the more serious adverse effects may also occur at the low doses used, such as dyslipidemia and neutropenia, and a recent network meta-analysis of 154 double-blind, randomized controlled trials of drug therapies vs. placebo for insomnia in adults found that quetiapine did not demonstrated any short-term benefits in sleep quality. Low dose antipsychotics may also be used in treatment of impulse-behavioural and cognitive-perceptual symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Despite the lack of evidence supporting the benefit of antipsychotics in people with personality disorders, 1 in 4 who do not have a serious mental illness are prescribed them in UK primary care. Many people receive these medication for over a year, contrary to NICE guidelines.
In children they may be used in those with disruptive behavior disorders, mood disorders and pervasive developmental disorders or intellectual disability. Antipsychotics are only weakly recommended for Tourette syndrome, because although they are effective, side effects are common. The situation is similar for those on the autism spectrum.
Much of the evidence for the off-label use of antipsychotics (for example, for dementia, OCD, PTSD, personality disorders, Tourette's) was of insufficient scientific quality to support such use, especially as there was strong evidence of increased risks of stroke, tremors, significant weight gain, sedation, and gastrointestinal problems. A UK review of unlicensed usage in children and adolescents reported a similar mixture of findings and concerns. A survey of children with pervasive developmental disorder found that 16.5% were taking an antipsychotic drug, most commonly for irritability, aggression, and agitation. Both risperidone and aripiprazole have been approved by the US FDA for the treatment of irritability in autistic children and adolescents. A review in the UK found that the use of antipsychotics in England doubled between 2000 and 2019. Children were prescribed antipsychotics for conditions for which there is no approval, such as autism.
Aggressive challenging behavior in adults with intellectual disability is often treated with antipsychotic drugs despite lack of an evidence base. A recent randomized controlled trial, however, found no benefit over placebo and recommended that the use of antipsychotics in this way should no longer be regarded as an acceptable routine treatment.
Antipsychotics may be an option, together with stimulants, in people with ADHD and aggressive behavior when other treatments have not worked. They have not been found to be useful for the prevention of delirium among those admitted to hospital.
Typicals vs atypicals
It is unclear whether the atypical (second-generation) antipsychotics offer advantages over older, first generation antipsychotics. Amisulpride, olanzapine, risperidone and clozapine may be more effective but are associated with greater side effects. Typical antipsychotics have equal drop-out and symptom relapse rates to atypicals when used at low to moderate dosages.
Clozapine is an effective treatment for those who respond poorly to other drugs ("treatment-resistant" or "refractory" schizophrenia), but it has the potentially serious side effect of agranulocytosis (lowered white blood cell count) in less than 4% of people.
Due to bias in the research the accuracy of comparisons of atypical antipsychotics is a concern.
In 2005, a US government body, the National Institute of Mental Health published the results of a major independent study (the CATIE project). No other atypical studied (risperidone, quetiapine, and ziprasidone) did better than the typical perphenazine on the measures used, nor did they produce fewer adverse effects than the typical antipsychotic perphenazine, although more patients discontinued perphenazine owing to extrapyramidal effects compared to the atypical agents (8% vs. 2% to 4%).
Atypical antipsychotics do not appear to lead to improved rates of medication adherence compared to typical antipsychotics.
Many researchers question the first-line prescribing of atypicals over typicals, and some even question the distinction between the two classes. In contrast, other researchers point to the significantly higher risk of tardive dyskinesia and other extrapyramidal symptoms with the typicals and for this reason alone recommend first-line treatment with the atypicals, notwithstanding a greater propensity for metabolic adverse effects in the latter. The UK government organization NICE recently revised its recommendation favoring atypicals, to advise that the choice should be an individual one based on the particular profiles of the individual drug and on the patient's preferences.
The re-evaluation of the evidence has not necessarily slowed the bias toward prescribing the atypicals.
Adverse effects
Generally, more than one antipsychotic drug should not be used at a time because of increased adverse effects.
Some atypicals are associated with considerable weight gain, diabetes and the risk of metabolic syndrome. Unwanted side effects cause people to stop treatment, resulting in relapses.
Risperidone (atypical) has a similar rate of extrapyramidal symptoms to haloperidol (typical). A rare but potentially lethal condition of neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) has been associated with the use of antipsychotics. Through its early recognition, and timely intervention rates have declined. However, an awareness of the syndrome is advised to enable intervention. Another less rare condition of tardive dyskinesia can occur due to long-term use of antipsychotics, developing after months or years of use. It is more often reported with use of typical antipsychotics. Very rarely antipsychotics may cause tardive psychosis.
Clozapine is associated with side effects that include weight gain, tiredness, and hypersalivation. More serious adverse effects include seizures, NMS, neutropenia, and agranulocytosis (lowered white blood cell count) and its use needs careful monitoring.
Clozapine is also associated with thromboembolism (including pulmonary embolism), myocarditis, and cardiomyopathy. A systematic review of clozapine-associated pulmonary embolism indicates that this adverse effect can often be fatal, and that it has an early onset, and is dose-dependent. The findings advised the consideration of using a prevention therapy for venous thromboembolism after starting treatment with clozapine, and continuing this for six months. Constipation is three times more likely to occur with the use of clozapine, and severe cases can lead to ileus and bowel ischemia resulting in many fatalities. Very rare clozapine adverse effects include periorbital edema due to several possible mechanisms (e.g. inhibition of platelet-derived growth factor receptors leading to increased vascular permeability, antagonism of renal dopamine receptors with electrolyte and fluid imbalance and immune-mediated hypersensitivity reactions).
However, the risk of serious adverse effects from clozapine is low, and there are the beneficial effects to be gained of a reduced risk of suicide, and aggression. Typical antipsychotics and atypical risperidone can have a side effect of sexual dysfunction. Clozapine, olanzapine, and quetiapine are associated with beneficial effects on sexual functioning helped by various psychotherapies.
By rate
Common (≥ 1% and up to 50% incidence for most antipsychotic drugs) adverse effects of antipsychotics include:
Dysphoria and apathy (due to dopamine receptor blockade)
Sedation (particularly common with asenapine, clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, chlorpromazine and zotepine)
Headaches
Dizziness
Diarrhea
Anxiety
Extrapyramidal side effects (particularly common with first-generation antipsychotics), which include:
- Akathisia, an often distressing sense of inner restlessness.
- Dystonia, an abnormal muscle contraction
- Pseudoparkinsonism, symptoms that are similar to what people with Parkinson's disease experience, including tremulousness and drooling
Hyperprolactinaemia (rare for those treated with clozapine, quetiapine and aripiprazole), which can cause:
- Galactorrhoea, the unusual secretion of breast milk.
- Gynaecomastia, abnormal growth of breast tissue
- Sexual dysfunction (in both sexes)
- Osteoporosis
Orthostatic hypotension
Weight gain (particularly prominent with clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine and zotepine)
Anticholinergic side-effects (common for olanzapine, clozapine; less likely on risperidone) such as:
- Blurred vision
- Constipation
- Dry mouth (although hypersalivation may also occur)
- Reduced perspiration
Tardive dyskinesia appears to be more frequent with high-potency first-generation antipsychotics, such as haloperidol, and tends to appear after chronic and not acute treatment. It is characterized by slow (hence the tardive) repetitive, involuntary and purposeless movements, most often of the face, lips, legs, or torso, which tend to resist treatment and are frequently irreversible. The rate of appearance of TD is about 5% per year of use of antipsychotic drug (whatever the drug used)
breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies with over 2 million individuals estimated an association between antipsychotic use and breast cancer by over 30%.
Rare/Uncommon (<1% incidence for most antipsychotic drugs) adverse effects of antipsychotics include:
Blood dyscrasias (e.g., agranulocytosis, leukopenia, and neutropaenia), which is more common in patients on clozapine.
Metabolic syndrome and other metabolic problems such as type II diabetes mellitus — particularly common with clozapine, olanzapine and zotepine. In American studies African Americans appeared to be at a heightened risk for developing type II diabetes mellitus. Evidence suggests that females are more sensitive to the metabolic side effects of first-generation antipsychotic drugs than males. Metabolic adverse effects appear to be mediated by the following mechanisms:
- Causing weight gain by antagonizing the histamine H1 and serotonin 5-HT2C receptors and perhaps by interacting with other neurochemical pathways in the central nervous system.
Neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a potentially fatal condition characterized by:
- Autonomic instability, which can manifest with tachycardia, nausea, vomiting, diaphoresis, etc.
- Hyperthermia — elevated body temperature.
- Mental status change (confusion, hallucinations, coma, etc.)
- Muscle rigidity
- Laboratory abnormalities (e.g., elevated creatine kinase, reduced iron plasma levels, electrolyte abnormalities, etc.)
Pancreatitis
QT interval prolongation — more prominent in those treated with amisulpride, pimozide, sertindole, thioridazine and ziprasidone.
Torsades de pointes
Seizures, particularly in people treated with chlorpromazine and clozapine.
Thromboembolism
Myocardial infarction
Stroke
Pisa syndrome
Long-term effects
Some studies have found decreased life expectancy associated with the use of antipsychotics, and argued that more studies are needed. Antipsychotics may also increase the risk of early death in individuals with dementia. Antipsychotics typically worsen symptoms in people with depersonalisation disorder. Antipsychotic polypharmacy (prescribing two or more antipsychotics at the same time for an individual) is a common practice but not evidence-based or recommended, and there are initiatives to curtail it. Similarly, the use of excessively high doses (often the result of polypharmacy) continues despite clinical guidelines and evidence indicating that it is usually no more effective but is usually more harmful. A meta-analysis of observational studies with over two million individuals has suggested a moderate association of antipsychotic use with breast cancer.
Loss of grey matter and other brain structural changes over time are observed amongst people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Meta-analyses of the effects of antipsychotic treatment on grey matter volume and the brain's structure have reached conflicting conclusions. A 2012 meta-analysis concluded that grey matter loss is greater in patients treated with first generation antipsychotics relative to those treated with atypicals, and hypothesized a protective effect of atypicals as one possible explanation. A second meta-analysis suggested that treatment with antipsychotics was associated with increased grey matter loss. Animal studies found that monkeys exposed to both first- and second-generation antipsychotics experience significant reduction in brain volume, resulting in an 8-11% reduction in brain volume over a 17–27 month period.
The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors said that antipsychotics are not interchangeable and it is recommend including trying at least one weight-neutral treatment for those patients with potential metabolic issues.
Subtle, long-lasting forms of akathisia are often overlooked or confused with post-psychotic depression, in particular when they lack the extrapyramidal aspect that psychiatrists have been taught to expect when looking for signs of akathisia.
Adverse effect on cognitive function and increased risk of death in people with dementia along with worsening of symptoms has been described in the literature.
Discontinuation
The British National Formulary recommends a gradual withdrawal when discontinuing antipsychotics to avoid acute withdrawal syndrome or rapid relapse. Symptoms of withdrawal commonly include nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. Other symptoms may include restlessness, increased sweating, and trouble sleeping. Less commonly there may be a feeling of the world spinning, numbness, or muscle pains. Symptoms generally resolve after a short period of time.
There is tentative evidence that discontinuation of antipsychotics can result in psychosis. It may also result in recurrence of the condition that is being treated. Rarely tardive dyskinesia can occur when the medication is stopped.
Unexpected psychotic episodes have been observed in patients withdrawing from clozapine. This is referred to as supersensitivity psychosis, not to be equated with tardive dyskinesia.
Tardive dyskinesia may abate during withdrawal from the antipsychotic agent, or it may persist.
Withdrawal effects may also occur when switching a person from one antipsychotic to another, (it is presumed due to variations of potency and receptor activity). Such withdrawal effects can include cholinergic rebound, an activation syndrome, and motor syndromes including dyskinesias. These adverse effects are more likely during rapid changes between antipsychotic agents, so making a gradual change between antipsychotics minimises these withdrawal effects. The British National Formulary recommends a gradual withdrawal when discontinuing antipsychotic treatment to avoid acute withdrawal syndrome or rapid relapse. The process of cross-titration involves gradually increasing the dose of the new medication while gradually decreasing the dose of the old medication.
City and Hackney Clinical Commissioning Group found more than 1,000 patients in their area in July 2019 who had not had regular medication reviews or health checks because they were not registered as having serious mental illness. On average they had been taking these drugs for six years. If this is typical of practice in England more than 100,000 patients are probably in the same position.
List of agents
Clinically used antipsychotic medications are listed below by drug group. Trade names appear in parentheses. A 2013 review has stated that the division of antipsychotics into first and second generation is perhaps not accurate.
Notes:
† indicates drugs that are no longer (or were never) marketed in English-speaking countries.
‡ denotes drugs that are no longer (or were never to begin with) marketed in the United States. Some antipsychotics are not firmly placed in either first-generation or second-generation classes.
# denotes drugs that have been withdrawn worldwide.
First-generation (typical)
Butyrophenones
Benperidol‡
Bromperidol†
Droperidol‡
Haloperidol
Moperone (discontinued)†
Pipamperone (discontinued)†
Timiperone †
Diphenylbutylpiperidines
Fluspirilene ‡
Penfluridol ‡
Pimozide
Phenothiazines
Acepromazine † — although it is mostly used in veterinary medicine.
Chlorpromazine
Cyamemazine †
Dixyrazine †
Fluphenazine
Levomepromazine‡
Mesoridazine (discontinued)†
Perazine
Pericyazine‡
Perphenazine
Pipotiazine ‡
Prochlorperazine
Promazine (discontinued)
Promethazine
Prothipendyl †
Thioproperazine‡ (only English-speaking country it is available in is Canada)
Thioridazine (discontinued)
Trifluoperazine
Triflupromazine (discontinued)†
Thioxanthenes
Chlorprothixene †
Clopenthixol
Flupentixol ‡
Thiothixene
Zuclopenthixol ‡
Disputed/unknown
This category is for drugs that have been called both first and second-generation, depending on the literature being used.
Benzamides
Sulpiride ‡
Sultopride †
Veralipride †
Tricyclics
Carpipramine †
Clocapramine †
Clorotepine †
Clotiapine ‡
Loxapine
Mosapramine †
Others
Molindone #
Second-generation (atypical)
Benzamides
Amisulpride ‡ – Selective dopamine antagonist. Higher doses (greater than 400 mg) act upon post-synaptic dopamine receptors resulting in a reduction in the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as psychosis. Lower doses, however, act upon dopamine autoreceptors, resulting in increased dopamine transmission, improving the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Lower doses of amisulpride have also been shown to have antidepressant and anxiolytic effects in non-schizophrenic patients, leading to its use in dysthymia and social phobias.
Nemonapride † – Used in Japan.
Remoxipride # – Has a risk of causing aplastic anaemia and, hence, has been withdrawn from the market worldwide. It has also been found to possess relatively low (virtually absent) potential to induce hyperprolactinaemia and extrapyramidal symptoms, likely attributable to its comparatively weak binding to (and, hence, rapid dissociation from) the D2 receptor.
Sultopride – An atypical antipsychotic of the benzamide chemical class used in Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong for the treatment of schizophrenia. It was launched by Sanofi-Aventis in 1976. Sultopride acts as a selective D2 and D3 receptor antagonist.
Benzisoxazoles/benzisothiazoles
Lumateperone – In December 2019, lumateperone received its first global approval in the USA for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. In 2020 and 2021 FDA approved for depressive episodes associated with bipolar I or II disorder (bipolar depression) in adults, as monotherapy and as adjunctive therapy with lithium or valproate.
Iloperidone – Approved by the US FDA in 2009, it is fairly well tolerated, although hypotension, dizziness, and somnolence were very common side effects. Has not received regulatory approval in other countries, however.
Paliperidone – Primary, active metabolite of risperidone that was approved in 2006.
Perospirone † – Has a higher incidence of extrapyramidal side effects than other atypical antipsychotics.
Risperidone – Divided dosing is recommended until initial titration is completed, at which time the drug can be administered once daily. Used off-label to treat Tourette syndrome and anxiety disorder.
Ziprasidone – Approved in 2004 to treat bipolar disorder. Side-effects include a prolonged QT interval in the heart, which can be dangerous for patients with heart disease or those taking other drugs that prolong the QT interval.
Lurasidone – Approved by the US FDA for schizophrenia and bipolar depression, and for use as schizophrenia treatment in Canada.
Butyrophenones
Melperone † – Only used in a few European countries. No English-speaking country has licensed it to date.
Lumateperone
Tricyclics
Asenapine – Used for the treatment of schizophrenia and acute mania associated with bipolar disorder.
Clozapine – Requires routine laboratory monitoring of complete blood counts every one to four weeks due to the risk of agranulocytosis. It has unparalleled efficacy in the treatment of treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Olanzapine – Used to treat psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, acute manic episodes, and maintenance of bipolar disorder. Used as an adjunct to antidepressant therapy, either alone or in combination with fluoxetine as Symbyax.
Quetiapine – Used primarily to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Also used and licensed in a few countries (including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) as an adjunct to antidepressant therapy in patients with major depressive disorder. It's the only antipsychotic that's demonstrated efficacy as a monotherapy for the treatment of major depressive disorder. It indirectly serves as a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor by means of its active metabolite, norquetiapine.
Zotepine – An atypical antipsychotic indicated for acute and chronic schizophrenia. It is still used in Japan and was once used in Germany but it was discontinued.†
Others
Blonanserin – Approved by the PMDA in 2008. Used in Japan and South Korea.
Pimavanserin – A selective 5-HT2A receptor antagonist approved for the treatment of Parkinson's disease psychosis in 2016.
Sertindole ‡ – Developed by the Danish pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck. Like the other atypical antipsychotics, it is believed to have antagonist activity at dopamine and serotonin receptors in the brain.
Third-generation
Third generation antipsychotics are recognized as demonstrating D2 receptor agonism as opposed to the D2 receptor antagonistic mechanism of both first-generation (typical) and second-generation (atypical) antipsychotic medications.
Phenylpiperazines/quinolinones
Aripiprazole (Abilify) – Partial agonist at the D2 receptor. Considered the prototypical third-generation antipsychotic.
Aripiprazole lauroxil (Abilify Maintena) – Long-acting version of aripiprazole for injection.
Brexpiprazole – Partial agonist of the D2 receptor. Successor of aripiprazole.
Cariprazine – A D3-preferring D2/3 partial agonist.
Phenylpiperazines/benzoxazinones
Brilaroxazine – A D2/3/4 and 5-HT1A partial agonist and 5-HT2A/2B/7 antagonist
Mechanism of action
Antipsychotic drugs such as haloperidol and chlorpromazine tend to block dopamine D2 receptors in the dopaminergic pathways of the brain. This means that dopamine released in these pathways has less effect. Excess release of dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway has been linked to psychotic experiences. Decreased dopamine release in the prefrontal cortex, and excess dopamine release in other pathways, are associated with psychotic episodes in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
In addition to the antagonistic effects of dopamine, antipsychotics (in particular atypical neuroleptics) also antagonize 5-HT2A receptors. Different alleles of the 5-HT2A receptor have been associated with schizophrenia and other psychoses, including depression. Higher concentrations of 5-HT2A receptors in cortical and subcortical areas, in particular in the right caudate nucleus have been historically recorded.
Typical antipsychotics are not particularly selective and also block dopamine receptors in the mesocortical pathway, tuberoinfundibular pathway, and the nigrostriatal pathway. Blocking D2 receptors in these other pathways is thought to produce some unwanted side effects that the typical antipsychotics can produce (see above). They were commonly classified on a spectrum of low potency to high potency, where potency referred to the ability of the drug to bind to dopamine receptors, and not to the effectiveness of the drug. High-potency antipsychotics such as haloperidol, in general, have doses of a few milligrams and cause less sleepiness and calming effects than low-potency antipsychotics such as chlorpromazine and thioridazine, which have dosages of several hundred milligrams. The latter have a greater degree of anticholinergic and antihistaminergic activity, which can counteract dopamine-related side-effects.
Atypical antipsychotic drugs have a similar blocking effect on D2 receptors; however, most also act on serotonin receptors, especially 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors. Both clozapine and quetiapine appear to bind just long enough to elicit antipsychotic effects but not long enough to induce extrapyramidal side effects and prolactin hypersecretion. 5-HT2A antagonism increases dopaminergic activity in the nigrostriatal pathway, leading to a lowered extrapyramidal side effect liability among the atypical antipsychotics.
Through the ability of most antipsychotics to antagonize 5ht2a serotonin pathways enabling a sensitisation of postsynaptic serotonin receptors, MDMA exposure can be more intense because it has more excitatory receptors to activate. The same effect can be observed with the d2 antagonizing with normal amphetamine (with this just being hypothetical as there is the fact that antipsychotics sensitize receptors, with exact these postsynaptic receptors (5ht2a, d2) being flooded by the respective neurotransmitter (serotonine, dopamine) from amphetamine exposure).
Comparison of medications
History
The original antipsychotic drugs were happened upon largely by chance and then tested for their effectiveness. The first, chlorpromazine, was developed as a surgical anesthetic. It was first used on psychiatric patients because of its powerful calming effect; at the time it was regarded as a non-permanent "pharmacological lobotomy". Lobotomy at the time was used to treat many behavioral disorders, including psychosis, although its effect was to markedly reduce behavior and mental functioning of all types. However, chlorpromazine proved to reduce the effects of psychosis in a more effective and specific manner than lobotomy, even though it was known to be capable of causing severe sedation. The underlying neurochemistry involved has since been studied in detail, and subsequent antipsychotic drugs have been developed by rational drug design.
The discovery of chlorpromazine's psychoactive effects in 1952 led to further research that resulted in the development of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and the majority of other drugs now used in the management of psychiatric conditions. In 1952, Henri Laborit described chlorpromazine only as inducing indifference towards what was happening around them in nonpsychotic, nonmanic patients, and Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker described it as controlling manic or psychotic agitation. The former claimed to have discovered a treatment for agitation in anyone, and the latter team claimed to have discovered a treatment for psychotic illness.
Until the 1970s there was considerable debate within psychiatry on the most appropriate term to use to describe the new drugs. In the late 1950s the most widely used term was "neuroleptic", followed by "major tranquilizer" and then "ataraxic". The first recorded use of the term tranquilizer dates from the early nineteenth century. In 1953 Frederik F. Yonkman, a chemist at the Swiss-based Cibapharmaceutical company, first used the term tranquilizer to differentiate reserpine from the older sedatives. The word neuroleptic was coined in 1955 by Delay and Deniker after their discovery (1952) of the antipsychotic effects of chlorpromazine. It is derived from the (neuron, originally meaning "sinew" but today referring to the nerves) and "λαμβάνω" (lambanō, meaning "take hold of"). Thus, the word means taking hold of one's nerves. It was often taken to refer also to common side effects such as reduced activity in general, as well as lethargy and impaired motor control. Although these effects are unpleasant and in some cases harmful, they were at one time, along with akathisia, considered a reliable sign that the drug was working. The term "ataraxy" was coined by the neurologist Howard Fabing and the classicist Alister Cameron to describe the observed effect of psychic indifference and detachment in patients treated with chlorpromazine. This term derived from the Greek adjective "ἀτάρακτος" (ataraktos), which means "not disturbed, not excited, without confusion, steady, calm". In the use of the terms "tranquilizer" and "ataractic", medical practitioners distinguished between the "major tranquilizers" or "major ataractics", which referred to drugs used to treat psychoses, and the "minor tranquilizers" or "minor ataractics", which referred to drugs used to treat neuroses. While popular during the 1950s, these terms are infrequently used today. They are being abandoned in favor of "antipsychotic", which refers to the drug's desired effects. Today, "minor tranquilizer" can refer to anxiolytic and/or hypnotic drugs such as the benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines, which are useful as generally short-term management for insomnia together with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. They are potentially addictive sedatives.
Antipsychotics are broadly divided into two groups, the typical or first-generation antipsychotics and the atypical or second-generation antipsychotics. The difference between first- and second-generation antipsychotics is a subject of debate. The second-generation antipsychotics are generally distinguishable by the presence of 5HT2A receptor antagonism and a corresponding lower propensity for extrapyramidal side effects compared to first-generation antipsychotics.
Society and culture
Terminology
The term major tranquilizer was used for older antipsychotic drugs. The term neuroleptic is often used as a synonym for antipsychotic, even though – strictly speaking – the two terms are not interchangeable. Antipsychotic drugs are a subgroup of neuroleptic drugs, because the latter have a wider range of effects.
Antipsychotics are a type of psychoactive or psychotropic medication.
Sales
Antipsychotics were once among the biggest selling and most profitable of all drugs, generating $22 billion in global sales in 2008. By 2003 in the US, an estimated 3.21 million patients received antipsychotics, worth an estimated $2.82 billion. Over 2/3 of prescriptions were for the newer, more expensive atypicals, each costing on average $164 per year, compared to $40 for the older types. By 2008, sales in the US reached $14.6 billion, the biggest selling drugs in the US by therapeutic class.
In the five years since July 2017 the number of antipsychotic medicines dispensed in the community in the United Kingdom has increased by 11.2%. There have also been substantial price rises. Risperidone 6 mg tablets, the largest, increased from £3.09 in July 2017 to £41.16 in June 2022. The NHS is spending an additional £33 million annually on antipsychotics. Haloperidol 500 microgram tablets constituted £14.3 million of this.
Overprescription
Antipsychotics in the nursing home population are often overprescribed, often for the purposes of making it easier to handle dementia patients. Federal efforts to reduce the use of antipsychotics in US nursing homes has led to a nationwide decrease in their usage in 2012.
Legal
Antipsychotics are sometimes administered as part of compulsory psychiatric treatment via inpatient (hospital) commitment or outpatient commitment.
Formulations
They may be administered orally or, in some cases, through long-acting (depot) injections administered in the dorsgluteal, ventrogluteal or deltoid muscle. Short-acting parenteral formulations also exist, which are generally reserved for emergencies or when oral administration is otherwise impossible. The oral formulations include immediate release, extended release, and orally disintegrating products (which are not sublingual, and can help ensure that medications are swallowed instead of "cheeked"). Sublingual products (e.g. asenapine) also exist, which must be held under the tongue for absorption. The first transdermal formulation of an antipsychotic (transdermal asenapine, marketed as Secuado), was FDA-approved in 2019.
Recreational use
Certain second-generation antipsychotics are misused or abused for their sedative, tranquilizing, and (paradoxically) "hallucinogenic" effects. The most commonly second-generation antipsychotic implicated is quetiapine. In case reports, quetiapine has been abused in doses taken by mouth (which is how the drug is available from the manufacturer), but also crushed and insufflated or mixed with water for injection into a vein. Olanzapine, another sedating second-generation antipsychotic, has also been misused for similar reasons. There is no standard treatment for antipsychotic abuse, though switching to a second-generation antipsychotic with less abuse potential (e.g. aripiprazole) has been used.
Controversy
Joanna Moncrieff has argued that antipsychotic drug treatment is often undertaken as a means of control rather than to treat specific symptoms experienced by the patient.
Use of this class of drugs has a history of criticism in residential care. As the drugs used can make patients calmer and more compliant, critics claim that the drugs can be overused. Outside doctors can feel under pressure from care home staff. In an official review commissioned by UK government ministers it was reported that the needless use of antipsychotic medication in dementia care was widespread and was linked to 1800 deaths per year. In the US, the government has initiated legal action against the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson for allegedly paying kickbacks to Omnicare to promote its antipsychotic risperidone (Risperdal) in nursing homes.
There has also been controversy about the role of pharmaceutical companies in marketing and promoting antipsychotics, including allegations of downplaying or covering up adverse effects, expanding the number of conditions or illegally promoting off-label usage; influencing drug trials (or their publication) to try to show that the expensive and profitable newer atypicals were superior to the older cheaper typicals that were out of patent. Following charges of illegal marketing, settlements by two large pharmaceutical companies in the US set records for the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations. One case involved Eli Lilly and Company's antipsychotic Zyprexa, and the other involved Bextra. In the Bextra case, the government also charged Pfizer with illegally marketing another antipsychotic, Geodon. In addition, AstraZeneca faces numerous personal-injury lawsuits from former users of Seroquel (quetiapine), amidst federal investigations of its marketing practices. By expanding the conditions for which they were indicated, Astrazeneca's Seroquel and Eli Lilly's Zyprexa had become the biggest selling antipsychotics in 2008 with global sales of $5.5 billion and $5.4 billion respectively.
Harvard University medical professor Joseph Biederman conducted research on bipolar disorder in children that led to an increase in such diagnoses. A 2008 Senate investigation found that Biederman also received $1.6 million in speaking and consulting fees between 2000 and 2007, some of them undisclosed to Harvard, from companies including makers of antipsychotic drugs prescribed for children with bipolar disorder. Johnson & Johnson gave more than $700,000 to a research center that was headed by Biederman from 2002 to 2005, where research was conducted, in part, on Risperdal, the company's antipsychotic drug. Biederman has responded saying that the money did not influence him and that he did not promote a specific diagnosis or treatment.
Pharmaceutical companies have also been accused of attempting to set the mental health agenda through activities such as funding consumer advocacy groups.
Special populations
It is recommended that persons with dementia who exhibit behavioral and psychological symptoms should not be given antipsychotics before trying other treatments. When taking antipsychotics this population has increased risk of cerebrovascular effects, parkinsonism or extrapyramidal symptoms, sedation, confusion and other cognitive adverse effects, weight gain, and increased mortality. Physicians and caretakers of persons with dementia should try to address symptoms including agitation, aggression, apathy, anxiety, depression, irritability, and psychosis with alternative treatments whenever antipsychotic use can be replaced or reduced. Elderly persons often have their dementia treated first with antipsychotics and this is not the best management strategy.
See also
List of investigational antipsychotics
Antipsychotic switching
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Recommendations for the use of antipsychotics for treating psychosis, World Health Organization 2012
Are atypical antipsychotics advantageous? – the case for, Australian Prescriber 2005 (note: pharmaceutical company conflict of interest statement at the end)
Are atypical antipsychotics advantageous? – the case against, Australian Prescriber 2005
First Generation Antipsychotics: An Introduction, Psychopharmacology Institute, 2012
FDA Public Health Advisory – Public Health Advisory for Antipsychotic Drugs used for Treatment of Behavioral Disorders in Elderly Patients, fda.gov
Antipsychotic Medication – information from mental health charity The Royal College of Psychiatrists
FROTA LH. Fifty Years of Antipsychotic Drugs in Psychiatry. "Cinqüenta Anos de Medicamentos Antipsicóticos em Psiquiatria." 1st ed; Ebook: CD-Rom/On-Line Portuguese, , File .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) 6Mb, Informática, Rio de Janeiro, August 2003, 486pp., medicina.ufrj.br
Psychiatry controversies
Drug classes defined by psychological effects
Dopamine antagonists
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In condensed matter physics and materials science, an amorphous solid (or non-crystalline solid) is a solid that lacks the long-range order that is characteristic of a crystal. The terms "glass" and "glassy solid" are sometimes used synonymously with amorphous solid; however, these terms refer specifically to amorphous materials that undergo a glass transition. Examples of amorphous solids include glasses, metallic glasses, and certain types of plastics and polymers.
Etymology
The term comes from the Greek a ("without"), and morphé ("shape, form").
Structure
Amorphous materials have an internal structure consisting of interconnected structural blocks that can be similar to the basic structural units found in the corresponding crystalline phase of the same compound. Unlike in crystalline materials, however, no long-range order exists. Amorphous materials therefore cannot be defined by a finite unit cell. Statistical methods, such as the atomic density function and radial distribution function, are more useful in describing the structure of amorphous solids.
Although amorphous materials lack long range order, they exhibit localized order on small length scales. Localized order in amorphous materials can be categorized as short or medium range order. By convention, short range order extends only to the nearest neighbor shell, typically only 1-2 atomic spacings. Medium range order is then defined as the structural organization extending beyond the short range order, usually by 1-2 nm.
Fundamental properties of amorphous solids
Glass transition at high temperatures
The freezing from liquid state to amorphous solid - glass transition - is considered one of the very important and unsolved problems of physics.
Universal low-temperature properties of amorphous solids
At very low temperatures (below 1-10 K), large family of amorphous solids have various similar low-temperature properties.
Although there are various theoretical models, neither glass transition nor low-temperature properties of glassy solids are well understood on the fundamental physics level.
Amorphous solids is an important area of condensed matter physics aiming to understand these substances at high temperatures of glass transition and at low temperatures towards absolute zero. From 1970s, low-temperature properties of amorphous solids were studied experimentally in great detail.
For all of these substances, specific heat has a (nearly) linear dependence as a function of temperature, and thermal conductivity has nearly quadratic temperature dependence. These properties are conventionally called anomalous being very different from properties of crystalline solids.
On the phenomenological level, many of these properties were described by a collection of tunneling two-level systems.
Nevertheless, the microscopic theory of these properties is still missing after more than 50 years of the research.
Remarkably, a dimensionless quantity of internal friction is nearly universal in these materials.
This quantity is a dimensionless ratio (up to a numerical constant) of the phonon wavelength to the phonon mean free path. Since the theory of tunneling two-level states (TLSs) does not address the origin of the density of TLSs, this theory cannot explain the universality of internal friction, which in turn is proportional to the density of scattering TLSs. The theoretical significance of this important and unsolved problem was highlighted by Anthony Leggett.
Nano-structured materials
Amorphous materials will have some degree of short-range order at the atomic-length scale due to the nature of intermolecular chemical bonding. Furthermore, in very small crystals, short-range order encompasses a large fraction of the atoms; nevertheless, relaxation at the surface, along with interfacial effects, distorts the atomic positions and decreases structural order. Even the most advanced structural characterization techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, have difficulty distinguishing amorphous and crystalline structures at short-length scales.
Characterization of amorphous solids
Due to the lack of long-range order, standard crystallographic techniques are often inadequate in determining the structure of amorphous solids. A variety of electron, X-ray, and computation-based techniques have been used to characterize amorphous materials. Multi-modal analysis is very common for amorphous materials.
X-ray and neutron diffraction
Unlike crystalline materials which exhibit strong Bragg diffraction, the diffraction patterns of amorphous materials are characterized by broad and diffuse peaks. As a result, detailed analysis and complementary techniques are required to extract real space structural information from the diffraction patterns of amorphous materials. It is useful to obtain diffraction data from both X-ray and neutron sources as they have different scattering properties and provide complementary data. Pair distribution function analysis can be performed on diffraction data to determine the probability of finding a pair of atoms separated by a certain distance. Another type of analysis that is done with diffraction data of amorphous materials is radial distribution function analysis, which measures the number of atoms found at varying radial distances away from an arbitrary reference atom. From these techniques, the local order of an amorphous material can be elucidated.
X-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy
X-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy is an atomic scale probe making it useful for studying materials lacking in long range order. Spectra obtained using this method provide information on the oxidation state, coordination number, and species surrounding the atom in question as well as the distances at which they are found.
Atomic electron tomography
The atomic electron tomography technique is performed in transmission electron microscopes capable of reaching sub-Angstrom resolution. A collection of 2D images taken at numerous different tilt angles is acquired from the sample in question, and then used to reconstruct a 3D image. After image acquisition, a significant amount of processing must be done to correct for issues such as drift, noise, and scan distortion. High quality analysis and processing using atomic electron tomography results in a 3D reconstruction of an amorphous material detailing the atomic positions of the different species that are present.
Fluctuation electron microscopy
Fluctuation electron microscopy is another transmission electron microscopy based technique that is sensitive to the medium range order of amorphous materials. Structural fluctuations arising from different forms of medium range order can be detected with this method. Fluctuation electron microscopy experiments can be done in conventional or scanning transmission electron microscope mode.
Computational techniques
Simulation and modeling techniques are often combined with experimental methods to characterize structures of amorphous materials. Commonly used computational techniques include density functional theory, molecular dynamics, and reverse Monte Carlo.
Uses and observations
Amorphous thin films
Amorphous phases are important constituents of thin films. Thin films are solid layers of a few nanometres to tens of micrometres thickness that are deposited onto a substrate. So-called structure zone models were developed to describe the microstructure of thin films as a function of the homologous temperature (Th), which is the ratio of deposition temperature to melting temperature. According to these models, a necessary condition for the occurrence of amorphous phases is that (Th) has to be smaller than 0.3. The deposition temperature must be below 30% of the melting temperature.
Superconductivity
Regarding their applications, amorphous metallic layers played an important role in the discovery of superconductivity in amorphous metals made by Buckel and Hilsch. The superconductivity of amorphous metals, including amorphous metallic thin films, is now understood to be due to phonon-mediated Cooper pairing. The role of structural disorder can be rationalized based on the strong-coupling Eliashberg theory of superconductivity.
Thermal protection
Amorphous solids typically exhibit higher localization of heat carriers compared to crystalline, giving rise to low thermal conductivity. Products for thermal protection, such as thermal barrier coatings and insulation, rely on materials with ultralow thermal conductivity.
Technological uses
Today, optical coatings made from TiO2, SiO2, Ta2O5 etc. (and combinations of these) in most cases consist of amorphous phases of these compounds. Much research is carried out into thin amorphous films as a gas separating membrane layer. The technologically most important thin amorphous film is probably represented by a few nm thin SiO2 layers serving as isolator above the conducting channel of a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). Also, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (Si:H) is of technical significance for thin-film solar cells.
Pharmaceutical use
In the pharmaceutical industry, some amorphous drugs have been shown to offer higher bioavailability than their crystalline counterparts as a result of the higher solubility of the amorphous phase. However, certain compounds can undergo precipitation in their amorphous form in vivo, and can then decrease mutual bioavailability if administered together.
In soils
Amorphous materials in soil strongly influence bulk density, aggregate stability, plasticity, and water holding capacity of soils. The low bulk density and high void ratios are mostly due to glass shards and other porous minerals not becoming compacted. Andisol soils contain the highest amounts of amorphous materials.
Phase
The occurrence of amorphous phases turned out to be a phenomenon of particular interest for the studying of thin-film growth. The growth of polycrystalline films is often used and preceded by an initial amorphous layer, the thickness of which may amount to only a few nm. The most investigated example is represented by the unoriented molecules of thin polycrystalline silicon films. Wedge-shaped polycrystals were identified by transmission electron microscopy to grow out of the amorphous phase only after the latter has exceeded a certain thickness, the precise value of which depends on deposition temperature, background pressure, and various other process parameters. The phenomenon has been interpreted in the framework of Ostwald's rule of stages that predicts the formation of phases to proceed with increasing condensation time towards increasing stability.
Notes
References
Further reading
Phases of matter
Unsolved problems in physics
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A file archiver is a computer program that combines a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for easier transportation or storage. File archivers may employ lossless data compression in their archive formats to reduce the size of the archive.
Basic archivers just take a list of files and concatenate their contents sequentially into archives. The archive files need to store metadata, at least the names and lengths of the original files, if proper reconstruction is possible. More advanced archivers store additional metadata, such as the original timestamps, file attributes or access control lists.
The process of making an archive file is called archiving or packing. Reconstructing the original files from the archive is termed unarchiving, unpacking or extracting.
History
An early archiver was the Multics command archive, descended from the CTSS command of the same name, which was a basic archiver and performed no compression. Multics also had a "tape_archiver" command, abbreviated ta, which was perhaps the forerunner of the Unix command tar.
Unix archivers
The Unix tools ar, tar, and cpio act as archivers but not compressors. Users of the Unix tools use additional compression tools, such as gzip, bzip2, or xz, to compress the archive file after packing or remove compression before unpacking the archive file. The filename extensions are successively added at each step of this process. For example, archiving a collection of files with tar and then compressing the resulting archive file with gzip results a file with .tar.gz extension.
This approach has two goals:
It follows the Unix philosophy that each program should accomplish a single task to perfection, as opposed to attempting to accomplish everything with one tool. As compression technology progresses, users may use different compression programs without having to modify or abandon their archiver.
The archives use solid compression. When the files are combined, the compressor can exploit redundancy across several archived files and achieve better compression than a compressor that compresses each files individually.
This approach, however, has disadvantages too:
Extracting or modifying one file is difficult. Extracting one file requires decompressing an entire archive, which can be time- and space-consuming. Modifying one means the file needs to be put back into archive and the archive recompressed again. This operation requires additional time and disk space.
The archive becomes damage-prone. If the area holding shared data for several files is damaged, all those files are lost.
It is impossible to take advantage of redundancy between files unless the compression window is larger than the size of an individual file. For example, gzip uses DEFLATE, which typically operates with a 32768-byte window, whereas bzip2 uses a Burrows–Wheeler transform roughly 27 times bigger. xz defaults to 8 MiB but supports significantly larger windows.
Windows archivers
The built-in archiver of Microsoft Windows as well as third-party archiving software, such as WinRAR and 7-zip, often use a graphical user interface. They also offer an optional command-line interface, while Windows itself does not. Windows archivers perform both archiving and compression. Solid compression may or may not be offered, depending on the product: Windows itself does not support it; WinRAR and 7-zip offer it as an option that can be turned on or off.
See also
Comparison of file archivers
Archive format
List of archive formats
Comparison of archive formats
References
External links
Computer storage systems
Computer file systems
Computer archives
Utility software types
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In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Artemis (; ) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. In later times, in some places, she was identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon. She often roamed the forests of Greece, attended by her large entourage, mostly made up of nymphs, some mortals, and hunters. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
In Greek tradition, Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. In most accounts, the twins are the products of an extramarital liaison. For this, Zeus' wife Hera forbade Leto from giving birth anywhere on land. Only the island of Delos gave refuge to Leto, allowing her to give birth to her children. Usually, Artemis is the twin to be born first, who then proceeds to assist Leto in the birth of the second child, Apollo. Like her brother, she was a kourotrophic (child-nurturing) deity, that is the patron and protector of young children, especially young girls, and women, and was believed to both bring disease upon women and children and relieve them of it. Artemis was worshipped as one of the primary goddesses of childbirth and midwifery along with Eileithyia and Hera. Much like Athena and Hestia, Artemis preferred to remain a maiden goddess and was sworn never to marry, so was one of the three Greek virgin goddesses, over whom the goddess of love and lust, Aphrodite, had no power whatsoever.
In myth and literature, Artemis is presented as a hunting goddess of the woods, surrounded by her followers, who are not to be crossed. In the myth of Actaeon, when the young hunter sees her bathing naked, he is transformed into a deer by the angered goddess and is then devoured by his own hunting dogs, who do not recognize their master. In the story of Callisto, the girl is driven away from Artemis' company after breaking her vow of virginity, having lain with and been impregnated by Zeus. In the Epic tradition, Artemis halted the winds blowing the Greek ships during the Trojan War, stranding the Greek fleet in Aulis, after King Agamemnon, the leader of the expedition, shot and killed her sacred deer. Artemis demanded the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon's young daughter, as compensation for her slain deer. In most versions, when Iphigenia is led to the altar to be offered as a sacrifice, Artemis pities her and takes her away, leaving another deer in her place. In the war that followed, Artemis, along with her twin brother and mother, supported the Trojans against the Greeks, and challenged Hera into battle.
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities; her worship spread throughout ancient Greece, with her multiple temples, altars, shrines, and local veneration found everywhere in the ancient world. Her great temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, before it was burnt to the ground. Artemis' symbols included a bow and arrow, a quiver, and hunting knives, and the deer and the cypress were sacred to her. Diana, her Roman equivalent, was especially worshipped on the Aventine Hill in Rome, near Lake Nemi in the Alban Hills, and in Campania.
Etymology
The name "Artemis" (n., f.) is of unknown or uncertain etymology, although various sources have been proposed. R. S. P. Beekes suggested that the e/i interchange points to a Pre-Greek origin. Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus. Georgios Babiniotis, while accepting that the etymology is unknown, also states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of pre-Greek origin.
The name may be related to Greek árktos "bear" (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), supported by the bear cult the goddess had in Attica (Brauronia) and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story of Callisto, which was originally about Artemis (Arcadian epithet kallisto); this cult was a survival of very old totemic and shamanistic rituals and formed part of a larger bear cult found further afield in other Indo-European cultures (e.g., Gaulish Artio). It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshipped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek , a-te-mi-to /Artemitos/ (gen.) and , a-ti-mi-te /Artimitei/ (dat.), written in Linear B at Pylos.
According to J. T. Jablonski, the name is also Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. Charles Anthon argued that the primitive root of the name is probably of Persian origin from *arta, *art, *arte, all meaning "great, excellent, holy", thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature, even as she was worshipped at Ephesus". Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake", and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter".
Ancient Greek writers, by way of folk etymology, and some modern scholars, have linked Artemis (Doric Artamis) to , artamos, i.e. "butcher" or, like Plato did in Cratylus, to , artemḗs, i.e. "safe", "unharmed", "uninjured", "pure", "the stainless maiden". A. J. Van Windekens tried to explain both and Artemis from , atremḗs, meaning "unmoved, calm; stable, firm" via metathesis.
Description
Artemis was the most popular goddess in Ancient Greece. The most frequent name of a month in the Greek calendars was Artemision in Ionia, Artemisios or Artamitios in the Doric and Aeolic territories and in Macedonia. Also Elaphios in Elis, Elaphebolion in Athens, Iasos, Apollonia of Chalkidice and Munichion in Attica. In the calendars of Aetolia, Phocis and Gytheion there was the month Laphrios and in Thebes, Corcyra, and Byzantion the month Eucleios. The goddess was venerated in festivals during spring.
Artemis is presented as a goddess who delights in hunting and punishes harshly those who cross her. Artemis' wrath is proverbial, and represents the hostility of wild nature to humans. Homer calls her , "the mistress of animals", a title associated with representations in art going back as far as the Bronze Age, showing a woman between a pair of animals. Artemis carries with her certain functions and characteristics of a Minoan form whose history was lost in the myths.
In some cults she retains the theriomorphic form of a Pre-Greek goddess who was conceived with the shape of a bear (arktos: bear). Kallisto in Arcadia is a hypostasis of Artemis with the shape of a bear, and her cults at Brauron and at Piraeus (Munichia) are remarkable for the arkteia where virgin girls before marriage were disguised as she-bears.
The ancient Greeks called potnia theron the representation of the goddess between animals; on a Greek vase from circa 570 BCE, a winged Artemis stands between a spotted panther and a deer. "Potnia theron" is very close to the daimons and this differentiates her from the other Greek divinities. This is the reason that Artemis was later identified with Hecate, since the daimons were tutelary deities. Hecate was the goddess of crossroads and she was the queen of the witches.
Laphria is the Pre-Greek "mistress of the animals" at Delphi and Patras. There was a custom to throw animals alive into the annual fire of the fest. The festival at Patras was introduced from Calydon and this relates Artemis to the Greek heroine Atalanta who symbolizes freedom and independence. Other epithets that relate Artemis to the animals are Amarynthia and Kolainis.
In the Homeric poems Artemis is mainly the goddess of hunting, because it was the most important sport in Mycenean Greece. An almost formulaic epithet used in the Iliad and Odyssey to describe her is iocheaira, "she who shoots arrows", often translated as "she who delights in arrows" or "she who showers arrows". She is called Artemis Chrysilakatos, of the golden shafts, or Chrysinios, of the golden reins, as a goddess of hunting in her chariot. The Homeric Hymn 27 to Artemis paints this picture of the goddess:
According to the beliefs of the first Greeks in Arcadia Artemis is the first nymph, a goddess of free nature. She is an independent free woman, and she doesn't need any partner. She is hunting surrounded by her nymphs. This idea of freedom and women's skill is expressed in many Greek myths.
In Peloponnese the temples of Artemis were built near springs, rivers and marshes. Artemis was closely related to the waters and especially to Poseidon, the god of the waters. Her common epithets are Limnnaia, Limnatis (relation to waters) and Potamia and Alphaea (relation to rivers). In some cults she is the healer goddess of women with the surnames Lousia and Thermia.
Artemis is the leader of the nymphs (Hegemone) and she is hunting surrounded by them. The nymphs appear during the festival of the marriage, and they are appealed by the pregnant women. Artemis became goddess of marriage and childbirth. She was worshipped with the surname Eucleia in several cities. Women consecrated clothes to Artemis for a happy childbirth and she had the epithets Lochia and Lecho.
The Dorians interpreted Artemis mainly as goddess of vegetation who was worshipped in an orgiastic cult with lascivious dances, with the common epithets Orthia, Korythalia and Dereatis. The female dancers wore masks and were famous in antiquity. The goddess of vegetation was also related to the tree-cult with temples near the holy trees and the surnames Apanchomene, Caryatis and Cedreatis.
According to Greek beliefs the image of a god or a goddess gave signs or tokens and had divine and magic powers. With these conceptions she was worshipped as Tauria (the Tauric, goddess), Aricina (Italy) and Anaitis (Lydia). In the bucolic (pastoral) songs the image of the goddess was discovered in bundles of leaves or dry sticks and she had the surnames Lygodesma and Phakelitis.
In the European folklore, a wild hunter is chasing an elfish woman who falls in the water. In the Greek myths the hunter is chasing a female deer (doe) and both disappear into the waters. In relation to these myths Artemis was worshipped as Saronia and Stymphalia . The myth of a goddess who is chased and then falls in the sea is related to the cults of Aphaea and Diktynna.
Artemis carrying torches was identified with Hecate and she had the surnames Phosphoros and Selasphoros . In Athens and Tegea, she was worshipped as Artemis Kalliste, "the most beautiful". Sometimes the goddess had the name of an Amazon like Lyceia (with a helmet of a wolf-skin) and Molpadia. The female warriors Amazons embody the idea of freedom and women's independence.
In spite of her status as a virgin who avoided potential lovers, there are multiple references to Artemis' beauty and erotic aspect; in the Odyssey, Odysseus compares Nausicaa to Artemis in terms of appearance when trying to win her favor, Libanius, when praising the city of Antioch, wrote that Ptolemy was smitten by the beauty of (the statue of) Artemis; whereas her mother Leto often took pride in her daughter's beauty. She has several stories surrounding her where men such as Actaeon, Orion, and Alpheus tried to couple with her forcibly, only to be thwarted or killed. Ancient poets note Artemis' height and imposing stature, as she stands taller and more impressive than all the nymphs accompanying her.
Epithets and functions
Artemis is rooted to the less developed personality of the Mycenean goddess of nature. The goddess of nature was concerned with birth and vegetation and had certain chthonic aspects. The Mycenean goddess was related to the Minoan mistress of the animals, who can be traced later in local cults, however we don't know to what extent we can differentiate the Minoan from the Mycenean religion. Artemis carries with her certain functions and characteristics of a Minoan form whose history was lost in the myths. According to the beliefs of the first Greeks in Arcadia, Artemis is the first nymph, a divinity of free nature. She was a great goddess and her temples were built near springs marshes and rivers where the nymphs live, and they are appealed by the pregnant women. In Greek religion we must see less tractable elements which have nothing to do with the Olympians, but come from an old, less organized world–exorcisms, rituals to raise crops, gods and goddesses conceived not quite in human shape. Some cults of Artemis retained the pre-Greek features which were consecrated by immemorial practices and connected with daily tasks. Artemis shows sometimes the wild and darker side of her character and can bring immediate death with her arrows, however she embodies the idea of "the free nature" which was introduced by the first Greeks. The Dorians came later in the area, probably from Epirus and the goddess of nature was mostly interpreted as a vegetation goddess who was related to the ecstatic Minoan tree-cult. She was worshipped in orgiastic cults with lascivious and sometimes obscene dances, which have pure Greek elements introduced by the Dorians. The feminine (sometimes male) dancers wore usually masks, and they were famous in the antiquity. The great popularity of Artemis corresponds to the Greek belief in freedom and she is mainly the goddess of women in a patriarchal society. The goddess of free nature is an independent woman and doesn't need a partner. Artemis is frequently depicted carrying a torch and she was occasionally identified with Hecate. Like other Greek deities, she had a number of other names applied to her, reflecting the variety of roles, duties, and aspects ascribed to the goddess.
Aeginaea, probably huntress of chamois or the wielder of the javelin, at Sparta However the word may mean "from the island Aegina", that relates Artemis with Aphaia (Britomartis).
Aetole, of Aetolia at Nafpaktos. A marble statue represented the goddess in the attitude of one hurling a javelin.
Agoraea, guardian of popular assemblies in Athens. She was considered to be the protector of the assemblies of the people in the agora. At Olympia the cult of "Artemis Agoraea" was related to the cult of Despoinai. (The double named goddesses Demeter and Persephone).
Agrotera, the huntress of wild wood, in the Iliad and many cults. It was believed that she first hunted at Agrae of Athens after her arrival from Delos. There was a custom of making a "slaughter sacrifice", to the goddess before a battle. The deer always accompanies the goddess of hunting. Her epithet Agraea is similar with Agrotera.
Alphaea, in the district of Elis. The goddess had an annual festival at Olympia and a temple at Letrinoi near the river Alpheus. At the festival of Letrinoi, the girls were dancing wearing masks. In the legend, Alphaea and her nymphs covered their faces with mud and the river god Alpheus, who was in love with her, could not distinguish her from the others. This explains, somehow, the clay masks at Sparta.
Amarynthia, or Amarysia, with a famous temple at Amarynthus near Eretria. The goddess was related to the animals, however she was also a healer goddess of women. She is identified with Kolainis.
Amphipyros, with fire at each end, a rare epithet of Artemis as bearing a torch in either hand. Sophocles calls her, "Elaphebolos, (deer slayer) Amphipyros", reminding the annual fire of the festival Laphria The adjective refers also to the twin fires of the two peaks of the Mount Parnassus above Delphi (Phaedriades).
Anaitis, in Lydia. The fame of Tauria (the Tauric goddess) was very high, and the Lydians claimed that the image of the goddess was among them. It was considered that the image had divine powers. The Athenians believed that the image became booty to the Persians and was carried from Brauron to Susa.
Angelos, messenger, envoy, title of Artemis at Syracuse in Sicily.
Apanchomene, the strangled goddess, at Caphyae in Arcadia. She was a vegetation goddess related to the ecstatic tree cult. The Minoan tree goddesses Helene, Dentritis, and Ariadne were also hanged. This epithet is related to the old traditions where icons and puppets of a vegetation goddess would be hung on a tree. It was believed that the plane tree near the spring at Caphyae, was planted by Menelaus, the husband of Helen of Troy. The tree was called "Menelais". The previous name of the goddess was most likely Kondyleatis.
Aphaea, or Apha, unseen or disappeared, a goddess at Aegina and a rare epithet of Artemis. Aphaea is identified with Britomartis. In the legend Britomartis (the sweet young woman) escaped from Minos, who fell in love with her. She travelled to Aegina on a wooden boat and then she disappeared. The myth indicates an identity in nature with Diktynna.
Aricina, derived from the town Aricia in Latium, or from Aricia, the wife of the Roman forest god Virbius (Hippolytus). The goddess was related with Artemis Tauria (the Tauric Artemis). Her statue was considered the same with the statue that Orestes brought from Tauris. Near the sanctuary of the goddess there was a combat between slaves who had run away from their masters and the prize was the priesthood of Artemis.
Ariste, the best, a goddess of the women. Pausanias describes xoana of "Ariste" and "Kalliste" in the way to the academy of Athens and he believes that the names are surnames of the goddess Artemis, who is depicted carrying a torch. Kalliste is not related to Kalliste of Arcadia.
Aristobule, the best advisor, at Athens. The politician and general Themistocles built a temple of Artemis Aristobule near his house in the deme of Melite, in which he dedicated his own statue.
Astrateias, she that stops an invasion, at Pyrrichos in Laconia. A wooden image (xoanon), was dedicated to the goddess, because she stopped the invasion of the Amazons in this area. Another xoanon represented "Apollo Amazonios".
Basileie, at Thrace and Paeonia. The women offered wheat stalks to the goddess. In this cult, which reached Athens, Artemis is relative to the Thracian goddess Bendis.
Brauronia, worshipped at Brauron in Attica. Her cult is remarkable for the "arkteia", young girls who dressed with short saffron-yellow chitons and imitated bears (she-bears: arktoi). In the Acropolis of Athens, the Athenian girls before puberty should serve the goddess as "arktoi". Artemis was the goddess of marriage and childbirth. The name of the small "bears" indicate the theriomorphic form of Artemis in an old pre-Greek cult. In the cult of Baubronia, the myth of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was represented in the ritual.
Boulaia, of the council, in Athens.
Boulephoros, counselling, advising, at Miletus, probably a Greek form of the mother-goddess.
Caryatis, the lady of the nut-tree, at Caryae on the borders between Laconia and Arcadia. Artemis was strongly related to the nymphs, and young girls were dancing the dance Caryatis. The dancers of Caryai were famous in antiquity. In a legend, Carya, the female lover of Dionysos was transformed into a nut tree and the dancers into nuts. The city is considered to be the place of the origin of the bucolic (pastoral) songs.
Cedreatis, near Orchomenus in Arcadia. A xoanon was mounted on the holy cedar (kedros).
Chesias, from the name of a river at Samos.
Chitonia, wearing a loose tunic, at Syracuse in Sicily, as goddess of hunting. The festival was distinguished by a peculiar dance and by a music on the flute.
Chrisilakatos, of the golden arrow, in Homer's Iliad as a powerful goddess of hunting. In the Odyssey, she descends from a peak and travels along the ridges of Mount Erymanthos, that was sacred to the "Mistress of the animals". In a legend, when the old goddess became wrathful, she would send the terrible Erymanthian boar to lay waste to fields. Artemis can bring an immediate death with her arrows. In the Iliad, Hera stresses the wild and darker side of her character and she accuses her of being "a lioness between women".
Chrisinios, of the golden reins, as a goddess of hunting in her chariot. In the Iliad, in her wrath, she kills the daughter of Bellerophon.
Coryphaea, of the peak, at Epidaurus in Argolis.
On the top of the mountain Coryphum there was a sanctuary of the goddess. The famous lyric poet Telesilla mentions "Artemis Coryphaea" in an ode.
Cnagia, near Sparta in Laconia. In a legend the native Cnageus was sold as a slave in Crete. He escaped to his country taking with him the virgin priestess of the goddess Artemis. The priestess carried with her from Crete the statue of the goddess, who was named Cnagia.
Cynthia, as goddess of the moon, from her birthplace on Mount Cynthos at Delos. Selene, the Greek personification of the moon, and the Roman Diana were also sometimes called Cynthia.
Daphnaea, as goddess of vegetation. Her name is most likely derived from the "laurel-branch" which was used as "May-branch", or an allusion to her statue being made of laurel-wood (daphne) Strabo refers to her annual festival at Olympia.
Delia, the feminine form of Apollo Delios
Delphinia, the feminine form of Apollo Delphinios (literally derived from Delphi).
Dereatis, at Sparta near Taygetos. Dancers were performing the obscene dance "kallabis".
Diktynna, from Mount Dikti, who is identified with the Minoan goddess Britomartis. Her name is derived from the mountain Dikti in Crete. A folk etymology derives her name from the word "diktyon" (net). In the legend Britomartis (the sweet young woman) was hunting together with Artemis who loved her desperately. She escaped from Minos, who fell in love with her, by jumping into the sea and falling into a net of fishes.
Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth in Boeotia and other local cults especially in Crete and Laconia. During the Bronze Age, in the cave of Amnisos, she was related to the annual birth of the divine child. In the Minoan myth the child was abandoned by his mother and then he was nurtured by the powers of nature.
Elaphia, goddess of hunting (deer). Strabo refers to her annual festival at Olympia.
Elaphebolos, shooter of deer, with the festival "Elaphebolia" at Phocis and Athens, and the name of a month in several local cults. Sophocles calls Artemis "Elaphebolos, Amphipyros", carrying a torch in each hand. This was used during the annual fire of the festival of Laphria at Delphi.
Ephesia, at the city Ephesus of Minor Asia. The city was a great center of the cult of the goddess, with a magnificent temple, (Artemision). Ephesia belongs to the series of the Anatolian goddesses (Great mother, or mountain-mother). However she is not a mother-goddess, but the goddess of free nature. In the Homeric Ionic sphere she is the goddess of hunting.
Eucleia, as a goddess of marriage in Boeotia, Locris and other cities. Epheboi and girls who wanted to marry should make a preliminary sacrifice in honour of the goddess. "Eukleios" was the name of a month in several cities and "Eucleia" was the name of a festival at Delphi. In Athens Peitho, Harmonia and Eucleia can create a good marriage. The bride would sacrifice to the virgin goddess Artemis.
Eupraxis, fine acting. On a relief from Sicily the goddess is depicted holding a torch in one hand and an offering on the other. The torch was used for the ignition of the fire on the altar.
Eurynome, wide ruling, at Phigalia in Arcadia. Her wooden image (xoanon) was bound with a roller golden chain. The xoanon depicted a woman's upper body and the lower body of a fish. Pausanias identifies her as one of the Oceanids daughters of Oceanus and Tethys
Hagemo, or Hegemone, leader, as the leader of the nymphs. Artemis was playing and dancing with the nymphs who lived near springs, waters and forests and she was hunting surrounded by them. The nymphs joined the festival of the marriage and then they returned to their original form. The pregnant women appealed to the nymphs for help. In Greek popular culture the commandress of the Neraiden (fairies) is called "Great lady", "Lady Kalo" or "Queen of the mountains".
Heleia, related to the marsh or meadow in Arcadia, Messenia and Kos.
Hemeresia, the soothing goddess worshipped at well Lusoi
Heurippa, horse finder, at Pheneus in Arcadia. Her sanctuary was near the bronze statue of Poseidon Hippios (horse). In a legend, Odysseus lost his mares and travelled throughout Greece to find them. He found his mares at Pheneus, where he founded the temple of "Artemis Heurippa".
Hymnia, at Orchomenos in Boeotia. She was a goddess of dance and songs, especially of female choruses. The priestesses of Artemis Hymnia couldn't have a normal life like the other women. They were at first virgins and were to remain celibate in the priesthood. They could not use the same baths and they were not allowed to enter the house of a private man.
Iakinthotrophos, nurse of Hyacinthos at Knidos. Hyacinthos was a god of vegetation with Minoan origin. After his birth he was abandoned by his mother and then he was nurtured by Artemis who represents the first power of nature.
Imbrasia, from the name of a river at Samos.
Iocheaira, shooter of arrows by Homer (archer queen), as goddess of hunting. She has a wild character and Hera advises her to kill animals in the forest, instead of fighting with her superiors. Apollo and Artemis kill with their arrows the children of Niobe because she offended her mother Leto. In the European and Greek popular religion the arrow-shots from invisible beings can bring diseases and death.
Issora, or Isora, at Sparta, with the surname Limnaia or Pitanitis. Issorium was a part of a great summit which advances into the level of Eurotas a Pausanias identifies her with the Minoan Britomartis.
Kalliste, the most beautiful, another form of Artemis with the shape of a bear at Tricoloni near Megalopolis a mountainous area full of wild beasts. Kallisto the attendant of Artemis, bore Arcas the patriarch of the Arcaden. In a legend Kallisto was transformed into a bear and in another myth Artemis shot her. Kallisto is a hypostasis of Artemis with a theriomorphic form from a pre-Greek cult.
'Keladeini, echoing chasing (noisy) in Homer's Iliad because she hunts wild boars and deer surrounded by her nymphs.
'Kithone, as a goddess of childbirth at Millet. Her name is probably derived from the custom of clothes consecration to the goddess, for a happy childbirth.
Kolainis, related with the animals at Euboea and Attica. At Eretria she had a major temple and she was called Amarysia. The goddess became a healer goddess of women.
Kolias, in a cult of women. Men were excluded because the fertility of the earth was related to motherhood. Aristophanes mentions Kolias and Genetyllis who are accused for lack of restraint. Their cult had a very emotional character.
Kondyleatis, named after the village Kondylea, where she had a grove and a temple. In a legend some boys tied a rope around the image of the goddess and said that Artemis was hanged. The boys were killed by the inhabitants and this caused a divine punishment. All the women brought dead children in the world, until the boys were honourably buried. An annual sacrifice was instituted to the divine spirits of the boys. Kondyleatis was most likely the original name of Artemis Apanchomeni.
Kordaka, in Elis. Τhe dancers performed the obscene dance kordaka, which is considered the origin of the dance of the old comedy. The dance is famous for its nudge and hilarity and gave the name to the goddess.
Korythalia, derived from Korythale, probably the "laurel May-branch", as a goddess of vegetation at Sparta. The epheboi and the girls who entered the marriage age placed the Korythale in front of the door of the house. In the cult the female dancers (famous in the antiquity) performed boisterous dances and were called Korythalistriai. In Italy, the male dancers wore wooden masks and they were called kyrritoi (pushing with the horns).
Kourotrophos, protector of young boys. During the Apaturia the front hair of young girls and young boys (koureion) were offered to the goddess.
Laphria, the mistress of the animals (Pre-Greek name) in many cults, especially in central Greece, Phocis and Patras. "Laphria" was the name of the festival. The characteristic rite was the annual fire and there was a custom to throw animals alive in the flames during the fest. The cult of "Laphria" at Patras was transferred from the city Calydon of Aetolia In a legend during the Calydonian boar hunt the fierce-huntress Atalanta was the first who wounded the boar. Atalanta was a Greek heroine, symbolizing the free nature and independence
Lecho, protector of a woman in childbed, or of one who has just given birth.
Leukophryene, derived from the city Leucophrys in Magnesia of Ionia. The original form of the cult of the goddess is unknown, however it seems that once the character of the goddess was similar with her character in Peloponnese.
Limnaia, of the marsh, at Sparta, with a swimming place Limnaion. (λίμνη: lake).
Limnatis, of the marsh and the lake, at Patras, Ancient Messene and many local cults. During the festival, the Messenian young ladies were violated. Cymbals have been found around the temple, indicating that the festival was celebrated with dances.
Lochia, as goddess of childbirth and midwifery. Women consecrated clothes to the goddess for a happy childbirth. Other less common epithets of Artemis as goddess of childbirth are Eulochia and Geneteira.
Lousia, bather or purifier, as a healer goddess at Lusoi in Arcadia, where Melampus healed the Proitiden.
Lyaia, at Syracuse in Sicily. (Spartan colony). There is a clear influence from the cult of Artemis Caryatis in Laconia. The Sicilian songs were transformed songs from the Laconic bucolic (pastoral) songs at Caryai.
Lyceia, of the wolf or with a helmet of a wolf skin, at Troezen in Argolis. It was believed that her temple was built by the hunter Hippolytus who abstained from sex and marriage. Lyceia was probably a surname of Artemis among the Amazons from whom Hippolytus descended from his mother. (Hippolyta).
Lycoatis, with a bronze statue at the city Lycoa in Arcadia. The city was near the foot of the mountain Mainalo, which was sacred to, Pan. On the south slope the Mantineians fetched the bones of Arcas, the son of Kallisto.(Kalliste).
Lygodesma, willow bound, at Sparta (another name of Orthia). In a legend
her image was discovered in a thicket of willows. standing upright (orthia).
Melissa, bee or beauty of nature, as a moon goddess. In Neoplatonic philosophy melissa is any pure being of souls coming to birth. The goddess took suffering away from mothers giving birth. It was Melissa who drew souls coming to birth.
Molpadia, singer of divine songs, a rare epithet of Artemis as a goddess of dances and songs and leader of the nymphs. In a legend Molpadia was an Amazon. During the Attic war she killed Antiope to save her by the Athenian king Theseus, but she was killed by Theseus.
Munichia, in a cult at Piraeus, related to the arkteia of Brauronian Artemis. According to legend, if someone killed a bear, he should be punished by sacrificing his daughter in the sanctuary. Embaros disguised his daughter by dressing her like a bear (arktos), and hid her in the adyton. He placed a goat on the altar and he sacrificed the goat instead of his daughter.
Mysia, with a temple on the road from Sparta to Arcadia near the "Tomb of the Horse".
Oenoatis, derived from the city Oenoe in Argolis. Above the town there was the mountain Artemisium, with the temple of the goddess on the summit.
In a Greek legend the mountain was the place where Heracles chased and captured the terrible Ceryneian Hind, an enormous female deer with golden antlers and hooves of bronze. The deer was sacred to Artemis.
Orthia, upright, with a famous festival at Sparta. Her cult was introduced by the Dorians. She was worshipped as a goddess of vegetation in an orgiastic cult with boisterous cyclic dances.
Among the offerings, there were teracotta masks representing grotesque faces and it seems that animal-masks were also used. In literature there was a great fight for taking the pieces of cheese that were offered to the goddess. The whipping of the epheboi near the altar was a ritual of initiation, preparing them for their future life as soldiers. During this ritual the altar was full of blood.
Paidotrophos, protector of children at Corone in Messenia. During a festival of Korythalia the wet-nurses brought the infants in the sanctuary of the goddess, to get her protection.
Peitho, Persuasion, at the city Argos in Argolis. Her sanctuary was in the market place. In Pelopponnese Peitho is related to Artemis. In Athens Peitho is the consensual force in civilized society and emphasizes civic armony.
Pergaia, who was worshipped at Pamphylia of Ionia. A famous annual festival was celebrated in honor of Artemis in the city Perga. Filial cults existed in Pisidia, north of Pamphylia.
Pheraia, from the city Pherai, at Argos, Athens and Sicyon. It was believed that the image of the goddess was brought from the city Pherai of Thessaly. This conception relates Artemis with the distinctly Thessalian goddess Enodia. Enodia had similar functions with Hecate and she carried the common epithet "Pheraia".
Phakelitis, of the bundle, at Tyndaris in Sicily. In the local legend the image of the goddess was found in a bundle of dry sticks.
Phoebe, bright, as a moon goddess sister of Phoebus. The epithet Phoebe is also given to the moon goddess Selene.
Phosphoros, carrier of light. In Ancient Messene she is carrying a torch as a moon-goddess and she is identified with Hecate.
Polo, in Thasos, with inscriptions and statues from the Hellenistic and Roman period. The name is probably related to "parthenos" (virgin).
Potamia, of the river, at Ortygia in Sicily. In a legend Arethusa, was a chaste nymph and tried to escape from the river god Alpheus who fell in love with her. She was transformed by Artemis into a stream, traversed underground and appeared at Ortygia, thus providing water for the city. Ovid calls Arethusa, "Alfeias" (Alfaea) (of the river god).
Potnia Theron, mistress of the animals. The origin of her cult is Pre-Greek and the term is used by Homer for the goddess of hunting. Potnia was the name of the Mycenean goddess of nature. In the earliest Minoan conceptions the "Master of the animals" is depicted between lions and daimons (Minoan Genius). Sometimes "potnia theron" is depicted with the head of a Gorgon, who is her distant ancestor. She is the only Greek goddess who stands close to the daimons and she has a wild side which differentiates her from other Greek gods. In the Greek legends when the goddess was offended she would send terrible animals like the Erymanthian boar and Calydonian boar to laid waste the farmer's land, or voracious birds like the Stymphalian birds to attack farms and humans. In Arcadia and during the festival of Laphria, there is evidence of barbaric animal sacrifices.
Pythia, as a goddess worshipped at Delphi.
Saronia, of Saron, at Troezen across the Saronic gulf. In a legend the king Saron was chasing a doe that dashed into the sea. He followed the doe in the waters and he was drowned in the waves of the sea. He gave his name to the Saronic gulf.
Selasphoros, carrier of light, flame, as a moon-goddess identified with Hecate, in the cult of Munichia at Piraeus.
Soteira (Kore Soteira), Kore saviour, at Phigalia. In Arcadia the mistress of the animals is the first nymph closely related to the springs and the animals, in a surrounding of animal-headed daimons. At Lycosura Artemis is depicted holding a snake and a torch and dressed with a deer skin, besides Demeter and Persephone. It was said that she was not the daughter of Leto, but the daughter of Demeter.
Stymphalia, of Stymphalus, a city in Arcadia. In a legend the water of the river descended in a chasm which was clogged up and the water overflowed creating a big marsh on the plain. A hunter was chasing a deer and both fell into the mud at the bottom of the chasm. The next day the whole water of the marsh dried up and the land was cultivated. The monstrous man eating Stymphalian birds that were killed by Heracles were considered birds of Artemis.
Tauria, or Tauro (the Tauric goddess), from the Tauri or of the bull. Euripides mentions the image of "Artemis Tauria". It was believed that the image of the goddess had divine powers. Her image was considered to have been carried from Tauris by Orestes and Iphigenia and was brought to Brauron, Sparta or Aricia.
Tauropolos, usually interpreted as hunting bull goddess. Tauropolos was not original in Greece and she has similar functions with foreign goddesses, especially with the mythical bull-goddess. The cult can be identified at Halae Araphenides in Attica. At the end of the peculiar festival, a man was sacrificed. He was killed in the ritual with a sword cutting his throat. Strabo mentions that during the night-fest of Tauropolia a girl was raped.
Thermia, as a healer goddess at Lousoi in Arcadia, where Melampus healed the Proitiden.
Toxia, or Toxitis, bowstring in torsion, as goddess of hunting in the island of Kos and at Gortyn. She is the sister of "Apollo Toxias".
Triclaria, at Patras. Her cult was superimposed on the cult of Dionysos Aisemnetis. During the festival of the god the children were wearing garlands of corn-ears. In a ritual they laid them aside to the goddess Artemis. Triclaria was a priestess of Artemis who made love with her lover in the sanctuary. They were punished to be sacrificed in the temple and each year the people should sacrifice a couple to the goddess. Europylus came carrying a chest with the image of Dionysos who put an end to the killings.
Mythology
Birth
Various conflicting accounts are given in Greek mythology regarding the birth of Artemis and Apollo, her twin brother. In terms of parentage, though, all accounts agree that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and that she was the twin sister of Apollo. In some sources, she is born at the same time as Apollo; but in others, earlier or later.
Although traditionally stated to be twins, the author of The Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo (the oldest extant account of Leto's wandering and birth of her children) is only concerned with the birth of Apollo, and sidelines Artemis; in fact in the Homeric Hymn they are not stated to be twins at all.
It is a slightly later poet, Pindar, who speaks of a single pregnancy. The two earliest poets, Homer and Hesiod, confirm Artemis and Apollo's status as full siblings born to the same mother and father, but neither explicitly makes them twins.
According to Callimachus, Hera, who was angry with her husband Zeus for impregnating Leto, forbade her from giving birth on either terra firma (the mainland) or on an island, but the island of Delos disobeyed and allowed Leto to give birth there. According to some, this rooted the once freely floating island to one place.
According to the Homeric Hymn to Artemis, however, the island where she and her twin were born was Ortygia. In ancient Cretan history, Leto was worshipped at Phaistos, and in Cretan mythology, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis on the islands known today as Paximadia.
A scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. 72 accounts for the island's archaic name Ortygia by asserting that Zeus transformed Leto into a quail (ortux) to prevent Hera from finding out about his infidelity, and Kenneth McLeish suggested further that in quail form, Leto would have given birth with as few birth-pains as a mother quail suffers when she lays an egg.
The myths also differ as to whether Artemis was born first, or Apollo. Most stories depict Artemis as firstborn, becoming her mother's midwife upon the birth of her brother Apollo. Servius, a late fourth/early fifth-century grammarian, wrote that Artemis was born first because at first it was night, whose instrument is the Moon, which Artemis represents, and then day, whose instrument is the Sun, which Apollo represents. Pindar however writes that both twins shone like the Sun when they came into the bright light.
After their troubling childbirth, Leto took the twin infants and crossed over to Lycia, in the southwest corner of Asia Minor, where she tried to drink from and bathe the babies in a spring she found there. However, the local Lycian peasants tried to prevent the twins and their mother from making use of the water by stirring up the muddy bottom of the spring, so the three of them could not drink it. Leto, in her anger that the impious Lycians had refused to offer hospitality to a fatigued mother and her thirsty infants, transformed them all into frogs, forever doomed to swim and hop around the spring.
Childhood
The childhood of Artemis is not fully related to any surviving myth. A poem by Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines a few vignettes of a young Artemis. While sitting on the knee of her father, she asks him to grant her 10 wishes:
to forever remain a virgin
to have many names to set her apart from her brother Phoebus (Apollo)
to have a bow and arrow made by the Cyclopes
to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer
to have a short, knee-length tunic so she could hunt
to have 60 "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir
to have 20 Amnisides nymphs as handmaidens so they would watch over her hunting dogs and bow while she rested
to rule over all the mountains
to be assigned any city, and only to visit when called by birthing mothers
to have the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.
Artemis believed she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly as she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother Apollo. All of her companions remained virgins, and Artemis closely guarded her own chastity. Her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, and the moon.
Callimachus then tells how Artemis spent her girlhood seeking out the things she would need to be a huntress, and how she obtained her bow and arrows from the isle of Lipara, where Hephaestus and the Cyclopes worked. While Oceanus' daughters were initially fearful, the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for a bow and arrows. He goes on to describe how she visited Pan, god of the forest, who gave her seven female and six male hounds. She then captured six golden-horned deer to pull her chariot. Artemis practiced archery first by shooting at trees and then at wild game.
Relations with men
The river god Alpheus was in love with Artemis, but as he realized he could do nothing to win her heart, he decided to capture her. When Artemis and her companions at Letrenoi go to Alpheus, she becomes suspicious of his motives and covers her face with mud so he does not recognize her. In another story, Alphaeus tries to rape Artemis' attendant Arethusa. Artemis pities the girl and saves her, transforming her into a spring in the temple Artemis Alphaea in Letrini, where the goddess and her attendant drink.
Bouphagos, son of the Titan Iapetus, sees Artemis and thinks about raping her. Reading his sinful thoughts, Artemis strikes him down at Mount Pholoe.
Daphnis was a young boy, a son of Hermes, who was accepted by and became a follower of the goddess Artemis; Daphnis would often accompany her in hunting and entertain her with his singing of pastoral songs and playing of the panpipes.
Artemis taught a man, Scamandrius, how to be a great archer, and he excelled in the use of a bow and arrow with her guidance.
Broteas was a famous hunter who refused to honour Artemis, and boasted that nothing could harm him, not even fire. Artemis then drove him mad, causing him to walk into fire, ending his life.
According to Antoninus Liberalis, Siproites was a Cretan who was metamorphized into a woman by Artemis, for, while hunting, seeing the goddess bathing. Artemis changed a Calydonian man named Calydon, son of Ares and Astynome, into stone when he saw the goddess bathing naked.
Divine retribution
Actaeon
Multiple versions of the Actaeon myth survive, though many are fragmentary. The details vary but at the core, they involve the great hunter Actaeon whom Artemis turns into a stag for a transgression, and who is then killed by hunting dogs. Usually, the dogs are his own, but no longer recognize their master. Occasionally they are said to be the hounds of Artemis.
Various tellings diverge in terms of the hunter's transgression: sometimes merely seeing the virgin goddess naked, sometimes boasting he is a better hunter than she, or even merely being a rival of Zeus for the affections of Semele. Apollodorus, who records the Semele version, notes that the ones with Artemis are more common.
According to Lamar Ronald Lacey's The Myth of Aktaion: Literary and Iconographic Studies, the standard modern text on the work, the most likely original version of the myth portrays Actaeon as the hunting companion of the goddess who, seeing her naked in her sacred spring, attempts to force himself on her. For this hubris, he is turned into a stag and devoured by his own hounds. However, in some surviving versions, Actaeon is a stranger who happens upon Artemis.
A single line from Aeschylus's now lost play Toxotides ("female archers") is among the earlier attestations of Actaeon's myth, stating that "the dogs destroyed their master utterly", with no confirmation of Actaeon's metamorphosis or the god he offended (but it is heavily implied to be Artemis, due to the title). Ancient artwork depicting the myth of Actaeon predate Aeschylus. Euripides, coming in a bit later, wrote in the Bacchae that Actaeon was torn to shreds and perhaps devoured by his "flesh-eating" hunting dogs when he claimed to be a better hunter than Artemis. Like Aeschylus, he does not mention Actaeon being deer-shaped when that happens. Callimachus writes that Actaeon chanced upon Artemis bathing in the woods, and she caused him to be devoured by his own hounds for the sacrilege, and he makes no mention of transformation into a deer either.
Diodorus Siculus wrote that Actaeon dedicated his prizes in hunting to Artemis, proposed marriage to her, and even tried to forcefully consummate said "marriage" inside the very sacred temple of the goddess; for this he was given the form "of one of the animals which he was wont to hunt", and then torn to shreds by his hunting dogs. Diodorus also mentioned the alternative of Actaeon claiming to be a better hunter than the goddess of the hunt. Hyginus also mentions Actaeon attempting to rape Artemis when he finds her bathing naked, and her transforming him into the doomed deer.
Apollodorus wrote that when Actaeon saw Artemis bathing, she turned him into a deer on the spot, and intentionally drove his dogs into a frenzy so that they would kill and devour him. Afterward, Chiron built a sculpture of Actaeon to comfort his dogs in their grief, as they could not find their master no matter how much they looked for him.
According to the Latin version of the story told by the Roman Ovid, Actaeon was a hunter who after returning home from a long day's hunting in the woods, he stumbled upon Artemis and her retinue of nymphs bathing in her sacred grotto. The nymphs, panicking, rushed to cover Artemis' naked body with their own, as Artemis splashed some water on Actaeon, saying he was welcome to share with everyone the tale of seeing her without any clothes as long as he could share it at all. Immediately, he was transformed into a deer, and in panic ran away. But he did not go far, as he was hunted down and eventually caught and devoured by his own fifty hunting dogs, who could not recognize their own master.
Pausanias says that Actaeon saw Artemis naked and that she threw a deerskin on him so that his hounds would kill him, in order to prevent him from marrying Semele.
Niobe
The story of Niobe, queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion, who blasphemously boasted of being superior to Leto. This myth is very old; Homer knew of it and wrote that Niobe had given birth to twelve children, equally divided in six sons and six daughters (the Niobids).
Other sources speak of fourteen children, seven sons, and seven daughters. Niobe claimed of being a better mother than Leto, for having more children than Leto's own two, "but the two, though they were only two, destroyed all those others." Leto was not slow to catch up on that and grew angry at the queen's hubris. She summoned her children and commanded them to avenge the slight against her.
Swiftly Apollo and Artemis descended on Thebes. While the sons were hunting in the woods, Apollo crept up on them and slew all seven with his silver bow. The dead bodies were brought to the palace. Niobe wept for them, but did not relent, saying that even now she was better than Leto, for she still had seven children, her daughters.
On cue, Artemis then started shooting the daughters one by one. Right as Niobe begged for her youngest one to be spared, Artemis killed that last one. Niobe cried bitter tears, and was turned into a rock. Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, killed himself. The gods themselves entombed them. In some versions, Apollo and Artemis spared a single son and daughter each, for they prayed to Leto for help; thus Niobe had as many children as Leto did, but no more.
Orion
Orion was Artemis' hunting companion; after giving up on trying to find Oenopion, Orion met Artemis and her mother Leto, and joined the goddess in hunting. A great hunter himself, he bragged that he would kill every beast on earth. Gaia, the earth, was not too pleased to hear that, and sent a giant scorpion to sting him. Artemis then transferred him into the stars as the constellation Orion. In one version Orion died after pushing Leto out of the scorpion's way.
In another version, Orion tries to violate Opis, one of Artemis' followers from Hyperborea, and Artemis kills him. In a version by Aratus, Orion grabs Artemis' robe and she kills him in self-defense. Other writers have Artemis kill him for trying to rape her or one of her attendants.
Istrus wrote a version in which Artemis fell in love with Orion, apparently the only time Artemis ever fell in love. She meant to marry him, and no talk from her brother Apollo would change her mind.
Apollo then decided to trick Artemis, and while Orion was off swimming in the sea, he pointed at him (barely a spot in the horizon) and wagered that Artemis could not hit that small "dot". Artemis, ever eager to prove she was the better archer, shot Orion, killing him. She then placed him among the stars.
In Homer's Iliad, the goddess of the dawn Eos seduces Orion, angering the gods who did not approve of immortal goddesses taking mortal men for lovers, causing Artemis to shoot and kill him on the island of Ortygia.
Callisto
Callisto, the daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia,
was one of Artemis' hunting attendants, and, as a companion of Artemis, took a vow of chastity.
According to Hesiod in his lost poem Astronomia, Zeus appeared to Callisto, and seduced her, resulting in her becoming pregnant. Though she was able to hide her pregnancy for a time, she was soon found out while bathing. Enraged, Artemis transformed Callisto into a bear, and in this form she gave birth to her son Arcas. Both of them were then captured by shepherds and given to Lycaon, and Callisto thus lost her child. Sometime later, Callisto "thought fit to go into" a forbidden sanctuary of Zeus, and was hunted by the Arcadians, her son among them. When she was about to be killed, Zeus saved her by placing her in the heavens as a constellation of a bear.
In his De Astronomica, Hyginus, after recounting the version from Hesiod, presents several other alternative versions. The first, which he attributes to Amphis, says that Zeus seduced Callisto by disguising himself as Artemis during a hunting session, and that when Artemis found out that Callisto was pregnant, she replied saying that it was the goddess's fault, causing Artemis to transform her into a bear. This version also has both Callisto and Arcas placed in the heavens, as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Hyginus then presents another version in which, after Zeus lay with Callisto, it was Hera who transformed her into a bear. Artemis later, while hunting, kills the bear, and "later, on being recognized, Callisto was placed among the stars". Hyginus also gives another version, in which Hera tries to catch Zeus and Callisto in the act, causing Zeus to transform her into a bear. Hera, finding the bear, points it out to Artemis, who is hunting; Zeus, in panic, places Callisto in the heavens as a constellation.
Ovid gives a somewhat different version: Zeus seduced Callisto once again disguised as Artemis, but she seems to realise that it is not the real Artemis, and she thus does not blame Artemis when, during bathing, she is found out. Callisto is, rather than being transformed, simply ousted from the company of the huntresses, and she thus gives birth to Arcas as a human. Only later is she transformed into a bear, this time by Hera. When Arcas, fully grown, is out hunting, he nearly kills his mother, who is saved only by Zeus placing her in the heavens.
In the Bibliotheca, a version is presented in which Zeus raped Callisto, "having assumed the likeness, as some say, of Artemis, or, as others say, of Apollo". He then turned her into a bear himself so as to hide the event from Hera. Artemis then shot the bear, either upon the persuasion of Hera, or out of anger at Callisto for breaking her virginity. Once Callisto was dead, Zeus made her into a constellation, took the child, named him Arcas, and gave him to Maia, who raised him.
Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, presents another version, in which, after Zeus seduced Callisto, Hera turned her into a bear, which Artemis killed to please Hera. Hermes was then sent by Zeus to take Arcas, and Zeus himself placed Callisto in the heavens.
Minor myths
When Zeus' gigantic son Tityos tried to rape Leto, she called out to her children for help, and both Artemis and Apollo were quick to respond by raining down their arrows on Tityos, killing him.
Chione was a princess of Phokis. She was beloved by two gods, Hermes and Apollo, and boasted that she was more beautiful than Artemis because she had made two gods fall in love with her at once. Artemis was furious and killed Chione with an arrow, or struck her mute by shooting off her tongue. However, some versions of this myth say Apollo and Hermes protected her from Artemis' wrath.
Artemis saved the infant Atalanta from dying of exposure after her father abandoned her. She sent a female bear to nurse the baby, who was then raised by hunters. In some stories, Artemis later sent a bear to injure Atalanta because others claimed Atalanta was a superior hunter. Among other adventures, Atalanta participated in the Calydonian boar hunt, which Artemis had sent to destroy Calydon because King Oeneus had forgotten her at the harvest sacrifices.
In the hunt, Atalanta drew the first blood and was awarded the prize of the boar's hide. She hung it in a sacred grove at Tegea as a dedication to Artemis. Meleager was a hero of Aetolia. King Oeneus ordered him to gather heroes from all over Greece to hunt the Calydonian boar. After the death of Meleager, Artemis turns his grieving sisters, the Meleagrids, into guineafowl that Artemis favoured.
In Nonnus' Dionysiaca, Aura, the daughter of Lelantos and Periboia, was a companion of Artemis. When out hunting one day with Artemis, she asserts that the goddess's voluptuous body and breasts are too womanly and sensual, and doubts her virginity, arguing that her own lithe body and man-like breasts are better than Artemis' and a true symbol of her own chastity. In anger, Artemis asks Nemesis for help to avenge her dignity. Nemesis agrees, telling Artemis that Aura's punishment will be to lose her virginity, since she dared question that of Artemis.
Nemesis then arranges for Eros to make Dionysus fall in love with Aura. Dionysus intoxicates Aura and rapes her as she lies unconscious, after which she becomes a deranged killer. While pregnant, she tries to kill herself or cut open her belly, as Artemis mocks her over it. When she bore twin sons, she ate one, while the other, Iacchus, was saved by Artemis.
The twin sons of Poseidon and Iphimedeia, Otos and Ephialtes, grew enormously at a young age. They were aggressive and skilled hunters who could not be killed except by each other. The growth of the Aloadae never stopped, and they boasted that as soon as they could reach heaven, they would kidnap Artemis and Hera and take them as wives. The gods were afraid of them, except for Artemis who captured a fine deer that jumped out between them. In another version of the story, she changed herself into a doe and jumped between them.
The Aloadae threw their spears and so mistakenly killed one another. In another version, Apollo sent the deer into the Aloadae's midst, causing their accidental killing of each other. In another version, they start pilling up mountains to reach Mount Olympus in order to catch Hera and Artemis, but the gods spot them and attack. When the twins had retreated the gods learnt that Ares has been captured. The Aloadae, not sure about what to do with Ares, lock him up in a pot. Artemis then turns into a deer and causes them to kill each other.
In some versions of the story of Adonis, Artemis sent a wild boar to kill him as punishment for boasting that he was a better hunter than her. In other versions, Artemis killed Adonis for revenge. In later myths, Adonis is a favorite of Aphrodite, who was responsible for the death of Hippolytus, who had been a hunter of Artemis. Therefore, Artemis killed Adonis to avenge Hippolytus's death. In yet another version, Adonis was not killed by Artemis, but by Ares as punishment for being with Aphrodite.
Polyphonte was a young woman who fled home in pursuit of a free, virginal life with Artemis, as opposed to the conventional life of marriage and children favoured by Aphrodite. As a punishment, Aphrodite cursed her, causing her to mate and have children with a bear. Artemis, seeing that, was disgusted and sent a horde of wild animals against her, causing Polyphonte to flee to her father's house. Her resulting offspring, Agrius and Oreius, were wild cannibals who incurred the hatred of Zeus. Ultimately the entire family was transformed into birds who became ill portents for mankind.
Coronis was a princess from Thessaly who became the lover of Apollo and fell pregnant. While Apollo was away, Coronis began an affair with a mortal man named Ischys. When Apollo learnt of this, he sent Artemis to kill the pregnant Coronis, or Artemis had the initiative to kill Coronis on her own accord for the insult done against her brother. The unborn child, Asclepius, was later removed from his dead mother's womb.
When two of her hunting companions who had sworn to remain chaste and be devoted to her, Rhodopis and Euthynicus, fell in love with each other and broke their vows in a cavern, Artemis turned Rhodopis into a fountain inside that very cavern as punishment. The two had fallen in love not on their own but only after Eros had struck them with his love arrows, commanded by his mother Aphrodite, who had taken offence in that Rhodopis and Euthynicus rejected love and marriage in favour of a chaste life.
When the queen of Kos Echemeia ceased to worship Artemis, she shot her with an arrow; Persephone then snatched the still-living Euthemia and brought her to the Underworld.
Trojan War
Artemis may have been represented as a supporter of Troy because her brother Apollo was the patron god of the city, and she herself was widely worshipped in western Anatolia in historical times. Artemis plays a significant role in the war; like Leto and Apollo, Artemis took the side of the Trojans. In Iliad Artemis on her chariot with the golden reigns, kills the daughter of Bellerophon. Bellorophone was a divine Greek hero who killed the monster Chimera. At the beginning of the Greek's journey to Troy, Artemis punished Agamemnon after he killed a sacred stag in a sacred grove and boasted that he was a better hunter than the goddess.
When the Greek fleet was preparing at Aulis to depart for Troy to commence the Trojan War, Artemis becalmed the winds. The seer Calchas erroneously advised Agamemnon that the only way to appease Artemis was to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. In some version of the myth, Artemis then snatched Iphigenia from the altar and substituted a deer; in others, Artemis allowed Iphigenia to be sacrificed. In versions where Iphigenia survived, a number of different myths have been told about what happened after Artemis took her; either she was brought to Tauris and led the priests there, or she became Artemis' immortal companion.Aeneas was also helped by Artemis, Leto, and Apollo. Apollo found him wounded by Diomedes and lifted him to heaven. There, the three deities secretly healed him in a great chamber.
During the theomachy, Artemis found herself standing opposite of Hera, on which a scholium to the Iliad wrote that they represent the Moon versus the air around the Earth. Artemis chided her brother Apollo for not fighting Poseidon and told him never to brag again; Apollo did not answer her. An angry Hera berated Artemis for daring to fight her:
How now art thou fain, thou bold and shameless thing, to stand forth against me? No easy foe I tell thee, am I, that thou shouldst vie with me in might, albeit thou bearest the bow, since it was against women that Zeus made thee a lion, and granted thee to slay whomsoever of them thou wilt. In good sooth it is better on the mountains to be slaying beasts and wild deer than to fight amain with those mightier than thou. Howbeit if thou wilt, learn thou of war, that thou mayest know full well how much mightier am I, seeing thou matchest thy strength with mine.
Hera then grabbed Artemis' hands by the wrists, and holding her in place, beat her with her own bow. Crying, Artemis left her bow and arrows where they lay and ran to Olympus to cry at her father Zeus' knees, while her mother Leto picked up her bow and arrows and followed her weeping daughter.
Worship
Artemis, the goddess of forests and hills, was worshipped throughout ancient Greece. Her best known cults were on the island of Delos
(her birthplace), in Attica at Brauron and Mounikhia (near Piraeus), and in Sparta. She was often depicted in paintings and statues in a forest setting, carrying a bow and arrows and accompanied by a deer.
The ancient Spartans used to sacrifice to her as one of their patron goddesses before starting a new military campaign.
Athenian festivals in honor of Artemis included Elaphebolia, Mounikhia, Kharisteria, and Brauronia. The festival of Artemis Orthia was observed in Sparta.
Pre-pubescent and adolescent Athenian girls were sent to the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron to serve the Goddess for one year. During this time, the girls were known as arktoi, or little she-bears.
A myth explaining this servitude states that a bear had formed the habit of regularly visiting the town of Brauron, and the people there fed it, so that, over time, the bear became tame. A girl teased the bear, and, in some versions of the myth, it killed her, while, in other versions, it clawed out her eyes. Either way, the girl's brothers killed the bear, and Artemis was enraged. She demanded that young girls "act the bear" at her sanctuary in atonement for the bear's death.
Artemis was worshipped as one of the primary goddesses of childbirth and midwifery along with Eileithyia. Dedications of clothing to her sanctuaries after a successful birth was common in the Classical era. Artemis could be a deity to be feared by pregnant women, as deaths during this time were attributed to her. As childbirth and pregnancy was a very common and important event, there were numerous other deities associated with it, many localized to a particular geographic area, including but not limited to Aphrodite, Hera and Hekate.
It was considered a good sign when Artemis appeared in the dreams of hunters and pregnant women, but a naked Artemis was seen as an ill omen. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, she assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin. Older sources, such as Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo (in Line 115), have the arrival of Eileithyia on Delos as the event that allows Leto to give birth to her children. Contradictory is Hesiod's presentation of the myth in Theogony, where he states that Leto bore her children before Zeus' marriage to Hera with no commentary on any drama related to their birth.
Despite her being primarily known as a goddess of hunting and the wilderness, she was also connected to dancing, music, and song like her brother Apollo; she is often seen singing and dancing with her nymphs, or leading the chorus of the Muses and the Graces at Delphi. In Sparta, girls of marriageable age performed the partheneia (choral maiden songs) in her honor. An ancient Greek proverb, written down by Aesop, went "For where did Artemis not dance?", signifying the goddess' connection to dancing and festivity.
During the Classical period in Athens, she was identified with Hekate. Artemis also assimilated Caryatis (Carya).
There was a women's cult at Cyzicus worshiping Artemis, which was called Dolon (Δόλων).
Festivals
Artemis was born on the sixth day of the month Thargelion (around May), which made it sacred for her, as her birthday. On the seventh day of the same month was Apollo's birthday. Artemis was worshipped in many festivals throughout Greece mainland and the islands, Asia Minor and south Italy. Most of these festivals were celebrated during spring.
Attica
Athens. The festival Elaphebolia was celebrated on the sixth day of the month Elaphebolion (ninth month) . The name is related to elaphos (deer) and Artemis is the Deer Huntress. Cakes made from flour, honey, and sesame and in the shape of stags were offered to the goddess during the festival.
Brauron. The festival was remarkable for the arkteia, where girls, aged between five and ten, were dressed in saffron robes and played at being bears, or "act the bear" to appease the goddess after she sent the plague when her bear was killed. Another commentator says that girls had to ‘placate the goddess for their virginity (parthenia), so that they would not be the object of revenge from her.
Piraeus. The festival of Artemis Munichia was celebrated on the 6th or 16th day of the month Munichion (tenth month). Young girls were dressed up as bears, as for the Brauronia. In the temple have been found sherds grom the geometric period. The festival commemorated the victory of the Greek fleet over the Persians at Salamis.
Athens. Artemis had a filial cult of Brauronia, near the Acropolis.
Agrae, a district of Athens, with a temple of Artemis-Agrotera. (huntress) On the 6th day of the month Boedromion , an armed procession would take a large numbe of goats to the temple. They would all be sacrificed in honor of the victory at the Battle of Marathon. The festival was called "Charisteria", also known as the Athenian "Thanksgiving".
Myrrhinus, a deme near Merenda (Markopoulo).There was a cult of Kolainis. Kolainis is usually identified with Artemis Amarysia in Euboia. Some rites and animal sacrifices were probably similar with the rites of Laphria.
Athmonia, a deme near Marousi. The festival of Artemis Amarysia, was no less splendid that the festival of Amarysia in Euboea.
Halae Araphenides, a deme near Brauron. The fest Tauropolia was celebrated in honour of Artemis Tauropolos. During the festival a human sacrifice was represented in a ritual.
Erchia a district of Athens. The modern Athenian airport was built over the ruins of the deme. A festival was celebrated on the 16th day of the month Metageitnion. Sacrifices were offered to Artemis and Hekate.
Central Greece
Hyampolis in Phocis. During an attack of the Thessalians, the Phocians terrified gathered together in one spot their women, children, movable property, and also their clothes, gold and made a vast pyre. The order was that if they would be defeated, all should be killed and would be thrown into the flames together with their property. The Phocians achieved a great victory and each year they celebrated their victory in the festival Elaphebolia-Laphria in honour of Artemis. All kinds of oferrings were burned in an annual fire, reminding the great pyre of the battle.
Delphi in Phocis. The festival Laphria was celebrated in the month Laphrios. The cult of Artemis Laphria was introduced by the priests of Delphi Lab(r)yaden who had probably Cretan origin. Laphria is certainly the Pre-Greek "Mistress of the animals".
Delphi in Phocis . The festival Eucleia was celebrated in honour of Artemis. According to the Labyaden-incriptions the oferrings darata are determined by the specified gamela and pedēia. Eucleia was a godess of marriage.
Tithorea in Ancient Phocis. It seems that the festival of Isis was a reform of the festival of Artemis Laphria.
Erineos in Doris. Festival of Artemis Laphria, indicated by the month Laphrios in the local calendar.
Antikyra in Phocis.Cult of Artemis-Diktynaia, a popular goddess who was worshipped with great respect.
Thebes in Boeotia. Before marriage a premilinary sacrifice should be made by the bride and the groom to Artemis-Eucleia.
Amarynthos in Euboia. Festival of Artemis Amarysia. Animals were sacrificed with rites probably similar with the fest Laphria.
Aulis in Boeotia. In a festival all kinds of sacrificial animals were oferred to the goddess. It seems that the festival was a reverberation of the rites of Laphria.
Calydon in Aetolia. Calydon is considered the origin of the cult of Artemis Laphria at Patras. In the Aetolian calendar there was the month Laphrios. Near the city there was the temple of Apollo Laphrius;
Nafpaktos in Aetolia. Cult of Artemis Laphria.
Acarnania. Cult of Artemis-Agrotera (huntress) in a society of hunters.
Peloponnese
Patras in Achaea. The great festival Laphria was celebrated in honour of Artemis. The characteristic rite was the annual fire. Birds, deers, sacrificial animals, young wolves and young bears were thrown alive in a great pyre. Laphria (Pre-Greek name) is the "Mistress of Animals". Traditionally her cult was introduced from Calydon of Aetolia.
Patras. The Ionians who lived in Ancient Achaea celebrated the annual festival of Artemis Triclaria. Pausanias mentions the legend of human sacrifices to the outraged goddess. The new deity Dionysus, put an end to the sacrifices .
Corinth. The festival Eucleia was celebrated in honor of Artemis.
Aigeira in Achaea. Festival of Artemis Agrotera (huntress). When the Sicyonians attacked the city, the Aigeirians tied torches on all goats of the area and during night they set the torches alight. The Sicyonians believed that Aigeira had a great army and they retreated.
Sparta. Festival of Artemis-Orthia. The goddess was associated with the female initiatory rite Partheneion. Women performed round dances. In a legend Theseus stole Helene from the dancing floor of Orthia, during the round-dancing. The significant prize of the competetions was an iron sickle (drepanē) indicating that Orthia was a goddess of vegetation.
Sparta on the road to Amyklai. Artemis-Korythalia was a goddess of vegetation. Women performed lascivious dances. The fest was celebrated in round huts covered with leaves. The nurses brought the infants in the temple of Korythalia during the fest Tithenedia.
Messene near the borders with Laconia. Festival of Artemis Limnatis (of the lake). The festival was celebrated with cymbals and dances. The goddess was worshipped by young women during the festivals of transition from childhood to adulthood.
Dereion on Taygetos in Laconia. Cult of Artemis -Dereatis. The festival was celebrated with the hymns calavoutoi and with the obscene dance callabis.
Epidauros Limera in Laconia. Cult of Artemis-Limnatis.
Caryae on the borders between Laconia and Arcadia . Festival of Artemis-Caryatis, a goddess of vegetation related to the tree-cult. Each year women performed an exstatic dance called the caryatis.
Boiai in Laconia. Cult of Artemis-Soteira (savior), which was related to the myrtle tree. When the inhabitants of the cities near the gulf were expelled, Artemis with the shape of a hare guided them to a myrtle tree where they built the new city.
Gytheion in Laconia. Cult of Artemis Laphria, in the month Laphrios.
Elis . Pelops (Peloponnese: Pelop's island) had won the sovereignity of Pisa and his followers celebrated their victory near the temple of Artemis-Kordaka. They danced the peculiar dance kordax.
Elis . Festival of Artemis-Elaphia in the month Elaphios (elaphos:deer). Elaphia was a goddess of hunting.
Letrinoi in Elis . Festival of Artemis Alpheaia. Girls wearing masks performed dances.
Olympia in Elis. Annual festival (panegeris) of Artemis Alpheaia .
Olympia in Elis. Annual festival of Artemis Elaphia.
Olympia in Elis. Annual festival of Artemis Daphnaia (of the laurel-branch), as a goddess of vegetation.
Hypsus in Arcadia near the borders of Laconia. Annual festival of Artemis-Diktynna. Her temple was built near the sea.
Hypsus . Annual fest of Artemis Daphnaia.(Of the laurel-branch).
Stymphalus in Arcadia . Festival of Artemis-Stymphalia. The festival begun near the Katavothres where the water overflowed and created a big marsh.
Orchomenus, in Arcadia. A sanctuary was built for Artemis Hymnia where her festival was celebrated every year.
Tegea in Arcadia, on the road to Laconia. Cult of Artemis-Limnatis (of the lake).
Phigalia in Arcadia. In a battle the Phigalians expelled the conquerors Spartans and recovered their city. On the summit of the Acropolis they built the sanctuary of Artemis-Soteira (Savior) and a statue of the goddess. At the beginning of festivals, all their processions started from the sunctuary.
Troizen in Argolis. Festival of Artemis-Saronia. Near the temple was the grave of the king Saron who was drowned into the sea.
Northern Greece
Aegae, in Macedonia. Eucleia had a shrine with dedications in the agora of the city. The goddess is associated with Artemis-Eucleia, the goddess of marriage who was widely worshipped in Boeotia.
Apollonia of Chalcidice. The festival Elaphebolia was celebrated in honor of Artemis in the month Elaphebolion
Greek islands
Icaria. The Tauropolion, the temple of Artemis Tauropolos was built at Oinoe. There was another smaller temenos that was sacred to Artemis-Tauropolos on the coast of the island.
Cephalonia. Cult of Artemis-Laphria who is related to the legend of Britomartis.
Corcyra. Cult of Artemis-Laphria in the month Laphrios.
Asia Minor
Ephesus in Ionia. The great festival Artemisia was celebreted in honor of Artemis. The wealth and splendor of temple and city were taken as evidence of Artemis Ephesia's power. Under Hellenic rule, and later, under Roman rule, the Ephesian Artemisia festival was increasingly promoted as a key element in the pan-Hellenic festival circuit .
Perga in Ionia. Famous festival of Artemis-Pergaia. Under Roman rule Diana-Pergaia is identified with Selene.
Iasos in Caria. The festival Elaphebolia was celebrated in honor of Artemis in the month Elaphebolion
Byzantion. Festival of Artemis-Eucleia in the month Eucleios.
Magna Graecia
Syracuse in Sicily. The festival of Artemis Chitonia was
distinguished by a peculiar dance and by a music on the flute. Chitonia (wearing a loose tunic) was a goddess of hunting.
Syracuse in Sicily. Festival of Artemis-Lyaia. Men from the countryside came to the city in a rustic dress. They carried a deer-antler on their head and holded a shepherd's stab. They sang satirical songs drinking wine. The festival was the link between the comic performance and the countryside.
Tauromenion in Sicily. Festival of Artemis-Eucleia in the month Eucleios.
Festival of Artemis-Korythalia. The male dancers wore wooden masks.
Attributes
Virginity
An important aspect of Artemis' persona and worship was her virginity, which may seem contradictory, given her role as a goddess associated with childbirth. The idea of Artemis as a virgin goddess likely is related to her primary role as a huntress. Hunters traditionally abstained from sex prior to the hunt as a form of ritual purity and out of a belief that the scent would scare off potential prey. The ancient cultural context in which Artemis' worship emerged also held that virginity was a prerequisite to marriage, and that a married woman became subservient to her husband.
In this light, Artemis' virginity is also related to her power and independence. Rather than a form of asexuality, it is an attribute that signals Artemis as her own master, with power equal to that of male gods. Her virginity also possibly represents a concentration of fertility that can be spread among her followers, in the manner of earlier mother-goddess figures. However, some later Greek writers did come to treat Artemis as inherently asexual and as an opposite to Aphrodite. Furthermore, some have described Artemis along with the goddesses Hestia and Athena as being asexual; this is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses.
As a mother goddess
Despite her virginity, both modern scholars and ancient commentaries have linked Artemis to the archetype of the mother goddess. Artemis was traditionally linked to fertility and was petitioned to assist women with childbirth. According to Herodotus, Greek playwright Aeschylus identified Artemis with Persephone as a daughter of Demeter. Her worshipers in Arcadia also traditionally associated her with Demeter and Persephone. In Asia Minor, she was often conflated with local mother-goddess figures, such as Cybele, and Anahita in Iran.
The archetype of the mother goddess, though, was not highly compatible with the Greek pantheon, and though the Greeks had adopted the worship of Cybele and other Anatolian mother goddesses as early as the seventh century BCE, she was not directly conflated with any Greek goddesses. Instead, bits and pieces of her worship and aspects were absorbed variously by Artemis, Aphrodite, and others as Eastern influence spread.
As the Lady of Ephesus
At Ephesus in Ionia, Turkey, her temple became one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was probably the best-known center of her worship except for Delos. There, the Lady whom the Ionians associated with Artemis through interpretatio graeca was worshipped primarily as a mother goddess, akin to the Phrygian goddess Cybele, in an ancient sanctuary where her cult image depicted the "Lady of Ephesus" adorned with multiple large beads. Excavation at the site of the Artemision in 1987–88 identified a multitude of tear-shaped amber beads that had been hung on the original wooden statue (xoanon), and these were probably carried over into later sculpted copies.
In Acts of the Apostles, Ephesian metalsmiths who felt threatened by Saint Paul's preaching of Christianity, jealously rioted in her defense, shouting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Some scholars contend that the statement "saved by childbearing" in the First Epistle to Timothy is a reference to Artemis's midwifery. Of the 121 columns of Artemis's temple, only one composite, made up of fragments, still stands as a marker of the temple's location.
As a lunar deity
No records have been found of the Greeks referring to Artemis as a lunar deity, as their lunar deity was Selene, but the Romans identified Artemis with Selene leading them to perceive her as a lunar deity, though the Greeks did not refer to her or worship her as such. As the Romans began to associate Apollo more with Helios, the personification of the Sun, it was only natural that the Romans would then begin to identify Apollo's twin sister, Artemis, with Helios' own sister, Selene, the personification of the Moon. Evidence of the syncretism of Artemis and Selene is found early on; a scholium on the Iliad, claiming to be reporting sixth century BCE author Theagenes's interpretation of the theomachy in Book 21, says that in the fight between Artemis and Hera, Artemis represents the Moon, while Hera represents the earthly air.
Active references to Artemis as an illuminating goddess start much later. Notably, Roman-era author Plutarch writes how during the Battle of Salamis, Artemis led the Athenians to victory by shining with the full moon, but all lunar-related narratives of this event come from Roman times, and none of the contemporary writers (such as Herodotus) makes any mention of the night or the Moon.
Artemis' connection to childbed and women's labour naturally led to her becoming associated with the menstrual cycle in course of time, thus the Moon. Selene, just like Artemis, was linked to childbirth, as it was believed that women had the easiest labours during the full moon, paving thus the way for the two goddesses to be seen as the same. On that, Cicero writes:
Apollo, a Greek name, is called Sol, the sun; and Diana, Luna, the moon. [...] Luna, the moon, is so called a lucendo (from shining); she bears the name also of Lucina: and as in Greece the women in labor invoke Diana Lucifera,
Association to health was another reason Artemis and Selene were syncretized; Strabo wrote that Apollo and Artemis were connected to the Sun and the Moon, respectively, which was due to the changes the two celestial bodies caused in the temperature of the air, as the twins were gods of pestilential diseases and sudden deaths.
Roman authors applied Artemis/Diana's byname, "Phoebe", to Luna/Selene, the same way as "Phoebus" was given to Helios due to his identification with Apollo. Another epithet of Artemis that Selene appropriated is "Cynthia", meaning "born in Mount Cynthus."
The goddesses Artemis, Selene, and Hecate formed a triad, identified as the same goddess with three avatars: Selene in the sky (moon), Artemis on earth (hunting), and Hecate beneath the earth (Underworld).
In Italy, those three goddesses became a ubiquitous feature in depictions of sacred groves, where Hecate/Trivia marked intersections and crossroads along with other liminal deities. The Romans enthusiastically celebrated the multiple identities of Diana as Hecate, Luna, and Trivia.
Roman poet Horace in his odes enjoins Apollo to listen to the prayers of the boys, as he asks Luna, the "two-horned queen of the stars", to listen to those of the girls in place of Diana, due to their role as protectors of the young. In Virgil's Aeneid, when Nisus addresses Luna/the Moon, he calls her "daughter of Latona."
In works of art, the two goddesses were mostly distinguished; Selene is usually depicted as being shorter than Artemis, with a rounder face, and wearing a long robe instead of a short hunting chiton, with a billowing cloak forming an arc above her head. Artemis was sometimes depicted with a lunate crown.
As Hecate
Hecate was the goddess of crossroads, boundaries, ghosts and witchcraft. She is the queen of the witches. Artemis absorbed the Pre-Greek goddess Potnia Theron who was closely associated with the daimons. In the Mycenean age daimons were lesser deities of ghosts, divine spirits and tutelary deities.
Some scholars believe that Hecate was an aspect of Artemis prior to the latter's adoption into the Olympian pantheon.
Artemis would have, at that point, become more strongly associated with purity and maidenhood on the one hand, while her originally darker attributes like her association with magic, the souls of the dead, and the night would have continued to be worshipped separately under her title Hecate.
Both goddesses carried torches, and were accompanied by a dog. It seems that the character of Artemis in Arcadia was original. At Acacesium Artemis Hegemone is depicted
holding two torches, and at Lycosura Artemis is depicted holding a snake and a torch. A bitch suitable for hunting was lying down by her side.
Sophocles calles Artemis Amphipyros, carrying a torch in each hand, however the adjective refers also to the twin fire on the two peaks of the mountain Parnassus behind Delphi. In the fest of Laphria at Delphi Artemis is related to the Pre-Greek mistress of the animals, with barbaric sacrifices and possible connections with magic and ghosts since Potnia Theron was close to the daimons. The annual fire was the characteristique custom of the fest.
At Kerameikos in Athens Artemis is clearly identified with Hecate. Pausanias believes that Kalliste (the most beautiful ) is a surname of Artemis carrying a torch. In Thessaly the distinctly local goddess Enodia with the surname Pheraia is identified with Hecate. Artemis Pheraia was worshipped in Argos, Athens and Sicyon.
Symbols
Bow and arrow
In Iliad and Odyssey, Artemis is a goddess of hunting, which was a very important sport for the Myceneans. She had a golden bow and arrows and the epithets was Chrisilakatos, she of the golden shaft and Iocheaira, shooter of arrows or archer queen. The arrows of Artemis could also sudden death, a belief which appears also in Indoeuropean folklore and religion (Rudra). The arrows of the goddess bring an immediate and mild death without a previous disease. Apollo and Artemis kill with their arrows the children of Niobe because she offended her mother Leto.
Chariots
Homer uses the epithet Chrisinios, of the golden reigns, to illustrate the chariot of the goddess of hunting. At the fest of Laphria at Delphi the priestess followed the parade on a chariot which was covered with the skin of a deer.
Spears, nets, and lyre
Artemis is rarely portrayed with a hunting spear. In her cult in Aetolia, the Artemis Aetole was depicted with a hunting spear or javelin. Artemis is also sometimes depicted with a fishing spear connected with her cult as a patron goddess of fishing. This conception relates her with Diktynna (Britomartis). As a goddess of maiden dances and songs, Artemis is often portrayed with a lyre in ancient art.
Deer
Deer were the only animals held sacred to Artemis herself. On seeing a deer larger than a bull with horns shining, she fell in love with these creatures and held them sacred. Deer were also the first animals she captured. She caught five golden-horned deer and harnessed them to her chariot. At Lycosura in isolated Arcadia Artemis is depicted holding a snake and a torch and dressed with a deer skin, besides Demeter and Persephone. It seems that the depictions of Artemis and Demeter-Melaina (black) in Arcadia correspond to the earliest conceptions of the first Greeks in Greece. At the fest of Laphria at Delphi the priestess followed the parade on a chariot which was covered with the skin of a deer.
The third labour of Heracles, commanded by Eurystheus, consisted of chasing and catching the terrible Ceryneian Hind. The hind was a female deer with golden andlers and hooves of bronze and was sacred to Artemis. Heracles begged Artemis for forgiveness and promised to return it alive. Artemis forgave him, but targeted Eurystheus for her wrath.
Hunting dog
In a legend Artemis got her hunting dogs from Pan in the forest of Arcadia. Pan gave Artemis two black-and-white dogs, three reddish ones, and one spotted one – these dogs were able to hunt even lions. Pan also gave Artemis seven bitches of the finest Arcadian race, but Artemis only ever brought seven dogs hunting with her at any one time. In the earliest conceptions of Artemis at Lycosura, a bitch suitable for hunting was lying down by her side.
Bear
In a Pre-Greek cult Artemis was conceived as a bear. Kallisto was transformed into a bear, and she is a hypostasis of Artemis with a theriomorph form. In the cults of Artemis at Brauron and at Piraeus Munichia (arkteia) young virgin girls were disguished to she-bears (arktoi) in a ritual and they served the goddess before marriage.
An etiological myth tries to explain the origin of the Arkteia. Every year, a girl between five and ten years of age was sent to Artemis' temple at Brauron. A bear was tamed by Artemis and introduced to the people of Athens. They touched it and played with it until one day a group of girls poked the bear until it attacked them. A brother of one of the girls killed the bear, so Artemis sent a plague in revenge. The Athenians consulted an oracle to understand how to end the plague. The oracle suggested that, in payment for the bear's blood, no Athenian virgin should be allowed to marry until she had served Artemis in her temple (played the bear for the goddess).
In a legend of the cult of Munichia if someone killed a bear, then they were to be punished by sacrificing their daughter in the sanctuary. Embaros disguised his daughter dressing her like a bear (arktos), and hid her in the adyton. He placed a goat on the altar and he sacrificed the goat instead of his daughter.
Boar
The boar is one of the favorite animals of the hunters, and also hard to tame. In honor of Artemis' skill, they sacrificed it to her. Oeneus and Adonis were both killed by Artemis' boar. In The Odyssey, she descends from a peak and she travels along the ridges of Mount Erymanthos, that was sacred to the "Mistress of the animals". When the goddess became wrathful she would send the terrible Erymanthian boar to laid waste the farmer's fields. Heracles managed to kill the terrible creature during his Twelve Labors.
In one legend, the Calydonian boar had terrorized the territory of Calydon because Artemis (the mistress of the animals) was offended. The Calydonian boar hunt is one of the great heroic adventures in Greek legend. The most famous Greek heroes including Meleager and Atalanta took part in the expedition. The fierce-hunter virgin Atalanta allied to the goddess Artemis was the first who wounded the Calydonian boar.
Ovid describes the boar as follows:
A dreadful boar.—His burning, bloodshot eyes
seemed coals of living fire, and his rough neck
was knotted with stiff muscles, and thick-set
with bristles like sharp spikes. A seething froth
dripped on his shoulders, and his tusks
were like the spoils of Ind [India]. Discordant roars
reverberated from his hideous jaws;
and lightning—belched forth from his horrid throat—
scorched the green fields.
— Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.284–289 (Brookes More translation)
Guinea fowl
Artemis felt pity for the Calydonian princesses Meleagrids as they mourned for their lost brother, Meleager, so she transformed them into Guinea fowl to be her favorite animals.
Buzzard hawk
Hawks were the favored birds of many of the gods, Artemis included.
Bull
Artemis is sometimes identified with the mythical bull-goddess in a cult foreign in Greece. The cult can be identified in Halae Araphenides in Attica, where at the end of the peculiar fest a man was sacrificed.Euripides relates her cult with Tauris (tauros:bull) and with the myth of Iphigenia at Brauron. Orestes brought the image of the goddess from Tauris, to Brauron Sparta or Aricia.
Torch
Artemis is often depicted holding one or two torches. There is not any sufficient explanation for this depiction. The character of the goddess in Arcadia seems to be original. At Acacesium Artemis Hegemone (the leader) is depicted holding two torches. At Lycosura the goddess is depicted holding a snake and a torch, and a bitch suitable for hunting was lying down by her sideSophocles calls Artemis "Elaphebolos, (deer slayer) Amphipyros (with a fire in each end)" reminding the annual fire of the fest Laphria at Delphi. The adjective refers also to the twin fires of the two peaks of the Mount Parnassus above Delphi (Phaedriades). Heshychius believes that Kalliste is the name of Hecate established at Kerameikos of Athens, who some call Artemis (torch bearing). On a relief from Sicily the goddess is depicted holding a torch in one hand and an offering on the other. The torch was used for the ignition of the fire on the altar.
Archaic and classical art
During the Bronze Age, the "mistress of the animals" is usually depicted between two lions with a peculiar crown on her head.
The oldest representations of Artemis in Greek Archaic art portray her as Potnia Theron ("Queen of the Beasts"): a winged goddess holding a stag and lioness in her hands, or sometimes a lioness and a lion. Potnia theron is the only Greek goddess close to the daimons and sometimes is depicted with a Gorgon head, and the Gorgon is her distant ancestor. This winged Artemis lingered in ex-votos as Artemis Orthia, with a sanctuary close by Sparta.
In Greek classical art she is usually portrayed as a maiden huntress, young, tall, and slim, clothed in a girl's short skirt, with hunting boots, a quiver, a golden or silver bow and arrows.
Often, she is shown in the shooting pose, and is accompanied by a hunting dog or stag. When portrayed as a lunar deity, Artemis wore a long robe and sometimes a veil covered her head. Her darker side is revealed in some vase paintings, where she is shown as the death-bringing goddess whose arrows fell young maidens and women, such as the daughters of Niobe.
Artemis was sometimes represented in Classical art with the crown of the crescent moon, such as also found on Luna and others.
On June 7, 2007, a Roman-era bronze sculpture of Artemis and the Stag was sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York state by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for $25.5 million.
Modern art
Legacy
In astronomy
105 Artemis (an asteroid discovered in 1868)
Artemis (crater) (a tiny crater on the moon, named in 2010)
Artemis Chasma (a nearly circular fracture on the surface of the planet Venus, described in 1980)
Artemis Corona (an oval feature largely enclosed by the Artemis Chasma, also described in 1980)
Acronym (ArTeMiS) for "Architectures de bolometres pour des Telescopes a grand champ de vue dans le domaine sub-Millimetrique au Sol", a large bolometer camera in the submillimeter range that was installed in 2010 at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
In taxonomy
The taxonomic genus Artemia, which entirely comprises the family Artemiidae, derives from Artemis. Artemia species are aquatic crustaceans known as brine shrimp, the best-known species of which, Artemia salina, or sea monkeys, was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae in 1758. Artemia species live in salt lakes, and although they are almost never found in an open sea, they do appear along the Aegean coast near Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis once stood.
In modern spaceflight
The Artemis program is an ongoing robotic and crewed spaceflight program carried out by NASA, U.S. commercial spaceflight companies, and international partners such as ESA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. The program has the goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the lunar south pole region no earlier than 2025.
Genealogy
See also
Bendis
Dali (goddess)
Janus
Lunar deity
Palermo Fragment
Regarding Tauropolos:
Bull (mythology)
Iphigenia in Tauris
Taurus (Mythology)
References
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.
Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). .
West, M. L. (2003), Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, edited and translated by Martin L. West, Loeb Classical Library No. 497, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2003. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
External links
Theoi Project, Artemis, information on Artemis from original Greek and Roman sources, images from classical art.
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. G. E. Marindin, William Smith, LLD, William Wayte)
Fischer-Hansen T., Poulsen B. (eds.) From Artemis to Diana: the goddess of man and beast. Collegium Hyperboreum and Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen, 2009
Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 1,150 images of Artemis)
Animal goddesses
Childhood goddesses
Hunting goddesses
Lunar goddesses
Nature goddesses
Night goddesses
Greek virgin goddesses
Mythological Greek archers
Children of Zeus
Divine twins
Deities in the Iliad
Metamorphoses characters
Rape of Persephone
Dog deities
Deities in the Aeneid
Light goddesses
Bear deities
Women in Greek mythology
Mountain goddesses
Dance goddesses
Tree goddesses
Health goddesses
Women of the Trojan war
Fertility goddesses
Twelve Olympians
Plague goddesses
Music and singing goddesses
Mythological hunters
Kourotrophoi
Shapeshifters in Greek mythology
Wolf deities
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Albinism is a congenital condition characterized in humans by the partial or complete absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism is associated with a number of vision defects, such as photophobia, nystagmus, and amblyopia. Lack of skin pigmentation makes for more susceptibility to sunburn and skin cancers. In rare cases such as Chédiak–Higashi syndrome, albinism may be associated with deficiencies in the transportation of melanin granules. This also affects essential granules present in immune cells, leading to increased susceptibility to infection.
Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect all vertebrates, including humans. It is due to absence or defect of tyrosinase, a copper-containing enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Unlike humans, other animals have multiple pigments and for these, albinism is considered to be a hereditary condition characterised by the absence of melanin in particular, in the eyes, skin, hair, scales, feathers or cuticle. While an organism with complete absence of melanin is called an albino, an organism with only a diminished amount of melanin is described as leucistic or albinoid. The term is from the Latin albus, "white".
Signs and symptoms
There are two principal types of albinism: oculocutaneous, affecting the eyes, skin and hair, and ocular affecting the eyes only.
There are different types of oculocutaneous albinism depending on which gene has undergone mutation. With some there is no pigment at all. The other end of the spectrum of albinism is "a form of albinism called rufous oculocutaneous albinism, which usually affects dark-skinned people".
According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, "With ocular albinism, the color of the iris of the eye may vary from blue to green or even brown, and sometimes darkens with age. However, when an optometrist or ophthalmologist examines the eye by shining a light from the side of the eye, the light shines back through the iris since very little pigment is present."
Because individuals with albinism have skin that entirely lacks the dark pigment melanin, which helps protect the skin from the sun's ultraviolet radiation, their skin can burn more easily from overexposure.
The human eye normally produces enough pigment to color the iris blue, green or brown and lend opacity to the eye. In photographs, those with albinism are more likely to demonstrate "red eye", due to the red of the retina being visible through the iris. Lack of pigment in the eyes also results in problems with vision, both related and unrelated to photosensitivity.
Those with albinism are generally as healthy as the rest of the population (but see related disorders below), with growth and development occurring as normal, and albinism by itself does not cause mortality, although the lack of pigment blocking ultraviolet radiation increases the risk of melanomas (skin cancers) and other problems.
Visual problems
Development of the optical system is highly dependent on the presence of melanin. For this reason, the reduction or absence of this pigment in people with albinism may lead to:
Misrouting of the retinogeniculate projections, resulting in abnormal decussation (crossing) of optic nerve fibres
Photophobia and decreased visual acuity due to light scattering within the eye (ocular straylight) Photophobia is specifically when light enters the eye, unrestrictedwith full force. It is painful and causes extreme sensitivity to light.
Reduced visual acuity due to foveal hypoplasia and possibly light-induced retinal damage.
Eye conditions common in albinism include:
Nystagmus, irregular rapid movement of the eyes back and forth, or in circular motion.
Amblyopia, decrease in acuity of one or both eyes due to poor transmission to the brain, often due to other conditions such as strabismus.
Optic nerve hypoplasia, underdevelopment of the optic nerve.
The improper development of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), which in normal eyes absorbs most of the reflected sunlight, further increases glare due to light scattering within the eye. The resulting sensitivity (photophobia) generally leads to discomfort in bright light, but this can be reduced by the use of sunglasses or brimmed hats.
Genetics
Oculocutaneous albinism is generally the result of the biological inheritance of genetically recessive alleles (genes) passed from both parents of an individual such as OCA1 and OCA2. A mutation in the human TRP-1 gene may result in the deregulation of melanocyte tyrosinase enzymes, a change that is hypothesized to promote brown versus black melanin synthesis, resulting in a third oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) genotype, "OCA3". Some rare forms are inherited from only one parent. There are other genetic mutations which are proven to be associated with albinism. All alterations, however, lead to changes in melanin production in the body. Some of these are associated with increased risk of skin cancer .
The chance of offspring with albinism resulting from the pairing of an organism with albinism and one without albinism is low. However, because organisms (including humans) can be carriers of genes for albinism without exhibiting any traits, albinistic offspring can be produced by two non-albinistic parents. Albinism usually occurs with equal frequency in both sexes. An exception to this is ocular albinism, which it is passed on to offspring through X-linked inheritance. Thus, ocular albinism occurs more frequently in males as they have a single X and Y chromosome, unlike females, whose genetics are characterized by two X chromosomes.
There are two different forms of albinism: a partial lack of the melanin is known as hypomelanism, or hypomelanosis, and the total absence of melanin is known as amelanism or amelanosis.
Enzyme
The enzyme defect responsible for OCA1-type albinism is tyrosine 3-monooxygenase (tyrosinase), which synthesizes melanin from the amino acid tyrosine.
Evolutionary theories
It is suggested that the early genus Homo (humans in the broader sense) started to evolve in East Africa around 3 million years ago. The dramatic phenotypic change from the ape-like Australopithecus to early Homo is hypothesized to have involved the extreme loss of body hair – except for areas most exposed to UV radiation, such as the head – to allow for more efficient thermoregulation in the early hunter-gatherers. The skin that would have been exposed upon general body hair loss in these early proto-humans would have most likely been non-pigmented, reflecting the pale skin underlying the hair of our chimpanzee relatives. A positive advantage would have been conferred to early hominids inhabiting the African continent that were capable of producing darker skin – those who first expressed the eumelanin-producing MC1R allele – which protected them from harmful epithelium-damaging ultraviolet rays. Over time, the advantage conferred to those with darker skin may have led to the prevalence of darker skin on the continent. The positive advantage, however, would have had to be strong enough so as to produce a significantly higher reproductive fitness in those who produced more melanin. The cause of a selective pressure strong enough to cause this shift is an area of much debate. Some hypotheses include the existence of significantly lower reproductive fitness in people with less melanin due to lethal skin cancer, lethal kidney disease due to excess vitamin D formation in the skin of people with less melanin, or simply natural selection due to mate preference and sexual selection.
When comparing the prevalence of albinism in Africa to its prevalence in other parts of the world, such as Europe and the United States, the potential evolutionary effects of skin cancer as a selective force due to its effect on these populations may not be insignificant. It would follow, then, that there would be stronger selective forces acting on albino individuals in Africa than on albinos in Europe and the US. In two separate studies in Nigeria, very few people with albinism appear to survive to old age. One study found that 89% of people diagnosed with albinism are between 0 and 30 years of age, while the other found that 77% of albinos were under the age of 20.
However, it has also been theorized that albinism may have been able to spread in some Native American communities, because albino males were culturally revered and assumed as having divine origins. The very high incidence of albinism among the Hopi tribe has been frequently attributed to the privileged status of albino males in Hopi society, who were not required to perform physical work outdoors, shielding them from the harmful effects of UV radiation. This privileged status of albino males in Hopi society allowed them to reproduce with large numbers of non-albino women, spreading the genes that are associated with albinism.
Diagnosis
Genetic testing can confirm albinism and what variety it is, but offers no medical benefits, except in the case of non-OCA disorders. Such disorders cause other medical problems in conjunction with albinism, and may be treatable. Genetic tests are currently available for parents who want to find out if they are carriers of ty-neg albinism. Diagnosis of albinism involves carefully examining a person's eyes, skin and hairs. Genealogical analysis can also help.
Management
Since there is no cure for albinism, it is managed through lifestyle adjustments. People with albinism need to take care not to get sunburnt and should have regular healthy skin checks by a dermatologist.
For the most part, treatment of the eye conditions consists of visual rehabilitation. Surgery is possible on the extra-ocular muscles to decrease strabismus. Nystagmus-damping surgery can also be performed, to reduce the "shaking" of the eyes back and forth. The effectiveness of all these procedures varies greatly and depends on individual circumstances.
Glasses (often with tinted lenses), low vision aids, large-print materials, and bright angled reading lights can help individuals with albinism. Some people with albinism do well using bifocals (with a strong reading lens), prescription reading glasses, hand-held devices such as magnifiers or monoculars or wearable devices like eSight
and Brainport.
The condition may lead to abnormal development of the optic nerve and sunlight may damage the retina of the eye as the iris cannot filter out excess light due to a lack of pigmentation. Photophobia may be ameliorated by the use of sunglasses which filter out ultraviolet light. Some use bioptics, glasses which have small telescopes mounted on, in, or behind their regular lenses, so that they can look through either the regular lens or the telescope. Newer designs of bioptics use smaller light-weight lenses. Some US states allow the use of bioptic telescopes for driving motor vehicles. (See also NOAH bulletin "Low Vision Aids".)
There are a number of national support groups across the globe which come under the umbrella of the World Albinism Alliance.
Epidemiology
Albinism affects people of all ethnic backgrounds; its frequency worldwide is estimated to be approximately one in 17,000. Prevalence of the different forms of albinism varies considerably by population, and is highest overall in people of sub-Saharan African descent. Today, the prevalence of albinism in sub-Saharan Africa is around 1 in 5,000, while in Europe and the US it is around 1 in 20,000 of the European derived population. Rates as high as 1 in 1,000 have been reported for some populations in Zimbabwe and other parts of Southern Africa.
Certain ethnic groups and populations in isolated areas exhibit heightened susceptibility to albinism, presumably due to genetic factors. These include notably the Native American Kuna, Zuni and Hopi nations (respectively of Panama, New Mexico and Arizona); Japan, in which one particular form of albinism is unusually common (OCA 4); and Ukerewe Island, the population of which shows a very high incidence of albinism.
Society and culture
In physical terms, humans with albinism commonly have visual problems and need sun protection.
Special status of albinos in Native American culture
In some Native American and South Pacific cultures, people with albinism have been traditionally revered, because they were considered heavenly beings associated with the sky. Among various indigenous tribes in South America, albinos were able to live luxurious lives due to their divine status. This special status was applied mainly to male albinos. It has been theorized that the very high level of albinism among some Native American tribes can be attributed to sexual privileges given to male albinos, which allowed them to reproduce with large numbers of non-albino women in their tribes, leading to the spread of genes that are associated with albinism.
Persecution of people with albinism
Humans with albinism often face social and cultural challenges (even threats), as the condition is often a source of ridicule, discrimination, or even fear and violence. It is especially socially stigmatised in many African societies. A study conducted in Nigeria on albino children stated that "they experienced alienation, avoided social interactions and were less emotionally stable. Furthermore, affected individuals were less likely to complete schooling, find employment, and find partners". Many cultures around the world have developed beliefs regarding people with albinism.
In African countries such as Tanzania and Burundi, there has been an unprecedented rise in witchcraft-related killings of people with albinism in recent years, because their body parts are used in potions sold by witch doctors. Numerous authenticated incidents have occurred in Africa during the 21st century. For example, in Tanzania, in September 2009, three men were convicted of killing a 14-year-old albino boy and severing his legs in order to sell them for witchcraft purposes. Again in Tanzania and Burundi in 2010, the murder and dismemberment of a kidnapped albino child was reported from the courts, as part of a continuing problem. The US-based National Geographic Society estimated that in Tanzania a complete set of albino body parts is worth US$75,000.
Another harmful and false belief is that sex with an albinistic woman will cure a man of HIV. This has led, for example in Zimbabwe, to rapes (and subsequent HIV infection).
Albinism in popular culture
Famous people with albinism include historical figures such as Oxford don William Archibald Spooner; actor-comedian Victor Varnado; musicians such as Johnny and Edgar Winter, Salif Keita, Winston "Yellowman" Foster, Brother Ali, Sivuca, Hermeto Pascoal, Willie "Piano Red" Perryman, Kalash Criminel; actor-rapper Krondon, and fashion models Connie Chiu, Ryan "La Burnt" Byrne and Shaun Ross. Emperor Seinei of Japan is thought to have been an albino because he was said to have been born with white hair.
International Albinism Awareness Day
International Albinism Awareness Day was established after a motion was accepted on 18 December 2014 by the United Nations General Assembly, proclaiming that 13 June would be known as International Albinism Awareness Day as of 2015. This was followed by a mandate created by the United Nations Human Rights Council that appointed Ms. Ikponwosa Ero, who is from Nigeria, as the first Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism.
See also
References
External links
GeneReview/NCBI/NIH/UW entry on Oculocutaneous Albinism Type 2
GeneReview/NCBI/NIH/UW entry on Oculocutaneous Albinism Type 4
Autosomal recessive disorders
Dermatologic terminology
Disturbances of human pigmentation
Human skin color
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AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.
AIM was popular by the late 1990s, in United States and other countries, and was the leading instant messaging application in that region into the following decade. Teens and college students were known to use the messenger's away message feature to keep in touch with friends, often frequently changing their away message throughout a day or leaving a message up with one's computer left on to inform buddies of their ongoings, location, parties, thoughts, or jokes. AIM's popularity declined as AOL subscribers started decreasing and steeply towards the 2010s, as Gmail's Google Talk, SMS, and Internet social networks, like Facebook gained popularity. Its fall has often been compared with other once-popular Internet services, such as Myspace.
In June 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications. In June 2017, Verizon combined AOL and Yahoo into its subsidiary Oath Inc. (now called Yahoo). The company discontinued AIM as a service on December 15, 2017.
History
In May 1997, AIM was released unceremoniously as a stand-alone download for Microsoft Windows. AIM was an outgrowth of "online messages" in the original platform written in PL/1 on a Stratus computer by Dave Brown. At one time, the software had the largest share of the instant messaging market in North America, especially in the United States (with 52% of the total reported ). This does not include other instant messaging software related to or developed by AOL, such as ICQ and iChat.
During its heyday, its main competitors were ICQ (which AOL acquired in 1998), Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger. AOL particularly had a rivalry or "chat war" with PowWow and Microsoft, starting in 1999. There were several attempts from Microsoft to simultaneously log into their own and AIM's protocol servers. AOL was unhappy about this and started blocking MSN Messenger from being able to access AIM. This led to efforts by many companies to challenge the AOL and Time Warner merger on the grounds of antitrust behaviour, leading to the formation of the OpenNet Coalition.
Official mobile versions of AIM appeared as early as 2001 on Palm OS through the AOL application. Third-party applications allowed it to be used in 2002 for the Sidekick. A version for Symbian OS was announced in 2003 as were others for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile
After 2012, stand-alone official AIM client software included advertisements and was available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Classic Mac OS, macOS, Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS.
Usage decline and product sunset
Around 2011, AIM started to lose popularity rapidly, partly due to the quick rise of Gmail and its built-in real-time Google Chat instant messenger integration in 2011 and because many people migrated to SMS or iMessages text messaging and later, social networking websites and apps for instant messaging, in particular, Facebook Messenger, which was released as a standalone application the same year. AOL made a partnership to integrate AIM messaging in Google Talk, and had a feature for AIM users to send SMS messages directly from AIM to any number, as well as for SMS users to send an IM to any AIM user.
As of June 2011, one source reported AOL Instant Messenger market share had collapsed to 0.73%. However, this number only reflected installed IM applications, and not active users. The engineers responsible for AIM claimed that they were unable to convince AOL management that free was the future.
On March 3, 2012, AOL ended employment of AIM's development staff while leaving it active and with help support still provided. On October 6, 2017, it was announced that the AIM service would be discontinued on December 15; however, a non-profit development team known as Wildman Productions started up a server for older versions of AOL Instant Messenger, known as AIM Phoenix.
The "AIM Man"
The AIM mascot was designed by JoRoan Lazaro and was implemented in the first release in 1997. This was a yellow stickman-like figure, often called the "Running Man". The mascot appeared on all AIM logos and most wordmarks, and always appeared at the top of the buddy list. AIM's popularity in the late 1990s and the 2000s led to the "Running Man" becoming a familiar brand on the Internet. After over 14 years, the iconic logo disappeared as part of the AIM rebranding in 2011. However, in August 2013, the "Running Man" returned. It was used for other AOL services like AOL Top Speed.
In 2014, a Complex editor called it a "symbol of America". In April 2015, the Running Man was officially featured in the Virgin London Marathon, dressed by a person for the AOL-partnered Free The Children charity.
Protocol
The standard protocol that AIM clients used to communicate is called Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime (OSCAR). Most AOL-produced versions of AIM and popular third party AIM clients use this protocol. However, AOL also created a simpler protocol called TOC that lacks many of OSCAR's features, but was sometimes used for clients that only require basic chat functionality. The TOC/TOC2 protocol specifications were made available by AOL, while OSCAR is a closed protocol that third parties had to reverse-engineer.
In January 2008, AOL introduced experimental Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) support for AIM, allowing AIM users to communicate using the standardized, open-source XMPP. However, in March 2008, this service was discontinued. In May 2011, AOL started offering limited XMPP support. On March 1, 2017, AOL announced (via XMPP-login-time messages) that the AOL XMPP gateway would be desupported, effective March 28, 2017.
Privacy
For privacy regulations, AIM had strict age restrictions. AIM accounts are available only for people over the age of 13; children younger than that were not permitted access to AIM.
Under the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL had no rights to read or monitor any private communications between users. The profile of the user had no privacy.
In November 2002, AOL targeted the corporate industry with Enterprise AIM Services (EAS), a higher security version of AIM.
If public content was accessed, it could be used for online, print or broadcast advertising, etc. This was outlined in the policy and terms of service: "... you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium". This allowed anything users posted to be used without a separate request for permission.
AIM's security was called into question. AOL stated that it had taken great pains to ensure that personal information will not be accessed by unauthorized members, but that it cannot guarantee that it will not happen.
AIM was different from other clients, such as Yahoo! Messenger, in that it did not require approval from users to be added to other users' buddy lists. As a result, it was possible for users to keep other unsuspecting users on their buddy list to see when they were online, read their status and away messages, and read their profiles. There was also a Web API to display one's status and away message as a widget on one's webpage. Though one could block a user from communicating with them and seeing their status, this did not prevent that user from creating a new account that would not automatically be blocked and therefore able to track their status. A more conservative privacy option was to select a menu feature that only allowed communication with users on one's buddy list; however, this option also created the side-effect of blocking all users who were not on one's buddy list. Users could also choose to be invisible to all.
Chat robots
AOL and various other companies supplied robots (bots) on AIM that could receive messages and send a response based on the bot's purpose. For example, bots could help with studying, like StudyBuddy. Some were made to relate to children and teenagers, like Spleak.
Others gave advice. The more useful chat bots had features like the ability to play games, get sport scores, weather forecasts or financial stock information. Users were able to talk to automated chat bots that could respond to natural human language. They were primarily put into place as a marketing strategy and for unique advertising options. It was used by advertisers to market products or build better consumer relations.
Before the inclusions of such bots, the other bots DoorManBot and AIMOffline provided features that were provided by AOL for those who needed it. ZolaOnAOL and ZoeOnAOL were short-lived bots that ultimately retired their features in favor of SmarterChild.
URI scheme
AOL Instant Messenger's installation process automatically installed an extra URI scheme ("protocol") handler into some Web browsers, so URIs beginning "aim:" could open a new AIM window with specified parameters. This was similar in function to the mailto: URI scheme, which created a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a webpage might have included a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the AIM user notarealuser:
<a href="aim:goim?screenname=notarealuser">Send Message</a>
To specify a message body, the message parameter was used, so the link location would have looked like this:
aim:goim?screenname=notarealuser&message=This+is+my+message
To specify an away message, the message parameter was used, so the link location would have looked like this:
aim:goaway?message=Hello,+my+name+is+Bill
When placing this inside a URL link, an AIM user could click on the URL link and the away message "Hello, my name is Bill" would instantly become their away message.
To add a buddy, the addbuddy message was used, with the "screenname" parameter
aim:addbuddy?screenname=notarealuser
This type of link was commonly found on forum profiles to easily add contacts.
Vulnerabilities
AIM had security weaknesses that have enabled exploits to be created that used third-party software to perform malicious acts on users' computers. Although most were relatively harmless, such as being kicked off the AIM service, others performed potentially dangerous actions, such as sending viruses. Some of these exploits relied on social engineering to spread by automatically sending instant messages that contained a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) accompanied by text suggesting the receiving user click on it, an action which leads to infection, i.e., a trojan horse. These messages could easily be mistaken as coming from a friend and contain a link to a Web address that installed software on the user's computer to restart the cycle.
Users also have reported sudden additions of toolbars and advertisements from third parties in the newer version of AIM. Multiple complaints about the lack of control of third party involvement have caused many users to stop using the service.
Extra features
iPhone application
On March 6, 2008, during Apple Inc.'s iPhone SDK event, AOL announced that they would be releasing an AIM application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The application was available for free from the App Store, but the company also provides a paid version, which displays no advertisements. Both were available from the App Store. The AIM client for iPhone and iPod Touch supported standard AIM accounts, as well as MobileMe accounts. There was also an express version of AIM accessible through the Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
In 2011, AOL launched an overhaul of their Instant Messaging service. Included in the update was a brand new iOS application for iPhone and iPod Touch that incorporated all the latest features. A brand new icon was used for the application, featuring the new cursive logo for AIM. The user-interface was entirely redone for the features including: a new buddy list, group messaging, in-line photos and videos, as well as improved file-sharing.
Version 5.0.5, updated in March 2012, it supported more social stream features, much like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the ability to send voice messages up to 60 seconds long.
iPad application
On April 3, 2010, Apple released the first generation iPad. Along with this newly released device AOL released the AIM application for iPad. It was built entirely from scratch for the new version iOS with a specialized user-interface for the device. It supports geo location, Facebook status updates and chat, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and many social networking platforms.
AIM Express
AIM Express ran in a pop-up browser window. It was intended for use by people who are unwilling or unable to install a standalone application or those at computers that lack the AIM application. AIM Express supported many of the standard features included in the stand-alone client, but did not provide advanced features like file transfer, audio chat, video conferencing, or buddy info. It was implemented in Adobe Flash. It was an upgrade to the prior AOL Quick Buddy, which was later available for older systems that cannot handle Express before being discontinued. Express and Quick Buddy were similar to MSN Web Messenger and Yahoo! Web Messenger. This web version evolved into AIM.com's web-based messenger.
AIM Pages
AIM Pages was a free website released in May 2006 by AOL in replacement of AIMSpace. Anyone who had an AIM user name and was at least 16 years of age could create their own web page (to display an online, dynamic profile) and share it with buddies from their AIM Buddy list.
Layout
AIM Pages included links to the email and Instant Message of the owner, along with a section listing the owners "buddies", which included AIM user names. It was possible to create modules in a Module T microformat. Video hosting sites like Netflix and YouTube could be added to ones AIM Page, as well as other sites like Amazon.com. It was also possible to insert HTML code.
The main focus of AIM Pages was the integration of external modules, like those listed above, into the AOL Instant Messenger experience.
Discontinuation
By late 2007, AIM Pages had been discontinued. After AIM Pages shutdown, links to AIM Pages were redirected to AOL Lifestream, AOL's new site aimed at collecting external modules in one place, independent of AIM buddies. AOL Lifestream was shut down February 24, 2017.
AIM for Mac
AOL released an all-new AIM for the Mac on September 29, 2008, and the final build on December 15, 2008. The redesigned AIM for Mac is a full universal binary Cocoa API application that supports both Tiger and Leopard — Mac OS X 10.4.8 (and above) or Mac OS X 10.5.3 (and above). On October 1, 2009, AOL released AIM 2.0 for Mac.
AIM real-time IM
This feature is available for AIM 7 and allows for a user to see what the other is typing as it is being done. It was developed and built with assistance from Trace Research and Development Centre at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Gallaudet University. The application provides visually impaired users the ability to convert messages from text (words) to speech. For the application to work users must have AIM 6.8 or higher, as it is not compatible with older versions of AIM software, AIM for Mac or iChat.
AIM to mobile (messaging to phone numbers)
This feature allows text messaging to a phone number (text messaging is less functional than instant messaging).
Discontinued features
AIM Phoneline
AIM Phoneline was a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service provided via the AIM application. It was also known to work with Apple's iChat Client. The service was officially closed to its customers on January 13, 2009. The closing of the free service caused the number associated with the service to be disabled and not transferable for a different service. AIM Phoneline website was recommending users switch to a new service named AIM Call Out, also discontinued now.
Launched on May 16, 2006, AIM Phoneline provided users the ability to have several local numbers, allowing AIM users to receive free incoming calls. The service allowed users to make calls to landlines and mobile devices through the use of a computer. The service, however, was only free for receiving and AOL charged users $14.95 a month for an unlimited calling plan. In order to use AIM Phoneline users had to install the latest free version of AIM Triton software and needed a good set of headphones with a boom microphone. It could take several days after a user signed up before it started working.
AIM Call Out
AIM Call Out is a discontinued Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service provided by AOL via its AIM application that replaced the defunct AIM Phoneline service in November 2007. It did not depend on the AIM client and could be used with only an AIM screenname via the WebConnect feature or a dedicated SIP device. The AIM Call Out service was shut down on March 25, 2009.
Security
On November 4, 2014, AIM scored one out of seven points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. AIM received a point for encryption during transit, but lost points because communications are not encrypted with a key to which the provider has no access, i.e., the communications are not end-to-end encrypted, users can't verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, (i.e., the service does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review, i.e., the code is not open-source), the security design is not properly documented, and there has not been a recent independent security audit. BlackBerry Messenger, Ebuddy XMS, Hushmail, Kik Messenger, Skype, Viber, and Yahoo! Messenger also scored one out of seven points.
See also
Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients
List of defunct instant messaging platforms
References
External links
1997 software
Android (operating system) software
Instant Messenger
BlackBerry software
Classic Mac OS instant messaging clients
Computer-related introductions in 1997
Cross-platform software
Defunct instant messaging clients
Instant messaging clients
Internet properties disestablished in 2017
IOS software
MacOS instant messaging clients
Online chat
Symbian software
Unix instant messaging clients
Videotelephony
Windows instant messaging clients
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In computability theory, the Ackermann function, named after Wilhelm Ackermann, is one of the simplest and earliest-discovered examples of a total computable function that is not primitive recursive. All primitive recursive functions are total and computable, but the Ackermann function illustrates that not all total computable functions are primitive recursive.
After Ackermann's publication of his function (which had three non-negative integer arguments), many authors modified it to suit various purposes, so that today "the Ackermann function" may refer to any of numerous variants of the original function. One common version is the two-argument Ackermann–Péter function developed by Rózsa Péter and Raphael Robinson. Its value grows very rapidly; for example, results in , an integer of 19,729 decimal digits.
History
In the late 1920s, the mathematicians Gabriel Sudan and Wilhelm Ackermann, students of David Hilbert, were studying the foundations of computation. Both Sudan and Ackermann are credited with discovering total computable functions (termed simply "recursive" in some references) that are not primitive recursive. Sudan published the lesser-known Sudan function, then shortly afterwards and independently, in 1928, Ackermann published his function (the Greek letter phi). Ackermann's three-argument function, , is defined such that for , it reproduces the basic operations of addition, multiplication, and exponentiation as
and for p > 2 it extends these basic operations in a way that can be compared to the hyperoperations:
(Aside from its historic role as a total-computable-but-not-primitive-recursive function, Ackermann's original function is seen to extend the basic arithmetic operations beyond exponentiation, although not as seamlessly as do variants of Ackermann's function that are specifically designed for that purpose—such as Goodstein's hyperoperation sequence.)
In On the Infinite, David Hilbert hypothesized that the Ackermann function was not primitive recursive, but it was Ackermann, Hilbert's personal secretary and former student, who actually proved the hypothesis in his paper On Hilbert's Construction of the Real Numbers.
Rózsa Péter and Raphael Robinson later developed a two-variable version of the Ackermann function that became preferred by almost all authors.
The generalized hyperoperation sequence, e.g. , is a version of Ackermann function as well.
In 1963 R.C. Buck based an intuitive two-variable variant on the hyperoperation sequence:
Compared to most other versions Buck's function has no unessential offsets:
Many other versions of Ackermann function have been investigated.
Definition
Definition: as m-ary function
Ackermann's original three-argument function is defined recursively as follows for nonnegative integers and :
Of the various two-argument versions, the one developed by Péter and Robinson (called "the" Ackermann function by most authors) is defined for nonnegative integers and as follows:
The Ackermann function has also been expressed in relation to the hyperoperation sequence:
or, written in Knuth's up-arrow notation (extended to integer indices ):
or, equivalently, in terms of Buck's function F:
Definition: as iterated 1-ary function
Define as the n-th iterate of :
Iteration is the process of composing a function with itself a certain number of times. Function composition is an associative operation, so .
Conceiving the Ackermann function as a sequence of unary functions, one can set .
The function then becomes a sequence of unary functions, defined from iteration:
Computation
The recursive definition of the Ackermann function can naturally be transposed to a term rewriting system (TRS).
TRS, based on 2-ary function
The definition of the 2-ary Ackermann function leads to the obvious reduction rules
Example
Compute
The reduction sequence is
To compute one can use a stack, which initially contains the elements .
Then repeatedly the two top elements are replaced according to the rules
Schematically, starting from :
WHILE stackLength <> 1
{
POP 2 elements;
PUSH 1 or 2 or 3 elements, applying the rules r1, r2, r3
}
The pseudocode is published in .
For example, on input ,
Remarks
The leftmost-innermost strategy is implemented in 225 computer languages on Rosetta Code.
For all the computation of takes no more than steps.
pointed out that in the computation of the maximum length of the stack is , as long as .
Their own algorithm, inherently iterative, computes within time and within space.
TRS, based on iterated 1-ary function
The definition of the iterated 1-ary Ackermann functions leads to different reduction rules
As function composition is associative, instead of rule r6 one can define
Like in the previous section the computation of can be implemented with a stack.
Initially the stack contains the three elements .
Then repeatedly the three top elements are replaced according to the rules
Schematically, starting from :
WHILE stackLength <> 1
{
POP 3 elements;
PUSH 1 or 3 or 5 elements, applying the rules r4, r5, r6;
}
Example
On input the successive stack configurations are
The corresponding equalities are
When reduction rule r7 is used instead of rule r6, the replacements in the stack will follow
The successive stack configurations will then be
The corresponding equalities are
Remarks
On any given input the TRSs presented so far converge in the same number of steps. They also use the same reduction rules (in this comparison the rules r1, r2, r3 are considered "the same as" the rules r4, r5, r6/r7 respectively). For example, the reduction of converges in 14 steps: 6 × r1, 3 × r2, 5 × r3. The reduction of converges in the same 14 steps: 6 × r4, 3 × r5, 5 × r6/r7. The TRSs differ in the order in which the reduction rules are applied.
When is computed following the rules {r4, r5, r6}, the maximum length of the stack stays below . When reduction rule r7 is used instead of rule r6, the maximum length of the stack is only . The length of the stack reflects the recursion depth. As the reduction according to the rules {r4, r5, r7} involves a smaller maximum depth of recursion, this computation is more efficient in that respect.
TRS, based on hyperoperators
As — or — showed explicitly, the Ackermann function can be expressed in terms of the hyperoperation sequence:
or, after removal of the constant 2 from the parameter list, in terms of Buck's function
Buck's function , a variant of Ackermann function by itself, can be computed with the following reduction rules:
Instead of rule b6 one can define the rule
To compute the Ackermann function it suffices to add three reduction rules
These rules take care of the base case A(0,n), the alignment (n+3) and the fudge (-3).
Example
Compute
The matching equalities are
when the TRS with the reduction rule is applied:
when the TRS with the reduction rule is applied:
Remarks
The computation of according to the rules {b1 - b5, b6, r8 - r10} is deeply recursive. The maximum depth of nested s is . The culprit is the order in which iteration is executed: . The first disappears only after the whole sequence is unfolded.
The computation according to the rules {b1 - b5, b7, r8 - r10} is more efficient in that respect. The iteration simulates the repeated loop over a block of code. The nesting is limited to , one recursion level per iterated function. showed this correspondence.
These considerations concern the recursion depth only. Either way of iterating leads to the same number of reduction steps, involving the same rules (when the rules b6 and b7 are considered "the same"). The reduction of for instance converges in 35 steps: 12 × b1, 4 × b2, 1 × b3, 4 × b5, 12 × b6/b7, 1 × r9, 1 × r10. The modus iterandi only affects the order in which the reduction rules are applied.
A real gain of execution time can only be achieved by not recalculating subresults over and over again. Memoization is an optimization technique where the results of function calls are cached and returned when the same inputs occur again. See for instance . published a cunning algorithm which computes within time and within space.
Huge numbers
To demonstrate how the computation of results in many steps and in a large number:
Table of values
Computing the Ackermann function can be restated in terms of an infinite table. First, place the natural numbers along the top row. To determine a number in the table, take the number immediately to the left. Then use that number to look up the required number in the column given by that number and one row up. If there is no number to its left, simply look at the column headed "1" in the previous row. Here is a small upper-left portion of the table:
The numbers here which are only expressed with recursive exponentiation or Knuth arrows are very large and would take up too much space to notate in plain decimal digits.
Despite the large values occurring in this early section of the table, some even larger numbers have been defined, such as Graham's number, which cannot be written with any small number of Knuth arrows. This number is constructed with a technique similar to applying the Ackermann function to itself recursively.
This is a repeat of the above table, but with the values replaced by the relevant expression from the function definition to show the pattern clearly:
Properties
General remarks
It may not be immediately obvious that the evaluation of always terminates. However, the recursion is bounded because in each recursive application either decreases, or remains the same and decreases. Each time that reaches zero, decreases, so eventually reaches zero as well. (Expressed more technically, in each case the pair decreases in the lexicographic order on pairs, which is a well-ordering, just like the ordering of single non-negative integers; this means one cannot go down in the ordering infinitely many times in succession.) However, when decreases there is no upper bound on how much can increase — and it will often increase greatly.
For small values of m like 1, 2, or 3, the Ackermann function grows relatively slowly with respect to n (at most exponentially). For , however, it grows much more quickly; even is about 2.00353, and the decimal expansion of is very large by any typical measure, about 2.12004.
An interesting aspect is that the only arithmetic operation it ever uses is addition of 1. Its fast growing power is based solely on nested recursion. This also implies that its running time is at least proportional to its output, and so is also extremely huge. In actuality, for most cases the running time is far larger than the output; see above.
A single-argument version that increases both and at the same time dwarfs every primitive recursive function, including very fast-growing functions such as the exponential function, the factorial function, multi- and superfactorial functions, and even functions defined using Knuth's up-arrow notation (except when the indexed up-arrow is used). It can be seen that is roughly comparable to in the fast-growing hierarchy. This extreme growth can be exploited to show that which is obviously computable on a machine with infinite memory such as a Turing machine and so is a computable function, grows faster than any primitive recursive function and is therefore not primitive recursive.
Not primitive recursive
The Ackermann function grows faster than any primitive recursive function and therefore is not itself primitive recursive. The sketch of the proof is this: a primitive recursive function defined using up to k recursions must grow slower than , the (k+1)-th function in the fast-growing hierarchy, but the Ackermann function grows at least as fast as .
Specifically, one shows that to every primitive recursive function there exists a non-negative integer such that for all non-negative integers ,
Once this is established, it follows that itself is not primitive recursive, since otherwise putting would lead to the contradiction
The proof proceeds as follows: define the class of all functions that grow slower than the Ackermann function
and show that contains all primitive recursive functions. The latter is achieved by showing that contains the constant functions, the successor function, the projection functions and that it is closed under the operations of function composition and primitive recursion.
Inverse
Since the function considered above grows very rapidly, its inverse function, f, grows very slowly. This inverse Ackermann function f−1 is usually denoted by α. In fact, α(n) is less than 5 for any practical input size n, since is on the order of .
This inverse appears in the time complexity of some algorithms, such as the disjoint-set data structure and Chazelle's algorithm for minimum spanning trees. Sometimes Ackermann's original function or other variations are used in these settings, but they all grow at similarly high rates. In particular, some modified functions simplify the expression by eliminating the −3 and similar terms.
A two-parameter variation of the inverse Ackermann function can be defined as follows, where is the floor function:
This function arises in more precise analyses of the algorithms mentioned above, and gives a more refined time bound. In the disjoint-set data structure, m represents the number of operations while n represents the number of elements; in the minimum spanning tree algorithm, m represents the number of edges while n represents the number of vertices. Several slightly different definitions of exist; for example, is sometimes replaced by n, and the floor function is sometimes replaced by a ceiling.
Other studies might define an inverse function of one where m is set to a constant, such that the inverse applies to a particular row.
The inverse of the Ackermann function is primitive recursive.
Use as benchmark
The Ackermann function, due to its definition in terms of extremely deep recursion, can be used as a benchmark of a compiler's ability to optimize recursion. The first published use of Ackermann's function in this way was in 1970 by Dragoș Vaida and, almost simultaneously, in 1971, by Yngve Sundblad.
Sundblad's seminal paper was taken up by Brian Wichmann (co-author of the Whetstone benchmark) in a trilogy of papers written between 1975 and 1982.
See also
Computability theory
Double recursion
Fast-growing hierarchy
Goodstein function
Primitive recursive function
Recursion (computer science)
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
An animated Ackermann function calculator
Ackerman function implemented using a for loop
Ackermann functions. Includes a table of some values.
describes several variations on the definition of A.
The Ackermann function written in different programming languages, (on Rosetta Code)
) Some study and programming.
Arithmetic
Large integers
Special functions
Theory of computation
Computability theory
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The Albanians ( ; , ) are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula who share a common Albanian ancestry, culture, history and language. They primarily live in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia as well as in Croatia, Greece, Italy and Turkey. They also constitute a large diaspora with several communities established across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
Albanians have Paleo-Balkanic origins. Exclusively attributing these origins to the Illyrians, Thracians or other Paleo-Balkan people is still a matter of debate among historians and ethnologists.
The first mention of the ethnonym Albanoi occurred in the 2nd century AD by Ptolemy describing an Illyrian tribe who lived around present-day central Albania. The first certain reference to Albanians as an ethnic group comes from 11th century chronicler Michael Attaleiates who describes them as living in the theme of Dyrrhachium.
The Shkumbin River roughly demarcates the Albanian language between Gheg and Tosk dialects. Christianity in Albania was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome until the 8th century AD. Then, dioceses in Albania were transferred to the patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1054, after the Great Schism, the north gradually became identified with Roman Catholicism and the south with Eastern Orthodoxy. In 1190 Albanians established the Principality of Arbanon in central Albania with the capital in Krujë.
The Albanian diaspora has its roots in migration from the Middle Ages initially across Southern Europe and eventually across wider Europe and the New World. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, sizeable numbers migrated to escape various social, economic or political difficulties. One population, the Arvanites, settled in Southern Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries. Another population, the Arbëreshë, settled across Sicily and Southern Italy between the 11th and 16th centuries. Smaller populations such as the Arbanasi settled in Southern Croatia and pockets of Southern Ukraine in the 18th century.
By the 15th century, the expanding Ottoman Empire overpowered the Balkan Peninsula, but faced successful rebellion and resistance by the League of Lezhë, a union of Albanian principalities led by Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg. By the 17th and 18th centuries, a substantial number of Albanians converted to Islam, which offered them equal opportunities and advancement within the Ottoman Empire. Thereafter, Albanians attained significant positions and culturally contributed to the broader Muslim world. Innumerable officials and soldiers of the Ottoman State were of Albanian origin, including more than 40 Grand Viziers, and under the Köprülü, in particular, the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest territorial extension. Between the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century Albanian Pashaliks were established by Kara Mahmud pasha of Scutari, Ali pasha of Yanina, and Ahmet Kurt pasha of Berat, while the Albanian wālī Muhammad Ali established a dynasty that ruled over Egypt and Sudan until the middle of the 20th century, a period in which Albanians formed a substantial community in Egypt.
During the 19th century, cultural developments, widely attributed to Albanians having gathered both spiritual and intellectual strength, conclusively led to the Albanian Renaissance. In 1912 during the Balkan Wars, Albanians declared the independence of their country. The demarcation of the new Albanian state was established following the Treaty of Bucharest and left about half of the ethnic Albanian population outside of its borders, partitioned between Greece, Montenegro and Serbia. After the Second World War up until the Revolutions of 1991, Albania was governed by a communist government under Enver Hoxha where Albania became largely isolated from the rest of Europe. In neighbouring Yugoslavia, Albanians underwent periods of discrimination and systematic oppression that concluded with the War of Kosovo and eventually with Kosovar independence.
Ethnonym
The Albanians () and their country Albania () have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is "Shqiptar", plural "Shqiptarë"; the name "Albanians" (Byzantine Greek: Albanoi/Arbanitai/Arbanites; Latin: Albanenses/Arbanenses) was used in medieval documents and gradually entered European Languages from which other similar derivative names emerged, many of which were or still are in use, such as English "Albanians"; Italian "Albanesi"; German "Albaner"; Greek "Arvanites", "Alvanitis" (Αλβανίτης) plural: "Alvanites" (Αλβανίτες), "Alvanos" (Αλβανός) plural: "Alvanoi" (Αλβανοί); Turkish "Arnaut", "Arnavut"; South Slavic languages "Arbanasi" (Арбанаси), "Albanci" (Албанци); Aromanian "Arbinesh" and so on.{{efn|See:<ref name="BardhylDemiraj534">. "The ethnic name shqiptar has always been discussed together with the ethnic complex: (tosk) arbëresh, arbëror, arbër — (gheg) arbënesh, arbënu(e)r, arbën; i.e. [arbën/r(—)]. p.536. Among the neighbouring peoples and elsewhere the denomination of the Albanians is based upon the root arb/alb, cp. Greek Αλβανός, Αρβανός "Albanian", Αρβανίτης "Arbëresh of Greece", Serbian Albanac, Arbanas, Bulg., Mac. албанец, Arom. arbinés (Papahagi 1963 135), Turk. arnaut, Ital. albanese, German Albaner etc. This basis is in use among the Arbëreshs of Italy and Greece as well; cp. arvanit, more rarely arbëror by the arbëreshs of Greece, as against arbëresh, arbëresh, bri(e)sh (beside gjegj — Altimari 1994 (1992) 53 s.). (Italy) (Kr. ?) árbanas, (Mandr.) allbanc, (Ukr.) allbanc(er) (Musliu – Dauti 1996) etj. For the various forms and uses of this or that variant see, inter alia, also Çabej SE II 6lss.; Demiraj 1999 175 ss. etj.</ref>. " "ethnic name or the national one of Albanians, despite the right Slavic term Albanci, now appears to be pronounced as Šiptari of Šipci with a connotation that is contemptuously negative, as it is used in the very beginning of the Serbs era at the time of the old Yugoslavia together and the form Šiftari and Arnauti which have the same pejorative connotations."}}
The term "Albanoi" (Αλβανοί) is first encountered on the works of Ptolemy (200-118 BCE) also is encountered twice in the works of Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates, and the term "Arvanitai" (Αρβανίται) is used once by the same author. He referred to the "Albanoi" as having taken part in a revolt against the Byzantine Empire in 1043, and to the "Arbanitai" as subjects of the Duke of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës). These references have been disputed as to whether they refer to the people of Albania.. Historian E. Vranoussi believes that these "Albanoi" were Normans from Sicily. She also notes that the same term (as "Albani") in medieval Latin meant "foreigners".
The reference to "Arvanitai" from Attaliates regarding the participation of Albanians in a rebellion around 1078 is undisputed. In later Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi" with a range of variants were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were also called by the classicising name Illyrians.N. Gregoras (ed. Bonn) V, 6; XI, 6. The first reference to the Albanian language dates to the latter 13th century (around 1285).
The national ethnonym Albanian and its variants are derived from Albanoi, first mentioned as an Illyrian tribe in the 2nd century CE by Ptolemy with their centre at the city of Albanopolis, located in modern-day central Albania, somewhere in the hinterland of Durrës... Linguists believe that the alb part in the root word originates from an Indo-European term for a type of mountainous topography, from which other words such as alps are derived. Through the root word alban and its rhotacized equivalents arban, albar, and arbar, the term in Albanian became rendered as Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë for the people and Arbënia/Arbëria for the country. The Albanian language was referred to as Arbnisht and Arbërisht. While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does have connotations to Classical Antiquity, the Albanian language employs a different ethnonym, with modern Albanians referring to themselves as Shqip(ë)tarë and to their country as Shqipëria. Two etymologies have been proposed for this ethnonym: one, derived from the etymology from the Albanian word for eagle (shqipe, var., shqiponjë). In Albanian folk etymology, this word denotes a bird totem, dating from the times of Skanderbeg as displayed on the Albanian flag. The other is within scholarship that connects it to the verb 'to speak' (me shqiptue) from the Latin "excipere". In this instance the Albanian endonym like Slav and others would originally have been a term connoting "those who speak [intelligibly, the same language]". The words Shqipëri and Shqiptar are attested from 14th century onward, but it was only at the end of 17th and beginning of the early 18th centuries that the placename Shqipëria and the ethnic demonym Shqiptarë gradually replaced Arbëria and Arbëreshë amongst Albanian speakers. That era brought about religious and other sociopolitical changes. As such a new and generalised response by Albanians based on ethnic and linguistic consciousness to this new and different Ottoman world emerging around them was a change in ethnonym.
Historical records
Little is known about the Albanian people prior to the 11th century, though a text compiled around the beginning of the 11th century in the Bulgarian language contains a possible reference to them. It is preserved in a manuscript written in the Serbo-Croatian Language traced back to the 17th century but published in the 20th century by Radoslav Grujic. It is a fragment of a once longer text that endeavours to explain the origins of peoples and languages in a question-and-answer form similar to a catechism.
The fragmented manuscript differentiated the world into 72 languages and three religious categories including Christians, half-believers and non-believers. Grujic dated it to the early 11th century and, if this and the identification of the Arbanasi as Albanians are correct, it would be the earliest written document referring to the Balkan Albanians as a people or language group.
It can be seen that there are various languages on earth. Of them, there are five Orthodox languages: Bulgarian, Greek, Syrian, Iberian (Georgian) and Russian. Three of these have Orthodox alphabets: Greek, Bulgarian and Iberian (Georgian). There are twelve languages of half-believers: Alamanians, Franks, Magyars (Hungarians), Indians, Jacobites, Armenians, Saxons, Lechs (Poles), Arbanasi (Albanians), Croatians, Hizi and Germans.
Michael Attaleiates (1022–1080) mentions the term Albanoi twice and the term Arbanitai once. The term Albanoi is used first to describe the groups which rebelled in southern Italy and Sicily against the Byzantines in 1038–40. The second use of the term Albanoi is related to groups which supported the revolt of George Maniakes in 1042 and marched with him throughout the Balkans against the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. The term Arvanitai is used to describe a revolt of Bulgarians (Boulgaroi) and Arbanitai in the theme of Dyrrhachium in 1078–79. It is generally accepted that Arbanitai refers to the ethnonym of medieval Albanians. As such, it is considered to be the first attestation of Albanians as an ethnic group in Byzantine historiography. The use of the term Albanoi in 1038–49 and 1042 as an ethnonym related to Albanians have been a subject of debate. In what has been termed the "Vranoussi-Ducellier debate", Alain Ducellier proposed that both uses of the term referred to medieval Albanians. Era Vranoussi counter-suggested that the first use referred to Normans, while the second didn't have an ethnic connotation necessarily and could be a reference to the Normans as "foreigners" (aubain) in Epirus which Maniakes and his army traversed. This debate has never been resolved. A newer synthesis about the second use of the term Albanoi by Pëllumb Xhufi suggests that the term Albanoi may have referred to Albanians of the specific district of Arbanon, while Arbanitai to Albanians in general regardless of the specific region they inhabited.
Language
The majority of the Albanian people speak the Albanian language which is an independent branch within the Indo-European family of languages. It is a language isolate to any other known living language in Europe and indeed no other language in the world has been conclusively associated to its branch. Its origin remains conclusively unknown but it is believed it has descended from an ancient Paleo-Balkan language.
The Albanian language is spoken by approximately 5 million people throughout the Balkan Peninsula as well as by a more substantial number by communities around the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Numerous variants and dialects of Albanian are used as an official language in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia. The language is also spoken in other countries whence it is officially recognised as a minority language in such countries as Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
There are two principal dialects of the Albanian language traditionally represented by Gheg and Tosk. The ethnogeographical dividing line is traditionally considered to be the Shkumbin river, with Gheg spoken in the north of it and Tosk in the south. Dialects of linguistic minorities spoken in Croatia (Arbanasi and Istrian), Kosovo, Montenegro and northwestern North Macedonia are classified as Gheg, while those spoken in Greece, southwestern North Macedonia and Italy as Tosk.
The Arbëresh and Arvanitika dialects of the Albanian language, are spoken by the Arbëreshë and Arvanites in Southern Italy and Southern Greece, respectively. They retain elements of medieval Albanian vocabulary and pronunciation that are no longer used in modern Albanian; however, both varieties are classified as endangered languages in the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages. The Cham dialect is spoken by the Cham Albanians, a community that originates from Chameria in what is currently north-western Greece and southern Albania; the use of the Cham dialect in Greece is declining rapidly, while Cham communities in Albania and the diaspora have preserved it.
Most of the Albanians in Albania and the Former Yugoslavia are polyglot and have the ability to understand, speak, read, or write a foreign language. As defined by the Institute of Statistics of Albania, 39.9% of the 25 to 64 years old Albanians in Albania are able to use at least one foreign language including English (40%), Italian (27.8%) and Greek (22.9%).
The origin of the Albanian language remains a contentious subject that has given rise to numerous hypotheses. The hypothesis of Albanian being one of the descendant of the Illyrian languages (Messapic language) is based on geography where the languages were spoken however not enough archaeological evidence is left behind to come therefore to a definite conclusion. Another hypothesis associates the Albanian language with the Thracian language. This theory takes exception to the territory, since the language was spoken in an area distinct from Albania, and no significant population movements have been recorded in the period when the shift from one language to the other is supposed to have occurred.
History
Late Antiquity
The Komani-Kruja culture is an archaeological culture attested from late antiquity to the Middle Ages in central and northern Albania, southern Montenegro and similar sites in the western parts of North Macedonia. It consists of settlements usually built below hillforts along the Lezhë (Praevalitana)-Dardania and Via Egnatia road networks which connected the Adriatic coastline with the central Balkan Roman provinces. Its type site is Komani and its fort on the nearby Dalmace hill in the Drin river valley. Kruja and Lezha represent significant sites of the culture. The population of Komani-Kruja represents a local, western Balkan people which was linked to the Roman Justinianic military system of forts. The development of Komani-Kruja is significant for the study of the transition between the classical antiquity population of Albania to the medieval Albanians who were attested in historical records in the 11th century. Winnifrith (2020) recently described this population as the survival of a "Latin-Illyrian" culture which emerged later in historical records as Albanians and Vlachs (Eastern Romance-speaking people). In Winnifrith's narrative, the geographical conditions of northern Albania favored the continuation of the Albanian language in hilly and mountainous areas as opposed to lowland valleys.
Middle Ages
The Albanian people maintain a very chequered and tumultuous history behind them, a fact explained by their geographical position in the Southeast of Europe at the cultural and political crossroad between the east and west. The issue surrounding the origin of the Albanian people has long been debated by historians and linguists for centuries. Many scholars consider the Albanians, in terms of linguistic evidences, the descendants of ancient populations of the Balkan Peninsula, either the Illyrians, Thracians or another Paleo-Balkan group. There are insufficient evidences to derive an accurate conclusion and therefore Albanian origins still remain a mystery.
The first certain attestation of medieval Albanians as an ethnic group is in Byzantine historiography in the work of Michael Attaleiates (1022–1080). Attaleiates mentions the term Albanoi twice and the term Arbanitai once. The term Albanoi is used first to describe the groups which rebelled in southern Italy and Sicily against the Byzantines in 1038–40. The second use of the term Albanoi is related to groups which supported the revolt of George Maniakes in 1042 and marched with him throughout the Balkans against the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. The term Arvanitai is used to describe a revolt of Bulgarians (Boulgaroi) and Arbanitai in the theme of Dyrrhachium in 1078–79. It is generally accepted that Arbanitai refers to the ethnonym of medieval Albanians. The use of the term Albanoi in 1038–49 and 1042 as an ethnonym related to Albanians have been a subject of debate. In what has been termed the "Ducellier-Vrannousi" debate, Alain Ducellier proposed that both uses of the term referred to medieval Albanians. Era Vrannousi counter-suggested that the first use referred to Normans, while the second didn't have an ethnic connotation necessarily and could be a reference to the Normans as "foreigners" (aubain) in Epirus which Maniakes and his army traversed. The debate has never been resolved. A newer synthesis about the second use of the term Albanoi by Pëllumb Xhufi suggests that the term Albanoi may have referred to Albanians of the specific district of Arbanon, while Arbanitai to Albanians in general regardless of the specific region they inhabited. The name reflects the Albanian endonym Arbër/n + esh which itself derives from the same root as the name of the Albanoi
Historically known as the Arbër or Arbën by the 11th century and onwards, they traditionally inhabited the mountainous area to the west of Lake Ochrida and the upper valley of the Shkumbin river.. "The geographical location of the mysterious 'Arbanon' has at last no doubt been settled by the researches of Alain Ducellier. In the 11th century at least it was the name given to the mountainous area to the west of Lake Ohrid and the upper valley of the river Shkumbin..." Though it was in 1190 when they established their first independent entity, the Principality of Arbër (Arbanon), with its seat based in Krujë. Immediately after the decline of the Progon dynasty in 1216, the principality came under Gregorios Kamonas and next his son-in-law Golem. Finally, the Principality was dissolved in ca. 1255 by the Empire of Nicea followed by an unsuccessful rebellion between 1257 and 1259 supported by the Despotate of Epirus. In the meantime Manfred, King of Sicily profited from the situation and launched an invasion into Albania. His forces, led by Philippe Chinard, captured Durrës, Berat, Vlorë, Spinarizza, their surroundings and the southern coastline of Albania from Vlorë to Butrint. In 1266 after defeating Manfred's forces and killing him, the Treaty of Viterbo of 1267 was signed, with Charles I, King of Sicily acquiring rights on Manfred's dominions in Albania. Local noblemen such as Andrea Vrana refused to surrender Manfred's former domains, and in 1271 negotiations were initiated.
In 1272 the Kingdom of Albania was created after a delegation of Albanian noblemen from Durrës signed a treaty declaring union with the Kingdom of Sicily under Charles. Charles soon imposed military rule, new taxes, took sons of Albanian noblemen hostage to ensure loyalty, and confiscated lands for Angevin nobles. This led to discontent among Albanian noblemen, several of whom turned to Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII. In late 1274, Byzantine forces helped by local Albanian noblemen capture Berat and Butrint. Charles' attempt to advance towards Constantinople failed at the Siege of Berat (1280–1281). A Byzantine counteroffensive ensued, which drove the Angevins out of the interior by 1281. The Sicilian Vespers rebellion further weakened the position of Charles, who died in 1285. By the end of the 13th century, most of Albania was under Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. In 1296 Serbian king Stephen Milutin captured Durrës. In 1299 Andronikos II married his daughter Simonis to Milutin and the lands he had conquered were considered as dowry. In 1302, Philip I, Prince of Taranto, grandson of Charles, claimed his rights on the Albanian kingdom and gained the support of local Albanian Catholics who preferred him over the Orthodox Serbs and Greeks, as well as the support of Pope Benedict XI. In the summer of 1304, the Serbs were expelled from the city of Durrës by the locals who submitted themselves to Angevin rule.
Prominent Albanian leaders during this time were the Thopia family, ruling in an area between the Mat and Shkumbin rivers, and the Muzaka family in the territory between the Shkumbin and Vlorë. In 1279, Gjon I Muzaka, who remained loyal to the Byzantines and resisted Angevin conquest of Albania, was captured by the forces of Charles but later released following pressure from Albanian nobles. The Muzaka family continued to remain loyal to the Byzantines and resisted the expansion of the Serbian Kingdom. In 1335 the head of the family, Andrea II Muzaka, gained the title of Despot and other Muzakas pursued careers in the Byzantine government in Constantinople. Andrea II soon endorsed an anti-Byzantine revolt in his domains between 1335–1341 and formed an alliance with Robert, Prince of Taranto in 1336. In 1336, Serbian king Stefan Dušan captured Durrës, including the territory under the control of the Muzaka family. Although Angevins managed to recapture Durazzo, Dušan continued his expansion, and in the period of 1337–45 he had captured Kanina and Valona in southern Albania. Around 1340 forces of Andrea II defeated the Serbian army at the Pelister mountain. After the death of Stefan Dušan in 1355 the Serbian Empire disintegrated, and Karl Thopia captured Durrës while the Muzaka family of Berat regained control over parts of southeastern Albania and over Kastoria that Andrea II captured from Prince Marko after the Battle of Marica in 1371.
The kingdom reinforced the influence of Catholicism and the conversion to its rite, not only in the region of Durrës but in other parts of the country. A new wave of Catholic dioceses, churches and monasteries were founded, papal missionaries and a number of different religious orders began spreading into the country. Those who were not Catholic in central and northern Albania converted and a great number of Albanian clerics and monks were present in the Dalmatian Catholic institutions.
Around 1230 the two main centers of Albanian settlements were around Devoll river in what is now central Albania and the other around the region known as Arbanon. Albanian presence in Croatia can be traced back to the beginning of the Late Middle Ages. In this period, there was a significant Albanian community in Ragusa with a number of families of Albanian origin inclusively the Sorgo family who came from the Cape of Rodon in central Albania, across Kotor in eastern Montenegro, to Dalmatia. By the 13th century, Albanian merchants were trading directly with the peoples of the Republic of Ragusa in Dalmatia which increased familiarity between Albanians and Ragusans. The upcoming invasion of Albania by the Ottoman Empire and the death of Skanderbeg caused many Christian Albanians to flee to Dalmatia and surrounding countries.
In the 14th century a number of Albanian principalities were created. These included Principality of Kastrioti, Principality of Dukagjini, Princedom of Albania, and Principality of Gjirokastër. At the beginning of the 15th century these principalities became stronger, especially because of the fall of the Serbian Empire. Some of these principalities were united in 1444 under the anti-Ottoman military alliance called League of Lezha.
Albanians were recruited all over Europe as a light cavalry known as stratioti. The stratioti were pioneers of light cavalry tactics during the 15th century. In the early 16th century heavy cavalry in the European armies was principally remodeled after Albanian stradioti of the Venetian army, Hungarian hussars and German mercenary cavalry units (Schwarzreitern).
Ottoman Empire
Prior to the Ottoman conquest of Albania, the political situation of the Albanian people was characterised by a fragmented conglomeration of scattered kingdoms and principalities such as the Principalities of Arbanon, Kastrioti and Thopia. Before and after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire continued an extended period of conquest and expansion with its borders going deep into the Southeast Europe. As a consequence thousands of Albanians from Albania, Epirus and Peloponnese escaped to Calabria, Naples, Ragusa and Sicily, whereby others sought protection at the often inaccessible Mountains of Albania.
Under the leadership of Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, a former governor of the Ottoman Sanjak of Dibra, a prosperous and longstanding revolution erupted with the formation of the League of Lezhë in 1444 up until the Siege of Shkodër ending in 1479, multiple times defeating the mightiest power of the time led by Sultans Murad II and Mehmed II. Skanderbeg managed to gather several of the Albanian principals, amongst them the Arianitis, Dukagjinis, Zaharias and Thopias, and establish a centralised authority over most of the non-conquered territories and proclaiming himself the Lord of Albania (Dominus Albaniae in Latin). Skanderbeg consistently pursued the aim relentlessly but rather unsuccessfully to create a European coalition against the Ottomans. His unequal fight against them won the esteem of Europe and financial and military aid from the Papacy and Naples, Venice and Ragusa.Barletius, Marinus. De obsidione Scodrensi. Venice: Bernardino de Vitabilus, 1504.
The Albanians, then predominantly Christian, were initially considered as an inferior class of people and as such were subjected to heavy taxes such as the Devshirme system that allowed the state to collect a requisite percentage of Christian adolescents from the Balkans and elsewhere to compose the Janissary. Since the Albanians were seen as strategically important, they made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman military and bureaucracy. They were therefore to be found within the imperial services as vital military and administrative retainers from Egypt to Algeria and the rest of the Maghreb.
In the late 18th century, Ali Pasha Tepelena created the autonomous region of the Pashalik of Yanina within the Ottoman Empire which was never recognised as such by the High Porte. The territory he properly governed incorporated most of southern Albania, Epirus, Thessaly and southwestern Macedonia. During his rule, the town of Janina blossomed into a cultural, political and economic hub for both Albanians and Greeks.
The ultimate goal of Ali Pasha Tepelena seems to have been the establishment of an independent rule in Albania and Epirus. Thus, he obtained control of Arta and took control over the ports of Butrint, Preveza and Vonitsa. He also gained control of the pashaliks of Elbasan, Delvina, Berat and Vlorë. His relations with the High Porte were always tense though he developed and maintained relations with the British, French and Russians and formed alliances with them at various times.
In the 19th century, the Albanian wālī Muhammad Ali established a dynasty that ruled over Egypt and Sudan until the middle of the 20th century. After a brief French invasion led by Napoleon Bonaparte and the Ottomans and Mameluks competing for power there, he managed collectively with his Albanian troops to become the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt. As he revolutionised the military and economic spheres of Egypt, his empire attracted Albanian people contributing to the emergence of the Albanian diaspora in Egypt initially formed by Albanian soldiers and mercenaries.
Islam arrived in the lands of the Albanian people gradually and grew widespread between at least the 17th and 18th centuries. The new religion brought many transformations into Albanian society and henceforth offered them equal opportunities and advancement within the Ottoman Empire.
With the advent of increasing suppression on Catholicism, the Ottomans initially focused their conversions on the Catholic Albanians of the north in the 17th century and followed suit in the 18th century on the Orthodox Albanians of the south. At this point, the urban centers of central and southern Albania had largely adopted the religion of the growing Muslim Albanian elite. Many mosques and tekkes were constructed throughout those urban centers and cities such as Berat, Gjirokastër, Korçë and Shkodër started to flourish. In the far north, the spread of Islam was slower due to Catholic Albanian resistance and the inaccessible and rather remote mountainous terrain.
The motives for conversion to Islam are subject to differing interpretations according to scholars depending on the context though the lack of sources does not help when investigating such issues. Reasons included the incentive to escape high taxes levied on non-Muslims subjects, ecclesiastical decay, coercion by Ottoman authorities in times of war, and the privileged legal and social position Muslims within the Ottoman administrative and political machinery had over that of non-Muslims....
As Muslims, the Albanians attained powerful positions in the Ottoman administration including over three dozen Grand Viziers of Albanian origin, among them Zagan Pasha, Bayezid Pasha and members of the Köprülü family, and regional rulers such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt and Ali Pasha of Tepelena. The Ottoman sultans Bayezid II and Mehmed III were both Albanian on their maternal side.
Areas such as Albania, western Macedonia, southern Serbia, Kosovo, parts of northern Greece and southern Montenegro in Ottoman sources were referred to as Arnavudluk or Albania.
Albanian Renaissance
The Albanian Renaissance characterised a period wherein the Albanian people gathered both spiritual and intellectual strength to establish their rights for an independent political and social life, culture and education. By the late 18th century and the early 19th century, its foundation arose within the Albanian communities in Italy and Romania and was frequently linked to the influences of the Romanticism and Enlightenment principles.
Albania was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries and the Ottoman authorities suppressed any expression of unity or national conscience by the Albanian people. A number of thoroughly intellectual Albanians, among them Naum Veqilharxhi, Girolamo de Rada, Dora d'Istria, Thimi Mitko, Naim and Sami Frashëri, made a conscious effort to awaken feelings of pride and unity among their people by working to develop Albanian literature that would call to mind the rich history and hopes for a more decent future.
The Albanians had poor or often no schools or other institutions in place to protect and preserve their cultural heritage. The need for schools was preached initially by the increasing number of Albanians educated abroad. The Albanian communities in Italy and elsewhere were particularly active in promoting the Albanian cause, especially in education which finally resulted with the foundation of the Mësonjëtorja in Korçë, the first secular school in the Albanian language.
The Turkish yoke had become fixed in the nationalist mythologies and psyches of the people in the Balkans, and their march toward independence quickened. Due to the more substantial of Islamic influence, the Albanians internal social divisions, and the fear that they would lose their Albanian territories to the emerging neighbouring states, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece, were among the last peoples in the Balkans to desire division from the Ottoman Empire.
The national awakening as a coherent political movement emerged after the Treaty of San Stefano, according to which Albanian-inhabited territories were to be ceded to the neighbouring states, and focused on preventing that partition.Tara Ashley O' Brien. Manufacturing Homogeneity in the Modern Albanian Nation-Building Project. University of Budapest, 2008, p. 4-5 It was the impetus for the nation-building movement, which was based more on fear of partition than national identity. Even after the declaration of independence, national identity was fragmented and possibly non-existent in much of the newly proposed country. The state of disunity and fragmentation would remain until the communist period following Second World War, when the communist nation-building project would achieve greater success in nation-building and reach more people than any previous regime, thus creating Albanian national communist identity.
Communism in Albania
Enver Hoxha of the Communist Party of Labour took power in Albania in 1946. Albania established an alliance with the Eastern Bloc which provided Albania with many advantages in the form of economic assistance and military protection from the Western Bloc during the Cold War.
The Albanians experienced a period of several beneficial political and economic changes. The government defended the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Albania, diversified the economy through a programme of industrialisation which led to a higher standard of living and followed improvements in areas such as health, education and infrastructure.
It subsequently followed a period wherein the Albanians lived within an extreme isolation from the rest of the world for the next four decades. By 1967, the established government had officially proclaimed Albania to be the first atheistic state in the world as they beforehand confiscated churches, monasteries and mosques, and any religious expression instantly became grounds for imprisonment.
Protests coinciding with the emerging revolutions of 1989 began to break out in various cities throughout Albania including Shkodër and Tirana which eventually lead to the fall of communism. Significant internal and external migration waves of Albanians to such countries as Greece and Italy followed.
Bunkerisation is arguably the most visible and memorable legacy of communism in Albania. Nearly 175,000 reinforced concrete bunkers were built on strategic locations across Albania's territory including near borders, within towns, on the seashores or mountains. These bunkers were never used for their intended purpose or for sheltered the population from attacks or an invasion by a neighbor. However, they were abandoned after the breakup of communism and have been sometimes reused for a variety of purposes.
Independence of Kosovo
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, after years of strained relations between the Serb and predominantly Albanian population of Kosovo. It has been officially recognised by Australia, Canada, the United States and major European Union countries, while Serbia refuse to recognise Kosovo's independence, claiming it as Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244.
The overwhelming majority of Kosovo's population is ethnically Albanian with nearly 1.7 million people. Their presence as well as in the adjacent regions of Toplica and Morava is recorded since the Middle Ages. As the Serbs expelled many Albanians from the wider Toplica and Morava regions in Southern Serbia, which the 1878 Congress of Berlin had given to the Principality of Serbia, many of them settled in Kosovo.. "So here next, after their expulsion 1877–1878 will be noted with only some patronymic (surnames) of the Albanians of Toplica and other Albanian areas of Sanjak of Nis. This means that the Albanians expelled after moving, attained the appellation muhaxhirë (refugees), which instead for the family surname to take the name of his grandfather, clan, or any other, they for their family surname take the name of the village of the Sanjak of Nis from where they were expelled from." ; pp. 53–54.
After being an integral section of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Kosovo including its Albanian population went through a period of discrimination, economic and political persecution. Rights to use the Albanian language were guaranteed by the constitution of the later formed Socialist Yugoslavia and was widely used in Macedonia and Montenegro prior to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In 1989, Kosovo lost its status as a federal entity of Yugoslavia with rights similar to those of the six other republics and eventually became part of Serbia and Montenegro.
In 1998, tensions between the Albanian and Serb population of Kosovo culminated in the Kosovo War, which led to the external and internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians. Serbian paramilitary forces committed war crimes in Kosovo, although the government of Serbia claims that the army was only going after suspected Albanian terrorists. NATO launched a 78-day air campaign in 1999, which eventually led to an end to the war.
Distribution
Balkans
Approximately five million Albanians are geographically distributed across the Balkan Peninsula with about half this number living in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro as well as to a more lesser extent in Croatia and Serbia. There are also significant Albanian populations in Greece.
Approximately 1.8 million Albanians are concentrated in the partially recognised Republic of Kosovo. They are geographically distributed south of the municipality of North Mitrovica and constitute the overall majority ethnic group of the territory.
In Montenegro, the Albanian population is currently estimated to be around 30,000 forming one of the constituent ethnic minority groups of the country. They predominantly live in the coastal region of Montenegro around the municipalities of Ulcinj and Bar but also Tuz and around Plav in the northern region as well as in the capital city of Podgorica in the central region.
In North Macedonia, there are more than approximately 500,000 Albanians constituting the largest ethnic minority group in the country. The vast majority of the Albanians are chiefly concentrated around the municipalities of Tetovo and Gostivar in the northwestern region, Struga and Debar in the southwestern region as well as around the capital of Skopje in the central region.
In Croatia, the number of Albanians stands at approximately 17.500 mostly concentrated in the counties of Istria, Split-Dalmatia and most notably in the capital city of Zagreb. The Arbanasi people who historically migrated to Bulgaria, Croatia and Ukraine live in scattered communities across Bulgaria, Croatia and Southern Ukraine.
In Serbia, the Albanians are an officially recognised ethnic minority group with a population of around 70,000. They are significantly concentrated in the municipalities of Bujanovac and Preševo in the Pčinja District. In Romania, the number of Albanians is unofficially estimated from 500 to 10,000 mainly distributed in Bucharest. They are recognised as an ethnic minority group and are respectively represented in Parliament of Romania.
Italy
The Italian Peninsula across the Adriatic Sea has attracted Albanian people for more than half a millennium often due to its immediate proximity. Albanians in Italy later became important in establishing the fundamentals of the Albanian Renaissance and maintaining the Albanian culture. The Arbëreshë people came sporadically in several small and large cycles initially as Stratioti mercenaries in service of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily and the Republic of Venice. Larger migration waves occurred after the death of Skanderbeg and the capture of Krujë and Shkodër by the Ottomans to escape the forthcoming political and religious changes.
Today, Arbëreshë constitute one of the largest ethnolinguistic minority groups and their language is recognized and protected constitutionally under the provisions of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The total number of Arbëreshës is approximately 260,000 scattered across Sicily, Calabria and Apulia. There are Italian Albanians in the Americas especially in such countries as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Canada and the United States.
After 1991, a mass migration of Albanians towards Italy occurred. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of Albanian migrants who held legal permits of residence in Italy was numbered to be around 480,000 and 500,000. Tuscany, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna represent the regions with the strongest presence of the modern Albanian population in Italy. As of 2022, 433,000 Albanian migrants who held legal permits of residence lived in Italy and were the second largest migrant community in Italy after Romanians. As of 2018, an additional ca. 200,000 Albanian migrants have obtained Italian citizenship (children born in Italy not included).
As of 2012, 41.5% of the Albanian in Italy population were counted as Muslim, 38.9% as Christian including 27.7% as Roman Catholic and 11% as Eastern Orthodox and 17.8% as Irreligious.
Greece
The Arvanites and Albanians of Western Thrace are a group descended from Tosks who migrated to southern and central Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries. They are Greek Orthodox Christians, and though they traditionally speak a dialect of Tosk Albanian known as Arvanitika, they have fully assimilated into the Greek nation and do not identify as Albanians.. "First, we can explain the astonishing persistence of Albanian village culture from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries through the ethnic and religious tolerance characteristic of Islamic empires and so lacking in their Christian equivalents. Ottoman control rested upon allowing local communities to keep their religion, language, local laws, and representatives, provided that taxes were paid (the millet system). There was no pressure for Greeks and Albanians to conform to each other's language or other behavior.
Clear signs of change are revealed in the travel diaries of the German scholar Ludwig Ross (1851), when he accompanied the Bavarian Otto, whom the Allies had foisted as king upon the newly freed Greek nation in the aftermath of the War of Independence in the 1830s. Ross praises the well-built Greek villages of central Greece with their healthy, happy, dancing inhabitants, and contrasts them specifically with the hovels and sickly inhabitants of Albanian villages. In fact, recent scholarship has underlined how far it was the West that built modem Greece in its own fanciful image as the land of a long-oppressed people who were the direct descendants of Pericles. Thus from the late nineteenth century onward the children of the inhabitants of the new "nation-state" were taught in Greek, history confined itself to the episodes of pure Greekness, and the tolerant Ottoman attitude to cultural diversity yielded to a deliberate policy of total Hellenization of the populace—effective enough to fool the casual observer. One is rather amazed at the persistence today of such dual-speaking populations in much of the Albanian colonization zone. However, apart from the provinciality of this essentially agricultural province, a high rate of illiteracy until well into this century has also helped to preserve Arvanitika in the Boeotian villagers (Meijs 1993)."; p. 140. "In contrast therefore to the more openly problematic issue of Slav speakers in northern Greece, Arvanitic speakers in central Greece lack any signs of an assertive ethnicity. I would like to suggest that they possess what we might term a passive ethnicity. As a result of a number of historical factors, much of the rural population in central Greece was Albanian-speaking by the time of the creation of the modern Greek state in the 1830s. Until this century, most of these people were illiterate and unschooled, yet there existed sufficient knowledge of Greek to communicate with officials and townspeople, itinerant traders, and so on, to limit the need to transform rural language usage. Life was extremely provincial, with just one major carriage-road passing through the center of the large province of Boeotia even in the 1930s (beyond which horseback and cart took over; van Effenterre 1989). Even in the 1960s, Arvanitic village children could be figures of fun for their Greek peers in the schools of Thebes (One of the two regional towns) (K. Sarri, personal communication, 2000). It was not a matter of cultural resistance but simple conservatism and provinciality, the extreme narrowness of rural life, that allowed Arvanitic language and local historic memories to survive so effectively to the very recent period." Arvanitika is in a state of attrition due to language shift towards Greek and large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population during the 20th century.
The Cham Albanians were a group that formerly inhabited a region of Epirus known as Chameria, nowadays Thesprotia in northwestern Greece. Many Cham Albanians converted to Islam during the Ottoman era. Muslim Chams were expelled from Greece during World War II, by an anti-communist resistance group (EDES). The causes of the expulsion were multifaceted and remain a matter of debate among historians. Different narratives in historiography argue that the causes involved pre-existing Greek policies which targeted the minority and sought its elimination, the Cham collaboration with the Axis forces and local property disputes which were instrumentalized after WWII. The estimated number of Cham Albanians expelled from Epirus to Albania and Turkey varies: figures include 14,000, 19,000, 20,000, 25,000 and 30,000.Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. . p. 158 According to Cham reports this number should be raised to c. 35,000.
Large-scale migration from Albania to Greece occurred after 1991. During this period, at least 500,000 Albanians have migrated and relocated to Greece. Despite the a lack of exact statistics, it is estimated that at least 700,000 Albanians have moved to Greece during the last 25 years. The Albanian government estimates 500,000 Albanians in Greece at the very least without accounting for their children. The 2011 Greece census indicated that Albanians consisted the biggest group of migrants in Greece, numbered roughly 480,000, but taking into consideration the current population of Greece (11 million) and the fact that the census failed to account for illegal foreigners, it was estimated that Albanians consist of 5% of the population (at least 550,000).By 2005, around 600,000 Albanians lived in Greece, forming the largest immigrant community in the country. They are economic migrants whose migration began in 1991, following the collapse of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania. , in total, there might have been more than 500,000 Albanian-born migrants and their children who received Greek citizenship over the years. In recent years, many Albanian workers and their families have left Greece in search of better opportunities elsewhere in Europe. As of 2022, there c. 292,000 Albanian immigrants are holders of legal permits to live and work in Greece, down from c. 423,000 in 2021.
Albanians in Greece have a long history of Hellenisation, assimilation and integration.Lazaridis, Gabriella, and Iordanis Psimmenos. "Migrant flows from Albania to Greece: economic, social and spatial exclusion." In Eldorado or Fortress? Migration in Southern Europe, pp. 170-185. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2000. Many ethnic Albanians have been naturalised as Greek nationals, others have self-declared as Greek since arrival and a considerable number live and work across both countries seasonally hence the number of Albanians in the country has often fluctuated.
Diaspora
Diaspora based Albanians may self identify as Albanian, use hybrid identification or identify with their nationality, often creating an obstacle in establishing a total figure of the population.
Europe
During the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, the conflicts in the Balkans and the Kosovo War set in motion large population movements of Albanians to Central, Western and Northern Europe. The gradual collapse of communism in Albania triggered as well a new wave of migration and contributed to the emergence of a new diaspora, mainly in Southern Europe, in such countries as Greece and Italy.
In Central Europe, there are approximately 200,000 Albanians in Switzerland with the particular concentration in the cantons of Zürich, Basel, Lucerne, Bern and St. Gallen. The neighbouring Germany is home to around 250,000 to 300,000 Albanians while in Austria there are around 40,000 to 80,000 Albanians concentrated in the states of Vienna, Styria, Salzburg, Lower and Upper Austria.
In Western Europe, the Albanian population of approximately 10,000 people living in the Benelux countries is in comparison to other regions relatively limited. There are more than 6,000 Albanian people living in Belgium and 2,800 in the nearby Netherlands. The most lesser number of Albanian people in the Benelux region is to be found in Luxembourg with a population of 2,100.
Within Northern Europe, Sweden possesses the most sizeable population of Albanians in Scandinavia however there is no exact answer to their number in the country. The populations also tend to be lower in Norway, Finland and Denmark with more than 18,000, 10,000 and 8,000 Albanians respectively. The population of Albanians in the United Kingdom is officially estimated to be around 39,000 whiles in Ireland there are less than 2,500 Albanians.
Asia and Africa
The Albanian diaspora in Africa and Asia, in such countries as Egypt, Syria or Turkey, was predominantly formed during the Ottoman period through economic migration and early years of the Republic of Turkey through migration due to sociopolitical discrimination and violence experienced by Albanians in Balkans.
In Turkey, the exact numbers of the Albanian population of the country are difficult to correctly estimate. According to a 2008 report, there were approximately 1.300,000 people of Albanian descent living in Turkey. As of that report, more than 500,000 Albanian descendants still recognise their ancestry and or their language, culture and traditions.
There are also other estimates that range from being 3 to 4 million people up to a total of 5 million in number, although most of these are Turkish citizens of either full or partial Albanian ancestry being no longer fluent in Albanian, comparable to the German Americans.. This was due to various degrees of either linguistic and or cultural assimilation occurring amongst the Albanian diaspora in Turkey. Albanians are active in the civic life of Turkey.Tabak, Hüsrev (3 March 2013). "Albanian awakening: The worm has turned! ". Today's Zaman. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
In Egypt there are 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers. Many are descendants of the Janissaries of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian who became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. Albanian Sunnis, Bektashis and Orthodox Christians were all represented in this diaspora, whose members at some point included major Renaissance figures (Rilindasit), including Thimi Mitko, Spiro Dine, Andon Zako Çajupi, Milo Duçi, Fan Noli and others who lived in Egypt for a time. With the ascension of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and rise of Arab nationalism, the last remnants of Albanian community there were forced to leave. Albanians have been present in Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and for about five centuries as a legacy of Ottoman Turkish rule.
Americas and Oceania
The first Albanian migration to North America began in the 19th and 20th centuries not long after gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire. However the Arbëreshë people from Southern Italy were the first Albanian people to arrive in the New World, many of them migrating after the wars that accompanied the Risorgimento.
Since then several Albanian migration waves have occurred throughout the 20th century as for instance after the Second World War with Albanians mostly from Yugoslavia rather than from Communist Albania, then after the Breakup of Communist Albania in 1990 and finally following the Kosovo War in 1998.
The most sizeable Albanian population in the Americas is predominantly to be found in the United States. New York metropolitan area in the State of New York is home to the most sizeable Albanian population of the United States. As of 2017, there are approximately 205,000 Albanians in the country with the main concentration in the states of New York, Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois. The number could be higher counting the Arbëreshë people as well; they are often distinguishable from other Albanian Americans with regard to their Italianized names, nationality and a common religion.
In Canada, there are approximately 39,000 Albanians in the country, including 36,185 Albanians from Albania and 2,870 Albanians from Kosovo, predominantly distributed in a multitude of provinces such as Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. Canada's largest cities such as Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton were besides the United States a major centre of Albanian migration to North America. Toronto is home to around 17,000 Albanians.
Albanian immigration to Australia began in the late 19th century and most took place during the 20th century.
People who planned to immigrate chose Australia after the US introduced immigration quotas on southern Europeans. Most were from southern Albania, of Muslim and Orthodox backgrounds and tended to live in Victoria and Queensland, with smaller numbers in Western and Northern Australia.
Italy's annexation of Albania marked a difficult time for Albanian Australians as many were thought by Australian authorities to pose a fascist threat. Post-war, the numbers of Albanian immigrants slowed due to immigration restrictions placed by the communist government in Albania.
Albanians from southwestern Yugoslavia (modern North Macedonia) arrived and settled in Melbourne in the 1960s-1970s. Other Albanian immigrants from Yugoslavia came from Montenegro and Serbia. The immigrants were mostly Muslims, but also Catholics among them including the relatives of the renowned Albanian nun and missionary Mother Teresa. Albanian refugees from Kosovo settled in Australia following the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict.
In the early twenty first century, Victoria has the highest concentration of Albanians and smaller Albanian communities exist in Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. In 2016, approximately 4,041 persons resident in Australia identified themselves as having been born in Albania and Kosovo, while 15,901 persons identified themselves as having Albanian ancestry, either alone or in combination with another ancestry.
Albanian migration to New Zealand occurred mid twentieth century following the Second World War. A small group of Albanian refugees originating mainly from Albania and the rest from Yugoslavian Kosovo and Macedonia settled in Auckland. During the Kosovo crisis (1999), up to 400 Kosovo Albanian refugees settled in New Zealand. In the twenty first century, Albanian New Zealanders number 400-500 people and are mainly concentrated in Auckland.
Culture
Traditions
Tribal social structure
The Albanian tribes () form a historical mode of social organization (farefisní) in Albania and the southwestern Balkans characterized by a common culture, often common patrilineal kinship ties tracing back to one progenitor and shared social ties. The fis (; commonly translated as "tribe", also as "clan" or "kin" community) stands at the center of Albanian organization based on kinship relations, a concept which can be found among southern Albanians also with the term farë''' (). Inherited from ancient Illyrian social structures, Albanian tribal society emerged in the early Middle Ages as the dominant form of social organization among Albanians. It also remained in a less developed system in southern Albania where large feudal estates and later trade and urban centres began to develop at the expense of tribal organization. One of the most particular elements of the Albanian tribal structure is its dependence on the Kanun, a code of Albanian oral customary laws. Most tribes engaged in warfare against external forces like the Ottoman Empire. Some also engaged in limited inter-tribal struggle for the control of resources.
Until the early years of the 20th century, the Albanian tribal society remained largely intact until the rise to power of communist regime in 1944, and is considered as the only example of a tribal social system structured with tribal chiefs and councils, blood feuds and oral customary laws, surviving in Europe until the middle of the 20th century. Members of the tribes of northern Albania believe their history is based on the notions of resistance and isolationism. Some scholars connect this belief with the concept of "negotiated peripherality". Throughout history the territory northern Albanian tribes occupy has been contested and peripheral so northern Albanian tribes often exploited their position and negotiated their peripherality in profitable ways. This peripheral position also affected their national program which significance and challenges are different from those in southern Albania.
Kanun
The Kanun is a set of Albanian traditional customary laws, which has directed all the aspects of the Albanian tribal society. For at least the last five centuries and until today, Albanian customary laws have been kept alive only orally by the tribal elders. The success in preserving them exclusively through oral systems highlights their universal resilience and provides evidence of their likely ancient origins. Strong pre-Christian motifs mixed with motifs from the Christian era reflect the stratification of the Albanian customary law across various historical ages. Over time, Albanian customary laws have undergone their historical development, they have been changed and supplemented with new norms, in accordance with certain requirements of socio-economic development. Besa and nderi (honour) are of major importance in Albanian customary law as the cornerstone of personal and social conduct. The Kanun is based on four pillars – Honour (), Hospitality (), Right Conduct () and Kin Loyalty ().
Besa
Besa (pledge of honor) is an Albanian cultural precept, usually translated as "faith" or "oath", that means "to keep the promise" and "word of honor". The concept is based upon faithfulness toward one's word in the form of loyalty or as an allegiance guarantee. Besa contains mores toward obligations to the family and a friend, the demand to have internal commitment, loyalty and solidarity when conducting oneself with others and secrecy in relation to outsiders. The besa is also the main element within the concept of the ancestor's will or pledge (amanet) where a demand for faithfulness to a cause is expected in situations that relate to unity, national liberation and independence that transcend a person and generations.
The concept of besa is included in the Kanun, the customary law of the Albanian people. The besa was an important institution within the tribal society of the Albanian tribes, who swore oaths to jointly fight against invaders, and in this aspect the besa served to uphold tribal autonomy. The besa was used toward regulating tribal affairs between and within the Albanian tribes.
Culinary arts
The traditional cuisine of the Albanians is diverse and has been greatly influenced by traditions and their varied environment in the Balkans and turbulent history throughout the course of the centuries. There is a considerable diversity between the Mediterranean and Balkan-influenced cuisines of Albanians in the Western Balkan nations and the Italian and Greek-influenced cuisines of the Arbëreshës and Chams. The enjoyment of food has a high priority in the lives of Albanian peoples especially when celebrating religious festivals such as Ramadan, Eid, Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah or Novruz
Ingredients include many varieties of fruits such as lemons, oranges, figs and olives, herbs such as basil, lavender, mint, oregano, rosemary and thyme and vegetables such as garlic, onion, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes. Albanian peoples who live closer to the Mediterranean Sea, Prespa Lake and Ohrid Lake are able to complement their diet with fish, shellfish and other seafood. Otherwise, lamb is often considered the traditional meat for different religious festivals. Poultry, beef and pork are also in plentiful supply.
Tavë Kosi is a national dish in Albania consisting of garlic lamb and rice baked under a thick, tart veil of yogurt. Fërgesë is another national dish and is made with peppers, tomatoes and cottage cheese. Pite is a baked pastry with a filling of a mixture of spinach and gjizë or mish. Desserts include Flia, consisting of multiple crepe-like layers brushed with crea; petulla, a traditionally fried dough, and Krofne, similar to Berliner.
Visual arts
Painting
The earliest preserved relics of visual arts of the Albanian people are sacred in nature and represented by numerous frescoes, murals and icons which has been created with an admirable use of color and gold. They reveal a wealth of various influences and traditions that converged in the historical lands of the Albanian people throughout the course of the centuries.
The rise of the Byzantines and Ottomans during the Middle Ages was accompanied by a corresponding growth in Christian and Islamic art often apparent in examples of architecture and mosaics throughout Albania. The Albanian Renaissance proved crucial to the emancipation of the modern Albanian culture and saw unprecedented developments in all fields of literature and arts whereas artists sought to return to the ideals of Impressionism and Romanticism.
Onufri, founder of the Berat School, Kolë Idromeno, David Selenica, Kostandin Shpataraku and the Zografi Brothers are the most eminent representatives of Albanian art. Albanians in Italy and Croatia have been also active among others the Renaissance influenced artists such as Marco Basaiti, Viktor Karpaçi and Andrea Nikollë Aleksi. In Greece, Eleni Boukouras is noted as being the first great female painter of post independence Greece.
In 1856, Pjetër Marubi arrived in Shkodër and established the first photography museum in Albania and probably the entire Balkans, the Marubi Museum. The collection of 150,000 photographs, captured by the Albanian-Italian Marubi dynasty, offers an ensemble of photographs depicting social rituals, traditional costumes, portraits of Albanian history.
The Kulla, a traditional Albanian dwelling constructed completely from natural materials, is a cultural relic from the medieval period particularly widespread in the southwestern region of Kosovo and northern region of Albania. The rectangular shape of a Kulla is produced with irregular stone ashlars, river pebbles and chestnut woods, however, the size and number of floors depends on the size of the family and their financial resources.
Literature
The roots of literature of the Albanian people can be traced to the Middle Ages with surviving works about history, theology and philosophy dating from the Renaissance.
The earliest known use of written Albanian is a baptismal formula (1462) written by the Archbishop of Durrës Paulus Angelus. In 1555, a Catholic clergyman Gjon Buzuku from the Shestan region published the earliest known book written in Albanian titled Meshari'' (The Missal) regarding Catholic prayers and rites containing archaic medieval language, lexemes and expressions obsolete in contemporary Albanian. Other Christian clergy such as Luca Matranga in the Arbëresh diaspora published (1592) in the Tosk dialect while other notable authors were from northern Albanian lands and included Pjetër Budi, Frang Bardhi, and Pjetër Bogdani.
In the 17th century and onwards, important contributions were made by the Arbëreshë people of Southern Italy who played an influential role in encouraging the Albanian Renaissance. Notable among them was figures such as Demetrio Camarda, Gabriele Dara, Girolamo de Rada, Giulio Variboba and Giuseppe Serembe who produced inspiring nationalist literature and worked to systematise the Albanian language.
The Bejtexhinj in the 18th century emerged as the result of the influences of Islam and particularly Sufism orders moving towards Orientalism. Individuals such as Nezim Frakulla, Hasan Zyko Kamberi, Shahin and Dalip Frashëri compiled literature infused with expressions, language and themes on the circumstances of the time, the insecurities of the future and their discontent at the conditions of the feudal system.
The Albanian Renaissance in the 19th century is remarkable both for its valuable poetic achievement and for its variety within the Albanian literature. It drew on the ideas of Romanticism and Enlightenment characterised by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as the interaction between nature and mankind. Dora d'Istria, Girolamo de Rada, Naim Frashëri, Naum Veqilharxhi, Sami Frashëri and Pashko Vasa maintained this movement and are remembered today for composing series of prominent works.
The 20th century was centred on the principles of Modernism and Realism and characterised by the development to a more distinctive and expressive form of Albanian literature. Pioneers of the time include Asdreni, Faik Konica, Fan Noli, Lasgush Poradeci, Migjeni who chose to portray themes of contemporary life and most notably Gjergj Fishta who created the epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís.
After World War II, Albania emerged as a communist state and Socialist realism became part of the literary scene. Authors and poets emerged such as Sejfulla Malëshova, Dritero Agolli and Ismail Kadare who has become an internationally acclaimed novelist and others who challenged the regime through various sociopolitical and historic themes in their works. Martin Camaj wrote in the diaspora while in neighbouring Yugoslavia, the emergence of Albanian cultural expression resulted in sociopolitical and poetic literature by notable authors like Adem Demaçi, Rexhep Qosja, Jusuf Buxhovi. The literary scene of the 21st century remains vibrant producing new novelists, authors, poets and other writers.
Performing arts
Apparel
The Albanian people have incorporated various natural materials from their local agriculture and livestock as a source of attire, clothing and fabrics. Their traditional apparel was primarily influenced by nature, the lifestyle and has continuously changed since ancient times. Different regions possesses their own exceptional clothing traditions and peculiarities varied occasionally in colour, material and shape.
The traditional costume of Albanian men includes a white skirt called Fustanella, a white shirt with wide sleeves, and a thin black jacket or vest such as the Xhamadan or Xhurdia. In winter, they add a warm woolen or fur coat known as Flokata or Dollama made from sheepskin or goat fur. Another authentic piece is called Tirq which is a tight pair of felt trousers mostly white, sometimes dark brown or black.
The Albanian women's costumes are much more elaborate, colorful and richer in ornamentation. In all the Albanian regions the women's clothing often has been decorated with filigree ironwork, colorful embroidery, a lot of symbols and vivid accessories. A unique and ancient dress is called Xhubleta, a bell shaped skirt reaching down to the calves and worn from the shoulders with two shoulder straps at the upper part.
Different traditional handmade shoes and socks were worn by the Albanian people. Opinga, leather shoes made from rough animal skin, were worn with Çorape, knitted woolen or cotton socks. Headdresses remain a contrasting and recognisable feature of Albanian traditional clothing. Albanian men wore hats of various designs, shape and size. A common headgear is a Plis and Qylafë, in contrast, Albanian women wore a Kapica adorned with jewels or embroidery on the forehead, and a Lëvere or Kryqe which usually covers the head, shoulders and neck. Wealthy Albanian women wore headdresses embellished with gems, gold or silver.
Music
For the Albanian people, music is a vital component to their culture and characterised by its own peculiar features and diverse melodic pattern reflecting the history, language and way of life. It rather varies from region to another with two essential stylistic differences between the music of the Ghegs and Tosks. Hence, their geographic position in Southeast Europe in combination with cultural, political and social issues is frequently expressed through music along with the accompanying instruments and dances.
Albanian folk music is contrasted by the heroic tone of the Ghegs and the relaxed sounds of the Tosks. Traditional iso-polyphony perhaps represents the most noble and essential genre of the Tosks which was proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Ghegs in contrast have a reputation for a distinctive variety of sung epic poetry often about the tumultuous history of the Albanian people.
There are a number of internationally acclaimed singers of ethnic Albanian origin such as Ava Max, Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, Era Istrefi, Rita Ora, and rappers such as Action Bronson, Dardan, Gashi and Loredana Zefi. Notable singers of Albanian origin from the former Yugoslavia include Selma Bajrami and Zana Nimani.
In international competitions, Albania participated in the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in 2004. Albanians have also represented other countries in the contest: Anna Oxa for Italy in 1989, Adrian Gaxha for North Macedonia in 2008, Ermal Meta for Italy in 2018, Eleni Foureira for Cyprus in 2018, as well as Gjon Muharremaj for Switzerland in 2020 and 2021. Kosovo has never participated, but is currently applying to become a member of the EBU and therefore debut in the contest.
Religion
Many different spiritual traditions, religious faiths and beliefs are practised by the Albanian people who historically have succeeded to coexist peacefully over the centuries in Southeast Europe. They are traditionally both Christians and Muslims—Catholics and Orthodox, Sunnis and Bektashis and—but also to a lesser extent Evangelicals, Protestants and Jews, constituting one of the most religiously diverse peoples of Europe.
Christianity in Albania was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome until the 8th century. Then, dioceses in Albania were transferred to the patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1054 after the schism, the north became identified with the Roman Catholic Church. Since that time all churches north of the Shkumbin river were Catholic and under the jurisdiction of the Pope. Various reasons have been put forward for the spread of Catholicism among northern Albanians. Traditional affiliation with the Latin Church and Catholic missions in central Albania in the 12th century fortified the Catholic Church against Orthodoxy, while local leaders found an ally in Catholicism against Slavic Orthodox states.
After the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, Christianity began to be overtaken by Islam, and Catholicism and Orthodoxy continued to be practiced with less frequency.
During the modern era, the monarchy and communism in Albania as well as the socialism in Kosovo, historically part of Yugoslavia, followed a systematic secularisation of its people. This policy was chiefly applied within the borders of both territories and produced a secular majority of its population.
All forms of Christianity, Islam and other religious practices were prohibited except for old non-institutional pagan practices in the rural areas, which were seen as identifying with the national culture. The current Albanian state has revived some pagan festivals, such as the Spring festival () held yearly on 14 March in the city of Elbasan. It is a national holiday.
The communist regime which ruled Albania after World War II persecuted and suppressed religious observance and institutions, and entirely banned religion to the point where Albania was officially declared to be the world's first atheist state. Religious freedom returned to Albania following the regime's change in 1992. Albanian Sunni Muslims are found throughout the country, Albanian Orthodox Christians as well as Bektashis are concentrated in the south, while Roman Catholics are found primarily in the north of the country.
According to the 2011 Census, which has been recognised as unreliable by the Council of Europe, in Albania, 58.79% of the population adheres to Islam, making it the largest religion in the country. Christianity is practiced by 16.99% of the population, making it the second largest religion in the country. The remaining population is either irreligious or belongs to other religious groups. Before World War II, there was given a distribution of 70% Muslims, 20% Eastern Orthodox, and 10% Roman Catholics. Today, Gallup Global Reports 2010 shows that religion plays a role in the lives of only 39% of Albanians, and ranks Albania the thirteenth least religious country in the world.
For part of its history, Albania has also had a Jewish community. Members of the Jewish community were saved by a group of Albanians during the Nazi occupation. Many left for Israel –1992 when the borders were opened after the fall of the communist regime, but about 200 Jews still live in Albania.
See also
Culture of Albania
Geography of Albania
History of Albania
List of Albanians
Notes
References
Citations
Cited sources
Note 95
←
External links
Books about Albania and the Albanian people (scribd.com)—Reference of books (and some journal articles) about Albania and the Albanian people; their history, language, origin, culture, literature, and so on public domain books, fully accessible online.
Albanians in the Balkans—U.S. Institute of Peace Report, November 2001
The Albanians and Their Territories by The Academy of Sciences of the PSR of Albania]
Ethnic groups divided by international borders
Ethnic groups in Albania
Ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ethnic groups in Croatia
Ethnic groups in Greece
Ethnic groups in Italy
Ethnic groups in Kosovo
Ethnic groups in Montenegro
Ethnic groups in North Macedonia
Ethnic groups in Serbia
Ethnic groups in the Balkans
Ethnic groups in Turkey
History of the Albanians
Indo-European peoples
Muslim communities in Europe
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The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membership group, reporting nearly 110,000 student and professional members . Its headquarters are in New York City.
The ACM is an umbrella organization for academic and scholarly interests in computer science (informatics). Its motto is "Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession".
History
In 1947, a notice was sent to various people:
On January 10, 1947, at the Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery at the Harvard computation Laboratory, Professor Samuel H. Caldwell of Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke of the need for an association of those interested in computing machinery, and of the need for communication between them.
[...]
After making some inquiries during May and June, we believe there is ample interest to start an informal association of many of those interested in the new machinery for computing and reasoning. Since there has to be a beginning, we are acting as a temporary committee to start such an association:
E. C. Berkeley, Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Newark, N. J.
R. V. D. Campbell, Raytheon Manufacturing Co., Waltham, Mass.
, Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.
H. E. Goheen, Office of Naval Research, Boston, Mass.
J. W. Mauchly, Electronic Control Co., Philadelphia, Pa.
T. K. Sharpless, Moore School of Elec. Eng., Philadelphia, Pa.
R. Taylor, Mass. Inst. of Tech., Cambridge, Mass.
C. B. Tompkins, Engineering Research Associates, Washington, D.C.
The committee (except for Curtiss) had gained experience with computers during World War II: Berkeley, Campbell, and Goheen helped build Harvard Mark I under Howard H. Aiken, Mauchly and Sharpless were involved in building ENIAC, Tompkins had used "the secret Navy code-breaking machines", and Taylor had worked on Bush's Differential analyzers.
The ACM was then founded in 1947 under the name Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, which was changed the following year to the Association for Computing Machinery. The ACM History Committee since 2016 has published the A.M.Turing Oral History project, the ACM Key Award Winners Video Series, and the India Industry Leaders Video project.
Activities
ACM is organized into over 246 local professional chapters and 38 Special Interest Groups (SIGs), through which it conducts most of its activities. Additionally, there are over 833 college and university chapters. The first student chapter was founded in 1961 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Many of the SIGs, such as SIGGRAPH, SIGDA, SIGPLAN, SIGCSE and SIGCOMM, sponsor regular conferences, which have become famous as the dominant venue for presenting innovations in certain fields. The groups also publish a large number of specialized journals, magazines, and newsletters.
ACM also sponsors other computer science related events such as the worldwide ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), and has sponsored some other events such as the chess match between Garry Kasparov and the IBM Deep Blue computer.
Services
Publications
ACM publishes over 50 journals including the prestigious Journal of the ACM, and two general magazines for computer professionals, Communications of the ACM (also known as Communications or CACM) and Queue. Other publications of the ACM include:
ACM XRDS, formerly "Crossroads", was redesigned in 2010 and is the most popular student computing magazine in the US.
ACM Interactions, an interdisciplinary HCI publication focused on the connections between experiences, people and technology, and the third largest ACM publication.
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Computers in Entertainment (CIE)
ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC)
ACM Special Interest Group: Computers and Society (SIGCAS)
A number of journals, specific to subfields of computer science, titled ACM Transactions. Some of the more notable transactions include:
ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG)
ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB)
ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL)
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)
ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)
ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS)
ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM)
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
Although Communications no longer publishes primary research, and is not considered a prestigious venue, many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in its pages.
ACM has made almost all of its publications available to paid subscribers online at its Digital Library and also has a Guide to Computing Literature. ACM also offers insurance, online courses, and other services to its members.
In 1997, ACM Press published Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing (), written by Christopher Morgan, with new photographs by Louis Fabian Bachrach. The book is a collection of historic and current portrait photographs of figures from the computer industry.
Portal and Digital Library
The ACM Portal is an online service of the ACM. Its core are two main sections: ACM Digital Library and the ACM Guide to Computing Literature.
The ACM Digital Library was launched in October 1997. It is the full-text collection of all articles published by the ACM in its articles, magazines and conference proceedings. The Guide is a bibliography in computing with over one million entries.
The ACM Digital Library contains a comprehensive archive starting in the 1950s of the organization's journals, magazines, newsletters and conference proceedings. Online services include a forum called Ubiquity and Tech News digest. There is an extensive underlying bibliographic database containing key works of all genres from all major publishers of computing literature. This secondary database is a rich discovery service known as The ACM Guide to Computing Literature.
ACM adopted a hybrid Open Access (OA) publishing model in 2013. Authors who do not choose to pay the OA fee must grant ACM publishing rights by either a copyright transfer agreement or a publishing license agreement.
ACM was a "green" publisher before the term was invented. Authors may post documents on their own websites and in their institutional repositories with a link back to the ACM Digital Library's permanently maintained Version of Record.
All metadata in the Digital Library is open to the world, including abstracts, linked references and citing works, citation and usage statistics, as well as all functionality and services. Other than the free articles, the full-texts are accessed by subscription.
There is also a mounting challenge to the ACM's publication practices coming from the open access movement. Some authors see a subscription business model as less relevant and publish on their home pages or on unreviewed sites like arXiv. Other organizations have sprung up which do their peer review entirely free and online, such as Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Journal of Machine Learning Research and the Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology.
ACM has made its publications from 1951 to 2000 open access through its digital library on 7 April 2022 as part of its 75th anniversary of the organisation.
Membership grades
In addition to student and regular members, ACM has several advanced membership grades to recognize those with multiple years of membership and "demonstrated performance that sets them apart from their peers".
The number of Fellows, Distinguished Members, and Senior Members cannot exceed 1%, 10%, and 25% of the total number of professional members, respectively.
Fellows
The ACM Fellows Program was established by Council of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1993 "to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM." There are 1,310 Fellows out of about 100,000 members.
Distinguished Members
In 2006, ACM began recognizing two additional membership grades, one which was called Distinguished Members. Distinguished Members (Distinguished Engineers, Distinguished Scientists, and Distinguished Educators) have at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous ACM membership and "have made a significant impact on the computing field". In 2006 when the Distinguished Members first came out, one of the three levels was called "Distinguished Member" and was changed about two years later to "Distinguished Educator". Those who already had the Distinguished Member title had their titles changed to one of the other three titles.
List of Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery
Senior Members
Also in 2006, ACM began recognizing Senior Members. According to the ACM, "The Senior Members Grade recognizes those ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous Professional Membership who have demonstrated performance through technical leadership, and technical or professional contributions". Senior membership also requires 3 letters of reference
Distinguished Speakers
While not technically a membership grade, the ACM recognizes distinguished speakers on topics in computer science. A distinguished speaker is appointed for a three-year period. There are usually about 125 current distinguished speakers. The ACM website describes these people as 'Renowned International Thought Leaders'. The distinguished speakers program (DSP) has been in existence for over 20 years and serves as an outreach program that brings renowned experts from Academia, Industry and Government to present on the topic of their expertise. The DSP is overseen by a committee
Chapters
ACM has three kinds of chapters: Special Interest Groups, Professional Chapters, and Student Chapters.
, ACM has professional & SIG Chapters in 56 countries.
, there exist ACM student chapters in 41 countries.
Special Interest Groups
SIGACCESS: Accessible Computing
SIGACT: Algorithms and Computation Theory
SIGAda: Ada Programming Language
SIGAI: Artificial Intelligence
SIGAPP: Applied Computing
SIGARCH: Computer Architecture
SIGBED: Embedded Systems
SIGBio: Bioinformatics
SIGCAS: Computers and Society
SIGCHI: Computer–Human Interaction
SIGCOMM: Data Communication
SIGCSE: Computer Science Education
SIGDA: Design Automation
SIGDOC: Design of Communication
SIGecom: Electronic Commerce
SIGEVO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
SIGGRAPH: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
SIGHPC: High Performance Computing
SIGIR: Information Retrieval
SIGITE: Information Technology Education
SIGKDD: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
SIGLOG: Logic and Computation
SIGMETRICS: Measurement and Evaluation
SIGMICRO: Microarchitecture
SIGMIS: Management Information Systems
SIGMM: Multimedia
SIGMOBILE: Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing
SIGMOD: Management of Data
SIGOPS: Operating Systems
SIGPLAN: Programming Languages
SIGSAC: Security, Audit, and Control
SIGSAM: Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation
SIGSIM: Simulation and Modeling
SIGSOFT: Software Engineering
SIGSPATIAL: Spatial Information
SIGUCCS: University and College Computing Services
SIGWEB: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web
Conferences
ACM and its Special Interest Groups (SIGs) sponsors numerous conferences with 170 hosted worldwide in 2017. ACM Conferences page has an up-to-date complete list while a partial list is shown below. Most of the SIGs also have an annual conference. ACM conferences are often very popular publishing venues and are therefore very competitive. For example, SIGGRAPH 2007 attracted about 30000 attendees, while CIKM 2005 and RecSys 2022 had paper acceptance rates of only accepted 15% and 17% respectively.
AIES: Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
ASPLOS: International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
CHI: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
CIKM: Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
COMPASS: International Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies
DAC: Design Automation Conference
DEBS: Distributed Event Based Systems
FAccT: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
FCRC: Federated Computing Research Conference
GECCO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
HT: Hypertext: Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
JCDL: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
MobiHoc: International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing
SC: Supercomputing Conference
SIGCOMM: ACM SIGCOMM Conference
SIGCSE: SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SIGGRAPH: International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
RecSys: ACM Conference on Recommender Systems
TAPIA: Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference
The ACM is a co–presenter and founding partner of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
Some conferences are hosted by ACM student branches; this includes Reflections Projections, which is hosted by UIUC ACM. In addition, ACM sponsors regional conferences. Regional conferences facilitate increased opportunities for collaboration between nearby institutions and they are well attended.
For additional non-ACM conferences, see this list of computer science conferences.
Awards
The ACM presents or co–presents a number of awards for outstanding technical and professional achievements and contributions in computer science and information technology.
ACM A. M. Turing Award
ACM – AAAI Allen Newell Award
ACM Athena Lecturer Award
ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing
ACM Distinguished Service Award
ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award
ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award
ACM Fellowship, awarded annually since 1993
ACM Gordon Bell Prize
ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award
ACM – IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
ACM – IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award
ACM – IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award
ACM India Doctoral Dissertation Award
ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award
ACM Policy Award
ACM Presidential Award
ACM Prize in Computing (formerly: ACM – Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences)
ACM Programming Systems and Languages Paper Award
ACM Student Research Competition
ACM Software System Award
International Science and Engineering Fair
Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award
SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering
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Anabaptism (from Neo-Latin , from the Greek : 're-' and 'baptism', , earlier also ) is a Christian movement which traces its origins to the Radical Reformation.
The early Anabaptists formulated their beliefs in a confession of faith called the Schleitheim Confession. In 1527, Michael Sattler presided over a meeting at Schleitheim (in the Canton of Schaffhausen, on the Swiss-German border), where Anabaptist leaders drew up the Schleitheim Confession of Faith (doc. 29). Sattler was arrested and executed soon afterwards. Anabaptist groups varied widely in their specific beliefs, but the Schleitheim Confession represents foundational Anabaptist beliefs as well as any single document can.
Anabaptists believe that baptism is valid only when candidates freely confess their faith in Christ and request to be baptized. This believer's baptism is opposed to baptism of infants, who are not able to make a conscious decision to be baptized. Anabaptists trace their heritage to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. Other Christian groups with different roots also practice believer's baptism, such as Baptists, but these groups are not Anabaptist. The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the early Anabaptist movement. Schwarzenau Brethren, River Brethren, Bruderhof, and the Apostolic Christian Church are Anabaptist denominations that developed well after the Radical Reformation, following their example. Though all Anabaptists share the same core theological beliefs, there are differences in the way of life between them; Old Order Anabaptist groups include the Old Order Amish, the Old Order Mennonites, Old Order River Brethren, and the Old Order German Baptist Brethren. In between the assimilated mainline denominations (such as Mennonite Church USA and the Church of the Brethren) and Old Order groups are Conservative Anabaptist groups. Conservative Anabaptists such as the Dunkard Brethren Church, Conservative Mennonites and Beachy Amish have retained traditional religious practices and theology, while allowing for some modern conveniences and advanced technology.
Emphasizing an adherence to the beliefs of early Christianity, as a whole, Anabaptists are distinguished by their keeping of practices that often include nonconformity to the world, "the love feast with feet washing, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, and the holy kiss, as well as turning the other cheek, no oaths, going the second mile, giving a cup of cold water, reconciliation, repeated forgiveness, humility, non-violence, and sharing possessions."
The name Anabaptist means "one who baptizes again". Their persecutors named them this, referring to the practice of baptizing persons when they converted or declared their faith in Christ even if they had been baptized as infants, and many call themselves "Radical Reformers". Anabaptists require that baptismal candidates be able to make a confession of faith that is freely chosen and so rejected baptism of infants. The New Testament teaches to repent and then be baptized, and infants are not able to repent and turn away from sin to a life of following Jesus. The early members of this movement did not accept the name Anabaptist, claiming that infant baptism was not part of scripture and was therefore null and void. They said that baptizing self-confessed believers was their first true baptism:
Anabaptists were heavily persecuted by state churches, both Magisterial Protestants and Roman Catholics, beginning in the 16th century and continuing thereafter, largely because of their interpretation of scripture, which put them at odds with official state church interpretations and local government control. Anabaptism was never established by any state and therefore never enjoyed any associated privileges. Most Anabaptists adhere to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7, which teaches against hate, killing, violence, taking oaths, participating in use of force or any military actions, and against participation in civil government. Anabaptists view themselves as primarily citizens of the kingdom of God, not of earthly governments. As committed followers of Jesus, they seek to pattern their life after his.
Some former groups who practiced rebaptism, now extinct, believed otherwise and complied with these requirements of civil society. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and many historians consider them outside true biblical Anabaptism. Conrad Grebel wrote in a letter to Thomas Müntzer in 1524: "True Christian believers are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter ... Neither do they use worldly sword or war, since all killing has ceased with them."
Lineage
Medieval forerunners
Anabaptists are considered to have begun with the Radical Reformation in the 16th century, but historians classify certain people and groups as their forerunners because of a similar approach to the interpretation and application of the Bible. For instance, Petr Chelčický, a 15th-century Bohemian reformer, taught most of the beliefs considered integral to Anabaptist theology. Medieval antecedents may include the Brethren of the Common Life, the Hussites, Dutch Sacramentists, and some forms of monasticism. The Waldensians also represent a faith similar to the Anabaptists.
Medieval dissenters and Anabaptists who held to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount share in common the following affirmations:
The believer must not swear oaths or refer disputes between believers to law-courts for resolution, in accordance with .
The believer must not bear arms or offer forcible resistance to wrongdoers, nor wield the sword. No Christian has the jus gladii (the right of the sword).
Civil government (i.e. "Caesar") belongs to the world. The believer belongs to God's kingdom, so must not fill any office nor hold any rank under government, which is to be passively obeyed.
Sinners or unfaithful ones are to be excommunicated, and excluded from the sacraments and from intercourse with believers unless they repent, according to and , but no force is to be used towards them.
Zwickau prophets and the German Peasants' War
On December 27, 1521, three "prophets" appeared in Wittenberg from Zwickau who were influenced by (and, in turn, influencing) Thomas MüntzerThomas Dreschel, Nicholas Storch, and Mark Thomas Stübner. They preached an apocalyptic, radical alternative to Lutheranism. Their preaching helped to stir the feelings concerning the social crisis which erupted in the German Peasants' War in southern Germany in 1525 as a revolt against feudal oppression. Under the leadership of Müntzer, it became a war against all constituted authorities and an attempt to establish by revolution an ideal Christian commonwealth, with absolute equality among persons and the community of goods. The Zwickau prophets were not Anabaptists (that is, they did not practise "rebaptism"); nevertheless, the prevalent social inequities and the preaching of men such as these have been seen as laying the foundation for the Anabaptist movement. The social ideals of the Anabaptist movement coincided closely with those of leaders in the German Peasants' War. Studies have found a very low percentage of subsequent sectarians to have taken part in the peasant uprising.
Views on origins
Research on the origins of the Anabaptists has been tainted both by the attempts of their enemies to slander them and by the attempts of their supporters to vindicate them. It was long popular to classify all Anabaptists as Munsterites and radicals associated with the Zwickau prophets, Jan Matthys, John of Leiden, and Thomas Müntzer. Those desiring to correct this error tended to over-correct and deny all connections between the larger Anabaptist movement and the most radical elements.
The modern era of Anabaptist historiography arose with Roman Catholic scholar Carl Adolf Cornelius' publication of (The History of the Münster Uprising) in 1855. Baptist historian Albert Henry Newman (1852–1933), who Harold S. Bender said occupied "first position in the field of American Anabaptist historiography", made a major contribution with his A History of Anti-Pedobaptism (1897).
Three main theories on origins of the Anabaptists are the following:
The movement began in a single expression in Zürich and spread from there (monogenesis);
It developed through several independent movements (polygenesis); and
It was a continuation of true New Testament Christianity (apostolic succession or church perpetuity).
Monogenesis
A number of scholars (e.g. Harold S. Bender, William Estep, Robert Friedmann) consider the Anabaptist movement to have developed from the Swiss Brethren movement of Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, et al. They generally argue that Anabaptism had its origins in Zürich, and that the Anabaptism of the Swiss Brethren was transmitted to southern Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and northern Germany, where it developed into its various branches. The monogenesis theory usually rejects the Münsterites and other radicals from the category of true Anabaptists. In the monogenesis view the time of origin is January 21, 1525, when Conrad Grebel baptized George Blaurock, and Blaurock in turn baptized several others immediately. These baptisms were the first "re-baptisms" known in the movement. This continues to be the most widely accepted date posited for the establishment of Anabaptism.
Polygenesis
James M. Stayer, , and Klaus Deppermann disputed the idea of a single origin of Anabaptists in a 1975 essay entitled "From Monogenesis to Polygenesis", suggesting that February 24, 1527, at Schleitheim is the proper date of the origin of Anabaptism. On this date the Swiss Brethren wrote a declaration of belief called the Schleitheim Confession. The authors of the essay noted the agreement among previous Anabaptist historians on polygenesis, even when disputing the date for a single starting point: "Hillerbrand and Bender (like Holl and Troeltsch) were in agreement that there was a single dispersion of Anabaptism …, which certainly ran through Zurich. The only question was whether or not it went back further to Saxony." After criticizing the standard polygenetic history, the authors found six groups in early Anabaptism which could be collapsed into three originating "points of departure": "South German Anabaptism, the Swiss Brethren, and the Melchiorites". According to their polygenesis theory, South German–Austrian Anabaptism "was a diluted form of Rhineland mysticism", Swiss Anabaptism "arose out of Reformed congregationalism", and Dutch Anabaptism was formed by "Social unrest and the apocalyptic visions of Melchior Hoffman". As examples of how the Anabaptist movement was influenced from sources other than the Swiss Brethren movement, mention has been made of how Pilgram Marpeck's of 1542 was deeply influenced by the of 1533 by Münster theologian Bernhard Rothmann. Melchior Hoffman influenced the Hutterites when they used his commentary on the Apocalypse shortly after he wrote it.
Others who have written in support of polygenesis include and Walter Klaassen, who established links between Thomas Müntzer and Hans Hut. In another work, Gottfried Seebaß and Werner Packull showed the influence of Thomas Müntzer on the formation of South German Anabaptism. Similarly, author Steven Ozment linked Hans Denck and Hans Hut with Thomas Müntzer, Sebastian Franck, and others. Author Calvin Pater showed how Andreas Karlstadt influenced Swiss Anabaptism in various areas, including his view of Scripture, doctrine of the church, and views on baptism.
Several historians, including Thor Hall, Kenneth Davis, and Robert Kreider, have also noted the influence of Humanism on Radical Reformers in the three originating points of departure to account for how this brand of reform could develop independently from each other. Relatively recent research, begun in a more advanced and deliberate manner by Andrew P. Klager, also explores how the influence and a particular reading of the Church Fathers contributed to the development of distinctly Anabaptist beliefs and practices in separate regions of Europe in the early 16th century, including by Menno Simons in the Netherlands, Conrad Grebel in Switzerland, Thomas Müntzer in central Germany, Pilgram Marpeck in the Tyrol, Peter Walpot in Moravia, and especially Balthasar Hubmaier in southern Germany, Switzerland, and Moravia.
Apostolic succession
Baptist successionists have, at times, pointed to 16th-century Anabaptists as part of an apostolic succession of churches ("church perpetuity") from the time of Christ. This view is held by some Baptists, some Mennonites, and a number of "true church" movements.
The opponents of the Baptist successionism theory emphasize that these non-Catholic groups clearly differed from each other, that they held some heretical views, or that the groups had no connection with one another and had origins that were separate both in time and in place.
A different strain of successionism is the theory that the Anabaptists are of Waldensian origin. Some hold the idea that the Waldensians are part of the apostolic succession, while others simply believe they were an independent group out of whom the Anabaptists arose. Ludwig Keller, Thomas M. Lindsay, Henry Clay Vedder, Delbert Grätz, John T. Christian and Thieleman J. van Braght (author of Martyrs Mirror) all held, in varying degrees, the position that the Anabaptists were of Waldensian origin.
History
Switzerland
Anabaptism in Switzerland began as an offshoot of the church reforms instigated by Ulrich Zwingli. As early as 1522, it became evident that Zwingli was on a path of reform preaching when he began to question or criticize such Catholic practices as tithes, the mass, and even infant baptism. Zwingli had gathered a group of reform-minded men around him, with whom he studied classical literature and the scriptures. However, some of these young men began to feel that Zwingli was not moving fast enough in his reform. The division between Zwingli and his more radical disciples became apparent in an October 1523 disputation held in Zurich. When the discussion of the mass was about to be ended without making any actual change in practice, Conrad Grebel stood up and asked "what should be done about the mass?" Zwingli responded by saying the council would make that decision. At this point, Simon Stumpf, a radical priest from Höngg, answered saying, "The decision has already been made by the Spirit of God."
This incident illustrated clearly that Zwingli and his more radical disciples had different expectations. To Zwingli, the reforms would only go as fast as the city Council allowed them. To the radicals, the council had no right to make that decision, but rather the Bible was the final authority of church reform. Feeling frustrated, some of them began to meet on their own for Bible study. As early as 1523, William Reublin began to preach against infant baptism in villages surrounding Zurich, encouraging parents to not baptize their children.
Seeking fellowship with other reform-minded people, the radical group wrote letters to Martin Luther, Andreas Karlstadt, and Thomas Müntzer. Felix Manz began to publish some of Karlstadt's writings in Zurich in late 1524. By this time the question of infant baptism had become agitated and the Zurich council had instructed Zwingli to meet weekly with those who rejected infant baptism "until the matter could be resolved". Zwingli broke off the meetings after two sessions, and Felix Manz petitioned the council to find a solution, since he felt Zwingli was too hard to work with. The council then called a meeting for January 17, 1525.
The Council ruled in this meeting that all who continued to refuse to baptize their infants should be expelled from Zurich if they did not have them baptized within one week. Since Conrad Grebel had refused to baptize his daughter Rachel, born on January 5, 1525, the Council decision was extremely personal to him and others who had not baptized their children. Thus, when sixteen of the radicals met on Saturday evening, January 21, 1525, the situation seemed particularly dark. The Hutterian Chronicle records the event:
Afterwards Blaurock was baptized, he in turn baptized others at the meeting. Even though some had rejected infant baptism before this date, these baptisms marked the first re-baptisms of those who had been baptized as infants and thus, technically, Swiss Anabaptism was born on that day.
Tyrol
Anabaptism appears to have come to Tyrol through the labors of George Blaurock. Similar to the German Peasants' War, the Gaismair uprising set the stage by producing a hope for social justice. Michael Gaismair had tried to bring religious, political, and economical reform through a violent peasant uprising, but the movement was squashed. Although little hard evidence exists of a direct connection between Gaismair's uprising and Tyrolian Anabaptism, at least a few of the peasants involved in the uprising later became Anabaptists. While a connection between a violent social revolution and non-resistant Anabaptism may be hard to imagine, the common link was the desire for a radical change in the prevailing social injustices. Disappointed with the failure of armed revolt, Anabaptist ideals of an alternative peaceful, just society probably resonated on the ears of the disappointed peasants.
Before Anabaptism proper was introduced to South Tyrol, Protestant ideas had been propagated in the region by men such as Hans Vischer, a former Dominican. Some of those who participated in conventicles where Protestant ideas were presented later became Anabaptists. As well, the population in general seemed to have a favorable attitude towards reform, be it Protestant or Anabaptist. George Blaurock appears to have preached itinerantly in the Puster Valley region in 1527, which most likely was the first introduction of Anabaptist ideas in the area. Another visit through the area in 1529 reinforced these ideas, but he was captured and burned at the stake in Klausen on September 6, 1529.
Jacob Hutter was one of the early converts in South Tyrol, and later became a leader among the Hutterites, who received their name from him. Hutter made several trips between Moravia and Tyrol, and most of the Anabaptists in South Tyrol ended up emigrating to Moravia because of the fierce persecution unleashed by Ferdinand I. In November 1535, Hutter was captured near Klausen and taken to Innsbruck where he was burned at the stake on February 25, 1536. By 1540 Anabaptism in South Tyrol was beginning to die out, largely because of the emigration to Moravia of the converts because of incessant persecution.
Low Countries and northern Germany
Melchior Hoffman is credited with the introduction of Anabaptist ideas into the Low Countries. Hoffman had picked up Lutheran and Reformed ideas, but on April 23, 1530 he was "re-baptized" at Strasbourg and within two months had gone to Emden and baptized about 300 persons. For several years Hoffman preached in the Low Countries until he was arrested and imprisoned at Strasbourg, where he died about 10 years later. Hoffman's apocalyptic ideas were indirectly related to the Münster Rebellion, even though he was "of a different spirit". Obbe and Dirk Philips had been baptized by disciples of Jan Matthijs, but were opposed to the violence that occurred at Münster. Obbe later became disillusioned with Anabaptism and withdrew from the movement in about 1540, but not before ordaining David Joris, his brother Dirk, and Menno Simons, the latter from whom the Mennonites received their name. David Joris and Menno Simons parted ways, with Joris placing more emphasis on "spirit and prophecy", while Menno emphasized the authority of the Bible. For the Mennonite side, the emphasis on the "inner" and "spiritual" permitted compromise to "escape persecution", while to the Joris side, the Mennonites were under the "dead letter of the Scripture".
Because of persecution and expansion, some of the Low Country Mennonites emigrated to Vistula delta, a region settled by Germans but under Polish rule until it became part of Prussia in 1772. There they formed the Vistula delta Mennonites integrating some other Mennonites mainly from Northern Germany. In the late 18th century, several thousand of them migrated from there to Ukraine (which at the time was part of Russia) forming the so-called Russian Mennonites. Beginning in 1874, many of them emigrated to the prairie states and provinces of the United States and Canada. In the 1920s, the conservative faction of the Canadian settlers went to Mexico and Paraguay. Beginning in the 1950s, the most conservative of them started to migrate to Bolivia. In 1958, Mexican Mennonites migrated to Belize. Since the 1980s, traditional Russian Mennonites migrated to Argentina. Smaller groups went to Brazil and Uruguay. In 2015, some Mennonites from Bolivia settled in Peru. In 2018, there are more than 200,000 of them living in colonies in Central and South America.
Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia
Although Moravian Anabaptism was a transplant from other areas of Europe, Moravia soon became a center for the growing movement, largely because of the greater religious tolerance found there. Hans Hut was an early evangelist in the area, with one historian crediting him with baptizing more converts in two years than all the other Anabaptist evangelists put together. The coming of Balthasar Hübmaier to Nikolsburg was a definite boost for Anabaptist ideas to the area. With the great influx of religious refugees from all over Europe, many variations of Anabaptism appeared in Moravia, with Jarold Zeman documenting at least ten slightly different versions. Soon, one-eyed Jacob Wiedemann appeared at Nikolsburg, and began to teach the pacifistic convictions of the Swiss Brethren, on which Hübmaier had been less authoritative. This would lead to a division between the (sword-bearing) and the (staff-bearing). Wiedemann and those with him also promoted the practice of community of goods. With orders from the lords of Liechtenstein to leave Nikolsburg, about 200 withdrew to Moravia to form a community at Austerlitz.
Persecution in South Tyrol brought many refugees to Moravia, many of whom formed into communities that practised community of goods. Jacob Hutter was instrumental in organizing these into what became known as the Hutterites. But others came from Silesia, Switzerland, German lands, and the Low Countries. With the passing of time and persecution, all the other versions of Anabaptism would die out in Moravia leaving only the Hutterites. Even the Hutterites would be dissipated by persecution, with a remnant fleeing to Transylvania, then to Ukraine, and finally to North America in 1874.
South and central Germany, Austria and Alsace
South German Anabaptism had its roots in German mysticism. Andreas Karlstadt, who first worked alongside Martin Luther, is seen as a forerunner of South German Anabaptism because of his reforming theology that rejected many Catholic practices, including infant baptism. However, Karlstadt is not known to have been "rebaptized", nor to have taught it. Hans Denck and Hans Hut, both with German Mystical background (in connection with Thomas Müntzer) both accepted "rebaptism", but Denck eventually backed off from the idea under pressure. Hans Hut is said to have brought more people into early Anabaptism than all the other Anabaptist evangelists of his time put together. However, there may have been confusion about what his baptism (at least some of the times it was done by making the sign of the Tau on the forehead) may have meant to the recipient. Some seem to have taken it as a sign by which they would escape the apocalyptical revenge of the Turks that Hut predicted. Hut even went so far as to predict a 1528 coming of the kingdom of God. When the prediction failed, some of his converts became discouraged and left the Anabaptist movement. The large congregation of Anabaptists at Augsburg fell apart (partly because of persecution) and those who stayed with Anabaptist ideas were absorbed into Swiss and Moravia Anabaptist congregations. Pilgram Marpeck was another notable leader in early South German Anabaptism who attempted to steer between the two extremes of Denck's inner Holiness and the legalistic standards of the other Anabaptists.
Persecutions and migrations
Roman Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted the Anabaptists, resorting to torture and execution in attempts to curb the growth of the movement. The Protestants under Zwingli were the first to persecute the Anabaptists, with Felix Manz becoming the first Anabaptist martyr in 1527. On May 20 or 21, 1527, Roman Catholic authorities executed Michael Sattler. King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) "the best antidote to Anabaptism". The Tudor regime, even the Protestant monarchs (Edward VI of England and Elizabeth I of England), persecuted Anabaptists as they were deemed too radical and therefore a danger to religious stability.
The persecution of Anabaptists was condoned by the ancient laws of Theodosius I and Justinian I which were passed against the Donatists, and decreed the death penalty for anyone who practised rebaptism. Martyrs Mirror, by Thieleman J. van Braght, describes the persecution and execution of thousands of Anabaptists in various parts of Europe between 1525 and 1660. Continuing persecution in Europe was largely responsible for the mass emigrations to North America by the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites. Unlike Calvinists, Anabaptists failed to gain recognition in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and as a result, they continued to be persecuted in Europe long after that treaty was signed.
Anabaptism stands out among other groups of martyrs, in that Anabaptist martyrologies feature women more prominently, "making up thirty per cent of the martyr stories, compared to five to ten per cent in the other accounts."
Beliefs and practices
Anabaptist beliefs were codified in the Schleitheim Confession in 1527, which best represents the beliefs of the various denominations of Anabaptism (inclusive of Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Bruderhof, Schwarzenau Brethren, River Brethren and Apostolic Christians).
Anabaptist denominations, such as the Mennonites, teach that "True faith entails a new birth, a spiritual regeneration by God's grace and power; 'believers' are those who have become the spiritual children of God." In Anabaptist theology, the pathway to salvation is "marked not by a forensic understanding of salvation by 'faith alone', but by the entire process of repentance, self-denial, faith rebirth and obedience." Those who wish to tarry this path receive baptism after the New Birth. Anabaptists heavily emphasize the importance of obedience in the salvation journey of a believer.
As a whole, Anabaptists emphasize an adherence to the beliefs of early Christianity and are thus distinguished by their keeping of practices that often include the observance of feetwashing, the holy kiss, and communion (with these three ordinances being practiced collectively in the lovefeast in the Schwarzenau Brethren and River Brethren traditions), Christian headcovering, nonconformity to the world, nonresistance, forgiveness, and sharing possessions, which in certain communities (as with the Bruderhof) takes on the form of communal living.
Anabaptists view themselves as a separate branch of Christianity, not being a part of Catholicism, Protestantism, Oriental Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy.
Types
Different types exist among the Anabaptists, although the categorizations tend to vary with the scholar's viewpoint on origins. Estep claims that in order to understand Anabaptism, one must "distinguish between the Anabaptists, inspirationists, and rationalists". He classes the likes of Blaurock, Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier, Manz, Marpeck, and Simons as Anabaptists. He groups Müntzer, Storch, et al. as inspirationists, and anti-trinitarians such as Michael Servetus, Juan de Valdés, Sebastian Castellio, and Faustus Socinus as rationalists. Mark S. Ritchie follows this line of thought, saying, "The Anabaptists were one of several branches of 'Radical' reformers (i.e. reformers that went further than the mainstream Reformers) to arise out of the Renaissance and Reformation. Two other branches were Spirituals or Inspirationists, who believed that they had received direct revelation from the Spirit, and rationalists or anti-Trinitarians, who rebelled against traditional Christian doctrine, like Michael Servetus."
Those of the polygenesis viewpoint use Anabaptist to define the larger movement, and include the inspirationists and rationalists as true Anabaptists. James M. Stayer used the term Anabaptist for those who rebaptized persons already "baptized" in infancy. Walter Klaassen was perhaps the first Mennonite scholar to define Anabaptists that way in his 1960 Oxford dissertation. This represents a rejection of the previous standard held by Mennonite scholars such as Bender and Friedmann.
Another method of categorization acknowledges regional variations, such as Swiss Brethren (Grebel, Manz), Dutch and Frisian Anabaptism (Menno Simons, Dirk Philips), and South German Anabaptism (Hübmaier, Marpeck).
Historians and sociologists have made further distinctions between radical Anabaptists, who were prepared to use violence in their attempts to build a New Jerusalem, and their pacifist brethren, later broadly known as Mennonites. Radical Anabaptist groups included the Münsterites, who occupied and held the German city of Münster in 1534–1535, and the Batenburgers, who persisted in various guises as late as the 1570s.
Spirituality
Charismatic manifestations
Within the inspirationist wing of the Anabaptist movement, it was not unusual for charismatic manifestations to appear, such as dancing, falling under the power of the Holy Spirit, "prophetic processions" (at Zurich in 1525, at Munster in 1534 and at Amsterdam in 1535), and speaking in tongues. In Germany some Anabaptists, "excited by mass hypnosis, experienced healings, glossolalia, contortions and other manifestations of a camp-meeting revival". The Anabaptist congregations that later developed into the Mennonite and Hutterite churches tended not to promote these manifestations, but did not totally reject the miraculous. Pilgram Marpeck, for example, wrote against the exclusion of miracles: "Nor does Scripture assert this exclusion ... God has a free hand even in these last days." Referring to some who had been raised from the dead, he wrote: "Many of them have remained constant, enduring tortures inflicted by sword, rope, fire and water and suffering terrible, tyrannical, unheard-of deaths and martyrdoms, all of which they could easily have avoided by recantation. Moreover one also marvels when he sees how the faithful God (Who, after all, overflows with goodness) raises from the dead several such brothers and sisters of Christ after they were hanged, drowned, or killed in other ways. Even today, they are found alive and we can hear their own testimony ... Cannot everyone who sees, even the blind, say with a good conscience that such things are a powerful, unusual, and miraculous act of God? Those who would deny it must be hardened men." The Hutterite Chronicle and the Martyrs Mirror record several accounts of miraculous events, such as when a man named Martin prophesied while being led across a bridge to his execution in 1531: "this once yet the pious are led over this bridge, but no more hereafter". Just "a short time afterwards such a violent storm and flood came that the bridge was demolished".
Holy Spirit leadership
The Anabaptists insisted upon the "free course" of the Holy Spirit in worship, yet still maintained it all must be judged according to the Scriptures. The Swiss Anabaptist document titled "Answer of Some Who Are Called (Ana-)Baptists – Why They Do Not Attend the Churches". One reason given for not attending the state churches was that these institutions forbade the congregation to exercise spiritual gifts according to "the Christian order as taught in the gospel or the Word of God in 1 Corinthians 14". "When such believers come together, 'Everyone of you (note every one) hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation', and so on. When someone comes to church and constantly hears only one person speaking, and all the listeners are silent, neither speaking nor prophesying, who can or will regard or confess the same to be a spiritual congregation, or confess according to 1 Corinthians 14 that God is dwelling and operating in them through His Holy Spirit with His gifts, impelling them one after another in the above-mentioned order of speaking and prophesying."
Today
Anabaptists
The major branches of Anabaptist Christianity today include the Amish, Schwarzenau Brethren, River Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites, Apostolic Christian Church, and Bruderhof. Within many of these traditions (Amish, Mennonite, Schwarzenau Brethren and River Brethren) are three subsets: (1) Old Order Anabaptists (2) Conservative Anabaptists and (3) Mainline Anabaptists; for example, among Schwarzenau Brethren are the Old Order German Baptist Brethren (who use horse and buggy for transportation and do not use electricity), the Dunkard Brethren (who adhere to traditional theological beliefs and wear plain dress, but use modern conveniences), and the Church of the Brethren (who are largely a mainline group where members are indistinguishable in dress from the general population).
Although many see the more well-known Anabaptist groups (Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites) as ethnic groups, only the Amish and the Hutterites today are composed mainly of descendants of the European Anabaptists, while Mennonites come from diverse backgrounds, with only a minority being classed as ethnic Mennonites. Brethren groups have mostly lost their ethnic distinctiveness.
In 2018, there were 2.13 million baptized Anabaptists in 86 countries.
The Bruderhof Communities were founded in Germany by Eberhard Arnold in 1920, establishing and organisationally joining the Hutterites in 1930. The group moved to England after the Gestapo confiscated their property in 1933, and they subsequently moved to Paraguay in order to avoid military conscription, and after World War II, they moved to the United States.
Groups which are derived from the Schwarzenau Brethren, often called German Baptists, while not directly descended from the 16th-century Radical Reformation, are considered Anabaptist due to their adherence to Anabaptist doctrine. The modern-day Brethren movement is a combination of Anabaptism and Radical Pietism.
Neo-Anabaptists
Neo-Anabaptism is a late twentieth and early twenty-first century theological movement within American evangelical Christianity which draws inspiration from theologians who are located within the Anabaptist tradition but are ecclesiastically outside it. Neo-Anabaptists have been noted for their "low church, counter-cultural, prophetic-stance-against-empire ethos" as well as for their focus on pacifism, social justice and poverty. The works of Mennonite theologians Ron Sider and John Howard Yoder are frequently cited as having a strong influence on the movement.
Relationship with Baptists
Some similarities exist between Baptists and the Anabaptists, which is why some historians have argued that the Baptists were influenced by the Anabaptists. These connections, however, are highly debated by historians. The similarities between Baptists and Anabaptists include baptism of believers only, religious freedom, and congregationalism. Despite these similarities, the relationship between Baptists and Anabaptists was strained in 1624 when five existing Baptist churches of London issued a condemnation of the Anabaptists. Puritans of England and their Baptist branch arose independently, and although they may have been informed by Anabaptist theology, they clearly differentiate themselves from Anabaptists as seen in the London Baptist Confession of Faith A.D. 1644, "Of those Churches which are commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists". Moreover, Baptist historian Chris Traffanstedt maintains that Anabaptists share "some similarities with the early General Baptists, but overall these similarities are slight and not always relational. In the end, we must come to say that this group of Christians does not reflect the historical teaching of the Baptists".
In practice, Anabaptists have maintained a more literal obedience to the Sermon on the Mount, while Baptists generally do not require nonresistance, non-swearing of oaths, and no remarriage if the first legitimate spouse is living. Traditional Anabaptists also require a head covering for women, modest apparel, practical separation from the world, and plain dress, which most Baptists no longer require. However, some Anabaptists and General Baptists have improved their relations and sometimes have worked together.
Influence on society
Common Anabaptist beliefs and practices of the 16th century continue to influence modern Christianity and Western society.
Voluntary church membership and believer's baptism
Freedom of religion – liberty of conscience
Separation or nonconformity to the world
Nonresistance, interpreted as pacifism by modernized groups
Priesthood of all believers
The Anabaptists were early promoters of a free church and freedom of religion. When it was introduced by the Anabaptists in the 15th and 16th centuries, religious freedom which was independent from the state was unthinkable to both clerical and governmental leaders. Religious liberty was equated with anarchy; Kropotkin traces the birth of anarchist thought in Europe to these early Anabaptist communities.
According to Estep:
Anabaptist characters exist in popular culture, most notably Chaplain Tappman in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, James (Jacques) in Voltaire's novella Candide, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera (1849), and the central character in the novel Q, by the collective known as "Luther Blissett".
See also
Adrianists
Amish Mennonite
Christian anarchism
Christian communism
Christian socialism
Clancularii
Conservative Mennonites
Donatists (first historical occurrence of re-baptism)
Funkite
List of Anabaptist churches
Martyrs Mirror
Melchior Rink, a central-German Anabaptist leader during the sixteenth-century
Old Order Mennonite
Peace churches
Plain people
Restorationism
Shtundists
Tabor College (Kansas)
References
Explanatory notes
Citations
General and cited sources
Carroll, J. M. (1931). The Trail of Blood: Following the Christians Down Through the Ages, or, the History of Baptist Churches from the Time of Christ, Their Founder, to the Present Day. Lexington, KY: Ashland Avenue Baptist Church. 56 p. + fold. chart. Without ISBN
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Knox, Ronald. Enthusiasm: a Chapter in the History of Religion, with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1950. viii, 622 p.
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Further reading
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Dipple, Geoffrey, Confessional Migration: Anabaptists – Mennonites, Hutterites, Baptists etc., EGO – European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2015, retrieved: March 11, 2021 (pdf).
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Alt URL
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External links
Global Anabaptist Wiki
Pilgrim Ministry: Anabaptist church directory
Anabaptist History Complete Playlist (Parts 1–20) history of the movement from the Bible to present. (YouTube videos, 27 hours)
The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, by E. Belfort Bax 1903
Christian terminology
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Ans or ANS or variation, may refer to:
Places
Ans, Belgium, a municipality in Belgium
Ans, Denmark, a village in Denmark
Angus, Scotland, UK; a council area by its Chapman code
Ainsdale railway station, England, UK (by station code ANS)
Andahuaylas Airport, Peru (by IATA airport code ANS)
People
Ans (given name), a Dutch feminine given name
Anna Nicole Smith, American model and actress
Organizations
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Astronomical Netherlands Satellite, a Dutch satellite
American Name Society
American Nuclear Society
American Numismatic Society, formerly the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society
ANS Group of Companies, a news organization in Azerbaijan
, a Cambodian resistance group; see Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea
Audubon Naturalist Society, an American environmental organization
Chemistry and biology
Adrenergic nervous system, adrenaline and noradrenaline neurotransmitters distribution in human body
8-Anilino-1-naphthalenesulfonic acid, a fluorescent chemical compound used as a molecular probe
Anthocyanidin synthase, an enzyme in the leucocyanidin biosynthesis pathway
Approximate number system, a hypothesized physiological basis for the sense of number
Autonomic nervous system, part of the peripheral nervous system in the body
Technology
, an unofficial file extension for ANSI art
Advanced Network and Services, a non-profit network service provider in the 1990s
American National Standards, defined by the American National Standards Institute
ans, a variable in calculators referring to the most recent answer
ANS carriage control characters (or ASA control characters), for computer line printers
Asymmetric numeral systems, coding in data compression
Authoritative name server, a DNS server
Artificial neural system, or Artificial neural network
Air Navigation Services, as delivered by an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP)
Music
ANS (album), a box set from the British band Coil
ANS synthesizer, a Russian photoelectric musical instrument
Other uses
Al Ansar FC, a Lebanese association football club
Amman National School, in Amman, Jordan
Ansvarlig selskap, a Norwegian personal responsibility company model
Algemeen Nijmeegs Studentenblad, a Dutch student magazine
See also
AN (disambiguation)
Answer (disambiguation), for which "Ans." may be an abbreviation
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"And did those feet in ancient time" is a poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton: A Poem in Two Books, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the title page is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed . Today it is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The famous orchestration was written by Sir Edward Elgar. It is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope and also by Blake, called Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during his unknown years. However, according to British folklore scholar A. W. Smith, "there was little reason to believe that an oral tradition concerning a visit made by Jesus to Britain existed before the early part of the twentieth century". Instead, the poem draws on an older story, repeated in Milton's History of Britain, that Joseph of Arimathea, alone, travelled to preach to the ancient Britons after the death of Jesus. The poem's theme is linked to the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a New Jerusalem. Churches in general, and the Church of England in particular, have long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.
In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake asks whether a visit by Jesus briefly created heaven in England, in contrast to the "dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks four questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. The second verse is interpreted as an exhortation to create an ideal society in England, whether or not there was a divine visit.
Text
The original text is found in the preface Blake wrote for inclusion with Milton, a Poem, following the lines beginning "The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid: of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn: ..."
Blake's poem
Beneath the poem Blake inscribed a quotation from the Bible:
"Dark Satanic Mills"
The phrase "dark Satanic Mills", which entered the English language from this poem, is often interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships. That view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills in Southwark, the first major factory in London. The rotary steam-powered flour mill, built by Matthew Boulton, assisted by James Watt, could produce 6,000 bushels of flour per week. The factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed in 1791 by fire. There were rumours of arson, but the most likely cause was a bearing that overheated due to poor maintenance.
London's independent millers celebrated, with placards reading, "Success to the mills of Albion but no Albion Mills." Opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. A contemporary illustration of the fire shows a devil squatting on the building. The mill was a short distance from Blake's home.
Blake's phrase resonates with a broader theme in his works; what he envisioned as a physically and spiritually repressive ideology based on a quantified reality. Blake saw the cotton mills and collieries of the period as a mechanism for the enslavement of millions, but the concepts underpinning the works had a wider application:
Another interpretation is that the phrase refers to the established Church of England, which, in contrast to Blake, preached a doctrine of conformity to the established social order and class system. Stonehenge and other megaliths are featured in Milton, suggesting they may relate to the oppressive power of priestcraft in general. Peter Porter observed that many scholars argue that the "[mills] are churches and not the factories of the Industrial Revolution everyone else takes them for". In 2007, the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, explicitly recognised that element of English subculture when he acknowledged the view that "dark satanic mills" could refer to the "great churches". In similar vein, the critic F. W. Bateson noted how "the adoption by the Churches and women's organizations of this anti-clerical paean of free love is amusing evidence of the carelessness with which poetry is read".
An alternative theory is that Blake is referring to a mystical concept within his own mythology, related to the ancient history of England. Satan's "mills" are referred to repeatedly in the main poem, and are first described in words which suggest neither industrialism nor ancient megaliths, but rather something more abstract: "the starry Mills of Satan/ Are built beneath the earth and waters of the Mundane Shell...To Mortals thy Mills seem everything, and the Harrow of Shaddai / A scheme of human conduct invisible and incomprehensible".
"Chariots of fire"
The line from the poem "Bring me my Chariot of fire!" draws on the story of 2 Kings 2:11, where the Old Testament prophet Elijah is taken directly to heaven: "And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." The phrase has become a byword for divine energy, and inspired the title of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, in which the hymn "Jerusalem" is sung during the final scenes. The plural phrase "chariots of fire" refers to 2 Kings 6:17.
"Green and pleasant land"
Blake lived in London for most of his life, but wrote much of Milton while living in a cottage, now Blake’s Cottage, in the village of Felpham in Sussex. Amanda Gilroy argues that the poem is informed by Blake's "evident pleasure" in the Felpham countryside. However, local people say that records from Lavant, near Chichester, state that Blake wrote "And did those feet in ancient time" in an east-facing alcove of the Earl of March public house.
The phrase "green and pleasant land" has become a common term for an identifiably English landscape or society. It appears as a headline, title or sub-title in numerous articles and books. Sometimes it refers, whether with appreciation, nostalgia or critical analysis, to idyllic or enigmatic aspects of the English countryside. In other contexts it can suggest the perceived habits and aspirations of rural middle-class life. Sometimes it is used ironically, e.g. in the Dire Straits song "Iron Hand".
Revolution
Several of Blake's poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity: "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)". He retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, but was often forced to resort to cloaking social idealism and political statements in Protestant mystical allegory. Even though the poem was written during the Napoleonic Wars, Blake was an outspoken supporter of the French Revolution, and Napoleon claimed to be continuing this revolution. The poem expressed his desire for radical change without overt sedition. In 1803 Blake was charged at Chichester with high treason for having "uttered seditious and treasonable expressions", but was acquitted. The trial was not a direct result of anything he had written, but comments he had made in conversation, including "Damn the King!".
The poem is followed in the preface by a quotation from Numbers 11:29: "Would to God that all the Lords people were prophets." Christopher Rowland has argued that this includes
everyone in the task of speaking out about what they saw. Prophecy for Blake, however, was not a prediction of the end of the world, but telling the truth as best a person can about what he or she sees, fortified by insight and an "honest persuasion" that with personal struggle, things could be improved. A human being observes, is indignant and speaks out: it's a basic political maxim which is necessary for any age. Blake wanted to stir people from their intellectual slumbers, and the daily grind of their toil, to see that they were captivated in the grip of a culture which kept them thinking in ways which served the interests of the powerful.
The words of the poem "stress the importance of people taking responsibility for change and building a better society 'in Englands green and pleasant land.' "
Popularisation
The poem, which was little known during the century which followed its writing, was included in the patriotic anthology of verse The Spirit of Man, edited by the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Robert Bridges, and published in 1916, at a time when morale had begun to decline because of the high number of casualties in World War I and the perception that there was no end in sight.
Under these circumstances, Bridges, finding the poem an appropriate hymn text to "brace the spirit of the nation [to] accept with cheerfulness all the sacrifices necessary," asked Sir Hubert Parry to put it to music for a Fight for Right campaign meeting in London's Queen's Hall. Bridges asked Parry to supply "suitable, simple music to Blake's stanzas – music that an audience could take up and join in", and added that, if Parry could not do it himself, he might delegate the task to George Butterworth.
The poem's idealistic theme or subtext accounts for its popularity across much of the political spectrum. It was used as a campaign slogan by the Labour Party in the 1945 general election; Clement Attlee said they would build "a new Jerusalem". It has been sung at conferences of the Conservative Party, at the Glee Club of the British Liberal Assembly, the Labour Party and by the Liberal Democrats.
Setting to music
By Hubert Parry
In adapting Blake's poem as a unison song, Parry deployed a two-stanza format, each taking up eight lines of Blake's original poem. He added a four-bar musical introduction to each verse and a coda, echoing melodic motifs of the song. The word "those" was substituted for "these" before "dark satanic mills".
Parry was initially reluctant to supply music for the campaign meeting, as he had doubts about the ultra-patriotism of Fight for Right; but knowing that his former student Walford Davies was to conduct the performance, and not wanting to disappoint either Robert Bridges or Davies, he agreed, writing it on 10 March 1916, and handing the manuscript to Davies with the comment, "Here's a tune for you, old chap. Do what you like with it." Davies later recalled,
Davies arranged for the vocal score to be published by Curwen in time for the concert at the Queen's Hall on 28 March and began rehearsing it. It was a success and was taken up generally.
But Parry began to have misgivings again about Fight for Right, and in May 1917 wrote to the organisation's founder Sir Francis Younghusband withdrawing his support entirely. There was even concern that the composer might withdraw the song from all public use, but the situation was saved by Millicent Fawcett of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The song had been taken up by the Suffragists in 1917 and Fawcett asked Parry if it might be used at a Suffrage Demonstration Concert on 13 March 1918. Parry was delighted and orchestrated the piece for the concert (it had originally been for voices and organ). After the concert, Fawcett asked the composer if it might become the Women Voters' Hymn. Parry wrote back, "I wish indeed it might become the Women Voters' hymn, as you suggest. People seem to enjoy singing it. And having the vote ought to diffuse a good deal of joy too. So they would combine happily".
Accordingly, he assigned the copyright to the NUWSS. When that organisation was wound up in 1928, Parry's executors reassigned the copyright to the Women's Institutes, where it remained until it entered the public domain in 1968.
The song was first called "And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time" and the early scores have this title. The change to "Jerusalem" seems to have been made about the time of the 1918 Suffrage Demonstration Concert, perhaps when the orchestral score was published (Parry's manuscript of the orchestral score has the old title crossed out and "Jerusalem" inserted in a different hand). However, Parry always referred to it by its first title. He had originally intended the first verse to be sung by a solo female voice (this is marked in the score), but this is rare in contemporary performances. Sir Edward Elgar re-scored the work for very large orchestra in 1922 for use at the Leeds Festival. Elgar's orchestration has overshadowed Parry's own, primarily because it is the version usually used now for the Last Night of the Proms (though Sir Malcolm Sargent, who introduced it to that event in the 1950s, always used Parry's version).
By Wallen
In 2020 a new musical arrangement of the poem by Errollyn Wallen, a British composer born in Belize, was sung by South African soprano Golda Schultz at the Last Night of the Proms. Parry's version was traditionally sung at the Last Night, with Elgar's orchestration; the new version, with different rhythms, dissonance, and reference to the blues, caused much controversy. While the song was often considered to be patriotic, in reality Jerusalem has always been an anti-establishment tract.
Use as a hymn
Although Parry composed the music as a unison song, many churches have adopted "Jerusalem" as a four-part hymn; a number of English entities, including the BBC, the Crown, cathedrals, churches, and chapels regularly use it as an office or recessional hymn on Saint George's Day.
However, some clergy in the Church of England, according to the BBC TV programme Jerusalem: An Anthem for England, have said that the song is not technically a hymn as it is not a prayer to God; consequently, it is not sung in some churches in England. It was sung as a hymn during the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in Westminster Abbey.
Many schools use the song, especially public schools in Great Britain (it was used as the title music for the BBC's 1979 series Public School about Radley College), and several private schools in Australia, New Zealand, New England and Canada. In Hong Kong, diverted version of "Jerusalem" is also used as the school hymn of St. Catherine's School for Girls, Kwun Tong and Bishop Hall Jubilee School. "Jerusalem" was chosen as the opening hymn for the London Olympics 2012, although "God Save the Queen" was the anthem sung during the raising of the flag in salute to the Queen. Some attempts have also been made to increase its use elsewhere with other words; examples include the state funeral of President Ronald Reagan in Washington National Cathedral on 11 June 2004, and the state memorial service for Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on 5 November 2014.
It has been sung on BBC's Songs Of Praise for many years; in a countrywide poll to find the UK's favourite hymn in 2019, it was voted top, relegating previous favourite "How Great Thou Art" into second place.
Proposal as English anthem
Upon hearing the orchestral version for the first time, King George V said that he preferred "Jerusalem" over the British national anthem "God Save the King". "Jerusalem" is considered to be England's most popular patriotic song; The New York Times said it was "fast becoming an alternative national anthem," and there have been calls to give it official status. England has no official anthem and uses the British national anthem "God Save the King", also unofficial, for some national occasions, such as before English international football matches. However, some sports, including rugby league, use "Jerusalem" as the English anthem. "Jerusalem" is the official hymn of the England and Wales Cricket Board, although "God Save the Queen" has been sung before England's games on several occasions, including the 2010 ICC World Twenty20, the 2010–11 Ashes series and the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup. Questions in Parliament have not clarified the situation, as answers from the relevant minister say that since there is no official national anthem, each sport must make its own decision.
As Parliament has not clarified the situation, Team England, the English Commonwealth team, held a public poll in 2010 to decide which anthem should be played at medal ceremonies to celebrate an English win at the Commonwealth Games. "Jerusalem" was selected by 52% of voters over "Land of Hope and Glory" (used since 1930) and "God Save the Queen".
In 2005 BBC Four produced Jerusalem: An Anthem For England highlighting the usages of the song/poem and a case was made for its adoption as the national anthem of England. Varied contributions come from Howard Goodall, Billy Bragg, Garry Bushell, Lord Hattersley, Ann Widdecombe and David Mellor, war proponents, war opponents, suffragettes, trade unionists, public schoolboys, the Conservatives, the Labour Party, football supporters, the British National Party, the Women's Institute, London Gay Men's Chorus, London Community Gospel Choir, Fat Les and naturists.
Cultural significance
Enduring popularity
The popularity of Parry's setting has resulted in many hundreds of recordings being made, too numerous to list, of both traditional choral performances and new interpretations by popular music artists. The song has also had a large cultural impact in Great Britain. It is sung every year by an audience of thousands at the end of the Last Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall and simultaneously in the Proms in the Park venues throughout the country. Similarly, along with "The Red Flag", it is sung each year at the closing of the annual Labour Party conference.
The song was used by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (indeed Parry transferred the copyright to the NUWSS in 1918; the Union was wound up in 1928 after women won the right to vote). During the 1920s many Women's Institutes (WI) started closing meetings by singing it, and this caught on nationally. Although it was never adopted as the WI's official anthem, in practice it holds that position, and is an enduring element of the public image of the WI.
A rendition of "Jerusalem" was included in the 1973 album Brain Salad Surgery by the progressive rock group Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The arrangement of the hymn is notable for its use of the first polyphonic synthesizer, the Moog Apollo. It was released as a single, but failed to chart in the United Kingdom. An instrumental rendition of the hymn was included in the 1989 album "The Amsterdam EP" by Scottish rock band Simple Minds.
"Jerusalem" is traditionally sung before rugby league's Challenge Cup Final, along with "Abide with Me", and before the Super League Grand Final, where it is introduced as "the rugby league anthem". Before 2008, it was the anthem used by the national side, as "God Save the Queen" was used by the Great Britain team: since the Lions were superseded by England, "God Save the Queen" has replaced "Jerusalem". Since 2004, it has been the anthem of the England cricket team, being played before each day of their home test matches.
It was also used in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics held in London and inspired several of the opening show segments directed by Danny Boyle. It was included in the ceremony's soundtrack album, Isles of Wonder.
Use in film, television and theatre
"Bring me my Chariot of fire" inspired the title of the film Chariots of Fire. A church congregation sings "Jerusalem" at the close of the film and a performance appears on the Chariots of Fire soundtrack performed by the Ambrosian Singers overlaid partly by a composition by Vangelis. One unexpected touch is that "Jerusalem" is sung in four-part harmony, as if it were truly a hymn. This is not authentic: Parry's composition was a unison song (that is, all voices sing the tune – perhaps one of the things that make it so "singable" by massed crowds) and he never provided any harmonisation other than the accompaniment for organ (or orchestra). Neither does it appear in any standard hymn book in a guise other than Parry's own, so it may have been harmonised specially for the film. The film's working title was "Running" until Colin Welland saw a television programme, Songs of Praise, featuring the hymn and decided to change the title.
The hymn has featured in many other films and television programmes including Four Weddings and a Funeral, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Saint Jack, Calendar Girls, Season 3: Episode 22 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Goodnight Mr. Tom, Women in Love, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Shameless, Jackboots on Whitehall, Quatermass and the Pit, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Collateral (UK TV series). An extract was heard in the 2013 Doctor Who episode "The Crimson Horror" although that story was set in 1893, i.e., before Parry's arrangement. A bawdy version of the first verse is sung by Mr Partridge in the third episode of Season 1 of Hi-de-Hi. A punk version is heard in Derek Jarman's 1977 film Jubilee. In an episode of Peep Show, Jez (Robert Webb) records a track titled "This Is Outrageous" which uses the first and a version of the second line in a verse. A modified version of the hymn, replacing the word "England" with "Neo", is used in Neo Yokio as the national anthem of the eponymous city state.
In the theatre it appears in Jerusalem, Calendar Girls and in Time and the Conways.
See also
Civil religion
Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution
Notes
References
External links
Comparisons of the Hand Painted copies of the Preface on the William Blake Archive
And did those feet in ancient time at Hymnary.org
(Multiple versions)
1804 poems
1916 songs
English Christian hymns
English patriotic songs
National symbols of England
Poetry by William Blake
British Israelism
Musical settings of poems by William Blake
British anthems
Joseph of Arimathea
Hymns in The New English Hymnal
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A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade No. 13, K. 525, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The musical includes the popular song "Send In the Clowns", written for Glynis Johns.
Since its original 1973 Broadway production, the musical has enjoyed professional productions in the West End, by opera companies, in a 2009 Broadway revival, and elsewhere, and it is a popular choice for regional groups. It was adapted for film in 1977, with Harold Prince directing and Elizabeth Taylor, Len Cariou, Lesley-Anne Down, and Diana Rigg starring.
Synopsis
Act One
The setting is Sweden, around the year 1900. One by one, the Quintet – five singers who comment like a Greek chorus throughout the show – enter, tuning up. Gradually, their vocalizing becomes an overture blending fragments of "Remember," "Soon," and "The Glamorous Life," leading into the first "Night Waltz." The other characters enter waltzing, each uncomfortable with their partner. After they drift back off, the aging and sardonic Madame Armfeldt, a wealthy former courtesan, and her solemn granddaughter, Fredrika, enter. Madame Armfeldt tells the child that the summer night "smiles" three times: first on the young, second on fools, and third on the old. Fredrika vows to watch the smiles occur. Middle-aged, successful lawyer Fredrik Egerman has recently married an 18-year-old trophy wife, Anne, a naive girl who loves Fredrik but isn't attracted to him. The two have been married for eleven months, and Anne still protects her virginity. Fredrik considers various ways he might seduce his wife but ultimately rules each one out and elects to take a nap instead ("Now"). Meanwhile, his son Henrik, a seminary student a year older than his stepmother, is frustrated and ignored ("Later"). Anne promises her husband that shortly she will consent to have sex even though she can't help recoiling at his touch ("Soon"), which leads to all three of them lamenting at once. Anne's maidservant Petra, an experienced and forthright girl, slightly older than the teen herself, offers her worldly but crass advice.
Desiree Armfeldt is a prominent and glamorous actress who is now reduced to touring in small towns. Madam Armfeldt, Desiree's mother, has taken over the care of Desiree's daughter Fredrika. Fredrika misses her mother, but Desiree continually delays seeing her, preferring, somewhat ironically, "The Glamorous Life". She performs near Fredrik's home, and Fredrik brings Anne to see the play. While there, Desiree notices Fredrik in the audience; the two had been lovers years earlier. Anne, suspicious and annoyed at Desiree's amorous glances, demands that Fredrik take her home immediately. Meanwhile, Petra tries to seduce a nervous and petulant Henrik.
That night, as Fredrik remembers his past with Desiree, he sneaks out to see her; the two have a happy but strained reunion as they "Remember". They reflect on their new lives, and Fredrik tries to explain how much he loves Anne ("You Must Meet My Wife"). Desiree sarcastically boasts of her own adultery, as she has been seeing the married dragoon, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm. Upon learning that Fredrik has gone for eleven months without sex, she agrees to accommodate him as a favor for an old friend.
Madam Armfeldt offers advice to young Fredrika. The elderly woman reflects poignantly on her own checkered past and wonders what happened to her refined "Liaisons". In Desiree's apartment, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm proclaims his unannounced arrival in his usual booming tones. Fredrik and Desiree fool the Count with an innocent explanation for their disheveled appearance, but he is still suspicious. He boasts of his many duels and the various wounds he has suffered before demonstrating his skills in knife-throwing. Fredrik responds sarcastically, causing the dragoon to dislike him immediately. Carl-Magnus returns to his wife, Countess Charlotte. Charlotte knows of her husband's infidelity, but Carl-Magnus is too absorbed in his suspicions of Desiree to talk to her ("In Praise of Women"). When she persuades him to blurt out the whole story, a twist is revealed—Charlotte's little sister is a schoolfriend of Anne's.
Charlotte visits Anne and describes Fredrik's tryst with Desiree. Anne is shocked and saddened, but Charlotte explains that such is the lot of a wife, and love brings pain ("Every Day a Little Death"). Meanwhile, Desiree asks Madam Armfeldt to host a party for Fredrik, Anne, and Henrik. Madam Armfeldt reluctantly agrees and sends out a personal invitation; its receipt sends Anne into a frenzy, imagining "A Weekend in the Country" with the Armfeldts. Anne does not want to accept the invitation, but Charlotte convinces her to do so to heighten the contrast between the older Desiree and the young and beautiful teenager. Charlotte relates this to the Count, who (much to her chagrin) decides to visit the Armfeldts, uninvited, as well. Carl-Magnus plans to challenge Fredrik to a duel, while Charlotte hopes to seduce the lawyer to make her husband jealous and end his philandering. The act ends as all characters head to Madam Armfeldt's estate.
Act Two
Madam Armfeldt's country estate is bathed in the golden glow of perpetual summer sunset at this high latitude ("Night Waltz One and Two"). Everyone arrives, each with their own amorous purposes and desires—even Petra, who catches the eye of Armfeldt's fetching manservant, Frid. The women begin to quarrel with one another. Fredrik is astonished to learn the name of Desiree's daughter. Henrik meets Fredrika, and confesses to her he deeply loves Anne. Meanwhile, in the garden, Fredrik and Carl-Magnus reflect on the difficulty of being annoyed with Desiree, agreeing "It Would Have Been Wonderful" had she not been quite so wonderful. Dinner is served, and the characters' "Perpetual Anticipation" enlivens the meal.
At dinner, Charlotte attempts to flirt with Fredrik and trades insults with Desiree. Soon, everyone is shouting and scolding everyone else, except for Henrik, who finally speaks up. He accuses the whole company of being amoral, and flees the scene. Stunned, everyone reflects on the situation and wanders away. Fredrika tells Anne of Henrik's secret love and the two dash off searching for him. Meanwhile, Desiree meets Fredrik and asks if he still wants to be "rescued" from his life. Fredrik answers honestly that he loves Desiree but cannot bring himself to hurt Anne. Hurt and bitter, Desiree can only reflect on the nature of her life and relationship with Fredrik ("Send In the Clowns"). Anne finds Henrik, who is attempting to commit suicide. The clumsy boy cannot complete the task, and Anne tells him she loves him, too. The pair begins to kiss, which leads to Anne's first sexual encounter. Meanwhile, not far away, Frid sleeps in Petra's lap. The maid imagines advantageous marriages but concludes that in the meantime, "a girl ought to celebrate what passes by" ("The Miller's Son"). Charlotte confesses her plan to Fredrik, and both watch Henrik and Anne, happy together, run away to start their new life. The two commiserate on a bench. Carl-Magnus, preparing to sleep with Desiree, sees this and challenges Fredrik to Russian Roulette; Fredrik nervously misfires and simply grazes his own ear. Feeling victorious, Carl-Magnus reaffirms his love for Charlotte, finally granting her wish.
After the Count and Countess leave, Fredrika and Madam Armfeldt discuss the recent chaotic turns of events. The elderly woman asks Fredrika a surprising question: "What is it all for?" Fredrika thinks about this and decides that love, for all of its frustrations, "must be worth it." Madam Armfeldt is surprised, ruefully noting that she rejected love for material wealth at Fredrika's age. She praises her granddaughter and remembers true love's fleeting nature.
Fredrik finally confesses his love for Desiree, acknowledging that Fredrika is his daughter, and the two promise to start a new life together ("Send in the Clowns" (Reprise)). Madam Armfeldt sits alone with Fredrika, who tells her grandmother that she has watched carefully but still has not seen the night smile. Madam Armfeldt laughs and points out that the night has indeed smiled twice: first on Henrik and Anne, the young, and second on Desiree and Fredrik, the fools. As the two wait for the "third smile... on the old", it occurs: Madam Armfeldt closes her eyes and dies peacefully with Fredrika beside her.
Musical numbers
Act I
Overture – Mr. Lindquist, Mrs. Nordstrom, Mrs. Anderssen, Mr. Erlanson and Mrs. Segstrom (the "Quintet")
"Night Waltz" – Company
"Now" – Fredrik Egerman
"Later" – Henrik Egerman
"Soon" – Anne Egerman
"Soon/Later/Now" – Anne, Henrik and Fredrik
"The Glamorous Life" – Fredrika Armfeldt, Desiree Armfeldt, Madam Armfeldt and Quintet
"Remember?" – Quintet
"You Must Meet My Wife" – Desiree and Fredrik
"Liaisons" – Madam Armfeldt
"In Praise of Women" – Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm
"Every Day a Little Death" – Countess Charlotte Malcolm and Anne
"A Weekend in the Country" – Company
Act II
Entr'acte – Orchestra
"Night Waltz I (The Sun Won't Set)" – Quintet
"Night Waltz II (The Sun Sits Low)" – Quintet
"It Would Have Been Wonderful" – Fredrik and Carl-Magnus
"Perpetual Anticipation" – Mrs. Nordstrom, Mrs. Segstrom and Mrs. Anderssen
"Dinner Table Scene" – Orchestra
"Send In the Clowns" – Desiree
"The Miller's Son" – Petra
"The World Won't End/Every Day a Little Death (reprise)" – Desiree and Charlotte
Reprises ("Soon", "You Must Meet My Wife", "A Weekend in the Country" and "Every Day a Little Death") – Quintet
"Send in the Clowns" (Reprise) – Desiree and Fredrik
"Last Waltz" – Orchestra
Additional musical numbers
Stage:
"Two Fairy Tales" – Henrik and Anne (cut in rehearsals when the tone of the musical changed)
"Silly People" – Frid (cut for time when "The Miller's Son" was added in Boston)
"Bang!" – Carl-Magnus (replaced by "In Praise of Women")
"My Husband the Pig" – Charlotte (replaced by the second half of "In Praise of Women")
Screen:
"Love Takes Time" – Company (lyrics added to Night Waltz)
"The Glamorous Life" – Fredrika (solo version later used combined with the original in the RNT revival)
A new introductory verse to "Every Day a Little Death" and a short section for Mme. Armfeldt in "A Weekend in the Country"
Characters
Fredrik Egerman: A successful widowed middle-aged lawyer. He is married to the 18-year-old Anne and has one son from his previous marriage, Henrik. In the past, he and Desiree were lovers. Bass-Baritone A2–E4
Anne Egerman: Fredrik's new, naive wife, who is still a virgin after 11 months of marriage. Soprano G3–A5
Henrik Egerman: Fredrik's son, 20 years old and Anne's stepson. He is serious but confused; he reads the works of philosophers and theologians whilst studying for the Lutheran priesthood. His sexual repression is a great cause of his turmoil, as he lusts after Anne and attempts to have a sexual encounter with Petra. Tenor G2–B4
Petra: Anne's maid and closest confidante, brash, bold and flirtatious. She has relations with Henrik. Mezzo-soprano F3–F5
Desiree Armfeldt: Self-absorbed, once-successful actress, now touring the countryside in what is clearly not the "glamorous life". Harboured love for Fredrik for years since their affair. Mezzo-soprano F3–E5
Fredrika Armfeldt: Desiree's thirteen-year-old daughter, who may or may not be the product (unbeknownst to Fredrik) of the actress's and Fredrik's affair. Soprano C4–E5
Madame Armfeldt: Desiree's mother, a former courtesan who has had "liaisons" with royalty. Contralto C3–F4
Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm: A military dragoon who is Desiree's latest lover. Hypocritically places value on fidelity, being hugely possessive when it comes to both his wife and mistress. Comedic role. Operatic Baritone G2–F4
Countess Charlotte Malcolm: Carl-Magnus' wife, to whom he flaunts his infidelities. She despises her husband for his behaviour, but obeys his orders due to her hopeless love for him. Self-loathing and borderline alcoholic, yet the more intelligent half of the Malcolm couple. Mezzo-soprano G3–F5
Frid: Madame Armfeldt's manservant. Has a tryst with Petra.
The Quintet: Mr. Lindquist, Mrs. Nordstrom, Mrs. Anderssen, Mr. Erlanson and Mrs. Segstrom. A group of five singers that act as a Greek chorus. Sometimes referred to as the Liebeslieder Singers (love song singers) although Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler did not script them to have that title, using Quintet instead. The first usage of Liebeslieder for the Quintet came during the 1990 New York City Opera production. Prince said that these characters represent "people in the show who aren't wasting time ... the play is about wasting time."
Malla: Desiree's maid, who is with her constantly. Silent part
Osa: Maid at Madame Armfeldt's manse. Silent part
Bertrand: Page at Madame Armfeldt's manse. Silent part
Casts
Original casts
Notable Replacements
Broadway (1973–74)
Fredrik Egerman: William Daniels
West End (1975)
Desiree Armfeldt: Virginia McKenna
Madame Armfeldt: Angela Baddeley
Broadway Revival (2009–11)
Desiree Armfeldt: Bernadette Peters
Madame Armfeldt: Elaine Stritch
Fredrika Armfeldt: Katherine McNamara
Count Carl-Magnus: Bradley Dean
Additional Performers
Desiree Armfeldt: Blair Brown, Shannon Cochran, Merle Dandridge, Judi Dench, Penny Fuller, Josefina Gabrielle, Haydn Gwynne, Dee Hoty, Sally Ann Howes, Amy Irving, Judith Ivey, Patti LuPone, Donna McKechnie, Siân Phillips, Barbara Robertson, Greta Scacchi, Emily Skinner, Juliet Stevenson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sigrid Thornton, Dorothy Tutin, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Zimbalist
Fredrik Egerman: Stephen Bogardus, Jason Danieley, John Dossett, Eric Flynn, Victor Garber, Laurence Guittard, Michael Hayden, George Hearn, Jeremy Irons, Mark Jacoby, Peter McEnery, Ron Raines, Anthony Warlow, Lambert Wilson
Madame Armfeldt: Claire Bloom, Barbara Bryne, Zoe Caldwell, Leslie Caron, Deanna Dunagan, Lila Kedrova, Zarah Leander, Maureen Lipman, Jodi Long, Mary Beth Peil, Siân Phillips, Regina Resnik, Helen Ryan, Elisabeth Welch
Fredrika Armfeldt: Kristen Bell, Danielle Ferland, Anna Kendrick
Petra: Sarah Uriarte Berry, Jessica Boevers, Maria Friedman, Francesca Jackson, Ruby Lewis, Jenny Powers, Sara Ramirez, Issy van Randwyck
Henrik Egerman: Bonaventura Bottone, Alexander Hanson, Paul Keating
Anne Egerman: Laura Benanti, Sarah Uriarte Berry, Jessie Buckley, Erin Davie, Janis Kelly, Joanna Riding
Countess Charlotte: Sarah Uriarte Berry, Sierra Boggess, Rachel de Benedet, Randy Graff, Susan Hampshire, Patricia Hodge, Beth Leavel, Deanne Meek, Lauren Molina, Maureen Moore, Michele Pawk, Hollis Resnik, Samantha Spiro
Count Carl-Magnus: Michael Cerveris, Eric Flynn, Marc Kudisch, Michael Maguire, Robert Newman, Chuck Wagner
Productions
Original Broadway production
A Little Night Music opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973. It played there until September 15, 1973, then moved to the Majestic Theatre, on September 17, and closed there on August 3, 1974, after 601 performances and 12 previews. It was directed by Harold Prince with choreography by Patricia Birch and design by Boris Aronson. The cast included Glynis Johns (Desiree Armfeldt), Len Cariou (Fredrik Egerman), Hermione Gingold (Madame Armfeldt), Victoria Mallory (Anne Egerman), Judith Kahan (Fredrika Armfeldt), Mark Lambert (Henrik Egerman), Laurence Guittard (Carl-Magnus Malcolm), Patricia Elliott (Charlotte Malcolm), George Lee Andrews (Frid), and D'Jamin Bartlett (Petra). It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Musical.
Australian premiere
The first international production opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in Sydney, Australia in November 1973, with a cast including Taina Elg, Bruce Barry, Jill Perryman, Doris Fitton, Anna Russell and Geraldine Turner. Australian revivals have been presented by the Sydney Theatre Company (featuring Geraldine Turner and a young Toni Collette) in 1990, Melbourne Theatre Company (featuring Helen Morse and John O'May) in 1997, Opera Australia (featuring Sigrid Thornton and Anthony Warlow) in 2009, and Victorian Opera (featuring Ali McGregor, Simon Gleeson and Verity Hunt-Ballard) in 2019.
United States tour
A US national tour began on February 26, 1974, at the Forrest Theatre, Philadelphia, and ended on February 13, 1975, at the Shubert Theatre, Boston. Jean Simmons as Desiree Armfeldt, George Lee Andrews as Fredrik Egerman and Margaret Hamilton as Madame Armfeldt headed the cast.
West End premiere
The musical premiered in the West End at the Adelphi Theatre on April 15, 1975, and starred Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland, David Kernan, Liz Robertson, and Diane Langton, with Hermione Gingold reprising her role as Madame Armfeldt. It ran for 406 performances. During the run, Angela Baddeley replaced Gingold, and Virginia McKenna replaced Simmons.
1989 West End revival
A revival opened in the West End on October 6, 1989, at the Piccadilly Theatre, directed by Ian Judge, designed by Mark Thompson, and choreographed by Anthony Van Laast. It starred Lila Kedrova as Madame Armfeldt, Dorothy Tutin as Desiree Armfeldt, Peter McEnery as Fredrik, and Susan Hampshire. The production ran for 144 performances, closing on February 17, 1990.
1995 London revival
A revival by the Royal National Theatre opened at the Olivier Theatre on September 26, 1995. It was directed by Sean Mathias, with set design by Stephen Brimson Lewis, costumes by Nicky Gillibrand, lighting by Mark Henderson and choreography by Wayne McGregor. It starred Judi Dench (Desiree), Siân Phillips (Madame Armfeldt), Joanna Riding (Anne Egerman), Laurence Guittard (Fredrik Egerman), Patricia Hodge (Countess Charlotte) and Issy van Randwyck (Petra). The production closed on August 31, 1996. Dench received the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
2008 London revival
The third London revival ran at the Menier Chocolate Factory from November 22, 2008, until March 8, 2009. The production was directed by Trevor Nunn, with musical supervision by Caroline Humphris, choreography by Lynne Page, sets and costumes by David Farley and new orchestrations by Jason Carr. The cast included Hannah Waddingham as Desiree, Alexander Hanson as Frederik, Jessie Buckley (Anne), Maureen Lipman (Madame Armfeldt), Alistair Robins (the Count), Gabriel Vick (Henrik), Grace Link (Fredrika) and Kasia Hammarlund (Petra). This critically acclaimed production transferred to the Garrick Theatre in the West End for a limited season, opening on March 28, 2009, and running until July 25, 2009. The production then transferred to Broadway with a new cast.
2009 Broadway revival
The 2008 Menier Chocolate Factory production opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in previews on November 24, 2009, and officially on December 13, 2009, with the same creative team. The cast was led by Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt and, in her Broadway debut, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree. Also featured were Alexander Hanson as Frederik, Ramona Mallory (the daughter of original Broadway cast members Victoria Mallory and Mark Lambert) as Anne, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Henrik, Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, Erin Davie as the Countess, Aaron Lazar as the Count, and Bradley Dean as Frid. Zeta-Jones received the award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical at the 64th Tony Awards.
Originally, Katherine Doherty and Keaton Whittaker played Fredrika in alternating performances, beginning with the November 2009 previews. The official show album, which was recorded in January 2010, features both Doherty and Whittaker as Fredrika (on different songs). However, Katherine McNamara replaced Doherty in February 2010. McNamara and Whittaker stayed with the production until it ended in January 2011.
When the contracts of Zeta-Jones and Lansbury ended, the production closed temporarily on June 20, 2010, and resumed on July 13, with new stars Bernadette Peters as Desiree Armfeldt and Elaine Stritch as Madame Armfeldt. In an interview, Peters said that Sondheim had "proposed the idea to her this spring and urged the producers of the revival to cast her." Trevor Nunn directed rehearsals with the two new stars, and the rest of the original cast remained. Peters and Stritch extended their contracts until January 9, 2011, when the production closed with 20 previews and 425 regular performances. Before the production closed, it recouped its initial investment.
Europe
Zarah Leander played Madame Armfeldt in the original Austrian staging (in 1975) as well as in the original Swedish staging in Stockholm in 1978 (here with Jan Malmsjö as Fredrik Egerman). The successful Stockholm staging was directed by Stig Olin. In 2010 the musical was scheduled to return to Stockholm and the Stockholm Stadsteater. The cast included Pia Johansson, Dan Ekborg, Yvonne Lombard and Thérese Andersson.
The Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris production ran from February 15, 2010, through February 20, 2010. Lee Blakeley directed and Andrew George was the choreographer. Italian-born actress Greta Scacchi played Désirée, and Leslie Caron played Madame Armfeldt.
The Turku City Theatre staged the musical in 2011 with in the role as Désirée. directed and Jussi Vahvaselkä was musical director.
In 2019, the Nederlands Reisopera staged a version directed by Zack Winokur, with Susan Rigvava-Dumas playing Désirée.
Opera companies
The musical has also become part of the repertoire of a few opera companies. Michigan Opera Theatre was the first major American opera company to present the work in 1983, and again in November 2009. Light Opera Works (Evanston, Illinois) produced the work in August 1983. New York City Opera staged it in 1990, 1991 and 2003, the Houston Grand Opera in 1999, the Los Angeles Opera in 2004, and Hartford Opera Theater in 2014. New York City Opera's production in August 1990 and July 1991 (a total of 18 performances) won the 1990 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival and was telecast on the PBS show Live at Lincoln Center on November 7, 1990. The cast included both stage performers: Sally Ann Howes and George Lee Andrews as Desiree and Frederik and opera regular Regina Resnik as Madame Armfeldt (in 1991). The 2003 production featured a young Anna Kendrick as Fredrika Armfeldt, alongside Jeremy Irons as Frederik, Juliet Stevenson as Desiree, Claire Bloom as Madame Armfeldt, Danny Gurwin as Henrik, Michele Pawk as Charlotte, and Marc Kudisch as Carl-Magnus.
Opera Australia presented the piece in Melbourne in May 2009, starring Sigrid Thornton as Desiree Armfeldt and Nancye Hayes as Madame Armfeldt. The production returned in 2010 at the Sydney Opera House with Anthony Warlow taking on the role of Fredrik Egerman. The production was directed by Stuart Maunder, designed by Roger Kirk, and conducted by Andrew Greene. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis performed the musical in June 2010. Designer Isaac Mizrahi directed and designed the production, with a cast that included Amy Irving, Siân Phillips, and Ron Raines as Fredrik Egerman.
The piece has also become a popular choice for amateur musical theatre and light opera companies. In 2017, the musical was performed by students at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Film adaptation
A film version of A Little Night Music was released in 1977, starring Elizabeth Taylor as Desiree, Lesley-Anne Down as Anne and Diana Rigg as Charlotte, with Len Cariou, Hermione Gingold and Laurence Guittard reprising their Broadway roles. The setting for the film was moved from Sweden to Austria. Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics for the "Night Waltz" theme ("Love Takes Time") and wrote an entirely new version of "The Glamorous Life", which has been incorporated into several subsequent productions of the stage musical. However, other songs, including "In Praise of Women", "The Miller's Son" and "Liaisons", were cut and remain heard only as background orchestrations. The film marked Broadway director Harold Prince's second (and final) time as a motion picture director. Critical reaction to the film was mostly negative, with much being made of Taylor's wildly fluctuating weight from scene to scene. Some critics talked more positively of the film, with Variety calling it "an elegant looking, period romantic charade". There was praise for Diana Rigg's performance, and orchestrator Jonathan Tunick received an Oscar for his work on the score. A soundtrack recording was released on LP, and a DVD release was issued in June 2007.
Music analysis
The score for A Little Night Music presents performance challenges more often seen in operetta or light opera pieces than in standard musical comedy. The demands made on the singing cast are considerable; although the vocal demands of the role of Desiree are rather small, most of the other singing roles require strong, legitimately-trained voices with fairly wide ranges. Sondheim's liberal use of counterpoint extends to the vocal parts, including a free-structured round (the trio "Perpetual Anticipation") as well as songs in which characters engage in interior monologues or even overt dialogue simultaneously ("Now/Later/Soon", "A Weekend in the Country"). Critic Rex Reed noted that "The score of 'Night Music' ...contains patter songs, contrapuntal duets and trios, a quartet, and even a dramatic double quintet to puzzle through. All this has been gorgeously orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick; there is no rhythm section, only strings and woodwinds to carry the melodies and harmonies aloft."
Sondheim's engagement with threes extends to his lyrics. He organizes trios with the singers separated, while his duets are sung together, about a third person.
The work is performed as an operetta in many professional opera companies. For example, it was added to the New York City Opera Company repertoire in 1990.
time
Virtually all of the music in the show is written in waltz meter ( time). Some parts adopt compound meter, with a time signature such as . Passages in "Overture", "Glamorous Life", "Liaisons", "Every Day A Little Death", and "The Miller's Son" are in duple meter.
Counterpoint and polyphony
At several points, Sondheim has multiple performers each sing a different song simultaneously. This use of counterpoint maintains coherence even as it extends the notion of a round, familiar in songs such as the traditional "Frère Jacques", into something more complex. Sondheim said: "As for the three songs ... going together well, I might as well confess. In those days I was just getting into contrapuntal and choral writing...and I wanted to develop my technique by writing a trio. What I didn't want to do is the quodlibet method...wouldn't it be nice to have three songs you don't think are going to go together, and they do go together ... The trick was the little vamp on "Soon" which has five-and six-note chords." Steve Swayne comments that the "contrapuntal episodes in the extended ensembles ... stand as testament to his interest in Counterpoint."
"Send In The Clowns"
The show's best-known and Sondheim's biggest hit song was almost an afterthought, written several days before the start of out-of-town tryouts. Sondheim initially conceived Desiree as a role for a more or less non-singing actress. When he discovered that the original Desiree, Glynis Johns, was able to sing (she had a "small, silvery voice") but could not "sustain a phrase", he devised the song "Send in the Clowns" for her in a way that would work around her vocal weakness, e.g., by ending lines with consonants that made for a short cut-off. "It is written in short phrases in order to be acted rather than sung ... tailor-made for Glynis Johns, who lacks the vocal power to sustain long phrases."
In analyzing the text of the song, Max Cryer wrote that it "is not intended to be sung by the young in love, but by a mature performer who has seen it all before. The song remains an anthem to regret for unwise decisions in the past and recognition that there's no need to send in the clowns – they're already here."
Graham Wolfe has argued, "What Desirée is referring to in the famous song is a conventional device to cover over a moment when something has gone wrong on stage. Midway through the second Act she has deviated from her usual script by suggesting to Fredrik the possibility of being together seriously and permanently, and, having been rejected, she falters as a show-person, finds herself bereft of the capacity to improvise and wittily cover. If Desirée could perform at this moment – revert to the innuendos, one-liners and blithe self-referential humour that constitutes her normal character – all would be well. She cannot, and what follows is an exemplary manifestation of Sondheim’s musico-dramatic complexity, his inclination to write music that performs drama. That is, what needs to be covered over (by the clowns sung about in the song) is the very intensity, ragged emotion and utter vulnerability that comes forward through the music and singing itself, a display protracted to six minutes, wrought with exposed silences, a shocked Fredrik sitting so uncomfortably before Desirée while something much too real emerges in a realm where he – and his audience – felt assured of performance."
Influences
There is a Mozart reference in the title—A Little Night Music is an occasionally-used translation of Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the nickname of Mozart's Serenade No. 13, K. 525. The elegant, harmonically-advanced music in this musical pays indirect homage to the compositions of Maurice Ravel, especially his Valses nobles et sentimentales (whose opening chord is borrowed for the opening chord of the song "Liaisons"); part of this effect stems from the style of orchestration that Jonathan Tunick used. There is also a direct quotation in 'A Weekend in the Country' (just as it moves to A major for the last time in the final section of the number) of Octavian's theme from Strauss' 'Der Rosenkavalier', another comedy of manners with partner-swapping at its heart.
Orchestration
The original Broadway pit consisted of a 17 piece orchestra.
Strings: 2 violins 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 bass, 1 harp
Brass: 2 trumpets (1 player), 3 horns, 1 trombone
Keyboards: 1 piano/celesta
Woodwinds:
Reed 1: alto flute, flute, piccolo
Reed 2: clarinet, flute
Reed 3: bass clarinet, clarinet
Reed 4: English horn, oboe
Reed 5: bassoon, clarinet
Percussion: (1 player) bells, crotales, snare drum, triangle, tympani, xylophone
The 2008 revival of the show modified the orchestrations to an 8 piece pit, re-orchestrated by Jason Carr.
Strings: 1 violin 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 bass, 1 harp
Keyboards: 1 piano/synthesizer
Woodwinds: 1 player
Bassoon: 1 player
Cast recordings
In addition to the original Broadway and London cast recordings, and the motion picture soundtrack (no longer available), there are recordings of the 1990 studio cast, the 1995 Royal National Theatre revival (starring Judi Dench), and the 2001 Barcelona cast recording sung in Catalan. In 1997 an all-jazz version of the score was recorded by Terry Trotter.
The 2009 Broadway revival with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury recorded a cast album on January 4, 2010, which was released on April 6.
Critical response
In his review of the original 1973 Broadway production, Clive Barnes in The New York Times called the musical "heady, civilized, sophisticated and enchanting." He noted that "the real triumph belongs to Stephen Sondheim...the music is a celebration of 3/4 time, an orgy of plaintively memorable waltzes, all talking of past loves and lost worlds...There is a peasant touch here." He commented that the lyrics are "breathtaking".
In its review of the 1989 London revival, the reviewer for The Guardian wrote that the "production also strikes me as infinitely superior to Harold Prince's 1975 version at the Adelphi. Mr Judge's great innovation is to transform the Liebeslieder Singers from the evening-dressed, after-dinner line-up into 18th century ghosts weaving in and out of the action...But Mr Judge's other great realisation is that, in Sondheim, the lyrics are not an adornment to a song but their very essence: understand them and the show will flow. Thus Dorothy Tutin as Desiree, the touring thesp eventually reunited with her quondam lover, is not the melting romantic of previous productions but a working mother with the sharpness of a hat-pin."
The Independent review of the 1995 National Theatre revival praised the production, writing "For three hours of gloriously barbed bliss and bewitchment, Sean Mathias's production establishes the show as a minor miracle of astringent worldly wisdom and one that is haunted by less earthy intimations." The review went on to state that "The heart of the production, in both senses, is Judi Dench's superb Desiree Armfeldt...Her husky-voiced rendering of "Send in the Clowns" is the most moving I've ever heard."
In reviewing the 2008 Menier Chocolate Factory production, the Telegraph reviewer wrote that "Sondheim's lyrics are often superbly witty, his music here, mostly in haunting waltz-time, far more accessible than is sometimes the case. The score positively throbs with love, regret and desire." But of the specific production, the reviewer went on to note: "But Nunn's production, on one of those hermetic sets largely consisting of doors and tarnished mirrors that have become such a cliché in recent years, never penetrates the work's subtly erotic heart. And as is often the case with this director's work, the pace is so slow and the mood so reverent, that initial enchantment gives way to bored fidgeting."
In his New York Times review of the 2009 Broadway production, Ben Brantley noted that "the expression that hovers over Trevor Nunn's revival...feels dangerously close to a smirk...It is a smirk shrouded in shadows. An elegiac darkness infuses this production." The production is "sparing on furniture and heavy on shadows", with "a scaled-down orchestra at lugubriously slowed-down tempos..." He goes on to write that "this somber, less-is-more approach could be effective were the ensemble plugged into the same rueful sensibility. But there is only one moment in this production when all its elements cohere perfectly. That moment, halfway through the first act, belongs to Ms. Lansbury, who has hitherto been perfectly entertaining, playing Madame Armfeldt with the overripe aristocratic condescension of a Lady Bracknell. Then comes her one solo, "Liaisons", in which her character thinks back on the art of love as a profession in a gilded age, when sex 'was but a pleasurable means to a measurable end.' Her face, with its glamour-gorgon makeup, softens, as Madame Armfeldt seems to melt into memory itself, and the wan stage light briefly appears to borrow radiance from her. It's a lovely example of the past reaching out to the present..."
Steven Suskin, reviewing the new Broadway cast for Variety, wrote "What a difference a diva makes. Bernadette Peters steps into the six-month-old revival of A Little Night Music with a transfixing performance, playing it as if she realizes her character's onstage billing -- "the one and only Desiree Armfeldt"—is clichéd hyperbole. By figuratively rolling her eyes at the hype, Peters gives us a rich, warm and comedically human Desiree, which reaches full impact when she pierces the façade with a nakedly honest, tears-on-cheek 'Send in the Clowns.'"
Awards and nominations
Original Broadway production
1995 London revival
2009 London Revival
2009 Broadway revival
References
Sources
External links
A Little Night Music on The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide
A Little Night Music at the Music Theatre International website
"Show Information, plot summary and character descriptions, stageagent.com (January 2008 archive)
A Little Night Music, Broadway revival
1973 musicals
Broadway musicals
West End musicals
Musicals based on films
Musicals by Hugh Wheeler
Musicals by Stephen Sondheim
Adaptations of works by Ingmar Bergman
American plays adapted into films
Tony Award for Best Musical
Tony Award-winning musicals
Musicals set in Sweden
Musicals set in the 1900s
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Ariel Sharon (; ; ; also known by his diminutive Arik, ; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
Born in Kfar Malal in Mandatory Palestine to Russian Jewish immigrants, he rose in the ranks of the Israeli Army from its creation in 1948, participating in the 1948 Palestine war as platoon commander of the Alexandroni Brigade and taking part in several battles. Sharon became an instrumental figure in the creation of Unit 101 and the reprisal operations, including the 1953 Qibya massacre, as well as in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, and the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. Yitzhak Rabin called Sharon "the greatest field commander in our history". Upon leaving the military, Sharon entered politics, joining the Likud party, and served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments in 1977–92 and 1996–99. As Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War. An official enquiry found that he bore "personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees, for which he became known as the "Butcher of Beirut" among Arabs. He was subsequently removed as defense minister.
From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Sharon championed construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He became the leader of the Likud in 1999, and in 2000, amid campaigning for the 2001 prime ministerial election, made a controversial visit to the Al-Aqsa complex on the Temple Mount, triggering the Second Intifada. He subsequently defeated Ehud Barak in the election and served as Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006. As Prime Minister, Sharon orchestrated the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier in 2002–03 and Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Facing stiff opposition to the latter policy within the Likud, in November 2005 he left Likud to form a new party, Kadima. He had been expected to win the next election and was widely interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals. Following a stroke on 4 January 2006, Sharon remained in a permanent vegetative state until his death in 2014.
Sharon remains a highly polarizing figure in Middle Eastern history. Israelis almost universally revere Sharon as a war hero and statesman, whereas Palestinians and Human Rights Watch have criticized him as a war criminal, with the latter lamenting that he was never held accountable.
Early life and education
Ariel (Arik) Scheinerman (later Sharon) was born in Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav, then in Mandatory Palestine, to Shmuel Scheinerman (1896–1956) of Brest-Litovsk and Vera (née Schneirov) Scheinerman (1900–1988) of Mogilev. His parents met while at university in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia), where Sharon's father was studying agronomy and his mother was studying medicine. They immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1922 in the wake of the Russian Communist government's growing persecution of Jews in the region. In Palestine, Vera Scheinerman went by the name Dvora.
The family arrived with the Third Aliyah and settled in Kfar Malal, a socialist, secular community. (Ariel Sharon himself would remain proudly secular throughout his life.) Although his parents were Mapai supporters, they did not always accept communal consensus: "The Scheinermans' eventual ostracism ... followed the 1933 Arlozorov murder when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the Labor movement's anti-Revisionist calumny and participate in Bolshevik-style public revilement rallies, then the order of the day. Retribution was quick to come. They were expelled from the local health-fund clinic and village synagogue. The cooperative's truck wouldn't make deliveries to their farm nor collect produce."
Sharon spoke both Hebrew and Russian.
Four years after their arrival at Kfar Malal, the Sheinermans had a daughter, Yehudit (Dita). Ariel was born two years later. At age 10, he joined the youth movement HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed. As a teenager, he began to take part in the armed night-patrols of his moshav. In 1942 at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Military career
Battle for Jerusalem and 1948 War
Sharon's unit of the Haganah became engaged in serious and continuous combat from the autumn of 1947, with the onset of the Battle for Jerusalem. Without the manpower to hold the roads, his unit took to making offensive hit-and-run raids on Arab forces in the vicinity of Kfar Malal. In units of thirty men, they would hit constantly at Arab villages, bridges and bases, as well as ambush the traffic between Arab villages and bases.
Sharon wrote in his autobiography: "We had become skilled at finding our way in the darkest nights and gradually we built up the strength and endurance these kind of operations required. Under the stress of constant combat we drew closer to one another and began to operate not just as a military unit but almost as a family. ... [W]e were in combat almost every day. Ambushes and battles followed each other until they all seemed to run together."
For his role in a night-raid on Iraqi forces at Bir Adas, Sharon was made a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the onset of the War of Independence, his platoon fended off the Iraqi advance at Kalkiya. Sharon was regarded as a hardened and aggressive soldier, swiftly moving up the ranks during the war. He was shot in the groin, stomach and foot by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the First Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. Sharon wrote of the casualties in the "horrible battle," and his brigade suffered 139 deaths.
Jordanian field marshal Habis Majali said that Sharon was among 6 Israeli soldiers captured by the Jordanian 4th battalion during the battle, and that Majali took them to a camp in Mafraq and the 6 were later traded back. Sharon denied the claims, but Majali was adamant. "Sharon is like a grizzly bear," he assured. "I captured him for 9 days, I healed his wounds and released him due to his insignificance." A few fellow high-ranking Jordanian officers testified in favour of his account." In 1994 and during the peace treaty signing ceremony with Jordan, Sharon wanted to get in touch with his former captor, but the latter determinedly refused to discuss the incident publicly.
After recovering from the wounds received at Latrun, he resumed command of his patrol unit. On 28 December 1948, his platoon attempted to break through an Egyptian stronghold in Iraq-El-Manshia. At about this time, Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion gave him the Hebraized name "Sharon". In September 1949, Sharon was promoted to company commander (of the Golani Brigade's reconnaissance unit) and in 1950 to intelligence officer for Central Command. He then took leave to begin studies in history and Middle Eastern culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sharon's subsequent military career would be characterized by insubordination, aggression and disobedience, but also brilliance as a commander.
Unit 101
A year and a half later, on the direct orders of the Prime Minister, Sharon returned to active service in the rank of major, as the founder and commander of the new Unit 101, a special forces unit tasked with reprisal operations in response to Palestinian fedayeen attacks. The first Israeli commando unit, Unit 101 specialized in offensive guerrilla warfare in enemy countries. The unit consisted of 50 men, mostly former paratroopers and Unit 30 personnel. They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked with carrying out special reprisals across the state's borders—mainly establishing small unit maneuvers, activation and insertion tactics. Training included engaging enemy forces across Israel's borders. Israeli historian Benny Morris describes Unit 101:
Unit 101 undertook a series of raids against Jordan, which then held the West Bank. The raids also helped bolster Israeli morale and convince Arab states that the fledgling nation was capable of long-range military action. Known for raids against Arab civilians and military targets, the unit is held responsible for the widely condemned Qibya massacre in the fall of 1953. After a group of Palestinians used Qibya as a staging point for a fedayeen attack in Yehud that killed a Jewish woman and her two children in Israel, Unit 101 retaliated on the village. By various accounts of the ensuing attack, 65 to 70 Palestinian civilians, half of them women and children, were killed when Sharon's troops dynamited 45 houses and a school.
Facing international condemnation for the attack, Ben-Gurion denied that the Israeli military was involved. In his memoir, Sharon wrote that the unit had checked all the houses before detonating the explosives and that he thought the houses were empty. Although he admitted the results were tragic, Sharon defended the attack, however: "Now people could feel that the terrorist gangs would think twice before striking, now that they knew for sure they would be hit back. Kibbya also put the Jordanian and Egyptian governments on notice that if Israel was vulnerable, so were they."
A few months after its founding, Unit 101 was merged with the 890 Paratroopers Battalion to create the Paratroopers Brigade, of which Sharon would also later become commander. Like Unit 101, it continued raids into Arab territory, culminating with the attack on the Qalqilyah police station in the autumn of 1956.
Leading up to the Suez War, the missions Sharon took part in included:
Operation Shoshana (now known as the Qibya massacre)
Operation Black Arrow
Operation Elkayam
Operation Egged
Operation Olive Leaves
Operation Volcano
Operation Gulliver (מבצע גוליבר)
Operation Lulav (מבצע לולב)
During a payback operation in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Sharon was again wounded by gunfire, this time in the leg. Incidents such as those involving Meir Har-Zion, along with many others, contributed to the tension between Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who often opposed Sharon's raids, and Moshe Dayan, who had become increasingly ambivalent in his feelings towards Sharon. Later in the year, Sharon was investigated and tried by the Military Police for disciplining one of his subordinates. However, the charges were dismissed before the onset of the Suez War.
1956 Suez War
Sharon commanded Unit 202 (the Paratroopers Brigade) during the 1956 Suez War (the British "Operation Musketeer"), leading the troop to take the ground east of the Sinai's Mitla Pass and eventually the pass itself against the advice of superiors, suffering heavy Israeli casualties in the process. Having successfully carried out the first part of his mission (joining a battalion parachuted near Mitla with the rest of the brigade moving on ground), Sharon's unit was deployed near the pass. Neither reconnaissance aircraft nor scouts reported enemy forces inside the Mitla Pass. Sharon, whose forces were initially heading east, away from the pass, reported to his superiors that he was increasingly concerned with the possibility of an enemy thrust through the pass, which could attack his brigade from the flank or the rear.
Sharon asked for permission to attack the pass several times, but his requests were denied, though he was allowed to check its status so that if the pass was empty, he could receive permission to take it later. Sharon sent a small scout force, which was met with heavy fire and became bogged down due to vehicle malfunction in the middle of the pass. Sharon ordered the rest of his troops to attack to aid their comrades. Sharon was criticized by his superiors and was damaged by allegations several years later made by several former subordinates, who claimed that Sharon tried to provoke the Egyptians and sent out the scouts in bad faith, ensuring that a battle would ensue.
Sharon had assaulted Themed in a dawn attack, and had stormed the town with his armor through the Themed Gap. Sharon routed the Sudanese police company, and captured the settlement. On his way to the Nakla, Sharon's men came under attack from Egyptian MIG-15s. On the 30th, Sharon linked up with Eytan near Nakla. Dayan had no more plans for further advances beyond the passes, but Sharon nonetheless decided to attack the Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan. Sharon sent his lightly armed paratroopers against dug-in Egyptians supported by aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery. Sharon's actions were in response to reports of the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the 4th Egyptian Armored Division in the area, which Sharon believed would annihilate his forces if he did not seize the high ground. Sharon sent two infantry companies, a mortar battery and some AMX-13 tanks under the command of Mordechai Gur into the Heitan Defile on the afternoon of 31 October 1956. The Egyptian forces occupied strong defensive positions and brought down heavy anti-tank, mortar and machine gun fire on the IDF force. Gur's men were forced to retreat into the "Saucer", where they were surrounded and came under heavy fire. Hearing of this, Sharon sent in another task force while Gur's men used the cover of night to scale the walls of the Heitan Defile. During the ensuing action, the Egyptians were defeated and forced to retreat. A total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle at Mitla. Due to these deaths, Sharon's actions at Mitla were surrounded in controversy, with many within the IDF viewing the deaths as the result of unnecessary and unauthorized aggression.
Six-Day War, War of Attrition and Yom Kippur War
The Mitla incident hindered Sharon's military career for several years. In the meantime, he occupied the position of an infantry brigade commander and received a law degree from Tel Aviv University. However, when Yitzhak Rabin became Chief of Staff in 1964, Sharon again began to rise rapidly in the ranks, occupying the positions of Infantry School Commander and Head of Army Training Branch, eventually achieving the rank of Aluf (Major General).
In the Six-Day War, Sharon, in command of an armored division on the Sinai front, drew up his own complex offensive strategy that combined infantry troops, tanks and paratroopers from planes and helicopters to destroy the Egyptian forces Sharon's 38th Division faced when it broke through to the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area. Sharon's victories and offensive strategy in the Battle of Abu-Ageila led to international commendation by military strategists; he was judged to have inaugurated a new paradigm in operational command. Researchers at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command studied Sharon's operational planning, concluding that it involved a number of unique innovations. It was a simultaneous attack by a multiplicity of small forces, each with a specific aim, attacking a particular unit in a synergistic Egyptian defense network. As a result, instead of supporting and covering each other as they were designed to do, each Egyptian unit was left fighting for its own life.
According to Sapir Handelman, after Sharon's assault of the Sinai in the Six-Day War and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli public nicknamed him "The King of Israel".
Sharon played a key role in the War of Attrition. In 1969, he was appointed the Head of IDF's Southern Command. As leader of the southern command, on 29 July Israeli frogmen stormed and destroyed Green Island, a fortress at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez whose radar and antiaircraft installations controlled that sector's airspace. On 9 September Sharon's forces carried out Operation Raviv, a large-scale raid along the western shore of the Gulf of Suez. Landing craft ferried across Russian-made tanks and armored personnel carriers that Israel had captured in 1967, and the small column harried the Egyptians for ten hours.
Following his appointment to the southern command, Sharon had no further promotions, and considered retiring. Sharon discussed the issue with Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who strongly advised him to remain at his post. Sharon remained in the military for another three years, before retiring in August 1973. Soon after, he helped found the Likud ("Unity") political party.
At the start of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 1973, Sharon was called back to active duty along with his assigned reserve armored division. On his farm, before he left for the front line, the Reserve Commander, Zeev Amit, said to him, "How are we going to get out of this?" Sharon replied, "You don't know? We will cross the Suez Canal and the war will end over there." Sharon arrived at the front, to participate in his fourth war, in a civilian car. His forces did not engage the Egyptian Army immediately, despite his requests. Under cover of darkness, Sharon's forces moved to a point on the Suez Canal that had been prepared before the war. In a move that again thwarted the commands of his superiors, Sharon's division crossed the Suez, effectively winning the war for Israel. He then headed north towards Ismailia, intent on cutting the Egyptian second army's supply lines, but his division was halted south of the Fresh Water Canal.
Abraham Adan's division passed over the bridgehead into Africa, advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo. His division managed to encircle Suez, cutting off and encircling the Third Army. Tensions between the two generals followed Sharon's decision, but a military tribunal later found his action was militarily effective.
Sharon's complex ground maneuver is regarded as a decisive move in the Yom Kippur War, undermining the Egyptian Second Army and encircling the Egyptian Third Army. This move was regarded by many Israelis as the turning point of the war in the Sinai front. Thus, Sharon is widely viewed as the hero of the Yom Kippur War, responsible for Israel's ground victory in the Sinai in 1973. A photo of Sharon wearing a head bandage on the Suez Canal became a famous symbol of Israeli military prowess.
Sharon's political positions were controversial, and he was relieved of duty in February 1974.
Bar Lev Line
Following Israel's victory in the six-day war, the war of attrition at the Suez Canal began. The Egyptians began firing in provocation against the Israeli forces posted on the eastern part of the canal. Haim Bar Lev, Israel's chief of staff, suggested that Israel construct a border line to protect its southern border. A wall of sand and earth raised along almost the entire length of the Suez Canal would both allow observation of Egyptian forces and conceal the movements of Israeli troops on the eastern side. This line, named after the chief of staff Haim Bar Lev, became known as the Bar Lev Line. It included at least thirty strong points stretching over almost 200 kilometers.
Bar Lev suggested that such a line would defend against any major Egyptian assault across the canal, and was expected to function as a "graveyard for Egyptian troops". Moshe Dayan described it as "one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world." Sharon, and Israel Tal on the other hand, vigorously opposed the line. Sharon said that it would pin down large military formations that would be sitting ducks for deadly artillery attacks, and cited the opinion of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who explained him "the great military disaster such a line could bring." Notwithstanding, it was completed in spring 1970.
During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian forces successfully breached the Bar Lev Line in less than two hours at a cost of more than a thousand dead and some 5,000 wounded. Sharon would later recall that what Schneerson had told him was a tragedy, "but unfortunately, that happened."
Early political career, 1974–2001
Beginnings of political career
In the 1940s and 1950s, Sharon seemed to be personally devoted to the ideals of Mapai, the predecessor of the modern Labor Party. However, after retiring from military service, he joined the Liberal Party and was instrumental in establishing Likud in July 1973 by a merger of Herut, the Liberal Party and independent elements. Sharon became chairman of the campaign staff for that year's elections, which were scheduled for November. Two and a half weeks after the start of the election campaign, the Yom Kippur War erupted and Sharon was called back to reserve service. On the heels of being hailed as a war hero for crossing the Suez in the 1973 war, Sharon won a seat to the Knesset in the elections that year, but resigned a year later.
From June 1975 to March 1976, Sharon was a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He planned his return to politics for the 1977 elections; first, he tried to return to the Likud and replace Menachem Begin at the head of the party. He suggested to Simha Erlich, who headed the Liberal Party bloc in the Likud, that he was more able than Begin to win an election victory; he was rejected, however. He then tried to join the Labor Party and the centrist Democratic Movement for Change, but was rejected by those parties too. Only then did he form his own list, Shlomtzion, which won two Knesset seats in the subsequent elections. Immediately after the elections, he merged Shlomtzion with the Likud and became Minister of Agriculture.
When Sharon joined Begin's government, he had relatively little political experience. During this period, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim settlements movement and was viewed as the patron of the settlers' movement. He used his position to encourage the establishment of a network of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to prevent the possibility of Palestinian Arabs' return to these territories. Sharon doubled the number of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip during his tenure.
After the 1981 elections, Begin rewarded Sharon for his important contribution to Likud's narrow win, by appointing him Minister of Defense.
Under Sharon, Israel continued to build upon the unprecedented coordination between the Israel Defense Forces and the South African Defence Force, with Israeli and South African generals giving each other unfettered access to each other's battlefields and military tactics, and Israel sharing with South Africa highly classified information about its missions, such as Operation Opera, which had previously only been reserved for the United States. In 1981, after visiting South African forces fighting in Namibia for 10 days, Sharon argued that South Africa needed more weapons to fight Soviet infiltration in the region. Sharon promised that the relationship between Israel and South Africa would continue to deepen as they work to "ensure the National Defense of both our countries". The collaboration in carrying out joint-nuclear tests, in planning counter-insurgency strategies in Namibia and in designing security fences helped to make Israel, South Africa's closest ally in this period.
1982 Lebanon War and Sabra and Shatila massacre
As Defense Minister, Sharon launched an invasion of Lebanon called Operation Peace for Galilee, later known as the 1982 Lebanon War, following the shooting of Israel's ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov. Although this attempted assassination was in fact perpetrated by the Abu Nidal Organization, possibly with Syrian or Iraqi involvement, the Israeli government justified the invasion by citing 270 terrorist attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Israel, the occupied territories, and the Jordanian and Lebanese border (in addition to 20 attacks on Israeli interests abroad). Sharon intended the operation to eradicate the PLO from its state within a state inside Lebanon, but the war is primarily remembered for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In a three-day massacre between 16 and 18 September, between 460 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp were killed by the Phalanges— Lebanese Maronite Christian militias. Shatila had previously been one of the PLO's three main training camps for foreign terrorists and the main training camp for European terrorists; the Israelis maintained that 2,000 to 3,000 terrorists remained in the camps, but were unwilling to risk the lives of more of their soldiers after the Lebanese army repeatedly refused to "clear them out." The killings followed years of sectarian civil war in Lebanon that left 95,000 dead. The Lebanese army's chief prosecutor investigated the killings and counted 460 dead, Israeli intelligence estimated 700–800 dead, and the Palestinian Red Crescent claimed 2,000 dead. 1,200 death certificates were issued to anyone who produced three witnesses claiming a family member disappeared during the time of the massacre. Nearly all of the victims were men.
The Phalange militia went into the camps to clear out PLO fighters while Israeli forces surrounded the camps, blocking camp exits and providing logistical support. The killings led some to label Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut".
An Associated Press report on 15 September 1982 stated, "Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, in a statement, tied the killing of the Phalangist leader Bachir Gemayel to the PLO, saying 'it symbolises the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organisations and their supporters'." Habib Chartouni, a Lebanese Christian from the Syrian Socialist National Party confessed to the murder of Gemayel, and no Palestinians were involved.
Robert Maroun Hatem, Hobeika's bodyguard, stated in his book From Israel to Damascus that Phalangist commander Elie Hobeika ordered the massacre of civilians in defiance of Israeli instructions to behave like a "dignified" army. Hatem claimed "Sharon had given strict orders to Hobeika....to guard against any desperate move" and that Hobeika perpetrated the massacre "to tarnish Israel's reputation worldwide" for the benefit of Syria. Hobeika subsequently joined the Syrian occupation government and lived as a prosperous businessman under Syrian protection; further massacres in Sabra and Shatilla occurred with Syrian support in 1985.
The massacre followed intense Israeli bombings of Beirut that had seen heavy civilian casualties, testing Israel's relationship with the United States in the process. America sent troops to help negotiate the PLO's exit from Lebanon, withdrawing them after negotiating a ceasefire that ostensibly protected Palestinian civilians.
Legal findings
After 400,000 Peace Now protesters rallied in Tel Aviv to demand an official government inquiry into the massacres, the official Israeli government investigation into the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, the Kahan Commission (1982), was conducted. The inquiry found that the Israeli Defense Forces were indirectly responsible for the massacre since IDF troops held the area. The commission determined that the killings were carried out by a Phalangist unit acting on its own, but its entry was known to Israel and approved by Sharon. Prime Minister Begin was also found responsible for not exercising greater involvement and awareness in the matter of introducing the Phalangists into the camps.
The commission also concluded that Sharon bore personal responsibility "for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge [and] not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed". It said Sharon's negligence in protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli control, amounted to a dereliction of duty of the minister. In early 1983, the commission recommended the removal of Sharon from his post as defense minister and stated:
We have found ... that the Minister of Defense [Ariel Sharon] bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office—and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority ... to ... remove [him] from office.
Sharon initially refused to resign as defense minister, and Begin refused to fire him. After a grenade was thrown into a dispersing crowd at an Israeli Peace Now march, killing Emil Grunzweig and injuring 10 others, a compromise was reached: Sharon agreed to forfeit the post of defense minister but stayed in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio.
Sharon's resignation as defense minister is listed as one of the important events of the Tenth Knesset.
In its 21 February 1983 issue, Time published an article implying that Sharon was directly responsible for the massacres. Sharon sued Time for libel in American and Israeli courts. Although the jury concluded that the Time article included false allegations, they found that the magazine had not acted with actual malice and so was not guilty of libel.
On 18 June 2001, relatives of the victims of the Sabra massacre began proceedings in Belgium to have Sharon indicted on alleged war crimes charges. Elie Hobeika, the leader of the Phalange militia who carried out the massacres, was assassinated in January 2002, several months before he was scheduled to testify trial. Prior to his assassination, he had "specifically stated that he did not plan to identify Sharon as being responsible for Sabra and Shatila."
Political downturn and recovery
After his dismissal from the Defense Ministry post, Sharon remained in successive governments as a minister without portfolio (1983–1984), Minister for Trade and Industry (1984–1990), and Minister of Housing Construction (1990–1992). In the Knesset, he was member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense committee (1990–1992) and chairman of the committee overseeing Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union. During this period he was a rival to then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, but failed in various bids to replace him as chairman of Likud. Their rivalry reached a head in February 1990, when Sharon grabbed the microphone from Shamir, who was addressing the Likud central committee, and famously exclaimed: "Who's for wiping out terrorism?" The incident was widely viewed as an apparent coup attempt against Shamir's leadership of the party.
Sharon unsuccessfully challenged Shamir in the 1984 Herut leadership election and the 1992 Likud leadership election.
In Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996–1999 government, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure (1996–98), and Foreign Minister (1998–99). Upon the election of the Barak Labor government, Sharon became the interim leader of the Likud party and subsequently won the September 1999 Likud leadership election.
Opposition to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
Ariel Sharon criticised the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 as an act of "brutal interventionism". Sharon said both Serbia and Kosovo have been victims of violence. He said prior to the current Yugoslav campaign against Kosovo Albanians, Serbians were the targets of attacks in the Kosovo province. "Israel has a clear policy. We are against aggressive actions. We are against hurting innocent people. I hope that the sides will return to the negotiating table as soon as possible." During the crisis, Elyakim Haetzni said the Serbs should be the first to receive Israeli aid. "There are our traditional friends," he told Israel Radio." It was suggested that Sharon may have supported the Yugoslav position because of the Serbian population's history of saving Jews during the holocaust. On Sharon's death, Serbian minister Aleksandar Vulin stated: The Serbian people will remember Sharon for opposing the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia and advocating respect for sovereignty of other nations and a policy of not interfering with their internal affairs.
Campaign for Prime Minister, 2000–2001
On 28 September 2000, Sharon and an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police officers visited the Temple Mount complex, site of the Dome of the Rock and Qibli Mosque, the holiest place in the world to Jews and the third holiest site in Islam. Sharon declared that the complex would remain under perpetual Israeli control. Palestinian commentators accused Sharon of purposely inflaming emotions with the event to provoke a violent response and obstruct success of delicate ongoing peace talks. On the following day, a large number of Palestinian demonstrators and an Israeli police contingent confronted each other at the site. According to the U.S. State Department, "Palestinians held large demonstrations and threw stones at police in the vicinity of the Western Wall. Police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 4 persons and injuring about 200." According to the government of Israel, 14 policemen were injured.
Sharon's visit, a few months before his election as Prime Minister, came after archeologists claimed that extensive building operations at the site were destroying priceless antiquities. Sharon's supporters claim that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority planned the Second Intifada months prior to Sharon's visit. They state that Palestinian security chief Jabril Rajoub provided assurances that if Sharon did not enter the mosques, no problems would arise. They also often quote statements by Palestinian Authority officials, particularly Imad Falouji, the P.A. Communications Minister, who admitted months after Sharon's visit that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon's visit, stating the intifada "was carefully planned since the return of (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat from Camp David negotiations rejecting the U.S. conditions". According to the Mitchell Report,
The Mitchell Report found that
In addition, the report stated,
The Or Commission, an Israeli panel of inquiry appointed to investigate the October 2000 events,
Prime Minister (2001–2006)
After the collapse of Barak's government, Sharon was elected Prime Minister on 6 February 2001, defeating Barak 62 percent to 38 percent. Sharon's senior adviser was Raanan Gissin. In his first act as prime minister, Sharon invited the Labor Party to join in a coalition with Likud. After Israel was struck by a wave of suicide bombings in 2002, Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield and led the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier. A survey conducted by Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center in May 2004 found that 80% of Jewish Israelis believed that the Israel Defense Forces had succeeded in militarily countering the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
The election of the more pro-Russian Sharon, as well as the more pro-Israel Vladimir Putin, led to an improvement in Israel–Russia relations.
In September 2003, Sharon became the first prime minister of Israel to visit India, saying that Israel regarded India as one of the most important countries in the world. Some analysts speculated on the development of a three-way military axis of New Delhi, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem.
On 20 July 2004, Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate from France to Israel immediately, in light of an increase in antisemitism in France (94 antisemitic assaults were reported in the first six months of 2004, compared to 47 in 2003). France has the third-largest Jewish population in the world (about 600,000 people). Sharon observed that an "unfettered anti-Semitism" reigned in France. The French government responded by describing his comments as "unacceptable", as did the French representative Jewish organization CRIF, which denied Sharon's claim of intense anti-Semitism in French society. An Israeli spokesperson later claimed that Sharon had been misunderstood. France then postponed a visit by Sharon. Upon his visit, both Sharon and French President Jacques Chirac were described as showing a willingness to put the issue behind them.
Unilateral disengagement
In September 2001, Sharon stated for the first time that Palestinians should have the right to establish their own land west of the Jordan River. In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, the European Union and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas, and stated his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future.
He embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while maintaining control of its coastline and airspace. Sharon's plan was welcomed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel's left wing as a step towards a final peace settlement. However, it was greeted with opposition from within his own Likud party and from other right wing Israelis, on national security, military, and religious grounds.
Disengagement from Gaza
On 1 December 2004, Sharon dismissed five ministers from the Shinui party for voting against the government's 2005 budget. In January 2005, Sharon formed a national unity government that included representatives of Likud, Labor, and Meimad and Degel HaTorah as "out-of-government" supporters without any seats in the government (United Torah Judaism parties usually reject having ministerial offices as a policy). Between 16 and 30 August 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. Once it became clear that the evictions were definitely going ahead, a group of conservative Rabbis, led by Yosef Dayan, placed an ancient curse on Sharon known as the Pulsa diNura, calling on the Angel of Death to intervene and kill him. After Israeli soldiers bulldozed every settlement structure except for several former synagogues, Israeli soldiers formally left Gaza on 11 September 2005 and closed the border fence at Kissufim. While his decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli electorate, with more than 80 percent of Israelis backing the plans. On 27 September 2005, Sharon narrowly defeated a leadership challenge by a 52–48 percent vote. The move was initiated within the central committee of the governing Likud party by Sharon's main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had left the cabinet to protest Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. The measure was an attempt by Netanyahu to call an early primary in November 2005 to choose the party's leader.
Founding of Kadima
On 21 November 2005, Sharon resigned as head of Likud, and dissolved parliament to form a new centrist party called Kadima ("Forward"). November polls indicated that Sharon was likely to be returned to the prime ministership. On 20 December 2005, Sharon's longtime rival Netanyahu was elected his successor as leader of Likud. Following Sharon's incapacitation, Ehud Olmert replaced Sharon as Kadima's leader, for the nearing general elections. Likud, along with the Labor Party, were Kadimas chief rivals in the March 2006 elections.
Sharon's stroke occurred a few months before he had been expected to win a new election and was widely interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals.
In the elections, which saw Israel's lowest-ever voter turnout of 64 percent (the number usually averages on the high 70%), Kadima, headed by Olmert, received the most Knesset seats, followed by Labor. The new governing coalition installed in May 2006 included Kadima, with Olmert as Prime Minister, Labor (including Amir Peretz as Defense Minister), the Pensioners' Party (Gil), the Shas religious party, and Israel Beytenu.
Alleged fundraising irregularities and Greek island affair
During the latter part of his career, Sharon was investigated for alleged involvement in a number of financial scandals, in particular, the Greek island affair and irregularities of fundraising during the 1999 election campaign. In the Greek island affair, Sharon was accused of promising (during his term as Foreign Minister) to help Israeli businessman David Appel in his development project on a Greek island in exchange for large consultancy payments to Sharon's son Gilad. The charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence. In the 1999 election fundraising scandal, Sharon was not charged with any wrongdoing, but his son Omri, a Knesset member at the time, was charged and sentenced in 2006 to nine months in prison.
To avoid a potential conflict of interest in relation to these investigations, Sharon was not involved in the confirmation of the appointment of a new attorney general, Menahem Mazuz, in 2005.
On 10 December 2005, Israeli police raided Martin Schlaff's apartment in Jerusalem. Another suspect in the case was Robert Nowikovsky, an Austrian involved in Russian state-owned company Gazprom's business activities in Europe.
According to Haaretz, "The $3 million that parachuted into Gilad and Omri Sharon's bank account toward the end of 2002 was transferred there in the context of a consultancy contract for development of kolkhozes (collective farms) in Russia. Gilad Sharon was brought into the campaign to make the wilderness bloom in Russia by Getex, a large Russian-based exporter of seeds (peas, millet, wheat) from Eastern Europe. Getex also has ties with Israeli firms involved in exporting wheat from Ukraine, for example. The company owns farms in Eastern Europe and is considered large and prominent in its field. It has its Vienna offices in the same building as Jurimex, which was behind the $1-million guarantee to the Yisrael Beiteinu party."
On 17 December, police found evidence of a $3 million bribe paid to Sharon's sons. Shortly afterwards, Sharon had a stroke.
Illness, incapacitation and death (2006–2014)
Sharon had been obese since the 1980s, and also had suspected chronic high blood pressure and high cholesterol – at tall, he was reputed to weigh . Stories of Sharon's appetite and obesity were legendary in Israel. He would often joke about his love of food and expansive girth. His staff car would reportedly be stocked with snacks, vodka, and caviar. In October 2004 when asked why he did not wear a bulletproof vest despite frequent death threats, Sharon smiled and replied, "There is none that fits my size". He was a daily consumer of cigars and luxury foods. Numerous attempts by doctors, friends, and staff to impose a balanced diet on Sharon were unsuccessful.
Sharon was hospitalized on 18 December 2005, following a minor ischemic stroke. During his hospital stay, doctors discovered a heart defect requiring surgery and ordered bed rest pending a cardiac catheterization scheduled for 5 January 2006. Instead, Sharon immediately returned to work and had a hemorrhagic stroke on 4 January. He was rushed to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. After two surgeries lasting 7 and 14 hours, doctors stopped the bleeding in Sharon's brain, but were unable to prevent him from entering into a coma. Subsequent media reports indicated that Sharon had been diagnosed with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) during his December hospitalisation. Hadassah Hospital Director Shlomo Mor-Yosef declined to respond to comments that the combination of CAA and blood thinners after Sharon's December stroke might have caused his more serious subsequent stroke.
Ehud Olmert became Acting Prime Minister the night of Sharon's second stroke, while Sharon officially remained in office. Knesset elections followed in March, with Olmert and Sharon's Kadima party winning a plurality. The next month, the Israeli Cabinet declared Sharon permanently incapacitated and Olmert became Interim Prime Minister on 14 April 2006 and Prime Minister in his own right on 4 May.
Sharon underwent a series of subsequent surgeries related to his state. In May 2006, he was transferred to a long-term care facility in Sheba Medical Center. In July of that year, he was briefly taken to the hospital's intensive care unit to be treated for bacteria in his blood, before returning to the long-term care facility on 6 November 2006. Sharon would remain at Sheba Medical Center until his death. Medical experts indicated that his cognitive abilities had likely been destroyed by the stroke. His condition worsened from late 2013, and Sharon suffered from renal failure on 1 January 2014.
After spending eight years in a coma, Sharon died at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on 11 January 2014. Sharon's state funeral was held on 13 January in accordance with Jewish burial customs, which require that interment take place as soon after death as possible. His body lay in state in the Knesset Plaza from 12 January until the official ceremony, followed by a funeral held at the family's ranch in the Negev Desert. Sharon was buried beside his wife, Lily.
Personal life
Sharon was married twice, to two sisters, Margalit and Lily Zimmerman, who were from Romania. Sharon met Margalit in 1947 when she was 16, while she was tending a vegetable field, and married her in 1953, shortly after becoming a military instructor. Margalit was a supervisory psychiatric nurse. They had one son, Gur. Margalit died in a car accident in May 1962 and Gur died in October 1967, aged 11, after a friend accidentally shot him while the two children were playing with a rifle at the Sharon family home. After Margalit's death, Sharon married her younger sister, Lily. They had two sons, Omri and Gilad, and six grandchildren. Lily Sharon died of lung cancer in 2000.
Sharon's sister, Yehudit, known as "Dita", married Shmuel Mandel. In the 1950s, the couple permanently left Israel and emigrated to the United States. This caused a permanent rift in the family. Shmuel and Vera Scheinerman were greatly hurt by their daughter's choice to leave Israel. As a result, Vera Scheinerman willed only a small part of her estate to Dita, an act which enraged her. At one point, Dita decided to return to Israel, but after Vera was informed by the Israel Lands Administration that it would not be legally possible to split the family property between Ariel and Dita, and informed her that she would not be able to build a home there, Dita, believing she was being lied to, cut her family in Israel off and refused to attend the funerals of her mother and sister-in-law. She reestablished contact with the family after Sharon's stroke. Sharon's sister has rarely been mentioned in biographies of him: he himself rarely acknowledged her and only mentioned her twice in his autobiography.
Legacy
A hugely consequential figure, Sharon remains a highly polarizing figure as well. While generally considered a great general and statesman among Israelis, Palestinians and numerous media and political sources revile Sharon as a war criminal. Human Rights Watch have contended that Sharon should have been held criminally accountable for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and other abuses.
The Ariel Sharon Park, an environmental park near Tel Aviv, is named for him.
In the Negev desert, the IDF is currently building its city of training bases, Camp Ariel Sharon. In total, a NIS 50 billion project, the city of bases is named after Ariel Sharon, the largest active construction project in Israel, it is to become the largest IDF base in Israel.
Overview of offices held
Sharon served as prime minister (Israel's head of government) from 7 March 2001 through 14 April 2006 (with Ehud Olmert serving as acting prime minister beginning 4 January 2006, after Sharon slipped into a coma). As prime minister he led the 12th government during the 15th Knesset and the 13th government during the 16th Knesset.
Sharon served in the Knesset, first for several months in 1973, and later from 1977 through 2006. Sharon. From July 1999 through July 2000, Sharon served as the unofficial/honorary Knesset's opposition leader. Thereafter, from July 2000 through March 2001, he served as the first official designated Knesset opposition leader.
Sharon was the leader of the Shlomtzion party from its 1976 founding until its 1977 merger into Likud. Sharon served as leader of the Likud party from 1999 through 2005, leaving to create Kadima which he led from 2005 through early 2006 (when he fell into a coma).
In addition to these positions and his ministerial roles, Sharon also served as a special aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from June 1975 through March 1976.
Ministerial posts
Electoral history
2001 direct election for Prime Minister
Party leadership elections
References
Further reading
Ben Shaul, Moshe (editor); Generals of Israel, Tel-Aviv: Hadar Publishing House, Ltd., 1968.
Uri Dan; Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait, Palgrave Macmillan, October 2006, 320 pages. .
Ariel Sharon, with David Chanoff; Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon, Simon & Schuster, 2001, .
Gilad Sharon, (translated by Mitch Ginsburg); Sharon: The Life of a Leader, HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, .
Nir Hefez, Gadi Bloom, (translated by Mitch Ginsburg); Ariel Sharon: A Life, Random House, October 2006, 512 pages, .
Freddy Eytan, (translated by Robert Davies); Ariel Sharon: A Life in Times of Turmoil, translation of Sharon: le bras de fer, Studio 8 Books and Music, 2006, .
Abraham Rabinovich; The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, 2005, .
Ariel Sharon, official biography, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tzvi T. Avisar; Sharon: Five years forward, Publisher House, March 2011, 259 pages, Official website, .
External links
Three recordings from Sharon's Military Career, published by Israel State Archives:
1928 births
2014 deaths
21st-century prime ministers of Israel
Deaths from kidney failure
Haganah members
Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni
Israeli generals
Israeli Ashkenazi Jews
Leaders of political parties in Israel
Israeli people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent
Israeli people of the Yom Kippur War
Jewish agnostics
Jewish military personnel
Kadima politicians
Likud politicians
Members of the 8th Knesset (1974–1977)
Members of the 9th Knesset (1977–1981)
Members of the 10th Knesset (1981–1984)
Members of the 11th Knesset (1984–1988)
Members of the 12th Knesset (1988–1992)
Members of the 13th Knesset (1992–1996)
Members of the 14th Knesset (1996–1999)
Members of the 15th Knesset (1999–2003)
Members of the 16th Knesset (2003–2006)
Ministers of Agriculture of Israel
Ministers of Defense of Israel
Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Israel
Ministers of Health of Israel
Ministers of Internal Affairs of Israel
Moshavniks
Prime Ministers of Israel
Shlomtzion (political party) politicians
Tel Aviv University alumni
People with disorders of consciousness
People with severe brain damage
Israeli people of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
Likud leaders
Israeli autobiographers
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Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 – 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering and queueing theory.
By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Erlang had created the field of telephone networks analysis. His early work in scrutinizing the use of local, exchange and trunk telephone line usage in a small community to understand the theoretical requirements of an efficient network led to the creation of the Erlang formula, which became a foundational element of modern telecommunication network studies.
Life
Erlang was born at Lønborg, near Tarm, in Jutland. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and a descendant of Thomas Fincke on his mother's side. At age 14, he passed the Preliminary Examination of the University of Copenhagen with distinction, after receiving dispensation to take it because he was younger than the usual minimum age. For the next two years he taught alongside his father.
A distant relative provided free board and lodging, and Erlang prepared for and took the University of Copenhagen entrance examination in 1896, and passed with distinction. He won a scholarship to the University and majored in mathematics, and also studied astronomy, physics and chemistry. He graduated in 1901 with an MA and over the next 7 years taught at several schools. He maintained his interest in mathematics, and received an award for a paper that he submitted to the University of Copenhagen.
He was a member of the Danish Mathematicians' Association (DMF) and through this met amateur mathematician Johan Jensen, the Chief Engineer of the Copenhagen Telephone Company (KTAS in Danish), an offshoot of the International Bell Telephone Company. Erlang worked for the Copenhagen Telephone Company from 1908 for almost 20 years, until his death in Copenhagen after an abdominal operation.
He was an associate of the British Institution of Electrical Engineers.
Contributions
While working for the CTC, Erlang was presented with the classic problem of determining how many circuits were needed to provide an acceptable telephone service. His thinking went further by finding how many telephone operators were needed to handle a given volume of calls. Most telephone exchanges then used human operators and cord boards to switch telephone calls by means of jack plugs.
Out of necessity, Erlang was a hands-on researcher. He would conduct measurements and was prepared to climb into street manholes to do so. He was also an expert in the history and calculation of the numerical tables of mathematical functions, particularly logarithms. He devised new calculation methods for certain forms of tables.
He developed his theory of telephone traffic over several years. His significant publications include:
1909 – "The Theory of Probabilities and Telephone Conversations", which proves that the Poisson distribution applies to random telephone traffic.
1917 – "Solution of some Problems in the Theory of Probabilities of Significance in Automatic Telephone Exchanges", which contains his classic formulae for call loss and waiting time.
1920 - "Telephone waiting times", which is Erlang's principal work on waiting times, assuming constant holding times.
These and other notable papers were translated into English, French and German. His papers were prepared in a very brief style and can be difficult to understand without a background in the field. One Bell Telephone Laboratories researcher is said to have learned Danish to study them.
The British Post Office accepted his formula as the basis for calculating circuit facilities.
In 1946, the CCITT named the international unit of telephone traffic the "erlang". A statistical distribution and programming language listed below have also been named in his honour.
Erlang also made an important contribution to physiologic modeling with the
Krogh-Erlang capillary cylinder model describing oxygen supply to living tissue.
See also
Erlang – a unit of communication activity
Erlang distribution – a statistical probability distribution
Erlang programming language – developed by Ericsson for large industrial real-time systems
Queueing theory
Teletraffic engineering
References
20th-century Danish mathematicians
20th-century Danish engineers
Electrical engineers
Queueing theorists
Danish statisticians
Danish business theorists
1878 births
1929 deaths
People from Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality
Danish civil engineers
University of Copenhagen alumni
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AMOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language for the Amiga computer. Following on from the successful STOS BASIC for the Atari ST, AMOS BASIC was written for the Amiga by François Lionet with Constantin Sotiropoulos and published by Europress Software in 1990.
History
AMOS competed on the Amiga platform with Acid Software's Blitz BASIC. Both BASICs differed from other dialects on different platforms, in that they allowed the easy creation of fairly demanding multimedia software, with full structured code and many high-level functions to load images, animations, sounds and display them in various ways.
The original AMOS was a BASIC interpreter which, whilst working fine, suffered the same disadvantages of any language being run interpretively. By all accounts, AMOS was extremely fast among interpreted languages, being speedy enough that an extension called AMOS 3D could produce playable 3D games even on plain 7 MHz 68000 Amigas. Later, an AMOS compiler was developed that further increased speed. AMOS could also run MC68000 machine code, loaded into a program's memory banks.
To simplify animation of sprites, AMOS included the AMOS Animation Language (AMAL), a compiled sprite scripting language which runs independently of the main AMOS BASIC program. It was also possible to control screen and "rainbow" effects using AMAL scripts. AMAL scripts in effect created CopperLists, small routines executed by the Amiga's Agnus chip.
After the original version of AMOS, Europress released a compiler (AMOS Compiler), and two other versions of the language: Easy AMOS, a simpler version for beginners, and AMOS Professional, a more advanced version with added features, such as a better integrated development environment, ARexx support, a new user interface API and new flow control constructs. Neither of these new versions was significantly more popular than the original AMOS.
AMOS was used mostly to make multimedia software, video games (platformers and graphical adventures) and educational software.
The language was mildly successful within the Amiga community. Its ease of use made it especially attractive to beginners.
Perhaps AMOS BASIC's biggest disadvantage, stemming from its Atari ST lineage, was its incompatibility with the Amiga's operating system functions and interfaces. Instead, AMOS BASIC controlled the computer directly, which caused programs written in it to have a non-standard user interface, and also caused compatibility problems with newer versions of hardware.
Today, the language has declined in popularity along with the Amiga computer for which it was written. Despite this, a small community of enthusiasts are still using it. The source code to AMOS was released around 2001 under a BSD style license by Clickteam, a company that includes the original programmer.
Software
Software written using AMOS BASIC includes:
Miggybyte
Scorched Tanks
Games by Vulcan Software, amongst which was the Valhalla trilogy
Amiga version of Ultimate Domain (called Genesia) by Microïds
Flight of the Amazon Queen, by Interactive Binary Illusions
Extreme Violence, included on an Amiga Power cover disk
Jetstrike, a commercial game by Rasputin Software
Black Dawn, a 1993 game for the Amiga personal computer
References
External links
Source code for AMOS Professional 68000 ASM from pianetaamiga.it (archived, ZIP)
Source code for AMOS and STOS 68000 ASM from clickteam.com (archived, ZIP)
The AMOS Factory (an AMOS support/community site)
Amigacoding website (contains in-depth info and references for AMOS - Archived version 22 Sep 2015)
History of STOS and AMOS: how they came to be published in the UK
Amos Professional group on Facebook (one of the members is AMOS' original developer François Lionet)
BASIC programming language family
Video game development software
Amiga development software
Software using the BSD license
Programming languages created in 1990
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Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by grievances, notoriety, financial, military, political or other motives. Many times governments, corporations, organized crime or their agents order assassinations. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman.
Etymology
The word assassin may be derived from the Arabic asasiyyin (أَسَاسِيِّين, ʾasāsiyyīn) from أَسَاس (ʾasās, "foundation, basis") + ـِيّ (-iyy), meaning "people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]."
Assassin is often believed to derive from the word hashshashin (), and shares its etymological roots with hashish ( or ; from ). It referred to a group of Nizari Ismailis known as the Order of Assassins who worked against various political targets.
Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the Near East from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and later expanded into a de facto state by acquiring or building many scattered strongholds. The group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons.
Although it is commonly believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.
The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).
Use in history
Ancient to medieval times
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics. It dates back at least as far as recorded history.
The Egyptian pharaoh Teti, of the Old Kingdom Sixth Dynasty (23rd century BCE), is thought to be the earliest known victim of assassination, though written records are scant and thus evidence is circumstantial. Two further ancient Egyptian monarchs are more explicitly recorded to have been assassinated; Amenemhat I of the Middle Kingdom Twelfth Dynasty (20th century BCE) is recorded to have been assassinated in his bed by his palace guards for reasons unknown (as related in the Instructions of Amenemhat); meanwhile contemporary judicial records relate the assassination of New Kingdom Twentieth Dynasty monarch Ramesses III in 1155 BCE as part of a failed coup attempt. Between 550 BC and 330 BC, seven Persian kings of Achaemenid Dynasty were murdered. The Art of War, a 5th-century BC Chinese military treatise mentions tactics of Assassination and its merits.
In the Old Testament, King Joash of Judah was assassinated by his own servants; Joab assassinated Absalom, King David's son; and King Sennacherib of Assyria was assassinated by his own sons.
Chanakya (–283 BC) wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra. His student Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire, later made use of assassinations against some of his enemies.
Some famous assassination victims are Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman dictator Julius Caesar (44 BC). Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later. Three successive Rashidun caliphs (Umar, Uthman Ibn Affan, and Ali ibn Abi Talib) were assassinated in early civil conflicts between Muslims. The practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC. Whilst many assassinations were performed by individuals or small groups, there were also specialized units who used a collective group of people to perform more than one assassination. The earliest were the sicarii in 6 AD, who predated the Middle Eastern Assassins and Japanese shinobis by centuries.
In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Strangling in the bathtub was the most commonly used method. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe.
Modern history
During the 16th and 17th centuries, international lawyers began to voice condemnation of assassinations of leaders. Balthazar Ayala has been described as "the first prominent jurist to condemn the use of assassination in foreign policy". Alberico Gentili condemned assassinations in a 1598 publication where he appealed to the self-interest of leaders: (i) assassinations had adverse short-term consequences by arousing the ire of the assassinated leader's successor, and (ii) assassinations had the adverse long-term consequences of causing disorder and chaos. Hugo Grotius's works on the law of war strictly forbade assassinations, arguing that killing was only permissible on the battlefield. In the modern world, the killing of important people began to become more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves and was also used for political symbolism, such as in the propaganda of the deed.
In Japan, a group of assassins called the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu killed a number of people, including Ii Naosuke who was the head of administration for the Tokugawa shogunate, during the Boshin War. Most of the assassinations in Japan were committed with bladed weaponry, a trait that was carried on into modern history. A video-record exists of the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, using a sword.
In 1895, a group of Japanese assassins killed the Korean queen (and posthumously empress) Myeongseong.
In the United States, within 100 years, four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—died at the hands of assassins. There have been at least 20 known attempts on U.S. presidents' lives.
In Austria, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, carried out by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. He is blamed for igniting World War I. Reinhard Heydrich died after an attack by British-trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the United States to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by plane.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia. India's "Father of the Nation", Mahatma Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse.
The African-American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel (now the National Civil Rights Museum) in Memphis, Tennessee. Three years prior, another African-American civil rights activist, Malcolm X, was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.
Cold War and beyond
Most major powers repudiated Cold War assassination tactics, but many allege that was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, the U.S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of engaging in such operations. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new Islamic government of Iran began an international campaign of assassination that lasted into the 1990s. At least 162 killings in 19 countries have been linked to the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The campaign came to an end after the Mykonos restaurant assassinations because a German court publicly implicated senior members of the government and issued arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the head of Iranian intelligence. Evidence indicates that Fallahian's personal involvement and individual responsibility for the murders were far more pervasive than his current indictment record represents.
In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom was related to Mahatma Gandhi, who had himself been assassinated in 1948), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991 in what were linked to separatist movements in Punjab and northern Sri Lanka, respectively.
In 1994, the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira during the Rwandan Civil War sparked the Rwandan genocide.
In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, who opposed the Oslo Accords. In Lebanon, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, prompted an investigation by the United Nations. The suggestion in the resulting Mehlis report that there was involvement by Syria prompted the Cedar Revolution, which drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
United States government killing of citizens
In 2010, The New York Times revealed the existence of a hit list made by the Obama administration. It included at least three Americans to be killed without any kind of court oversight and no trial, against the background of the War on Terror. Officials of the government proposed who to kill and the president decided who was going to get killed. In September 2011, American citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were assassinated by the United States government with drone strikes. Two weeks later, Awlaki's 16-year-old son was also killed.
Further motivations
As a military and foreign policy doctrine
Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused: Sun Tzu, writing around 500 BC, argued in favor of using assassination in his book The Art of War. Nearly 2000 years later, in his book The Prince, Machiavelli also advises rulers to assassinate enemies whenever possible to prevent them from posing a threat. An army and even a nation might be based upon and around a particularly strong, canny, or charismatic leader, whose loss could paralyze the ability of both to make war.
For similar and additional reasons, assassination has also sometimes been used in the conduct of foreign policy. The costs and benefits of such actions are difficult to compute. It may not be clear whether the assassinated leader gets replaced with a more or less competent successor, whether the assassination provokes ire in the state in question, whether the assassination leads to souring domestic public opinion, and whether the assassination provokes condemnation from third-parties. One study found that perceptual biases held by leaders often negatively affect decision making in that area, and decisions to go forward with assassinations often reflect the vague hope that any successor might be better.
In both military and foreign policy assassinations, there is the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader, or that such a killing (or a failed attempt) will prompt the masses to contemn the killers and support the leader's cause more strongly. Faced with particularly brilliant leaders, that possibility has in various instances been risked, such as in the attempts to kill the Athenian Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War. A number of additional examples from World War II show how assassination was used as a tool:
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague on May 27, 1942, by the British and Czechoslovak government-in-exile. That case illustrates the difficulty of comparing the benefits of a foreign policy goal (strengthening the legitimacy and influence of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London) against the possible costs resulting from an assassination (the Lidice massacre).
The American interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plane during World War II after his travel route had been decrypted.
Operation Gaff was a planned British commando raid to capture or kill the German field marshal Erwin Rommel, also known as "The Desert Fox".
Use of assassination has continued in more recent conflicts:
During the Vietnam War, the US engaged in the Phoenix Program to assassinate Viet Cong leaders and sympathizers. It killed between 6,000 and 41,000 people, with official "targets" of 1,800 per month.
With the January 3, 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike, the US assassinated the commander of Iran's Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani and the commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with eight other high-ranking military personnel. The assassination of the military leaders was part of escalating tensions between the US and Iran and the American-led intervention in Iraq.
As a tool of insurgents
Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups: the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.
The Irish Republican Army guerrillas in 1919 to 1921 killed many Royal Irish Constabulary Police intelligence officers during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins set up a special unit, the Squad, for that purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the killing of 14 British agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday in 1920.
The tactic was used again by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969–1998). Assassination of unionist politicians and activists was one of a number of methods used in the Provisional IRA campaign 1969–1997. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Conservative Party Conference in a Brighton hotel. Loyalist paramilitaries retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating Irish nationalist politicians.
Basque separatists ETA in Spain assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably the president of the government of Spain, Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero-Blanco Grandee of Spain, in 1973. In the early 1990s, it also began to target academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with it.
The Red Brigades in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures and, to a lesser extent, so did the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and the 1980s.
In the Vietnam War, communist insurgents routinely assassinated government officials and individual civilians deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the Ngo Dinh Diem regime to collapse before the US intervened.
Psychology
A major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that most prospective assassins spend copious amounts of time planning and preparing for their attempts. Assassinations are thus rarely "impulsive" actions.
However, about 25% of the actual attackers were found to be delusional, a figure that rose to 60% with "near-lethal approachers" (people apprehended before reaching their targets). That shows that while mental instability plays a role in many modern assassinations, the more delusional attackers are less likely to succeed in their attempts. The report also found that around two-thirds of attackers had previously been arrested, not necessarily for related offenses; 44% had a history of serious depression, and 39% had a history of substance abuse.
Techniques
Modern methods
With the advent of effective ranged weaponry and later firearms, the position of an assassination target was more precarious. Bodyguards were no longer enough to deter determined killers, who no longer needed to engage directly or even to subvert the guard to kill the leader in question. Moreover, the engagement of targets at greater distances dramatically increased the chances for assassins to survive since they could quickly flee the scene. The first heads of government to be assassinated with a firearm were James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, the regent of Scotland, in 1570, and William the Silent, the Prince of Orange of the Netherlands, in 1584. Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch.
Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered land mines also used, especially in the Middle East and the Balkans; the initial attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's life was with a grenade. With heavy weapons, the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) has become a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), and Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles, as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.
A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations; however, certain pragmatic difficulties attend long-range shooting, including finding a hidden shooting position with a clear line of sight, detailed advance knowledge of the intended victim's travel plans, the ability to identify the target at long range, and the ability to score a first-round lethal hit at long range, which is usually measured in hundreds of meters. A dedicated sniper rifle is also expensive, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and handfinishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.
Despite their comparative disadvantages, handguns are more easily concealable and so are much more commonly used than rifles. Of the 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, 15% used knives, and 8% explosives (the use of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).
In the case of state-sponsored assassination, poisoning can be more easily denied. Georgi Markov, a dissident from Bulgaria, was assassinated by ricin poisoning. A tiny pellet containing the poison was injected into his leg through a specially designed umbrella. Widespread allegations involving the Bulgarian government and the KGB have not led to any legal results. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was learned that the KGB had developed an umbrella that could inject ricin pellets into a victim, and two former KGB agents who defected stated that the agency assisted in the murder. The CIA made several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro; many of the schemes involving poisoning his cigars. In the late 1950s, the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky killed Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera with a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampule, making their deaths look like heart attacks. A 2006 case in the UK concerned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko who was given a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, possibly passed to him in aerosol form sprayed directly onto his food.
Targeted killing
Targeted killing is the intentional killing by a government or its agents of a civilian or "unlawful combatant" who is not in the government's custody. The target is a person asserted to be taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism, by bearing arms or otherwise, who has thereby lost the immunity from being targeted that he would otherwise have under the Third Geneva Convention. It is a different term and concept from that of "targeted violence", as used by specialists who study violence.
On the other hand, Gary D. Solis, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in his 2010 book The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War, wrote, "Assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts." The use of the term "assassination" is opposed, as it denotes murder (unlawful killing), but the terrorists are targeted in self-defense, which is thus viewed as a killing but not a crime (justifiable homicide). Abraham D. Sofaer, former federal judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote on the subject:
When people call a targeted killing an "assassination", they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States ... U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests... But killings in self-defense are no more "assassinations" in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition.
Author and former U.S. Army Captain Matthew J. Morgan argued that "there is a major difference between assassination and targeted killing... targeted killing [is] not synonymous with assassination. Assassination... constitutes an illegal killing." Similarly, Amos Guiora, a professor of law at the University of Utah, wrote, "Targeted killing is... not an assassination." Steve David, professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, wrote, "There are strong reasons to believe that the Israeli policy of targeted killing is not the same as assassination." Syracuse Law William Banks and GW Law Peter Raven-Hansen wrote, "Targeted killing of terrorists is... not unlawful and would not constitute assassination." Rory Miller writes: "Targeted killing... is not 'assassination. Eric Patterson and Teresa Casale wrote, "Perhaps most important is the legal distinction between targeted killing and assassination."
On the other hand, the American Civil Liberties Union also states on its website, "A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law, under which lethal force may be used outside armed conflict zones only as a last resort to prevent imminent threats, when non-lethal means are not available. Targeting people who are suspected of terrorism for execution, far from any war zone, turns the whole world into a battlefield."
Yael Stein, the research director of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, also stated in her article "By Any Name Illegal and Immoral: Response to 'Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing:
The argument that this policy affords the public a sense of revenge and retribution could serve to justify acts both illegal and immoral. Clearly, lawbreakers ought to be punished. Yet, no matter how horrific their deeds, as the targeting of Israeli civilians indeed is, they should be punished according to the law. David's arguments could, in principle, justify the abolition of formal legal systems altogether.
Targeted killing has become a frequent tactic of the United States and Israel in their fight against terrorism. The tactic can raise complex questions and lead to contentious disputes as to the legal basis for its application, who qualifies as an appropriate "hit list" target, and what circumstances must exist before the tactic may be used. Opinions range from people considering it a legal form of self-defense that decreases terrorism to people calling it an extrajudicial killing that lacks due process and leads to further violence. Methods used have included firing Hellfire missiles from Predator or Reaper drones (unmanned, remote-controlled planes), detonating a cell phone bomb, and long-range sniper shooting. Countries such as the US (in Pakistan and Yemen) and Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza) have used targeted killing to eliminate members of groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas. In early 2010, with President Obama's approval, Anwar al-Awlaki became the first US citizen to be publicly approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011.
United Nations investigator Ben Emmerson said that US drone strikes may have violated international humanitarian law. The Intercept reported, "Between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes [in northeastern Afghanistan] killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets."
Countermeasures
Early forms
One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins was employing bodyguards, who act as a shield for the potential target; keep a lookout for potential attackers, sometimes in advance, such as on a parade route; and putting themselves in harm's way, both by simple presence, showing that physical force is available to protect the target, and by shielding the target if any attack occurs. To neutralize an attacker, bodyguards are typically armed as much as legal and practical concerns permit.
Notable examples of bodyguards include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman Janissaries, but in both cases, the protectors sometimes became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage or killing the very leaders whom they were supposed to protect. The loyalty of individual bodyguards is an important question as well, especially for leaders who oversee states with strong ethnic or religious divisions. Failure to realize such divided loyalties allowed the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
The bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and it was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, which led assassins to attempt stealthy means, such as poison, whose risk was reduced by having another person taste the leader's food first.
Modern strategies
With the advent of gunpowder, ranged assassination via bombs or firearms became possible. One of the first reactions was simply to increase the guard, creating what at times might seem a small army trailing every leader. Another was to begin clearing large areas whenever a leader was present to the point that entire sections of a city might be shut down.
As the 20th century dawned, the prevalence and capability of assassins grew quickly, as did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions virtually invulnerable to small arms fire, smaller bombs and mines. Bulletproof vests also began to be used, but since they were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected, they tended to be worn only during high-profile public events, if at all.
Access to famous people also became more and more restricted; potential visitors would be forced through numerous different checks before being granted access to the official in question, and as communication became better and information technology more prevalent, it has become all but impossible for a would-be killer to get close enough to the personage at work or in private life to effect an attempt on their life, especially with the common use of metal and bomb detectors.
Most modern assassinations have been committed either during a public performance or during transport, both because of weaker security and security lapses, such as with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, or as part of a coup d'état in which security is either overwhelmed or completely removed, such as with Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
The methods used for protection by famous people have sometimes evoked negative reactions by the public, with some resenting the separation from their officials or major figures. One example might be traveling in a car protected by a bubble of clear bulletproof glass, such as the MRAP-like Popemobile of Pope John Paul II, built following an attempt at his life. Politicians often resent the need for separation and sometimes send their bodyguards away from them for personal or publicity reasons. US President William McKinley did so at the public reception in which he was assassinated.
Other potential targets go into seclusion and are rarely heard from or seen in public, such as writer Salman Rushdie. A related form of protection is the use of body doubles, people with similar builds to those they are expected to impersonate. These people are then made up and, in some cases, undergo plastic surgery to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high-risk situations. According to Joe R. Reeder, Under Secretary of the Army from 1993 to 1997, Fidel Castro used body doubles.
US Secret Service protective agents receive training in the psychology of assassins.
See also
Assassinations in fiction
Contract killing
History of assassination
Hitman
List of assassinated and executed heads of state and government
List of assassinations
List of assassinations by firearm
List of people who survived assassination attempts
List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots
Special Activities Center of the Central Intelligence Agency
Notes and references
Further reading
Ayton, Mel. Plotting to Kill the President: Assassination Attempts from Washington to Hoover (Potomac Books, 2017), United States
Review The Daily Telegraph, April 3, 2010.
External links
Notorious Assassinations – slideshow by Life magazine
CNN. "U.S. policy on assassinations" from CNN.com/Law Center, November 4, 2002. See also Ford's 1976 executive order. However, Executive Order 12333, which prohibited the CIA from assassinations, was relaxed by the George W. Bush administration.
(PDF)
Is the CIA Assassination Order of a US Citizen Legal? – video by Democracy Now!
Attacks by method
Killings by type
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Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite negative results. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records, such as in ancient Egypt and in the Bible, and remains widespread; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there were 283 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide . The term alcoholism was first coined in 1852, but alcoholism and alcoholic are stigmatizing and discourage seeking treatment, so clinical diagnostic terms such as alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependence are used instead.
Alcohol is addictive, and heavy long-term alcohol use results in many negative health and social consequences. It can damage all the organ systems, but especially affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system. Heavy alcohol usage can result in trouble sleeping, and severe cognitive issues like dementia, brain damage, or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. Physical effects include irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis, increased cancer risk, and severe withdrawal symptoms if stopped suddenly. These health effects can reduce life expectancy by 10 years. Drinking during pregnancy may harm the child's health, and drunk driving increases the risk of traffic accidents. Alcoholism is also associated with increases in violent and non-violent crime. While alcoholism directly resulted in 139,000 deaths in 2013, 3.3 million deaths may be attributable to alcohol.
The development of alcoholism is attributed to both environment and genetics equally. The use of alcohol to self-medicate stress or anxiety can turn into alcoholism. Someone with a parent or sibling with an alcohol use disorder is three to four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves, but only a minority of them do. Environmental factors include social, cultural and behavioral influences. High stress levels and anxiety, as well as alcohol's inexpensive cost and easy accessibility, increase the risk. People may continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal. After a person stops drinking alcohol, they may experience a low level of withdrawal lasting for months. Medically, alcoholism is considered both a physical and mental illness. Questionnaires are usually used to detect possible alcoholism. Further information is then collected to confirm the diagnosis.
Treatment of alcoholism may take several forms. Due to medical problems that can occur during withdrawal, alcohol cessation should be controlled carefully. One common method involves the use of benzodiazepine medications, such as diazepam. These can be taken while admitted to a health care institution or individually. The medications acamprosate or disulfiram may also be used to help prevent further drinking. Mental illness or other addictions may complicate treatment. Various individual or group therapy or support groups are used to attempt to keep a person from returning to alcoholism. Among them is the abstinence based mutual aid fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). A 2020 scientific review found that clinical interventions encouraging increased participation in AA (AA/twelve step facilitation (AA/TSF))—resulted in higher abstinence rates over other clinical interventions, and most studies in the review found that AA/TSF led to lower health costs.
Many terms, some slurs and some informal, have been used to refer to people affected by alcoholism such as tippler, drunkard, dipsomaniac and souse.
Signs and symptoms
The risk of alcohol dependence begins at low levels of drinking and increases directly with both the volume of alcohol consumed and a pattern of drinking larger amounts on an occasion, to the point of intoxication, which is sometimes called binge drinking.
Long-term misuse
Alcoholism is characterised by an increased tolerance to alcohol – which means that an individual can consume more alcohol – and physical dependence on alcohol, which makes it hard for an individual to control their consumption. The physical dependency caused by alcohol can lead to an affected individual having a very strong urge to drink alcohol. These characteristics play a role in decreasing the ability to stop drinking of an individual with an alcohol use disorder. Alcoholism can have adverse effects on mental health, contributing to psychiatric disorders and increasing the risk of suicide. A depressed mood is a common symptom of heavy alcohol drinkers.
Warning signs
Warning signs of alcoholism include the consumption of increasing amounts of alcohol and frequent intoxication, preoccupation with drinking to the exclusion of other activities, promises to quit drinking and failure to keep those promises, the inability to remember what was said or done while drinking (colloquially known as "blackouts"), personality changes associated with drinking, denial or the making of excuses for drinking, the refusal to admit excessive drinking, dysfunction or other problems at work or school, the loss of interest in personal appearance or hygiene, marital and economic problems, and the complaint of poor health, with loss of appetite, respiratory infections, or increased anxiety.
Physical
Short-term effects
Drinking enough to cause a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.03–0.12% typically causes an overall improvement in mood and possible euphoria (intense feelings of well-being and happiness), increased self-confidence and sociability, decreased anxiety, a flushed, red appearance in the face and impaired judgment and fine muscle coordination. A BAC of 0.09% to 0.25% causes lethargy, sedation, balance problems and blurred vision. A BAC of 0.18% to 0.30% causes profound confusion, impaired speech (e.g. slurred speech), staggering, dizziness and vomiting. A BAC from 0.25% to 0.40% causes stupor, unconsciousness, anterograde amnesia, vomiting (death may occur due to inhalation of vomit while unconscious) and respiratory depression (potentially life-threatening). A BAC from 0.35% to 0.80% causes a coma (unconsciousness), life-threatening respiratory depression and possibly fatal alcohol poisoning. With all alcoholic beverages, drinking while driving, operating an aircraft or heavy machinery increases the risk of an accident; many countries have penalties for drunk driving.
Long-term effects
Having more than one drink a day for women or two drinks for men increases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, and stroke. Risk is greater with binge drinking, which may also result in violence or accidents. About 3.3 million deaths (5.9% of all deaths) are believed to be due to alcohol each year. Alcoholism reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years and alcohol use is the third leading cause of early death in the United States. Long-term alcohol misuse can cause a number of physical symptoms, including cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, epilepsy, polyneuropathy, alcoholic dementia, heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, peptic ulcers and sexual dysfunction, and can eventually be fatal. Other physical effects include an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, malabsorption, alcoholic liver disease, and several cancers. Damage to the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system can occur from sustained alcohol consumption. A wide range of immunologic defects can result and there may be a generalized skeletal fragility, in addition to a recognized tendency to accidental injury, resulting in a propensity for bone fractures.
Women develop long-term complications of alcohol dependence more rapidly than do men, women also have a higher mortality rate from alcoholism than men. Examples of long-term complications include brain, heart, and liver damage and an increased risk of breast cancer. Additionally, heavy drinking over time has been found to have a negative effect on reproductive functioning in women. This results in reproductive dysfunction such as anovulation, decreased ovarian mass, problems or irregularity of the menstrual cycle, and early menopause. Alcoholic ketoacidosis can occur in individuals who chronically misuse alcohol and have a recent history of binge drinking. The amount of alcohol that can be biologically processed and its effects differ between sexes. Equal dosages of alcohol consumed by men and women generally result in women having higher blood alcohol concentrations (BACs), since women generally have a lower weight and higher percentage of body fat and therefore a lower volume of distribution for alcohol than men.
Psychiatric
Long-term misuse of alcohol can cause a wide range of mental health problems. Severe cognitive problems are common; approximately 10% of all dementia cases are related to alcohol consumption, making it the second leading cause of dementia. Excessive alcohol use causes damage to brain function, and psychological health can be increasingly affected over time. Social skills are significantly impaired in people with alcoholism due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. The social skills that are impaired by alcohol use disorder include impairments in perceiving facial emotions, prosody, perception problems, and theory of mind deficits; the ability to understand humor is also impaired in people who misuse alcohol. Psychiatric disorders are common in people with alcohol use disorders, with as many as 25% also having severe psychiatric disturbances. The most prevalent psychiatric symptoms are anxiety and depression disorders. Psychiatric symptoms usually initially worsen during alcohol withdrawal, but typically improve or disappear with continued abstinence. Psychosis, confusion, and organic brain syndrome may be caused by alcohol misuse, which can lead to a misdiagnosis such as schizophrenia. Panic disorder can develop or worsen as a direct result of long-term alcohol misuse.
The co-occurrence of major depressive disorder and alcoholism is well documented. Among those with comorbid occurrences, a distinction is commonly made between depressive episodes that remit with alcohol abstinence ("substance-induced"), and depressive episodes that are primary and do not remit with abstinence ("independent" episodes). Additional use of other drugs may increase the risk of depression. Psychiatric disorders differ depending on gender. Women who have alcohol-use disorders often have a co-occurring psychiatric diagnosis such as major depression, anxiety, panic disorder, bulimia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or borderline personality disorder. Men with alcohol-use disorders more often have a co-occurring diagnosis of narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, impulse disorders or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Women with alcohol use disorder are more likely to experience physical or sexual assault, abuse, and domestic violence than women in the general population, which can lead to higher instances of psychiatric disorders and greater dependence on alcohol.
Social effects
Serious social problems arise from alcohol use disorder; these dilemmas are caused by the pathological changes in the brain and the intoxicating effects of alcohol. Alcohol misuse is associated with an increased risk of committing criminal offences, including child abuse, domestic violence, rape, burglary and assault. Alcoholism is associated with loss of employment, which can lead to financial problems. Drinking at inappropriate times and behavior caused by reduced judgment can lead to legal consequences, such as criminal charges for drunk driving or public disorder, or civil penalties for tortious behavior. An alcoholic's behavior and mental impairment while drunk can profoundly affect those surrounding him and lead to isolation from family and friends. This isolation can lead to marital conflict and divorce, or contribute to domestic violence. Alcoholism can also lead to child neglect, with subsequent lasting damage to the emotional development of children of people with alcohol use disorders. For this reason, children of people with alcohol use disorders can develop a number of emotional problems. For example, they can become afraid of their parents, because of their unstable mood behaviors. They may develop shame over their inadequacy to liberate their parents from alcoholism and, as a result of this, may develop self-image problems, which can lead to depression.
Alcohol withdrawal
As with similar substances with a sedative-hypnotic mechanism, such as barbiturates and benzodiazepines, withdrawal from alcohol dependence can be fatal if it is not properly managed. Alcohol's primary effect is the increase in stimulation of the GABAA receptor, promoting central nervous system depression. With repeated heavy consumption of alcohol, these receptors are desensitized and reduced in number, resulting in tolerance and physical dependence. When alcohol consumption is stopped too abruptly, the person's nervous system experiences uncontrolled synapse firing. This can result in symptoms that include anxiety, life-threatening seizures, delirium tremens, hallucinations, shakes and possible heart failure. Other neurotransmitter systems are also involved, especially dopamine, NMDA and glutamate.
Severe acute withdrawal symptoms such as delirium tremens and seizures rarely occur after 1-week post cessation of alcohol. The acute withdrawal phase can be defined as lasting between one and three weeks. In the period of 3–6 weeks following cessation, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbance are common. Similar post-acute withdrawal symptoms have also been observed in animal models of alcohol dependence and withdrawal.
A kindling effect also occurs in people with alcohol use disorders whereby each subsequent withdrawal syndrome is more severe than the previous withdrawal episode; this is due to neuroadaptations which occur as a result of periods of abstinence followed by re-exposure to alcohol. Individuals who have had multiple withdrawal episodes are more likely to develop seizures and experience more severe anxiety during withdrawal from alcohol than alcohol-dependent individuals without a history of past alcohol withdrawal episodes. The kindling effect leads to persistent functional changes in brain neural circuits as well as to gene expression. Kindling also results in the intensification of psychological symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. There are decision tools and questionnaires that help guide physicians in evaluating alcohol withdrawal. For example, the CIWA-Ar objectifies alcohol withdrawal symptoms in order to guide therapy decisions which allows for an efficient interview while at the same time retaining clinical usefulness, validity, and reliability, ensuring proper care for withdrawal patients, who can be in danger of death.
Causes
A complex combination of genetic and environmental factors influences the risk of the development of alcoholism. Genes that influence the metabolism of alcohol also influence the risk of alcoholism, as can a family history of alcoholism. There is compelling evidence that alcohol use at an early age may influence the expression of genes which increase the risk of alcohol dependence. These genetic and epigenetic results are regarded as consistent with large longitudinal population studies finding that the younger the age of drinking onset, the greater the prevalence of lifetime alcohol dependence.
Severe childhood trauma is also associated with a general increase in the risk of drug dependency. Lack of peer and family support is associated with an increased risk of alcoholism developing. Genetics and adolescence are associated with an increased sensitivity to the neurotoxic effects of chronic alcohol misuse. Cortical degeneration due to the neurotoxic effects increases impulsive behaviour, which may contribute to the development, persistence and severity of alcohol use disorders. There is evidence that with abstinence, there is a reversal of at least some of the alcohol induced central nervous system damage. The use of cannabis was associated with later problems with alcohol use. Alcohol use was associated with an increased probability of later use of tobacco and illegal drugs such as cannabis.
Availability
Alcohol is the most available, widely consumed, and widely misused recreational drug. Beer alone is the world's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage; it is the third-most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is thought by some to be the oldest fermented beverage.
Gender difference
Based on combined data in the US from SAMHSA's 2004–2005 National Surveys on Drug Use & Health, the rate of past-year alcohol dependence or misuse among persons aged 12 or older varied by level of alcohol use: 44.7% of past month heavy drinkers, 18.5% binge drinkers, 3.8% past month non-binge drinkers, and 1.3% of those who did not drink alcohol in the past month met the criteria for alcohol dependence or misuse in the past year. Males had higher rates than females for all measures of drinking in the past month: any alcohol use (57.5% vs. 45%), binge drinking (30.8% vs. 15.1%), and heavy alcohol use (10.5% vs. 3.3%), and males were twice as likely as females to have met the criteria for alcohol dependence or misuse in the past year (10.5% vs. 5.1%).
Genetic variation
There are genetic variations that affect the risk for alcoholism. Some of these variations are more common in individuals with ancestry from certain areas; for example, Africa, East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The variants with strongest effect are in genes that encode the main enzymes of alcohol metabolism, ADH1B and ALDH2. These genetic factors influence the rate at which alcohol and its initial metabolic product, acetaldehyde, are metabolized. They are found at different frequencies in people from different parts of the world. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*2 causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol to acetaldehyde, and reduces risk for alcoholism; it is most common in individuals from East Asia and the Middle East. The alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH1B*3 also causes a more rapid metabolism of alcohol. The allele ADH1B*3 is only found in some individuals of African descent and certain Native American tribes. African Americans and Native Americans with this allele have a reduced risk of developing alcoholism. Native Americans, however, have a significantly higher rate of alcoholism than average; risk factors such as cultural environmental effects (e.g. trauma) have been proposed to explain the higher rates. The aldehyde dehydrogenase allele ALDH2*2 greatly reduces the rate at which acetaldehyde, the initial product of alcohol metabolism, is removed by conversion to acetate; it greatly reduces the risk for alcoholism.
A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 100,000 human individuals identified variants of the gene KLB, which encodes the transmembrane protein β-Klotho, as highly associated with alcohol consumption. The protein β-Klotho is an essential element in cell surface receptors for hormones involved in modulation of appetites for simple sugars and alcohol. Several large GWAS have found differences in the genetics of alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence, although the two are to some degree related.
DNA damage
Alcohol-induced DNA damage, when not properly repaired, may have a key role in the neurotoxicity induced by alcohol. Metabolic conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde can occur in the brain and the neurotoxic effects of ethanol appear to be associated with acetaldehyde induced DNA damages including DNA adducts and crosslinks. In addition to acetaldehyde, alcohol metabolism produces potentially genotoxic reactive oxygen species, which have been demonstrated to cause oxidative DNA damage.
Diagnosis
Definition
Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word alcoholism, it is not a recognized diagnosis, and the use of the term alcoholism is discouraged due to its heavily stigmatized connotations. It is classified as alcohol use disorder in the DSM-5 or alcohol dependence in the ICD-11. In 1979, the World Health Organization discouraged the use of alcoholism due to its inexact meaning, preferring alcohol dependence syndrome.
Misuse, problem use, abuse, and heavy use of alcohol refer to improper use of alcohol, which may cause physical, social, or moral harm to the drinker. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2005, defines "moderate use" as no more than two alcoholic beverages a day for men and no more than one alcoholic beverage a day for women. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines binge drinking as the amount of alcohol leading to a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08, which, for most adults, would be reached by consuming five drinks for men or four for women over a two-hour period. According to the NIAAA, men may be at risk for alcohol-related problems if their alcohol consumption exceeds 14 standard drinks per week or 4 drinks per day, and women may be at risk if they have more than 7 standard drinks per week or 3 drinks per day. It defines a standard drink as one 12-ounce bottle of beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Despite this risk, a 2014 report in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that only 10% of either "heavy drinkers" or "binge drinkers" defined according to the above criteria also met the criteria for alcohol dependence, while only 1.3% of non-binge drinkers met the criteria. An inference drawn from this study is that evidence-based policy strategies and clinical preventive services may effectively reduce binge drinking without requiring addiction treatment in most cases.
Alcoholism
The term alcoholism is commonly used amongst laypeople, but the word is poorly defined. Despite the imprecision inherent in the term, there have been attempts to define how the word alcoholism should be interpreted when encountered. In 1992, it was defined by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) and ASAM as "a primary, chronic disease characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking." MeSH has had an entry for alcoholism since 1999, and references the 1992 definition.
The WHO calls alcoholism "a term of long-standing use and variable meaning", and use of the term was disfavored by a 1979 WHO expert committee.
In professional and research contexts, the term alcoholism is not currently favored, but rather alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, or alcohol use disorder are used. Talbot (1989) observes that alcoholism in the classical disease model follows a progressive course: if people continue to drink, their condition will worsen. This will lead to harmful consequences in their lives, physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Johnson (1980) proposed that the emotional progression of the addicted people's response to alcohol has four phases. The first two are considered "normal" drinking and the last two are viewed as "typical" alcoholic drinking. Johnson's four phases consist of:
Learning the mood swing. People are introduced to alcohol (in some cultures this can happen at a relatively young age), and they enjoy the happy feeling it produces. At this stage, there is no emotional cost.
Seeking the mood swing. People will drink to regain that happy feeling in phase 1; the drinking will increase as more alcohol is required to achieve the same effect. Again at this stage, there are no significant consequences.
At the third stage there are physical and social consequences such as hangovers, family problems, and work problems. People will continue to drink excessively, disregarding the problems.
The fourth stage can be detrimental with a risk for premature death. People in this phase now drink to feel normal, they block out the feelings of overwhelming guilt, remorse, anxiety, and shame they experience when sober.
DSM and ICD
In the United States, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the most common diagnostic guide for substance use disorders, whereas most countries use the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) for diagnostic (and other) purposes. The two manuals use similar but not identical nomenclature to classify alcohol problems.
Social barriers
Attitudes and social stereotypes can create barriers to the detection and treatment of alcohol use disorder. This is more of a barrier for women than men. Fear of stigmatization may lead women to deny that they have a medical condition, to hide their drinking, and to drink alone. This pattern, in turn, leads family, physicians, and others to be less likely to suspect that a woman they know has alcohol use disorder. In contrast, reduced fear of stigma may lead men to admit that they are having a medical condition, to display their drinking publicly, and to drink in groups. This pattern, in turn, leads family, physicians, and others to be more likely to suspect that a man they know is someone with an alcohol use disorder.
Screening
Screening is recommended among those over the age of 18. Several tools may be used to detect a loss of control of alcohol use. These tools are mostly self-reports in questionnaire form. Another common theme is a score or tally that sums up the general severity of alcohol use.
The CAGE questionnaire, named for its four questions, is one such example that may be used to screen patients quickly in a doctor's office.
The CAGE questionnaire has demonstrated a high effectiveness in detecting alcohol-related problems; however, it has limitations in people with less severe alcohol-related problems, white women and college students.
Other tests are sometimes used for the detection of alcohol dependence, such as the Alcohol Dependence Data Questionnaire, which is a more sensitive diagnostic test than the CAGE questionnaire. It helps distinguish a diagnosis of alcohol dependence from one of heavy alcohol use. The Michigan Alcohol Screening Test (MAST) is a screening tool for alcoholism widely used by courts to determine the appropriate sentencing for people convicted of alcohol-related offenses, driving under the influence being the most common. The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), a screening questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization, is unique in that it has been validated in six countries and is used internationally. Like the CAGE questionnaire, it uses a simple set of questions – a high score earning a deeper investigation. The Paddington Alcohol Test (PAT) was designed to screen for alcohol-related problems amongst those attending Accident and Emergency departments. It concords well with the AUDIT questionnaire but is administered in a fifth of the time.
Urine and blood tests
There are reliable tests for the actual use of alcohol, one common test being that of blood alcohol content (BAC). These tests do not differentiate people with alcohol use disorders from people without; however, long-term heavy drinking does have a few recognizable effects on the body, including:
Macrocytosis (enlarged MCV)
Elevated GGT
Moderate elevation of AST and ALT and an AST: ALT ratio of 2:1
High carbohydrate deficient transferrin (CDT)
With regard to alcoholism, BAC is useful to judge alcohol tolerance, which in turn is a sign of alcoholism. Electrolyte and acid-base abnormalities including hypokalemia, hypomagnesemia, hyponatremia, hyperuricemia, metabolic acidosis, and respiratory alkalosis are common in people with alcohol use disorders.
However, none of these blood tests for biological markers is as sensitive as screening questionnaires.
Prevention
The World Health Organization, the European Union and other regional bodies, national governments and parliaments have formed alcohol policies in order to reduce the harm of alcoholism.
Increasing the age at which alcohol can be purchased, and banning or restricting alcohol beverage advertising are common methods to reduce alcohol use among adolescents and young adults in particular. Another common method of alcoholism prevention is taxation of alcohol products – increasing price of alcohol by 10% is linked with reduction of consumption of up to 10%.
Credible, evidence-based educational campaigns in the mass media about the consequences of alcohol misuse have been recommended. Guidelines for parents to prevent alcohol misuse amongst adolescents, and for helping young people with mental health problems have also been suggested.
Because alcohol is often used for self-medication of conditions like anxiety temporarily, prevention of alcoholism may be attempted by reducing the severity or prevalence of stress and anxiety in individuals.
Management
Treatments are varied because there are multiple perspectives of alcoholism. Those who approach alcoholism as a medical condition or disease recommend differing treatments from, for instance, those who approach the condition as one of social choice. Most treatments focus on helping people discontinue their alcohol intake, followed up with life training and/or social support to help them resist a return to alcohol use. Since alcoholism involves multiple factors which encourage a person to continue drinking, they must all be addressed to successfully prevent a relapse. An example of this kind of treatment is detoxification followed by a combination of supportive therapy, attendance at self-help groups, and ongoing development of coping mechanisms. Much of the treatment community for alcoholism supports an abstinence-based zero tolerance approach popularized by the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous; however, some prefer a harm-reduction approach.
Cessation of alcohol intake
Medical treatment for alcohol detoxification usually involves administration of a benzodiazepine, in order to ameliorate alcohol withdrawal syndrome's adverse impact. The addition of phenobarbital improves outcomes if benzodiazepine administration lacks the usual efficacy, and phenobarbital alone might be an effective treatment. Propofol also might enhance treatment for individuals showing limited therapeutic response to a benzodiazepine. Individuals who are only at risk of mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms can be treated as outpatients. Individuals at risk of a severe withdrawal syndrome as well as those who have significant or acute comorbid conditions can be treated as inpatients. Direct treatment can be followed by a treatment program for alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorder to attempt to reduce the risk of relapse. Experiences following alcohol withdrawal, such as depressed mood and anxiety, can take weeks or months to abate while other symptoms persist longer due to persisting neuroadaptations.
Psychological
Various forms of group therapy or psychotherapy are sometimes used to encourage and support abstinence from alcohol, or to reduce alcohol consumption to levels that are not associated with adverse outcomes. Mutual-aid group-counseling is an approach used to facilitate relapse prevention. Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the earliest organizations formed to provide mutual peer support and non-professional counseling, however the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous is disputed. A 2020 Cochrane review concluded that Twelve-Step Facilitation (TSF) probably achieves outcomes such as fewer drinks per drinking day, however evidence for such a conclusion comes from low to moderate certainty evidence "so should be regarded with caution". Others include LifeRing Secular Recovery, SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety, and Secular Organizations for Sobriety.
Manualized Twelve Step Facilitation (TSF) interventions (i.e. therapy which encourages active, long-term Alcoholics Anonymous participation) for Alcohol Use Disorder lead to higher abstinence rates, compared to other clinical interventions and to wait-list control groups.
Moderate drinking
Moderate drinking amongst people with alcohol dependence - often termed 'controlled drinking' - has been subject to significant controversy. Indeed much of the skepticism towards the viability of moderate drinking goals stems from historical ideas about 'alcoholism', now replaced with 'alcohol use disorder' or alcohol dependence in most scientific contexts. A 2021 meta-analysis and systematic review of controlled drinking covering 22 studies concluded controlled drinking was a 'non-inferior' outcome to abstinence for many drinkers.
Rationing and moderation programs such as Moderation Management and DrinkWise do not mandate complete abstinence. While most people with alcohol use disorders are unable to limit their drinking in this way, some return to moderate drinking. A 2002 US study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) showed that 17.7% of individuals diagnosed as alcohol dependent more than one year prior returned to low-risk drinking. This group, however, showed fewer initial symptoms of dependency.
A follow-up study, using the same subjects that were judged to be in remission in 2001–2002, examined the rates of return to problem drinking in 2004–2005. The study found abstinence from alcohol was the most stable form of remission for recovering alcoholics. There was also a 1973 study showing chronic alcoholics drinking moderately again, but a 1982 follow-up showed that 95% of subjects were not able to maintain drinking in moderation over the long term. Another study was a long-term (60 year) follow-up of two groups of alcoholic men which concluded that "return to controlled drinking rarely persisted for much more than a decade without relapse or evolution into abstinence." Internet based measures appear to be useful at least in the short term.
Medications
In the United States there are four approved medications for alcoholism: acamprosate, two methods of using naltrexone and disulfiram.
Acamprosate may stabilise the brain chemistry that is altered due to alcohol dependence via antagonising the actions of glutamate, a neurotransmitter which is hyperactive in the post-withdrawal phase. By reducing excessive NMDA activity which occurs at the onset of alcohol withdrawal, acamprosate can reduce or prevent alcohol withdrawal related neurotoxicity. Acamprosate reduces the risk of relapse amongst alcohol-dependent persons.
Naltrexone is a competitive antagonist for opioid receptors, effectively blocking the effects of endorphins and opioids. Naltrexone is used to decrease cravings for alcohol and encourage abstinence. Alcohol causes the body to release endorphins, which in turn release dopamine and activate the reward pathways; hence in the body Naltrexone reduces the pleasurable effects from consuming alcohol. Evidence supports a reduced risk of relapse among alcohol-dependent persons and a decrease in excessive drinking. Nalmefene also appears effective and works in a similar manner.
Disulfiram prevents the elimination of acetaldehyde, a chemical the body produces when breaking down ethanol. Acetaldehyde itself is the cause of many hangover symptoms from alcohol use. The overall effect is discomfort when alcohol is ingested: an extremely rapid and long-lasting, uncomfortable hangover.
Several other drugs are also used and many are under investigation.
Benzodiazepines, while useful in the management of acute alcohol withdrawal, if used long-term can cause a worse outcome in alcoholism. Alcoholics on chronic benzodiazepines have a lower rate of achieving abstinence from alcohol than those not taking benzodiazepines. This class of drugs is commonly prescribed to alcoholics for insomnia or anxiety management. Initiating prescriptions of benzodiazepines or sedative-hypnotics in individuals in recovery has a high rate of relapse with one author reporting more than a quarter of people relapsed after being prescribed sedative-hypnotics. Those who are long-term users of benzodiazepines should not be withdrawn rapidly, as severe anxiety and panic may develop, which are known risk factors for alcohol use disorder relapse. Taper regimes of 6–12 months have been found to be the most successful, with reduced intensity of withdrawal.
Calcium carbimide works in the same way as disulfiram; it has an advantage in that the occasional adverse effects of disulfiram, hepatotoxicity and drowsiness, do not occur with calcium carbimide.
Ondansetron and topiramate are supported by tentative evidence in people with certain genetic patterns. Evidence for ondansetron is stronger in people who have recently started to abuse alcohol. Topiramate is a derivative of the naturally occurring sugar monosaccharide D-fructose. Review articles characterize topiramate as showing "encouraging", "promising", "efficacious", and "insufficient" results in the treatment of alcohol use disorders.
Evidence does not support the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), antipsychotics, or gabapentin.
Research
Topiramate, a derivative of the naturally occurring sugar monosaccharide D-fructose, has been found effective in helping alcoholics quit or cut back on the amount they drink. Evidence suggests that topiramate antagonizes excitatory glutamate receptors, inhibits dopamine release, and enhances inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid function. A 2008 review of the effectiveness of topiramate concluded that the results of published trials are promising, however as of 2008, data was insufficient to support using topiramate in conjunction with brief weekly compliance counseling as a first-line agent for alcohol dependence. A 2010 review found that topiramate may be superior to existing alcohol pharmacotherapeutic options. Topiramate effectively reduces craving and alcohol withdrawal severity as well as improving quality-of-life-ratings.
Baclofen, a GABAB receptor agonist, is under study for the treatment of alcoholism. According to a 2017 Cochrane Systematic Review, there is insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness or safety for the use of baclofen for withdrawal symptoms in alcoholism. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is under study for the treatment of patients with alcohol use disorder.
Dual addictions and dependencies
Alcoholics may also require treatment for other psychotropic drug addictions and drug dependencies. The most common dual dependence syndrome with alcohol dependence is benzodiazepine dependence, with studies showing 10–20% of alcohol-dependent individuals had problems of dependence and/or misuse problems of benzodiazepine drugs such as diazepam or clonazepam. These drugs are, like alcohol, depressants. Benzodiazepines may be used legally, if they are prescribed by doctors for anxiety problems or other mood disorders, or they may be purchased as illegal drugs. Benzodiazepine use increases cravings for alcohol and the volume of alcohol consumed by problem drinkers. Benzodiazepine dependency requires careful reduction in dosage to avoid benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome and other health consequences. Dependence on other sedative-hypnotics such as zolpidem and zopiclone as well as opiates and illegal drugs is common in alcoholics. Alcohol itself is a sedative-hypnotic and is cross-tolerant with other sedative-hypnotics such as barbiturates, benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines. Dependence upon and withdrawal from sedative-hypnotics can be medically severe and, as with alcohol withdrawal, there is a risk of psychosis or seizures if not properly managed.
Epidemiology
The World Health Organization estimates that there are about 380 million people with alcoholism worldwide (5.1% of the population over 15 years of age), with it being most common among males and young adults. Geographically, it is least common in Africa (1.1% of the population) and has the highest rates in Eastern Europe (11%).
in the United States, about 17 million (7%) of adults and 0.7 million (2.8%) of those age 12 to 17 years of age are affected. About 12% of American adults have had an alcohol dependence problem at some time in their life.
In the United States and Western Europe, 10–20% of men and 5–10% of women at some point in their lives will meet criteria for alcoholism. In England, the number of "dependent drinkers" was calculated as over 600,000 in 2019. Estonia had the highest death rate from alcohol in Europe in 2015 at 8.8 per 100,000 population. In the United States, 30% of people admitted to hospital have a problem related to alcohol.
Within the medical and scientific communities, there is a broad consensus regarding alcoholism as a disease state. For example, the American Medical Association considers alcohol a drug and states that "drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite often devastating consequences. It results from a complex interplay of biological vulnerability, environmental exposure, and developmental factors (e.g., stage of brain maturity)." Alcoholism has a higher prevalence among men, though, in recent decades, the proportion of female alcoholics has increased. Current evidence indicates that in both men and women, alcoholism is 50–60% genetically determined, leaving 40–50% for environmental influences. Most alcoholics develop alcoholism during adolescence or young adulthood.
Prognosis
Alcoholism often reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years. The most common cause of death in alcoholics is from cardiovascular complications. There is a high rate of suicide in chronic alcoholics, which increases the longer a person drinks. Approximately 3–15% of alcoholics die by suicide, and research has found that over 50% of all suicides are associated with alcohol or drug dependence. This is believed to be due to alcohol causing physiological distortion of brain chemistry, as well as social isolation. Suicide is also very common in adolescent alcohol abusers, with 25% of suicides in adolescents being related to alcohol abuse. Among those with alcohol dependence after one year, some met the criteria for low-risk drinking, even though only 26% of the group received any treatment, with the breakdown as follows: 25% were found to be still dependent, 27% were in partial remission (some symptoms persist), 12% asymptomatic drinkers (consumption increases chances of relapse) and 36% were fully recovered – made up of 18% low-risk drinkers plus 18% abstainers. In contrast, however, the results of a long-term (60-year) follow-up of two groups of alcoholic men indicated that "return to controlled drinking rarely persisted for much more than a decade without relapse or evolution into abstinence....return-to-controlled drinking, as reported in short-term studies, is often a mirage."
History
Historically the name dipsomania was coined by German physician C. W. Hufeland in 1819 before it was superseded by alcoholism. That term now has a more specific meaning. The term alcoholism was first used by Swedish physician Magnus Huss in an 1852 publication to describe the systemic adverse effects of alcohol.
Alcohol has a long history of use and misuse throughout recorded history. Biblical, Egyptian and Babylonian sources record the history of abuse and dependence on alcohol. In some ancient cultures alcohol was worshiped and in others, its misuse was condemned. Excessive alcohol misuse and drunkenness were recognized as causing social problems even thousands of years ago. However, the defining of habitual drunkenness as it was then known as and its adverse consequences were not well established medically until the 18th century. In 1647 a Greek monk named Agapios was the first to document that chronic alcohol misuse was associated with toxicity to the nervous system and body which resulted in a range of medical disorders such as seizures, paralysis, and internal bleeding. In the 1910s and 1920s, the effects of alcohol misuse and chronic drunkenness boosted membership of the temperance movement and led to the prohibition of alcohol in many Western countries, nationwide bans on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages that generally remained in place until the late 1920s or early 1930s; these policies resulted in the decline of death rates from cirrhosis and alcoholism. In 2005, alcohol dependence and misuse was estimated to cost the US economy approximately 220 billion dollars per year, more than cancer and obesity.
Society and culture
The various health problems associated with long-term alcohol consumption are generally perceived as detrimental to society; for example, money due to lost labor-hours, medical costs due to injuries due to drunkenness and organ damage from long-term use, and secondary treatment costs, such as the costs of rehabilitation facilities and detoxification centers. Alcohol use is a major contributing factor for head injuries, motor vehicle injuries (27%), interpersonal violence (18%), suicides (18%), and epilepsy (13%). Beyond the financial costs that alcohol consumption imposes, there are also significant social costs to both the alcoholic and their family and friends. For instance, alcohol consumption by a pregnant woman can lead to an incurable and damaging condition known as fetal alcohol syndrome, which often results in cognitive deficits, mental health problems, an inability to live independently and an increased risk of criminal behaviour, all of which can cause emotional stress for parents and caregivers. Estimates of the economic costs of alcohol misuse, collected by the World Health Organization, vary from 1–6% of a country's GDP. One Australian estimate pegged alcohol's social costs at 24% of all drug misuse costs; a similar Canadian study concluded alcohol's share was 41%. One study quantified the cost to the UK of all forms of alcohol misuse in 2001 as £18.5–20 billion. All economic costs in the United States in 2006 have been estimated at $223.5 billion.
The idea of hitting rock bottom refers to an experience of stress that can be attributed to alcohol misuse. There is no single definition for this idea, and people may identify their own lowest points in terms of lost jobs, lost relationships, health problems, legal problems, or other consequences of alcohol misuse. The concept is promoted by 12-step recovery groups and researchers using the transtheoretical model of motivation for behavior change. The first use of this slang phrase in the formal medical literature appeared in a 1965 review in the British Medical Journal, which said that some men refused treatment until they "hit rock bottom", but that treatment was generally more successful for "the alcohol addict who has friends and family to support him" than for impoverished and homeless addicts.
Stereotypes of alcoholics are often found in fiction and popular culture. The "town drunk" is a stock character in Western popular culture. Stereotypes of drunkenness may be based on racism or xenophobia, as in the fictional depiction of the Irish as heavy drinkers. Studies by social psychologists Stivers and Greeley attempt to document the perceived prevalence of high alcohol consumption amongst the Irish in America. Alcohol consumption is relatively similar between many European cultures, the United States, and Australia. In Asian countries that have a high gross domestic product, there is heightened drinking compared to other Asian countries, but it is nowhere near as high as it is in other countries like the United States. It is also inversely seen, with countries that have very low gross domestic product showing high alcohol consumption. In a study done on Korean immigrants in Canada, they reported alcohol was typically an integral part of their meal but is the only time solo drinking should occur. They also generally believe alcohol is necessary at any social event, as it helps conversations start.
Peyote, a psychoactive agent, has even shown promise in treating alcoholism. Alcohol had actually replaced peyote as Native Americans' psychoactive agent of choice in rituals when peyote was outlawed.
See also
Addictive personality
Alcohol-related traffic crashes in the United States
Alcoholism in family systems
Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism
CRAFFT Screening Test
Disulfiram-like drug
High-functioning alcoholic
Holiday heart syndrome
List of countries by alcohol consumption
Notes
References
External links
Articles containing video clips
Drinking culture
Substance dependence
Substance-related disorders
Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate
Wikipedia neurology articles ready to translate
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Abstraction is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal (real or concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstraction" is the outcome of this process—a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group, field, or category.
Conceptual abstractions may be formed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only those aspects which are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, excluding but not eliminating the other phenomenal and cognitive characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction, a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball').
Abstraction in its secondary use is a material process, discussed in the themes below.
Origins
Thinking in abstractions is considered by anthropologists, archaeologists, and sociologists to be one of the key traits in modern human behaviour, which is believed to have developed between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its development is likely to have been closely connected with the development of human language, which (whether spoken or written) appears to both involve and facilitate abstract thinking.
History
Abstraction involves induction of ideas or the synthesis of particular facts into one general theory about something. It is the opposite of specification, which is the analysis or breaking-down of a general idea or abstraction into concrete facts. Abstraction can be illustrated by Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620), a book of modern scientific philosophy written in the late Jacobean era of England to encourage modern thinkers to collect specific facts before making any generalizations.
Bacon used and promoted induction as an abstraction tool; it complemented but was distinct from the ancient deductive-thinking approach that had dominated the intellectual world since the times of Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, and Aristotle. Thales (–546 BCE) believed that everything in the universe comes from one main substance, water. He deduced or specified from a general idea, "everything is water," to the specific forms of water such as ice, snow, fog, and rivers.
Modern scientists used the approach of abstraction (going from particular facts collected into one general idea). Newton (1642–1727) derived the motion of the planets from Copernicus' (1473–1543) simplification, that the sun is the center of our solar system; Kepler (1571–1630) compressed thousands of measurements into one expression to finally conclude that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit about the sun; Galileo (1564–1642) repeated one hundred specific experiments into the law of falling bodies.
Themes
Compression
An abstraction can be seen as a compression process, mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data; based on similarities in the constituent data, for example, many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT". This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from the distinction between "abstract" and "concrete". In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects, and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object).
For example, picture 1 below illustrates the concrete relationship "Cat sits on Mat".
Chains of abstractions can be construed, moving from neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic abstractions such as color or shape, to experiential abstractions such as a specific cat, to semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT, to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as "object" as opposed to "action".
For example, graph 1 below expresses the abstraction "agent sits on location". This conceptual scheme entails no specific hierarchical taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive exclusion of detail.
Instantiation
Non-existent things in any particular place and time are often seen as abstract. By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times.
Those abstract things are then said to be multiply instantiated, in the sense of picture 1, picture 2, etc., shown below. It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation. Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of the concept "cat" or the concept "telephone". Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions, they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 below. We might look at other graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal, and see that animal is more abstract than mammal; but on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme.
Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars—e.g., the particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular. This is similar to qualia and sumbebekos.
Material process
Still retaining the primary meaning of '' or 'to draw away from', the abstraction of money, for example, works by drawing away from the particular value of things allowing completely incommensurate objects to be compared (see the section on 'Physicality' below). Karl Marx's writing on the commodity abstraction recognizes a parallel process.
The state (polity) as both concept and material practice exemplifies the two sides of this process of abstraction. Conceptually, 'the current concept of the state is an abstraction from the much more concrete early-modern use as the standing or status of the prince, his visible estates'. At the same time, materially, the 'practice of statehood is now constitutively and materially more abstract than at the time when princes ruled as the embodiment of extended power'.
Ontological status
The way that physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being, for example the way the concrete, particular, individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist. That difference accounts for the ontological usefulness of the word "abstract". The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times.
Abstraction this, abstraction
Physicality
A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies a particular place and time. However, in the secondary sense of the term 'abstraction', this physical object can carry materially abstracting processes. For example, record-keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in containers. According to , these clay containers contained tokens, the total of which were the count of objects being transferred. The containers thus served as something of a bill of lading or an accounts book. In order to avoid breaking open the containers for the count, marks were placed on the outside of the containers. These physical marks, in other words, acted as material abstractions of a materially abstract process of accounting, using conceptual abstractions (numbers) to communicate its meaning.
Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like the color red. That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality). For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.
An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use predicates as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of a particular property (e.g., good). Questions about the properties of things are then propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator. In the graph 1 below, the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates.
Referencing and referring
Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents. For example, "happiness" can mean experiencing various positive emotions, but can also refer to life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Likewise, "architecture" refers not only to the design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building.
Simplification and ordering
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication.
For example, many different things can be red. Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1, to the right). The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects. Specifically, the conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their five labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph.
Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram. For example, the arrow between the agent and CAT:Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT. The arrows between the gerund/present participle SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location"; Elsie is an instance of CAT.
Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more abstract than the graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction. Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in Douglas Hofstadter's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979):
An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality. But perhaps a detective or philosopher/scientist/engineer might seek to learn about something, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle.
Thought processes
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects. But an idea can be symbolized.
As used in different disciplines
In art
Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general. Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world—it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art. Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction. In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory. Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.
In computer science
Computer scientists use abstraction to make models that can be used and re-used without having to re-write all the program code for each new application on every different type of computer. They communicate their solutions with the computer by writing source code in some particular computer language which can be translated into machine code for different types of computers to execute. Abstraction allows program designers to separate a framework (categorical concepts related to computing problems) from specific instances which implement details. This means that the program code can be written so that code does not have to depend on the specific details of supporting applications, operating system software, or hardware, but on a categorical concept of the solution. A solution to the problem can then be integrated into the system framework with minimal additional work. This allows programmers to take advantage of another programmer's work, while requiring only an abstract understanding of the implementation of another's work, apart from the problem that it solves.
In general semantics
Abstractions and levels of abstraction play an important role in the theory of general semantics originated by Alfred Korzybski. Anatol Rapoport wrote "Abstracting is a mechanism by which an infinite variety of experiences can be mapped on short noises (words)."
In history
Francis Fukuyama defines history as "a deliberate attempt of abstraction in which we separate out important from unimportant events".
In linguistics
Researchers in linguistics frequently apply abstraction so as to allow an analysis of the phenomena of language at the desired level of detail. A commonly used abstraction, the phoneme, abstracts speech sounds in such a way as to neglect details that cannot serve to differentiate meaning. Other analogous kinds of abstractions (sometimes called "emic units") considered by linguists include morphemes, graphemes, and lexemes.
Abstraction also arises in the relation between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Pragmatics involves considerations that make reference to the user of the language; semantics considers expressions and what they denote (the designata) abstracted from the language user; and syntax considers only the expressions themselves, abstracted from the designate.
In mathematics
Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying structures, patterns or properties of a mathematical concept or object, removing any dependence on real-world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.
The advantages of abstraction in mathematics are:
It reveals deep connections between different areas of mathematics.
Known results in one area can suggest conjectures in another related area.
Techniques and methods from one area can be applied to prove results in other related area.
Patterns from one mathematical object can be generalized to other similar objects in the same class.
The main disadvantage of abstraction is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and might require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated.
In music
In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality. Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized by the exploration of internal numeric relationships.
In neurology
A recent meta-analysis suggests that the verbal system has a greater engagement with abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged in processing concrete concepts. This is because abstract concepts elicit greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts which elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Other research into the human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres differ in their handling of abstraction. For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage.
In philosophy
Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals, and on that basis forming a concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals. It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction. Another philosophical tool for the discussion of abstraction is thought space.
John Locke defined abstraction in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding:
'So words are used to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, which are taken from particular things; but if every particular idea that we take in had its own special name, there would be no end to names. To prevent this, the mind makes particular ideas received from particular things become general; which it does by considering them as they are in the mind—mental appearances—separate from all other existences, and from the circumstances of real existence, such as time, place, and so on. This procedure is called abstraction. In it, an idea taken from a particular thing becomes a general representative of all of the same kind, and its name becomes a general name that is applicable to any existing thing that fits that abstract idea.' (2.11.9)
In psychology
Carl Jung's definition of abstraction broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, different complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process. Abstraction operates in one of these functions when it excludes the simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emotion. Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche. The opposite of abstraction is concretism. Abstraction is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types.
In social theory
Social theorists deal with abstraction both as an ideational and as a material process. Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899–1990) asked: "Can there be abstraction other than by thought?" He used the example of commodity abstraction to show that abstraction occurs in practice as people create systems of abstract exchange that extend beyond the immediate physicality of the object and yet have real and immediate consequences. This work was extended through the 'Constitutive Abstraction' approach of writers associated with the Journal Arena. Two books that have taken this theme of the abstraction of social relations as an organizing process in human history are Nation Formation: Towards a Theory of Abstract Community (1996)
and an associated volume published in 2006, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In.
These books argue that a nation is an abstract community bringing together strangers who will never meet as such; thus constituting materially real and substantial, but abstracted and mediated relations. The books suggest that contemporary processes of globalization and mediatization have contributed to materially abstracting relations between people, with major consequences for how humans live their lives.
One can readily argue that abstraction is an elementary methodological tool in several disciplines of social science. These disciplines have definite and different concepts of "man" that highlight those aspects of man and his behaviour by idealization that are relevant for the given human science. For example, is the man as sociology abstracts and idealizes it, depicting man as a social being. Moreover, we could talk about (the man who can extend his biologically determined intelligence thanks to new technologies), or (who is simply creative).
Abstraction (combined with Weberian idealization) plays a crucial role in economics - hence abstractions such as "the market"
and the generalized concept of "business".
Breaking away from directly experienced reality was a common trend in 19th-century sciences (especially physics), and this was the effort which fundamentally determined the way economics tried (and still tries) to approach the economic aspects of social life. It is abstraction we meet in the case of both Newton's physics and the neoclassical theory, since the goal was to grasp the unchangeable and timeless essence of phenomena. For example, Newton created the concept of the material point by following the abstraction method so that he abstracted from the dimension and shape of any perceptible object, preserving only inertial and translational motion. Material point is the ultimate and common feature of all bodies. Neoclassical economists created the indefinitely abstract notion of homo economicus by following the same procedure. Economists abstract from all individual and personal qualities in order to get to those characteristics that embody the essence of economic activity. Eventually, it is the substance of the economic man that they try to grasp. Any characteristic beyond it only disturbs the functioning of this essential core.
See also
References
Citations
Sources
Sohn-Rethel, Alfred (1977) Intellectual and manual labour: A critique of epistemology, Humanities Press.
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Further reading
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External links
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gottlob Frege
Discussion at The Well concerning Abstraction hierarchy
Concepts in epistemology
Concepts in metaphilosophy
Concepts in metaphysics
Thought
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Austria-Hungary, formally known as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. Austria-Hungary was a military and diplomatic alliance of two sovereign states with a single monarch who was titled both Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War and was dissolved shortly after Hungary terminated the union with Austria on 31 October 1918.
One of Europe's major powers at the time, Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at and the third-most populous (after Russia and the German Empire). The Empire built up the fourth-largest machine-building industry in the world, after the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. Austria-Hungary also became the world's third-largest manufacturer and exporter of electric home appliances, electric industrial appliances, and power generation apparatus for power plants, after the United States and the German Empire, and it constructed Europe's second-largest railway network after the German Empire.
With the exception of the territory of Bosnian Condominium, Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were separate sovereign countries in international law. Thus separate representatives from Austria and Hungary signed peace treaties agreeing to territorial changes, for example the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. Citizenship and passports were also separate.
At its core was the dual monarchy which was a real union between Cisleithania, the northern and western parts of the former Austrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and Hungarian states were co-equal in power. The two countries conducted unified diplomatic and defence policies. For these purposes, "common" ministries of foreign affairs and defence were maintained under the monarch's direct authority, as was a third finance ministry responsible only for financing the two "common" portfolios. A third component of the union was the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, an autonomous region under the Hungarian crown, which negotiated the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement in 1868. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austro-Hungarian joint military and civilian rule until it was fully annexed in 1908, provoking the Bosnian crisis.
Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I, which began with an Austro-Hungarian war declaration on the Kingdom of Serbia on 28 July 1914. It was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The Kingdom of Hungary and the First Austrian Republic were treated as its successors de jure, whereas the independence of the West Slavs and South Slavs of the Empire as the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Second Polish Republic, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, respectively, and most of the territorial demands of the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Italy were also recognized by the victorious powers in 1920.
Name and terminology
The realm's official name was in and in (), though in international relations Austria–Hungary was used (; ). The Austrians also used the names () (in detail ; ) and Danubian Monarchy (; ) or Dual Monarchy (; ) and The Double Eagle (; ), but none of these became widespread either in Hungary or elsewhere.
The realm's full name used in the internal administration was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of St. Stephen.
German:
Hungarian:
From 1867 onwards, the abbreviations heading the names of official institutions in Austria–Hungary reflected their responsibility:
( or Imperial and Royal) was the label for institutions common to both parts of the monarchy, e.g., the (War Fleet) and, during the war, the (Army). The common army changed its label from to only in 1889 at the request of the Hungarian government.
() or Imperial-Royal was the term for institutions of Cisleithania (Austria); "royal" in this label referred to the Crown of Bohemia.
() or () ("Royal Hungarian") referred to Transleithania, the lands of the Hungarian crown. In the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, its autonomous institutions hold k. () ("Royal") as according to the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement, the only official language in Croatia and Slavonia was Croatian, and those institutions were "only" Croatian.
Following a decision of Franz Joseph I in 1868, the realm bore the official name Austro-Hungarian Monarchy/Realm (; ) in its international relations. It was often contracted to the Dual Monarchy in English or simply referred to as Austria.
History
Formation and Background
Ever since the Hapsburgs ascended to the throne of Kingdom of Hungary, the kingdom had always enjoyed a great degree of autonomy. In the revolutions of 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austrian Empire called for greater self-government and later even independence from the Hapsburg Empire. This was crushed militarily by the Austrians with Russian help, and the traditional autonomy that the Hungarians had enjoyed was replaced with absolutist rule from Vienna. However, this only further increased Hungarian resentment of Hapsburg dominion.
In the 1860's, the Empire faced two severe defeats: its loss in the Second Italian War of Independence broke its dominion over much of Italy, while defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 led to the dissolution of the German Confederation (of which the Hapsburg emperor was the hereditary president) and the exclusion of Austria from German affairs. These twin defeats gave the Hungarians the opportunity to remove the shackles of absolutist rule.
Realizing the need to compromise with Hungary in order to retain its great power status, the central government in Vienna began negotiations with the Hungarian nobility, led by Ferenc Deák. On 20 March 1867, the newly re-established Hungarian parliament at Pest started to negotiate the new laws to be accepted on 30 March. However, Hungarian leaders received the Emperor's formal coronation as King of Hungary on 8 June as a necessity for the laws to be enacted within the lands of the Holy Crown of Hungary. On 28 July, Franz Joseph, in his new capacity as King of Hungary, approved and promulgated the new laws, which officially gave birth to the Dual Monarchy.
1866–1878: beyond Kleindeutschland
The Austro-Prussian war was ended by the Peace of Prague (1866) which settled ythe German Question in favor of a Lesser German Solution. Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, who was the foreign secretary from 1866–1871, hated the Prussian leader, Otto von Bismarck, who had repeatedly outmaneuvered him. Beust looked to France for avenging Austria's defeat and attempted to negotiate with Emperor Napoleon III of France and Italy for an anti-Prussian alliance, but no terms could be reached. The decisive victory of Prusso-German armies in the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent founding of the German Empire ended all hope of re establishing Austrian dominance in Germany and Beust retired.
After being forced out of Germany and Italy, the Dual Monarchy turned to the Balkans, which were in tumult as nationalistic movements were gaining strength and demanding independence. Both Russia and Austria–Hungary saw an opportunity to expand in this region. Russia took on the role of protector of Slavs and Orthodox Christians. Austria envisioned a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse empire under Vienna's control. Count Gyula Andrássy, a Hungarian who was Foreign Minister (1871–1879), made the centerpiece of his policy one of opposition to Russian expansion in the Balkans and blocking Serbian ambitions to dominate a new South Slav federation. He wanted Germany to ally with Austria, not Russia.
Government
Overview
The Compromise turned the Habsburg domains into a real union between the Austrian Empire ("Lands Represented in the Imperial Council", or Cisleithania) in the western and northern half and the Kingdom of Hungary ("Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen", or Transleithania) in the eastern half. The two halves shared a common monarch, who ruled as Emperor of Austria over the western and northern half portion and as King of Hungary over the eastern portion. Foreign relations and defense were managed jointly, and the two countries also formed a customs union. All other state functions were to be handled separately by each of the two states.
Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, each with its own unique governmental structures (see: Polish Autonomy in Galicia and Croatian–Hungarian Settlement).
The division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship: one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, never a common one. However, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports, which were written in Croatian and French, and displayed the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia on them. Croatia-Slavonia also had executive autonomy regarding naturalization and citizenship, defined as "Hungarian-Croatian citizenship" for the kingdom's citizens.
The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, even after the Austrian Empire was created in 1804. The administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary (until 1848–49 Hungarian revolution) remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungary's central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government. The country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary (the Gubernium) – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848 and were reinstated after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867.
Vienna served as the Monarchy's primary capital. The Cisleithanian (Austrian) part contained about 57 percent of the total population and the larger share of its economic resources, compared to the Hungarian part.
There were three parts to the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire:
the common foreign, military, and a joint financial policy (only for diplomatic, military, and naval expenditures; later also included the Bosnian affairs) under the monarch
the "Austrian" or Cisleithanian government (Lands Represented in the Imperial Council)
the "Hungarian" or Transleithanian government (Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen)
The first prime minister of Hungary after the Compromise was Count Gyula Andrássy (1867–1871). The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph was crowned as King of Hungary. Andrássy next served as the Foreign Minister of Austria–Hungary (1871–1879).
The Empire relied increasingly on a cosmopolitan bureaucracy—in which Czechs played an important role—backed by loyal elements, including a large part of the German, Hungarian, Polish and Croat aristocracy.
After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was fully annexed in 1908, provoking the Bosnian crisis among the other powers. The northern part of the Ottoman Sanjak of Novi Pazar was also under de facto joint occupation during that period, but the Austro-Hungarian army withdrew as part of their annexation of Bosnia. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as an official state religion due to Bosnia's Muslim population.
Joint government
The common government (officially designated Ministerial Council for Common Affairs, or Ministerrat für gemeinsame Angelegenheiten in German) came into existence in 1867 as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. The Government of Austria, which ruled the monarchy until then became the government of the Austrian part and another government was formed for the Hungarian part. A common government was also formed for the few matters of common national security - the Common Army, navy, foreign policy and the imperial household, and the customs union. It consisted of three Imperial and Royal Joint-ministries ():
Ministry of the Imperial and Royal Household and Foreign Affairs, known as the Imperial Chancellery before 1869;
Imperial and Royal Ministry of War, known as the Imperial Ministry of War before 1911;
Imperial and Royal Ministry of Finance, known as the Imperial Ministry of Finance before 1908, responsible only for the finances of the other two joint-ministries.
The Minister of the Imperial and Royal Household and Foreign Affairs was the chairman (except when the Monarch was present and led the meetings himself) and thus he was de facto the common prime minister. Since 1869 the prime ministers of the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the monarchy were also members of the common government.
Relations during the half-century after 1867 between the two parts of the dual monarchy featured repeated disputes over shared external tariff arrangements and over the financial contribution of each government to the common treasury. These matters were determined by the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, in which common expenditures were allocated 70% to Austria and 30% to Hungary. This division had to be renegotiated every ten years. There was political turmoil during the build-up to each renewal of the agreement. By 1907, the Hungarian share had risen to 36.4%. The disputes culminated in the early 1900s in a prolonged constitutional crisis. It was triggered by disagreement over which language to use for command in Hungarian army units and deepened by the advent to power in Budapest in April 1906 of a Hungarian nationalist coalition. Provisional renewals of the common arrangements occurred in October 1907 and in November 1917 on the basis of the status quo. The negotiations in 1917 ended with the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy.
In 1878, the Congress of Berlin placed the Bosnia Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire under Austro-Hungarian occupation. The region was formally annexed in 1908 and was governed by Austria and Hungary jointly (a Condominium). The governor-general of Bosnia and Herzegovina was always an army officer, but he was first and foremost the head of the civil administration in the province (the Bosnian Office, ) and was subordinated to the common Ministry of Finance (as the common government lacked a ministry of the interior). Bosnia received a Territorial Statute (Landesstatut) with the setting up of a Territorial Diet, regulations for the election and procedure of the Diet, a law of associations, a law of public meetings, and a law dealing with the district councils. According to this statute Bosnia-Herzegovina formed a single administrative territory under the responsible direction and supervision of the Ministry of Finance of the Dual Monarchy in Vienna.
Parliaments
Hungary and Austria maintained separate parliaments, each with its own prime minister: the Diet of Hungary (commonly known as the National Assembly) and the Imperial Council () in Cisleithania. Each parliament had its own executive government, appointed by the monarch.
Cisleithania
The Imperial Council was a bicameral body: the upper house was the House of Lords (), and the lower house was the House of Deputies (). Members of the House of Deputies were elected through a system of "curiae" which weighted representation in favor of the wealthy but was progressively reformed until universal male suffrage was introduced in 1906.
Transleithania
The Diet of Hungary was also bicameral: the upper house was the House of Magnates (), and the lower house was the House of Representatives (). The "curia" system was also used to elect members of the House of Representatives. Franchise was very limited, with around 5% of men eligible to vote in 1874, rising to 8% at the beginning of World War I. Matters concerning Croatia-Slavonia alone fell to the Croatian-Slavonian Diet (commonly referred to as the Croatian Parliament).
Bosnia and Herzegovina condominium
The Diet (Sabor) of Bosnia-Herzegovina was created in 1910. Its setup consisted of a single Chamber, elected on the principle of the representation of interests. It numbered 92 members. The Diet had very limited legislative powers. The main legislative power was in the hands of the emperor, the parliaments in Vienna and Budapest, and the joint-minister of finance. The Diet of Bosnia could make proposals, but they had to be approved by both parliaments in Vienna and Budapest. The Diet could only deliberate on matters that affected Bosnia and Herzegovina exclusively; decisions on armed forces, commercial and traffic connections, customs, and similar matters, were made by the parliaments in Vienna and Budapest. The Diet also had no control over the National Council or the municipal councils.
Government of Cisleithania
The Emperor of the dual monarchy in his right of Emperor of Austria and King of Bohemia, ruler of the Austrian part of the realm, officially named The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Parliament of the Realm (Die im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder), simplified in 1915 to just Austrian Lands (Österreichische Länder) appointed the Government of Austria. The Austrian ministries carried the designation Imperial-Royal Ministry (sing. k.k. Ministerium), in which Imperial stands for the Kaiser's title of Emperor and Austria and Royal stands for his title of King of Bohemia. The central authorities were known as the "Ministry" (Ministerium). In 1867 the Ministerium consisted of seven ministries (Agriculture, Religion and Education, Finance, Interior, Justice, Commerce and Public Works, Defence). A Ministry of Railways was created in 1896, and the Ministry of Public Works was separated from Commerce in 1908. Ministries of and Social Welfare were established in 1917 to deal with issues arising from World War I. The ministries all had the title k.k. ("Imperial-Royal"), referring to the Imperial Crown of Austria and the Royal Crown of Bohemia.
The administrative system in the Austrian Empire consisted of three levels: the central State administration, the territories (Länder), and the local communal administration. The State administration comprised all affairs having relation to rights, duties, and interests "which are common to all territories"; all other administrative tasks were left to the territories. Finally, the communes had self-government within their own sphere.
Each of the seventeen territories of Cisleithania had an official from the central government, informally called a territorial chief (Landeschef). In five crown lands - the duchies of Salzburg, Carinthia, Carniola, Upper and Lower Silesia (commonly known as Austrian SIlesia) and Bukovina the territorial chief was called a Provincial President (Landespräsident) and his administrative office was called a Provincial Government (Landesregierung). The other twelve entities within the Austrian half of the Monarchy had an Imperial–royal Stateholder (K.k. Statthalter) with an administrative office called an Office of the Stateholder or Stateholder's Chancellery (Statthalterei).
Each entity had its own provincial parliament, called a Landtag, elected by the voters (some princely nobles were unelected members in their own right). The Emperor appointed one of its members as Landeshauptmann (i.e., provincial premier). The Landeshauptmann was the Speaker of the Landtag and thus a member of the provincial legislature.
Below the territory was the district (Bezirk) under a district-head (Bezirkshauptmann), appointed by the State government. These district-heads united nearly all the administrative functions which were divided among the various ministries. Each district was divided into a number of municipalities (Ortsgemeinden), each with its own elected mayor (Bürgermeister). The nine statutory cities were autonomous units at the district-level.
The complexity of this system, particularly the overlap between State and territorial administration, led to moves for administrative reform. As early as 1904, premier Ernest von Koerber had declared that a complete change in the principles of administration would be essential if the machinery of State were to continue working. Richard von Bienerth's last act as Austrian premier in May 1911 was the appointment of a commission nominated by the Emperor to draw up a scheme of administrative reform. In March 1918, Seidler Government decided upon a program of national autonomy as a basis for administrative reform, which was, however, never carried into effect.
Government of Transleithania
The Emperor of the dual monarchy in his right of Apostolic King of Hungary and King of Croatia and Slavonia, ruler of the Hungarian part of the realm, officially named The Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown (A Magyar Szent Korona országai) appointed the Government of Hungary. The Hungarian ministries carried the designation the Kingdom of Hungary's ... Ministry (sing. Magyar Királyi ...minisztérium), in which Royal stands for the Kaiser's title of Apostolic King of Hungary.
From 1867 the administrative and political divisions of the lands belonging to the Hungarian crown were remodeled due to some restorations and other changes. In 1868 Transylvania was definitely reunited to Hungary proper, and the town and district of Fiume maintained its status as a Corpus separatum ("separate body"). The "Military Frontier" was abolished in stages between 1871 and 1881, with Banat and Šajkaška being incorporated into Hungary proper and the Croatian and Slavonian Military Frontiers joining Croatia-Slavonia.
The Autonomous Government, officially Royal Croatian–Slavonian–Dalmatian Land Government ( or Kraljevska hrvatsko–slavonsko–dalmatinska zemaljska vlada) was established in 1869 with its seat in Zagreb.
In regard to local government, Hungary had traditionally been divided into around seventy counties (, singular megye; Croatian: ) and an array of districts and cities with special statuses. This system was reformed in two stages. In 1870, most historical privileges of territorial subdivisions were abolished, but the existing names and territories were retained. At this point, there were a total of 175 territorial subdivisions: 65 counties (49 in Hungary proper, 8 in Transylvania, and 8 in Croatia), 89 cities with municipal rights, and 21 other types of municipality (3 in Hungary proper and 18 in Transylvania). In a further reform in 1876, most of the cities and other types of municipality were incorporated into the counties. The counties in Hungary were grouped into seven circuits, which had no administrative function. The lowest level subdivision was the district or processus ().
After 1876, some urban municipalities remained independent of the counties in which they were situated. There were 26 of these urban municipalities in Hungary: Arad, Baja, Debreczen, Győr, Hódmezővásárhely, Kassa, Kecskemét, Kolozsvár, Komárom, Marosvásárhely, Nagyvárad, Pancsova, Pécs, Pozsony, Selmecz- és Bélabanya, Sopron, Szabadka, Szatmárnémeti, Szeged, Székesfehervár, Temesvár, Újvidék, Versecz, Zombor, and Budapest, the capital of the country. In Croatia-Slavonia, there were four: Osijek, Varaždin and Zagreb and Zemun. Fiume continued to form a separate division.
The administration of the municipalities was carried on by an official appointed by the king. These municipalities each had a council of twenty members. Counties were led by a County head ( or ) appointed by the king and under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. Each county had a municipal committee of 20 members, comprising 50% virilists (persons paying the highest direct taxes) and 50% elected persons fulfilling the prescribed census and ex officio members (deputy county head, main notary, and others). The powers and responsibilities of the counties were constantly decreased and were transferred to regional agencies of the kingdom's ministries.
Government of the Bosnia and Herzegovina condominium
The Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina was headed by a governor-general (), who was both the head of the civil administration and the commander of the military forces based in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Due to the military functions of the position all nine governor-generals were army officers. The executive branch was headed by a National Council, which was chaired by the governor and contained the governor's deputy and chiefs of departments. At first, the government had only three departments, administrative, financial and legislative. Later, other departments, including construction, economics, education, religion, and technical, were founded as well. The administration of the country, together with the carrying out of the laws, devolved upon the Territorial Government in Sarajevo, which was subordinate and responsible to the Common Ministry of Finance. The existing administrative authorities of the Territory retained their previous organization and functions.
The Austrian-Hungarian authorities left the Ottoman division of Bosnia and Herzegovina untouched, and only changed the names of divisional units. Thus the Bosnia Vilayet was renamed Reichsland, sanjaks were renamed Kreise (Circuits), kazas were renamed Bezirke (Districts), and nahiyahs became Exposituren. There were six Kreise and 54 Bezirke. The heads of the Kreises were Kreiseleiters, and the heads of the Bezirke were Bezirkesleiters.
Judicial system
Cisleithania
The December Constitution of 1867 restored the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, and public jury trials in Austria. The system of general courts had the same four rungs it still has today:
District courts ();
Regional courts ();
Higher regional courts ();
Supreme Court ().
Habsburg subjects would from now on be able to take the State to court should it violate their fundamental rights. Since regular courts were still unable to overrule the bureaucracy, much less the legislature, these guarantees necessitated the creation of specialist courts that could:
The Administrative Court (), stipulated by the 1867 Basic Law on Judicial Power () and implemented in 1876, had the power to review the legality of administrative acts, ensuring that the executive branch remained faithful to the principle of the rule of law.
The Imperial Court (), stipulated by the Basic Law on the Creation of an Imperial Court () in 1867 and implemented in 1869, decided demarcation conflicts between courts and the bureaucracy, between its constituent territories, and between individual territories and the Empire. The Imperial Court also heard complaints of citizens who claimed to have been violated in their constitutional rights, although its powers were not cassatory: it could only vindicate the complainant by the government to be in the wrong, not by actually voiding its wrongful decisions.
The State Court () held the Emperor's ministers accountable for political misconduct committed in office. Although the Emperor could not be taken to court, many of his decrees now depended on the relevant minister to countersign them. The double-pronged approach of making the Emperor dependent on his ministers and also making ministers criminally liable for bad outcomes would firstly enable, secondly motivate the ministers to put pressure on the monarch.
Transleithania
Judicial power was also independent of the executive in Hungary. After the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement of 1868, Croatia-Slavonia had its own independent judicial system (the Table of Seven was the court of last instance for Croatia-Slavonia with final civil and criminal jurisdiction). The judicial authorities in Hungary were:
the district courts with single judges (458 in 1905);
the county courts with collegiate judgeships (76 in number); to these were attached 15 jury courts for press offences. These were courts of first instance. In Croatia-Slavonia these were known as the court tables after 1874;
Royal Tables (12 in number), which were courts of second instance, established at Budapest, Debrecen, Győr, Kassa, Kolozsvár, Marosvásárhely, Nagyvárad, Pécs, Pressburg, Szeged, Temesvár and Ban's Table at Zagreb.
The Royal Supreme Court at Budapest, and the Supreme Court of Justice, or Table of Seven, at Zagreb, which were the highest judicial authorities. There were also a special commercial court at Budapest, a naval court at Fiume, and special army courts.
Bosnia and Herzegovina condominium
The Territorial Statute introduced the modern rights and laws in Bosnia–Herzegovina, and it guaranteed generally the civil rights of the inhabitants of the Territory, namely citizenship, personal liberty, protection by the competent judicial authorities, liberty of creed and conscience, preservation of the national individuality and language, freedom of speech, freedom of learning and education, inviolability of the domicile, secrecy of posts and telegraphs, inviolability of property, the right of petition, and finally the right of holding meetings.
The existing judicial authorities of the Territory retained their previous organization and functions.
Budget
Despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the personal union (from 1527), the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separate and independent budget. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, and it was only after the Compromise of 1867 that Hungary obtained a separate budget.
Voting rights
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Austrian half of the dual monarchy began to move towards constitutionalism. A constitutional system with a parliament, the Reichsrat was created, and a bill of rights was enacted also in 1867. Suffrage to the Reichstag's lower house was gradually expanded until 1907, when equal suffrage for all male citizens was introduced.
The 1907 Cisleithanian legislative election were the first elections held under universal male suffrage, after an electoral reform abolishing tax-paying requirements for voters had been adopted by the council and was endorsed by Emperor Franz Joseph earlier in the year. However, seat allocations were based on tax revenues from the States.
Principal issues in the internal politics
The traditional aristocracy and land-based gentry class gradually faced increasingly wealthy men of the cities, who achieved wealth through trade and industrialization. The urban middle and upper class tended to seek their own power and supported progressive movements in the aftermath of revolutions in Europe.
As in the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire frequently used liberal economic policies and practices. From the 1860s, businessmen succeeded in industrializing parts of the Empire. Newly prosperous members of the bourgeoisie erected large homes and began to take prominent roles in urban life that rivaled the aristocracy's. In the early period, they encouraged the government to seek foreign investment to build up infrastructure, such as railroads, in aid of industrialization, transportation and communications, and development.
The influence of liberals in Austria, most of them ethnic Germans, weakened under the leadership of Count Eduard von Taaffe, the Austrian prime minister from 1879 to 1893. Taaffe used a coalition of clergy, conservatives and Slavic parties to weaken the liberals. In Bohemia, for example, he authorized Czech as an official language of the bureaucracy and school system, thus breaking the German speakers' monopoly on holding office. Such reforms encouraged other ethnic groups to push for greater autonomy as well. By playing nationalities off one another, the government ensured the monarchy's central role in holding together competing interest groups in an era of rapid change.
During the First World War, rising national sentiments and labour movements contributed to strikes, protests and civil unrest in the Empire. After the war, republican, national parties contributed to the disintegration and collapse of the monarchy in Austria and Hungary. Republics were established in Vienna and Budapest.
Legislation to help the working class emerged from Catholic conservatives. They turned to social reform by using Swiss and German models and intervening in private industry. In Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had used such policies to neutralize socialist promises. The Catholics studied the Swiss Factory Act of 1877, which limited working hours for everyone and provided maternity benefits, and German laws that insured workers against industrial risks inherent in the workplace. These served as the basis for Austria's 1885 Trade Code Amendment.
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporters remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous electoral success of the pro-compromise Liberal Party frustrated many Hungarian voters. While the pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, the Slovak, Serb, and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among the ethnic minorities. The nationalist Hungarian parties, which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters, remained in the opposition, except from 1906 to 1910 where the nationalist Hungarian parties were able to form government.
Foreign affairs
The emperor officially had charge of foreign affairs. His minister of foreign affairs conducted diplomacy. See Ministers of the Imperial and Royal House and of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918).
Demographics
The following data is based on the official Austro-Hungarian census conducted in 1910.
Population and area
Languages
In Austria (Cisleithania), the census of 1910 recorded Umgangssprache, everyday language. Jews and those using German in offices often stated German as their Umgangssprache, even when having a different Muttersprache. 36.8% of the total population spoke German as their native language, and more than 71% of the inhabitants spoke some German.
In Hungary (Transleithania), where the census was based primarily on mother tongue, 48.1% of the total population spoke Hungarian as their native language. Not counting autonomous Croatia-Slavonia, more than 54.4% of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hungary were native speakers of Hungarian (this included also the Jewsaround 5% of the populationas mostly they were Hungarian-speaking).
Some languages were considered dialects of more widely spoken languages. For example: in the census, Rhaeto-Romance languages were counted as "Italian", while Istro-Romanian was counted as "Romanian". Yiddish was counted as "German" in both Austria and Hungary.
Historical regions:
Religion
Solely in the Empire of Austria:
Solely in the Kingdom of Hungary:
Largest cities
Data: census in 1910
Ethnic relations
In July 1849, the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament proclaimed and enacted ethnic and minority rights (the next such laws were in Switzerland), but these were overturned after the Russian and Austrian armies crushed the Hungarian Revolution. After the Kingdom of Hungary reached the Compromise with the Habsburg Dynasty in 1867, one of the first acts of its restored Parliament was to pass a Law on Nationalities (Act Number XLIV of 1868). It was a liberal piece of legislation and offered extensive language and cultural rights. It did not recognize non-Hungarians to have rights to form states with any territorial autonomy.
The "Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867" created the personal union of the independent states of Hungary and Austria, linked under a common monarch also having joint institutions. The Hungarian majority asserted more of their identity within the Kingdom of Hungary, and it came to conflict with some of her own minorities. The imperial power of German-speakers who controlled the Austrian half was resented by others. In addition, the emergence of nationalism in the newly independent Romania and Serbia also contributed to ethnic issues in the empire.
Article 19 of the 1867 "Basic State Act" (Staatsgrundgesetz), valid only for the Cisleithanian (Austrian) part of Austria–Hungary, said:
The implementation of this principle led to several disputes, as it was not clear which languages could be regarded as "customary". The Germans, the traditional bureaucratic, capitalist and cultural elite, demanded the recognition of their language as a customary language in every part of the empire. German nationalists, especially in the Sudetenland (part of Bohemia), looked to Berlin in the new German Empire. There was a German-speaking element in Austria proper (west of Vienna), but it did not display much sense of German nationalism. That is, it did not demand an independent state; rather it flourished by holding most of the high military and diplomatic offices in the Empire.
Italian was regarded as an old "culture language" () by German intellectuals and had always been granted equal rights as an official language of the Empire, but the Germans had difficulty in accepting the Slavic languages as equal to their own. On one occasion Count A. Auersperg (Anastasius Grün) entered the Diet of Carniola carrying what he claimed to be the whole corpus of Slovene literature under his arm; this was to demonstrate that the Slovene language could not be substituted for German as the language of higher education.
The following years saw official recognition of several languages, at least in Austria. From 1867, laws awarded Croatian equal status with Italian in Dalmatia. From 1882, there was a Slovene majority in the Diet of Carniola and in the capital Laibach (Ljubljana); they replaced German with Slovene as their primary official language. Galicia designated Polish instead of German in 1869 as the customary language of government.
Istro-Romanians
In Istria, the Istro-Romanians, a small ethnic group composed by around 2,600 people in the 1880s, suffered severe discrimination. The Croats of the region, who formed the majority, tried to assimilate them, while the Italian minority supported them in their requests for self-determination. In 1888, the possibility of opening the first school for the Istro-Romanians teaching in the Romanian language was discussed in the Diet of Istria. The proposal was very popular among them. The Italian deputies showed their support, but the Croat ones opposed it and tried to show that the Istro-Romanians were in fact Slavs. During Austro-Hungarian rule, the Istro-Romanians lived under poverty conditions, and those living in the island of Krk were fully assimilated by 1875.
Bohemia
The language disputes were most fiercely fought in Bohemia, where the Czech speakers formed a majority and sought equal status for their language to German. The Czechs had lived primarily in Bohemia since the 6th century and German immigrants had begun settling the Bohemian periphery in the 13th century. The constitution of 1627 made the German language a second official language and equal to Czech. German speakers lost their majority in the Bohemian Diet in 1880 and became a minority to Czech speakers in the cities of Prague and Pilsen (while retaining a slight numerical majority in the city of Brno (Brünn)). The old Charles University in Prague, hitherto dominated by German speakers, was divided into German and Czech-speaking faculties in 1882.
Hungarian Dominance
At the same time, Hungarian dominance faced challenges from the local majorities of Romanians in Transylvania and in the eastern Banat, Slovaks in today's Slovakia, and Croats and Serbs in the crown lands of Croatia and of Dalmatia (today's Croatia), in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the provinces known as the Vojvodina (today's northern Serbia). The Romanians and the Serbs began to agitate for union with their fellow nationalists and language speakers in the newly founded states of Romania (1859–1878) and Serbia.
Trialist Proclamation
Hungary's leaders were generally less willing than their Austrian counterparts to share power with their subject minorities, but they granted a large measure of autonomy to Croatia in 1868. To some extent, they modeled their relationship to that kingdom on their own compromise with Austria of the previous year. In spite of nominal autonomy, the Croatian government was an economic and administrative part of Hungary, which the Croatians resented. In the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina many advocated the idea of a trialist Austro-Hungaro-Croatian monarchy; among the supporters of the idea were Archduke Leopold Salvator, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and emperor and king Charles I who during his short reign supported the trialist idea only to be vetoed by the Hungarian government and Count Istvan Tisza. The count finally signed the trialist proclamation after heavy pressure from the king on 23 October 1918.
Language
Language was one of the most contentious issues in Austro-Hungarian politics. All governments faced difficult and divisive hurdles in deciding on the languages of government and of instruction. The minorities sought the widest opportunities for education in their own languages, as well as in the "dominant" languages—Hungarian and German. By the "Ordinance of 5 April 1897", the Austrian Prime Minister Count Kasimir Felix Badeni gave Czech equal standing with German in the internal government of Bohemia; this led to a crisis because of nationalist German agitation throughout the empire. The Crown dismissed Badeni.
The Hungarian Minority Act of 1868 gave the minorities (Slovaks, Romanians, Serbs, et al.) individual (but not also communal) rights to use their language in offices, schools (although in practice often only in those founded by them and not by the state), courts and municipalities (if 20% of the deputies demanded it). Beginning with the 1879 Primary Education Act and the 1883 Secondary Education Act, the Hungarian state made more efforts to reduce the use of non-Magyar languages, in strong violation of the 1868 Nationalities Law. After 1875, all Slovak language schools higher than elementary were closed, including the only three high schools (gymnasiums) in Revúca (Nagyrőce), Turčiansky Svätý Martin (Turócszentmárton) and Kláštor pod Znievom (Znióváralja). From June 1907, all public and private schools in Hungary were obliged to ensure that after the fourth grade, the pupils could express themselves fluently in Hungarian. This led to the further closing of minority schools, devoted mostly to the Slovak and Rusyn languages.
The two kingdoms sometimes divided their spheres of influence. According to Misha Glenny in his book, The Balkans, 1804–1999, the Austrians responded to Hungarian support of Czechs by supporting the Croatian national movement in Zagreb.
In recognition that he reigned in a multi-ethnic country, Emperor Franz Joseph spoke (and used) German, Hungarian and Czech fluently, and Croatian, Serbian, Polish and Italian to some degree.
Jews
Around 1900, Jews numbered about two million in the whole territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; their position was ambiguous. The populist and antisemitic politics of the Christian Social Party are sometimes viewed as a model for Adolf Hitler's Nazism. Antisemitic parties and movements existed, but the governments of Vienna and Budapest did not initiate pogroms or implement official antisemitic policies. They feared that such ethnic violence could ignite other ethnic minorities and escalate out of control. The antisemitic parties remained on the periphery of the political sphere due to their low popularity among voters in the parliamentary elections.
In that period, the majority of Jews in Austria–Hungary lived in small towns (shtetls) in Galicia and rural areas in Hungary and Bohemia; however, they had large communities and even local majorities in the downtown districts of Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Kraków and Lwów. Of the pre-World War I military forces of the major European powers, the Austro-Hungarian army was almost alone in its regular promotion of Jews to positions of command. While the Jewish population of the lands of the Dual Monarchy was about 5%, Jews made up nearly 18% of the reserve officer corps. Thanks to the modernity of the constitution and to the benevolence of emperor Franz Joseph, the Austrian Jews came to regard the era of Austria–Hungary as a golden era of their history. By 1910 about 900,000 religious Jews made up approximately 5% of the population of Hungary and about 23% of Budapest's citizenry. Jews accounted for 54% of commercial business owners, 85% of financial institution directors and owners in banking, and 62% of all employees in commerce, 20% of all general grammar school students, and 37% of all commercial scientific grammar school students, 31.9% of all engineering students, and 34.1% of all students in human faculties of the universities. Jews were accounted for 48.5% of all physicians, and 49.4% of all lawyers/jurists in Hungary. Note: The numbers of Jews were reconstructed from religious censuses. They did not include the people of Jewish origin who had converted to Christianity, or the number of atheists. Among many Hungarian parliament members of Jewish origin, the most famous Jewish members in Hungarian political life were Vilmos Vázsonyi as Minister of Justice, Samu Hazai as Minister of War, János Teleszky as minister of finance, János Harkányi as minister of trade, and József Szterényi as minister of trade.
Education
Universities in Cisleithania
The first university in the Austrian half of the Empire (Charles University) was founded by H.R. Emperor Charles IV in Prague in 1347, the second oldest university was the Jagiellonian University established in Kraków by the King of Poland Casimir III the Great in 1364, while the third oldest (University of Vienna) was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365.
The higher educational institutions were predominantly German, but beginning in the 1870s, language shifts began to occur. These establishments, which in the middle of the 19th century had had a predominantly German character, underwent in Galicia a conversion into Polish national institutions, in Bohemia and Moravia a separation into German and Czech ones. Thus Germans, Czechs and Poles were provided for. But now the smaller nations also made their voices heard: the Ruthenians, Slovenes and Italians. The Ruthenians demanded at first, in view of the predominantly Ruthenian character of rural East Galicia, a national partition of the Polish University of Lwów. Since the Poles were at first unyielding, Ruthenian demonstrations and strikes of students arose, and the Ruthenians were no longer content with the reversion of a few separate professorial chairs, and with parallel courses of lectures. By a pact concluded on 28 January 1914 the Poles promised a Ruthenian university; but owing to the war the question lapsed. The Italians could hardly claim a university of their own on grounds of population (in 1910 they numbered 783,000), but they claimed it all the more on grounds of their ancient culture. All parties were agreed that an Italian faculty of laws should be created; the difficulty lay in the choice of the place. The Italians demanded Trieste; but the Government was afraid to let this Adriatic port become the centre of an irredenta; moreover the Southern Slavs of the city wished it kept free from an Italian educational establishment. Bienerth in 1910 brought about a compromise; namely, that it should be founded at once, the situation to be provisionally in Vienna, and to be transferred within four years to Italian national territory. The German National Union (Nationalverband) agreed to extend temporary hospitality to the Italian university in Vienna, but the Southern Slav Hochschule Club demanded a guarantee that a later transfer to the coast provinces should not be contemplated, together with the simultaneous foundation of Slovene professorial chairs in Prague and Cracow, and preliminary steps towards the foundation of a Southern Slav university in Laibach. But in spite of the constant renewal of negotiations for a compromise it was impossible to arrive at any agreement, until the outbreak of war left all the projects for a Ruthenian university at Lemberg, a Slovene one in Laibach, and a second Czech one in Moravia, unrealized.
Universities in Transleithania
In the year 1276, the university of Veszprém was destroyed by the troops of Péter Csák and it was never rebuilt. A university was established by Louis I of Hungary in Pécs in 1367. Sigismund established a university at Óbuda in 1395. Another, Universitas Istropolitana, was established 1465 in Pozsony (now Bratislava in Slovakia) by Mattias Corvinus. None of these medieval universities survived the Ottoman wars. Nagyszombat University was founded in 1635 and moved to Buda in 1777 and it is called Eötvös Loránd University today. The world's first institute of technology was founded in Selmecbánya, Kingdom of Hungary (since 1920 Banská Štiavnica, now Slovakia) in 1735. Its legal successor is the University of Miskolc in Hungary. The Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) is considered the oldest institute of technology in the world with university rank and structure. Its legal predecessor the Institutum Geometrico-Hydrotechnicum was founded in 1782 by Emperor Joseph II.
The high schools included the universities, of which Hungary possessed five, all maintained by the state: at Budapest (founded in 1635), at Kolozsvár (founded in 1872), and at Zagreb (founded in 1874). Newer universities were established in Debrecen in 1912, and Pozsony university was reestablished after a half millennium in 1912. They had four faculties: theology, law, philosophy and medicine (the university at Zagreb was without a faculty of medicine). There were in addition ten high schools of law, called academies, which in 1900 were attended by 1,569 pupils. The Polytechnicum in Budapest, founded in 1844, which contained four faculties and was attended in 1900 by 1,772 pupils, was also considered a high school. There were in Hungary in 1900 forty-nine theological colleges, twenty-nine Catholic, five Greek Uniat, four Greek Orthodox, ten Protestant and one Jewish. Among special schools the principal mining schools were at Selmeczbánya, Nagyág and Felsőbánya; the principal agricultural colleges at Debreczen and Kolozsvár; and there was a school of forestry at Selmeczbánya, military colleges at Budapest, Kassa, Déva and Zagreb, and a naval school at Fiume. There were in addition a number of training institutes for teachers and a large number of schools of commerce, several art schools – for design, painting, sculpture, music
Economy
Overview
The heavily rural Austro-Hungarian economy slowly modernised after 1867. Railroads opened up once-remote areas, and cities grew. Many small firms promoted capitalist way of production. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The first Austrian stock exchange (the Wiener Börse) was opened in 1771 in Vienna, the first stock exchange of the Kingdom of Hungary (the Budapest Stock Exchange) was opened in Budapest in 1864. The central bank (Bank of issue) was founded as Austrian National Bank in 1816. In 1878, it transformed into Austro-Hungarian National Bank with principal offices in both Vienna and Budapest. The central bank was governed by alternating Austrian or Hungarian governors and vice-governors.
The gross national product per capita grew roughly 1.76% per year from 1870 to 1913. That level of growth compared very favorably to that of other European nations such as Britain (1%), France (1.06%), and Germany (1.51%). However, in a comparison with Germany and Britain, the Austro-Hungarian economy as a whole still lagged considerably, as sustained modernization had begun much later. Like the German Empire, that of Austria–Hungary frequently employed liberal economic policies and practices. In 1873, the old Hungarian capital Buda and Óbuda (Ancient Buda) were officially merged with the third city, Pest, thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into Hungary's administrative, political, economic, trade and cultural hub. Many of the state institutions and the modern administrative system of Hungary were established during this period. Economic growth centered on Vienna and Budapest, the Austrian lands (areas of modern Austria), the Alpine region and the Bohemian lands. In the later years of the 19th century, rapid economic growth spread to the central Hungarian plain and to the Carpathian lands. As a result, wide disparities of development existed within the empire. In general, the western areas became more developed than the eastern ones. The Kingdom of Hungary became the world's second-largest flour exporter after the United States. The large Hungarian food exports were not limited to neighbouring Germany and Italy: Hungary became the most important foreign food supplier of the large cities and industrial centres of the United Kingdom. Galicia, which has been described as the poorest province of Austro-Hungary, experienced near-constant famines, resulting in 50,000 deaths a year. The Istro-Romanians of Istria were also poor, as pastoralism lost strength and agriculture was not productive.
However, by the end of the 19th century, economic differences gradually began to even out as economic growth in the eastern parts of the monarchy consistently surpassed that in the western. The strong agriculture and food industry of the Kingdom of Hungary with the centre of Budapest became predominant within the empire and made up a large proportion of the export to the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, western areas, concentrated mainly around Prague and Vienna, excelled in various manufacturing industries. This division of labour between the east and west, besides the existing economic and monetary union, led to an even more rapid economic growth throughout Austria–Hungary by the early 20th century. However, since the turn of the twentieth century, the Austrian half of the Monarchy could preserve its dominance within the empire in the sectors of the first industrial revolution, but Hungary had a better position in the industries of the second industrial revolution, in these modern sectors of the second industrial revolution the Austrian competition could not become dominant.
Trade
From 1527 (the creation of the monarchic personal union) to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated it from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories. After 1867, the Austrian and Hungarian customs union agreement had to be renegotiated and stipulated every ten years. The agreements were renewed and signed by Vienna and Budapest at the end of every decade because both countries hoped to derive mutual economic benefit from the customs union. The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary contracted their foreign commercial treaties independently of each other.
Industry
The empire's heavy industry had mostly focused on machine building, especially for the electric power industry, locomotive industry and automotive industry, while in light industry the precision mechanics industry was the most dominant. Through the years leading up to World War I the country became the 4th biggest machine manufacturer in the world.
The two most important trading partners were traditionally Germany (1910: 48% of all exports, 39% of all imports), and Great Britain (1910: almost 10% of all exports, 8% of all imports), the third most important partner was the United States, it followed by Russia, France, Switzerland, Romania, the Balkan states and South America. Trade with the geographically neighbouring Russia, however, had a relatively low weight (1910: 3% of all exports /mainly machinery for Russia, 7% of all imports /mainly raw materials from Russia).
Automotive industry
Prior to World War I, the Austrian Empire had five car manufacturer companies. These were: Austro-Daimler in Wiener-Neustadt (cars trucks, buses), Gräf & Stift in Vienna (cars), Laurin & Klement in Mladá Boleslav (motorcycles, cars), Nesselsdorfer in Nesselsdorf (Kopřivnice), Moravia (automobiles), and Lohner-Werke in Vienna (cars). Austrian car production started in 1897.
Prior to World War I, the Kingdom of Hungary had four car manufacturer companies. These were: the Ganz company in Budapest, RÁBA Automobile in Győr, MÁG (later Magomobil) in Budapest, and MARTA (Hungarian Automobile Joint-stock Company Arad) in Arad. Hungarian car production started in 1900. Automotive factories in the Kingdom of Hungary manufactured motorcycles, cars, taxicabs, trucks and buses.
Electrical industry and electronics
In 1884, Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri (ZBD), three engineers associated with the Ganz Works of Budapest, determined that open-core devices were impractical, as they were incapable of reliably regulating voltage.
When employed in parallel connected electric distribution systems, closed-core transformers finally made it technically and economically feasible to provide electric power for lighting in homes, businesses and public spaces. The other essential milestone was the introduction of 'voltage source, voltage intensive' (VSVI) systems' by the invention of constant voltage generators in 1885.
Bláthy had suggested the use of closed cores, Zipernowsky had suggested the use of parallel shunt connections, and Déri had performed the experiments;
The first Hungarian water turbine was designed by the engineers of the Ganz Works in 1866, the mass production with dynamo generators started in 1883. The manufacturing of steam turbo generators started in the Ganz Works in 1903.
In 1905, the Láng Machine Factory company also started the production of steam turbines for alternators.
Tungsram is a Hungarian manufacturer of light bulbs and vacuum tubes since 1896. On 13 December 1904, Hungarian Sándor Just and Croatian Franjo Hanaman were granted a Hungarian patent (No. 34541) for the world's first tungsten filament lamp. The tungsten filament lasted longer and gave brighter light than the traditional carbon filament. Tungsten filament lamps were first marketed by the Hungarian company Tungsram in 1904. This type is often called Tungsram-bulbs in many European countries.
Despite the long experimentation with vacuum tubes at Tungsram company, the mass production of radio tubes begun during WW1, and the production of X-ray tubes started also during the WW1 in Tungsram Company.
The Orion Electronics was founded in 1913. Its main profiles were the production of electrical switches, sockets, wires, incandescent lamps, electric fans, electric kettles, and various household electronics.
The telephone exchange was an idea of the Hungarian engineer Tivadar Puskás (1844–1893) in 1876, while he was working for Thomas Edison on a telegraph exchange.
The first Hungarian telephone factory (Factory for Telephone Apparatuses) was founded by János Neuhold in Budapest in 1879, which produced telephones microphones, telegraphs, and telephone exchanges.
In 1884, the Tungsram company also started to produce microphones, telephone apparatuses, telephone switchboards and cables.
The Ericsson company also established a factory for telephones and switchboards in Budapest in 1911.
Aeronautic industry
The first airplane in Austria was Edvard Rusjan's design, the Eda I, which had its maiden flight in the vicinity of Gorizia on 25 November 1909.
The first Hungarian hydrogen-filled experimental balloons were built by István Szabik and József Domin in 1784.
The first Hungarian designed and produced airplane (powered by a Hungarian built inline engine) was flown at Rákosmező on 4 November 1909. The earliest Hungarian airplane with Hungarian built radial engine was flown in 1913. Between 1912 and 1918, the Hungarian aircraft industry began developing. The three greatest: UFAG Hungarian Aircraft Factory (1914), Hungarian General Aircraft Factory (1916), Hungarian Lloyd Aircraft, Engine Factory at Aszód (1916), and Marta in Arad (1914). During the First World War, fighter planes, bombers and reconnaissance planes were produced in these factories. The most important aero-engine factories were Weiss Manfred Works, GANZ Works, and Hungarian Automobile Joint-stock Company Arad.
Rolling stock manufacturers
The factories producing rolling stock such as locomotives, steam engines and wagons, but also bridges and other iron structures, were installed in Vienna (Locomotive Factory of the State Railway Company, founded in 1839), in Wiener Neustadt (New Vienna Locomotive Factory, founded in 1841), and in Floridsdorf (Floridsdorf Locomotive Factory, founded in 1869).
The Hungarian factories producing rolling stock as well as bridges and other iron structures were the MÁVAG company in Budapest (steam engines and wagons) and the Ganz company in Budapest (steam engines, wagons, the production of electric locomotives and electric trams started from 1894). and the RÁBA Company in Győr.
Shipbuilding
The largest shipyard in the dual monarchy and a strategic asset for the Austro-Hungarian Navy was the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino in Trieste, founded in 1857 by Wilhelm Strudthoff. Second in importance was the Danubius Werft in Fiume (present-day Rijeka, Croatia). Third in importance for the naval shipbuilding was the Navy's own Marinearsenal, located at the main naval base in Pola, present-day Croatia. Smaller shipyards included the Cantiere Navale Triestino in Monfalcone (established in 1908 with ship repairs as the main activity, but went on during the war to manufacture submarines) and the in Fiume. The latter was established in 1854 under the name Stabilimento Tecnico Fiume with Robert Whitehead as the enterprise's director and the purpose to produce his torpedoes for the Navy. The company went bankrupt in 1874 and in the following year Whitehead bought it to establish the Whitehead & Co. Next to torpedoes the company went on to produce submarines during WWI. On the Danube, the DDSG had established the Óbuda Shipyard on the Hungarian Hajógyári Island in 1835. The largest Hungarian shipbuilding company was the Ganz-Danubius.
Infrastructure
Telecommunications
Telegraph
The first telegraph connection (Vienna—Brno—Prague) had started operation in 1847. In Hungarian territory the first telegraph stations were opened in Pressburg (Pozsony, today's Bratislava) in December 1847 and in Buda in 1848. The first telegraph connection between Vienna and Pest–Buda (later Budapest) was constructed in 1850, and Vienna–Zagreb in 1850.
Austria subsequently joined a telegraph union with German states. In the Kingdom of Hungary, 2,406 telegraph post offices operated in 1884. By 1914 the number of telegraph offices reached 3,000 in post offices and further 2,400 were installed in the railway stations of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Telephone
The first telephone exchange was opened in Zagreb (8 January 1881), the second was in Budapest (1 May 1881), and the third was opened in Vienna (3 June 1881). Initially telephony was available in the homes of individual subscribers, companies and offices. Public telephone stations appeared in the 1890s, and they quickly became widespread in post offices and railway stations. Austria–Hungary had 568 million telephone calls in 1913; only two Western European countries had more phone calls: the German Empire and the United Kingdom. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was followed by France with 396 million telephone calls and Italy with 230 million phone calls. In 1916, there were 366 million telephone calls in Cisleithania, among them 8.4 million long distant calls. All telephone exchanges of the cities, towns and larger villages in Transleithania were linked until 1893. By 1914, more than 2000 settlements had telephone exchange in Kingdom of Hungary.
Electronic audio broadcasting
The Telefon Hírmondó (Telephone Herald) news and entertainment service was introduced in Budapest in 1893. Two decades before the introduction of radio broadcasting, people could listen to political, economic and sports news, cabaret, music and opera in Budapest daily. It operated over a special type of telephone exchange system.
Rail transport
By 1913, the combined length of the railway tracks of the Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Hungary reached . In Western Europe only Germany had more extended railway network (); the Austro-Hungarian Empire was followed by France (), the United Kingdom (), Italy () and Spain ().
Railways in Cisleithania
Rail transport expanded rapidly in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its predecessor state, the Habsburg Empire, had built a substantial core of railways in the west, originating from Vienna, by 1841. Austria's first steam railway from Vienna to Moravia with its terminus in Galicia (Bochnie) was opened in 1839. The first train travelled from Vienna to Lundenburg (Břeclav) on 6 June 1839 and one month later between the imperial capital in Vienna and the capital of Moravia Brünn (Brno) on 7 July. At that point, the government realized the military possibilities of rail and began to invest heavily in construction. Pozsony (Bratislava), Budapest, Prague, Kraków, Lviv, Graz, Laibach (Ljubljana) and Venedig (Venice) became linked to the main network. By 1854, the empire had almost of track, about 60–70% of it in state hands. The government then began to sell off large portions of track to private investors to recoup some of its investments and because of the financial strains of the 1848 Revolution and of the Crimean War.
From 1854 to 1879, private interests conducted almost all rail construction. What would become Cisleithania gained of track, and Hungary built of track. During this time, many new areas joined the railway system and the existing rail networks gained connections and interconnections. This period marked the beginning of widespread rail transportation in Austria–Hungary, and also the integration of transportation systems in the area. Railways allowed the empire to integrate its economy far more than previously possible, when transportation depended on rivers.
After 1879, the Austrian and the Hungarian governments slowly began to renationalize their rail networks, largely because of the sluggish pace of development during the worldwide depression of the 1870s. Between 1879 and 1900, more than of railways were built in Cisleithania and Hungary. Most of this constituted "filling in" of the existing network, although some areas, primarily in the far east, gained rail connections for the first time. The railway reduced transportation costs throughout the empire, opening new markets for products from other lands of the Dual Monarchy. In 1914, of a total of of railway tracks in Austria, (82%) were state-owned.
Railways in Transleithania
The first Hungarian steam locomotive railway line was opened on 15 July 1846 between Pest and Vác. In 1890 most large Hungarian private railway companies were nationalized as a consequence of the poor management of private companies, except the strong Austrian-owned Kaschau-Oderberg Railway (KsOd) and the Austrian-Hungarian Southern Railway (SB/DV). They also joined the zone tariff system of the MÁV (Hungarian State Railways). By 1910, the total length of the rail networks of Hungarian Kingdom reached , the Hungarian network linked more than 1,490 settlements. Nearly half (52%) of the empire's railways were built in Hungary, thus the railroad density there became higher than that of Cisleithania. This has ranked Hungarian railways the 6th most dense in the world (ahead of Germany and France).
Electrified commuter railways: A set of four electric commuter rai lines were built in Budapest, the BHÉV: Ráckeve line (1887), Szentendre line (1888), Gödöllő line (1888), Csepel line (1912)
Tramway lines in the cities
Horse-drawn tramways appeared in the first half of the 19th century. Between the 1850s and 1880s many were built : Vienna (1865), Budapest (1866), Brno (1869), Trieste (1876). Steam trams appeared in the late 1860s. The electrification of tramways started in the late 1880s. The first electrified tramway in Austria–Hungary was built in Budapest in 1887.
Electric tramway lines in the Austrian Empire:
Austria: Gmunden (1894); Linz, Vienna (1897); Graz (1898); Trieste (1900); Ljubljana (1901); Innsbruck (1905); Unterlach, Ybbs an der Donau (1907); Salzburg (1909); Klagenfurt, Sankt Pölten (1911); Piran (1912)
Austrian Littoral: Pula (1904).
Bohemia: Prague (1891); Teplice (1895); Liberec (1897); Ústí nad Labem, Plzeň, Olomouc (1899); Moravia, Brno, Jablonec nad Nisou (1900); Ostrava (1901); Mariánské Lázně (1902); Budějovice, České Budějovice, Jihlava (1909)
Austrian Silesia: Opava (Troppau) (1905), Cieszyn (Cieszyn) (1911)
Dalmatia: Dubrovnik (1910)
Galicia: Lviv (1894), Bielsko-Biała (1895); Kraków (1901); Tarnów, Cieszyn (1911)
Electric tramway lines in the Kingdom of Hungary:
Hungary: Budapest (1887); Pressburg/Pozsony/Bratislava (1895); Szabadka/Subotica (1897), Szombathely (1897), Miskolc (1897); Temesvár/Timișoara (1899); Sopron (1900); Szatmárnémeti/Satu Mare (1900); Nyíregyháza (1905); Nagyszeben/Sibiu (1905); Nagyvárad/Oradea (1906); Szeged (1908); Debrecen (1911); Újvidék/Novi Sad (1911); Kassa/Košice (1913); Pécs (1913)
Croatia: Fiume (1899); Pula (1904); Opatija – Lovran (1908); Zagreb (1910); Dubrovnik (1910).
Underground
The Budapest Metro Line 1 (originally the "Franz Joseph Underground Electric Railway Company") is the second oldest underground railway in the world (the first being the London Underground's Metropolitan Line and the third being Glasgow), and the first on the European mainland. It was built from 1894 to 1896 and opened on 2 May 1896. In 2002, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The M1 line became an IEEE Milestone due to the radically new innovations in its era: "Among the railway's innovative elements were bidirectional tram cars; electric lighting in the subway stations and tram cars; and an overhead wire structure instead of a third-rail system for power".
Inland waterways and river regulation
In 1900 the engineer C. Wagenführer drew up plans to link the Danube and the Adriatic Sea by a canal from Vienna to Trieste. It was born from the desire of Austria–Hungary to have a direct link to the Adriatic Sea but was never constructed.
Lower Danube and the Iron Gates
In 1831 a plan had already been drafted to make the passage navigable, at the initiative of the Hungarian politician István Széchenyi. Finally Gábor Baross, Hungary's "Iron Minister", succeeded in financing this project. The riverbed rocks and the associated rapids made the gorge valley an infamous passage for shipping. In German, the passage is still known as the Kataraktenstrecke, even though the cataracts are gone. Near the actual "Iron Gates" strait the Prigrada rock was the most important obstacle until 1896: the river widened considerably here and the water level was consequently low. Upstream, the Greben rock near the "Kazan" gorge was notorious.
Tisza River
The length of the Tisza in Hungary used to be . It flowed through the Great Hungarian Plain, which is one of the largest flat areas in central Europe. Since plains can cause a river to flow very slowly, the Tisza used to follow a path with many curves and turns, which led to many large floods in the area.
After several small-scale attempts, István Széchenyi organised the "regulation of the Tisza" (Hungarian: a Tisza szabályozása) which started on 27 August 1846, and substantially ended in 1880. The new length of the river in Hungary was ( total), with of "dead channels" and of new riverbed. The resultant length of the flood-protected river comprises (out of of all Hungarian protected rivers).
Shipping and ports
The most important seaport was Trieste (today part of Italy), where the Austrian merchant marine was based. Two major shipping companies (Austrian Lloyd and Austro-Americana) and several shipyards were located there. From 1815 to 1866, Venice had been part of the Habsburg empire. The loss of Venice prompted the development of the Austrian merchant marine. By 1913, the commercial marine of Austria, comprised 16,764 vessels with a tonnage of 471,252, and crews number-ing 45,567. Of the total (1913) 394 of 422,368 tons were steamers, and 16,370 of 48,884 tons were sailing vessels The Austrian Lloyd was one of the biggest ocean shipping companies of the time. Prior to the beginning of World War I, the company owned 65 middle-sized and large steamers. The Austro-Americana owned one third of this number, including the biggest Austrian passenger ship, the SS Kaiser Franz Joseph I. In comparison to the Austrian Lloyd, the Austro-American concentrated on destinations in North and South America. The Austro-Hungarian Navy became much more significant than previously, as industrialization provided sufficient revenues to develop it. Pola (Pula, today part of Croatia) was especially significant for the navy.
The most important seaport for the Hungarian part of the monarchy was Fiume (Rijeka, today part of Croatia), where the Hungarian shipping companies, such as the Adria, operated. The commercial marine of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1913 comprised 545 vessels of 144,433 tons, and crews numbering 3,217. Of the total number of vessels 134,000 of 142,539 tons were steamers, and 411 of 1,894 tons were sailing vessels. The first Danubian steamer company, Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (DDSG), was the largest inland shipping company in the world until the collapse of Austria-Hungary.
Military
The Austro-Hungarian Army was under the command of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen (1817–1895), an old-fashioned bureaucrat who opposed modernization. The military system of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was similar in both states, and rested since 1868 upon the principle of the universal and personal obligation of the citizen to bear arms. Its military force was composed of the common army; the special armies, namely the Austrian Landwehr, and the Hungarian Honved, which were separate national institutions, and the Landsturm or levy-en masse. As stated above, the common army stood under the administration of the joint minister of war, while the special armies were under the administration of the respective ministries of national defence. The yearly contingent of recruits for the army was fixed by the military bills voted on by the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments and was generally determined on the basis of the population, according to the last census returns. It amounted in 1905 to 103,100 men, of which Austria furnished 59,211 men, and Hungary 43,889. Besides 10,000 men were annually allotted to the Austrian Landwehr, and 12,500 to the Hungarian Honved. The term of service was two years (three years in the cavalry) with the colours, seven or eight in the reserve and two in the Landwehr; in the case of men not drafted to the active army the same total period of service was spent in various special reserves.
The common minister of war was the head for the administration of all military affairs, except those of the Austrian Landwehr and of the Hungarian Honved, which were committed to the ministries for national defence of the two respective states. But the supreme command of the army was nominally vested in the monarch, who had the power to take all measures regarding the whole army. In practice, the emperor's nephew Archduke Albrecht was his chief military advisor and made the policy decisions.
The Austro-Hungarian Navy was mainly a coast defence force, and also included a flotilla of monitors for the Danube. It was administered by the naval department of the ministry of war.
1914–1918: World War I
1878–1914: Congress of Berlin, Balkan instability and the Bosnia Crisis
Russian Pan-Slavic organizations sent aid to the Balkan rebels and so pressured the tsar's government to declare war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877 in the name of protecting Orthodox Christians. Unable to mediate between the Ottoman Empire and Russia over the control of Serbia, Austria–Hungary declared neutrality when the conflict between the two powers escalated into a war. With help from Romania and Greece, Russia defeated the Ottomans and with the Treaty of San Stefano tried to create a large pro-Russian Bulgaria.
This treaty sparked an international uproar that almost resulted in a general European war. Austria–Hungary and Britain feared that a large Bulgaria would become a Russian satellite that would enable the tsar to dominate the Balkans. British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli moved warships into position against Russia to halt the advance of Russian influence in the eastern Mediterranean so close to Britain's route through the Suez Canal. The Treaty of San Stefano was seen in Austria as much too favourable for Russia and its Orthodox-Slavic goals.
The Congress of Berlin rolled back the Russian victory by partitioning the large Bulgarian state that Russia had carved out of Ottoman territory and denying any part of Bulgaria full independence from the Ottomans. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 let Austria occupy (but not annex) the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a predominantly Slavic area. Austria occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as a way of gaining power in the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania became fully independent. Nonetheless, the Balkans remained a site of political unrest with teeming ambition for independence and great power rivalries. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Gyula Andrássy (Minister of Foreign Affairs) managed to force Russia to retreat from further demands in the Balkans. As a result, Greater Bulgaria was broken up and Serbian independence was guaranteed. In that year, with Britain's support, Austria–Hungary stationed troops in Bosnia to prevent the Russians from expanding into nearby Serbia. In another measure to keep the Russians out of the Balkans, Austria–Hungary formed an alliance, the Mediterranean Entente, with Britain and Italy in 1887 and concluded mutual defence pacts with Germany in 1879 and Romania in 1883 against a possible Russian attack. Following the Congress of Berlin the European powers attempted to guarantee stability through a complex series of alliances and treaties.
Anxious about Balkan instability and Russian aggression, and to counter French interests in Europe, Austria–Hungary forged a defensive alliance with Germany in October 1879 and in May 1882. In October 1882 Italy joined this partnership in the Triple Alliance largely because of Italy's imperial rivalries with France. Tensions between Russia and Austria–Hungary remained high, so Bismarck replaced the League of the Three Emperors with the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to keep the Habsburgs from recklessly starting a war over Pan-Slavism. The Sandžak-Raška / Novibazar region was under Austro-Hungarian occupation between 1878 and 1909, when it was returned to the Ottoman Empire, before being ultimately divided between kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia.
On the heels of the Great Balkan Crisis, Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1878 and the monarchy eventually annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding of Cisleithania and Transleithania under the control of the Imperial & Royal finance ministry rather than attaching it to either territorial government. The annexation in 1908 led some in Vienna to contemplate combining Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatia to form a third Slavic component of the monarchy. The deaths of Franz Joseph's brother, Maximilian (1867), and his only son, Rudolf, made the Emperor's nephew, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne. The Archduke was rumoured to have been an advocate for this trialism as a means to limit the power of the Hungarian aristocracy.
A proclamation issued on the occasion of its annexation to the Habsburg monarchy in October 1908 promised these lands constitutional institutions, which should secure to their inhabitants full civil rights and a share in the management of their own affairs by means of a local representative assembly. In performance of this promise a constitution was promulgated in 1910.
The principal players in the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 were the foreign ministers of Austria and Russia, Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal and Alexander Izvolsky. Both were motivated by political ambition; the first would emerge successful, and the latter would be broken by the crisis. Along the way, they would drag Europe to the brink of war in 1909. They would also divide Europe into the two armed camps that would go to war in July 1914.
Aehrenthal had started with the assumption that the Slavic minorities could never come together, and the Balkan League would never cause any damage to Austria. He turned down an Ottoman proposal for an alliance that would include Austria, Turkey, and Romania. However, his policies alienated the Bulgarians, who turned instead to Russia and Serbia. Although Austria had no intention to embark on additional expansion to the south, Aehrenthal encouraged speculation to that effect, expecting that it would paralyze the Balkan states. Instead, it incited them to feverish activity to create a defensive block to stop Austria. A series of grave miscalculations at the highest level thus significantly strengthened Austria's enemies.
In 1914, Slavic militants in Bosnia rejected Austria's plan to fully absorb the area; they assassinated the Austrian heir and precipitated World War I.
Prelude
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. A group of six assassins (Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež, Vaso Čubrilović) from the nationalist group Mlada Bosna, supplied by the Black Hand, had gathered on the street where the Archduke's motorcade would pass. Čabrinović threw a grenade at the car, but missed. It injured some people nearby, and Franz Ferdinand's convoy could carry on. The other assassins failed to act as the cars drove past them quickly. About an hour later, when Franz Ferdinand was returning from a visit at the Sarajevo Hospital, the convoy took a wrong turn into a street where Gavrilo Princip by coincidence stood. With a pistol, Princip shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The reaction among most city-dwelling Austrian people was mild, almost indifferent. As historian Z. A. B. Zeman later wrote, "The event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday [June 28 and 29], the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened".
The assassination excessively intensified the existing traditional religion-based ethnic hostilities in Bosnia. However, in Sarajevo itself, Austrian authorities encouraged violence against the Serb residents, which resulted in the Anti-Serb riots of Sarajevo, in which Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims killed two and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Writer Ivo Andrić referred to the violence as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were organized not only in Sarajevo but also in many other larger Austro-Hungarian cities in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. Four hundred sixty Serbs were sentenced to death and a predominantly Muslim special militia known as the Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs.
Some members of the government, such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Leopold Berchtold and Army Commander Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had wanted to confront the resurgent Serbian nation for some years in a preventive war, but the Emperor and Hungarian prime minister István Tisza were opposed.
The foreign ministry of Austro-Hungarian Empire sent ambassador László Szőgyény to Potsdam, where he inquired about the standpoint of the German Emperor on 5 July and received a supportive response.
The leaders of Austria–Hungary therefore decided to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt; using the assassination as an excuse, they presented a list of ten demands called the July Ultimatum, expecting Serbia would never accept. When Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands but only partially accepted the remaining one, Austria–Hungary declared war. Franz Joseph I finally followed the urgent counsel of his top advisers.
Over the course of July and August 1914, these events caused the start of World War I, as Russia mobilized in support of Serbia, setting off a series of counter-mobilizations. In support of his German ally, on Thursday, 6 August 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph signed the declaration of war on Russia. Italy initially remained neutral, despite its alliance with Austria–Hungary. In 1915, it switched to the side of the Entente powers, hoping to gain territory from its former ally.
Wartime foreign policy
The Austro-Hungarian Empire played a relatively passive diplomatic role in the war, as it was increasingly dominated and controlled by Germany. The only goal was to punish Serbia and try to stop the ethnic breakup of the Empire, and it completely failed. Starting in late 1916 the new Emperor Karl removed the pro-German officials and opened peace overtures to the Allies, whereby the entire war could be ended by compromise, or perhaps Austria would make a separate peace from Germany. The main effort was vetoed by Italy, which had been promised large slices of Austria for joining the Allies in 1915. Austria was only willing to turn over the Trentino region but nothing more. Karl was seen as a defeatist, which weakened his standing at home and with both the Allies and Germany.
Theaters of operations
The Austro-Hungarian Empire conscripted 7.8 million soldiers during WWI. General von Hötzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff. Franz Joseph I, who was much too old to command the army, appointed Archduke Friedrich von Österreich-Teschen as Supreme Army Commander (Armeeoberkommandant), but asked him to give Von Hötzendorf freedom to take any decisions. Von Hötzendorf remained in effective command of the military forces until Emperor Karl I took the supreme command himself in late 1916 and dismissed Conrad von Hötzendorf in 1917. Meanwhile, economic conditions on the homefront deteriorated rapidly. The Empire depended on agriculture, and agriculture depended on the heavy labor of millions of men who were now in the Army. Food production fell, the transportation system became overcrowded, and industrial production could not successfully handle the overwhelming need for munitions. Germany provided a great deal of help, but it was not enough. Furthermore, the political instability of the multiple ethnic groups of Empire now ripped apart any hope for national consensus in support of the war. Increasingly there was a demand for breaking up the Empire and setting up autonomous national states based on historic language-based cultures. The new Emperor sought peace terms from the Allies, but his initiatives were vetoed by Italy.
Homefront
The heavily rural Empire did have a small industrial base, but its major contribution was manpower and food. Nevertheless, Austria–Hungary was more urbanized (25%) than its actual opponents in the First World War, like the Russian Empire (13.4%), Serbia (13.2%) or Romania (18.8%). Furthermore, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had also more industrialized economy and higher GDP per capita than the Kingdom of Italy, which was economically the far most developed actual opponent of the Empire.
On the home front, food grew scarcer and scarcer, as did heating fuel. Hungary, with its heavy agricultural base, was somewhat better fed. The Army conquered productive agricultural areas in Romania and elsewhere, but refused to allow food shipments to civilians back home. Morale fell every year, and the diverse nationalities gave up on the Empire and looked for ways to establish their own nation states.
Inflation soared, from an index of 129 in 1914 to 1589 in 1918, wiping out the cash savings of the middle-class. In terms of war damage to the economy, the war used up about 20 percent of the GDP. The dead soldiers amounted to about four percent of the 1914 labor force, and the wounded ones to another six percent. Compared all the major countries in the war, the death and casualty rate was toward the high-end regarding the present-day territory of Austria.
By summer 1918, "Green Cadres" of army deserters formed armed bands in the hills of Croatia-Slavonia and civil authority disintegrated. By late October violence and massive looting erupted and there were efforts to form peasant republics. However, the Croatian political leadership was focused on creating a new state (Yugoslavia) and worked with the advancing Serbian army to impose control and end the uprisings.
Serbian front 1914–1916
At the start of the war, the army was divided into two: the smaller part attacked Serbia while the larger part fought against the formidable Imperial Russian Army. The invasion of Serbia in 1914 was a disaster: by the end of the year, the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory, but had lost 227,000 out of a total force of 450,000 men. However, in the autumn of 1915, the Serbian Army was defeated by the Central Powers, which led to the occupation of Serbia. Near the end of 1915, in a massive rescue operation involving more than 1,000 trips made by Italian, French and British steamers, 260,000 Serb surviving soldiers were transported to Brindisi and Corfu, where they waited for the chance of the victory of Allied Powers to reclaim their country. Corfu hosted the Serbian government in exile after the collapse of Serbia and served as a supply base to the Greek front. In April 1916 a large number of Serbian troops were transported in British and French naval vessels from Corfu to mainland Greece. The contingent numbering over 120,000 relieved a much smaller army at the Macedonian front and fought alongside British and French troops.
Russian front 1914–1917
On the Eastern front, the war started out equally poorly. The government accepted the Polish proposal of establishing the Supreme National Committee as the Polish central authority within the Empire, responsible for the formation of the Polish Legions, an auxiliary military formation within the Austro-Hungarian army. The Austro-Hungarian Army was defeated at the Battle of Lemberg and the great fortress city of Przemyśl was besieged and fell in March 1915. The Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive started as a minor German offensive to relieve the pressure of the Russian numerical superiority on the Austro-Hungarians, but the cooperation of the Central Powers resulted in huge Russian losses and the total collapse of the Russian lines and their long retreat into Russia. The Russian Third Army perished. In summer 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Army, under a unified command with the Germans, participated in the successful Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. From June 1916, the Russians focused their attacks on the Austro-Hungarian army in the Brusilov Offensive, recognizing the numerical inferiority of the Austro-Hungarian army. By the end of September 1916, Austria–Hungary mobilized and concentrated new divisions, and the successful Russian advance was halted and slowly repelled; but the Austrian armies took heavy losses (about 1 million men) and never recovered. Nevertheless, the huge losses in men and material inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to the revolutions of 1917, and it caused an economic crash in the Russian Empire.
The Act of 5 November 1916 was proclaimed then to the Poles jointly by the Emperors Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. This act promised the creation of the Kingdom of Poland out of territory of Congress Poland, envisioned by its authors as a puppet state controlled by the Central Powers, with the nominal authority vested in the Regency Council. The origin of that document was the dire need to draft new recruits from German-occupied Poland for the war with Russia. Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918 ending the World War I, in spite of the previous initial total dependence of the kingdom on its sponsors, it ultimately served against their intentions as the cornerstone proto state of the nascent Second Polish Republic, the latter composed also of territories never intended by the Central Powers to be ceded to Poland.
The Battle of Zborov (1917) was the first significant action of the Czechoslovak Legions, who fought for the independence of Czechoslovakia against the Austro-Hungarian army.
Italian front 1915–1918
In May 1915, Italy attacked Austria–Hungary. Italy was the only military opponent of Austria–Hungary which had a similar degree of industrialization and economic level; moreover, her army was numerous (≈1,000,000 men were immediately fielded), but suffered from poor leadership, training and organization. Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna marched his army towards the Isonzo river, hoping to seize Ljubljana, and to eventually threaten Vienna. However, the Royal Italian Army were halted on the river, where four battles took place over five months (23 June – 2 December 1915). The fight was extremely bloody and exhausting for both the contenders.
On 15 May 1916, the Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf launched the Strafexpedition ("punitive expedition"): the Austrians broke through the opposing front and occupied the Asiago plateau. The Italians managed to resist and in a counteroffensive seized Gorizia on 9 August. Nonetheless, they had to stop on the Carso, a few kilometres away from the border. At this point, several months of indecisive trench warfare ensued (analogous to the Western front). As the Russian Empire collapsed as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russians ended their involvement in the war, Germans and Austrians were able to move on the Western and Southern fronts much manpower from the erstwhile Eastern fighting.
On 24 October 1917, Austrians (now enjoying decisive German support) attacked at Caporetto using new infiltration tactics; although they advanced more than in the direction of Venice and gained considerable supplies, they were halted and could not cross the Piave river. Italy, although suffering massive casualties, recovered from the blow, and a coalition government under Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was formed. Italy also enjoyed support by the Entente powers: by 1918, large amounts of war materials and a few auxiliary American, British, and French divisions arrived in the Italian battle zone. Cadorna was replaced by General Armando Diaz; under his command, the Italians retook the initiative and won the decisive Battle of the Piave river (15–23 June 1918), in which some 60,000 Austrian and 43,000 Italian soldiers were killed. The final battle was at Vittorio Veneto; after 4 days of stiff resistance, Italian troops crossed the Piave River, and after losing 90,000 men the defeated Austrian troops retreated in disarray pursued by the Italians. The Italians captured 448,000 Austrian-Hungarian soldiers (about one-third of the imperial-royal army), 24 of whom were generals, 5,600 cannons and mortars, and 4,000 machine guns. The armistice was signed at Villa Giusti on 3 November, in spite of Austria–Hungary already having disintegrated on 31 October 1918.
Romanian front 1916–1917
On 27 August 1916, Romania declared war against Austria–Hungary. The Romanian Army crossed the borders of Eastern Hungary (Transylvania), and despite initial successes, by November 1916, the Central Powers formed by the Austro-Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, and Ottoman armies, had defeated the Romanian and Russian armies of the Entente Powers, and occupied the southern part of Romania (including Oltenia, Muntenia and Dobruja). Within 3 months of the war, the Central Powers came near Bucharest, the Romanian capital city. On 6 December, the Central Powers captured Bucharest, and part of the population moved to the unoccupied Romanian territory, in Moldavia, together with the Romanian government, royal court and public authorities, which relocated to Iași.
In 1917, after several defensive victories (managing to stop the German-Austro-Hungarian advance), with Russia's withdrawal from the war following the October Revolution, Romania was forced to drop out of the war.
Whereas the German army realized it needed close cooperation from the homefront, Habsburg officers saw themselves as entirely separate from the civilian world, and superior to it. When they occupied productive areas, such as southern Romania, they seized food stocks and other supplies for their own purposes and blocked any shipments intended for civilians back in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The result was that the officers lived well, as the civilians began to starve. Vienna even transferred training units to Serbia and Poland for the sole purpose of feeding them. In all, the Army obtained about 15 percent of its cereal needs from occupied territories.
Role of Hungary
Although the Kingdom of Hungary comprised only 42% of the population of Austria–Hungary, the thin majority – more than 3.8 million soldiers – of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces were conscripted from the Kingdom of Hungary during the First World War. Roughly 600,000 soldiers were killed in action, and 700,000 soldiers were wounded in the war.
Austria–Hungary held on for years, as the Hungarian half provided sufficient supplies for the military to continue to wage war. This was shown in a transition of power after which the Hungarian prime minister, Count István Tisza, and foreign minister, Count István Burián, had decisive influence over the internal and external affairs of the monarchy. By late 1916, food supply from Hungary became intermittent and the government sought an armistice with the Entente powers. However, this failed as Britain and France no longer had any regard for the integrity of the monarchy because of Austro-Hungarian support for Germany.
Analysis of defeat
Among the European great powers, in proportion to its national income, Austria-Hungary paid the lowest attention to the development and maintenance of its army.
The setbacks that the Austrian army suffered in 1914 and 1915 can be attributed to a large extent by the incompetence of the Austrian high command. After attacking Serbia, its forces soon had to be withdrawn to protect its eastern frontier against Russia's invasion, while German units were engaged in fighting on the Western Front. This resulted in a greater than expected loss of men in the invasion of Serbia. Furthermore, it became evident that the Austrian high command had had no plans for possible continental war and that the army and navy were also ill-equipped to handle such a conflict.
In the last two years of the war the Austro-Hungarian armed forces lost all ability to act independently of Germany. As of 7 September 1916, the German emperor was given full control of all the armed forces of the Central Powers and Austria-Hungary effectively became a satellite of Germany. The Austrians viewed the German army favorably, on the other hand by 1916 the general belief in Germany was that Germany, in its alliance with Austria–Hungary, was "shackled to a corpse". The operational capability of the Austro-Hungarian army was seriously affected by supply shortages, low morale and a high casualty rate, and by the army's composition of multiple ethnicities with different languages and customs.
The last two successes for the Austrians, the Romanian Offensive and the Caporetto Offensive, were German-assisted operations. As the Dual Monarchy became more politically unstable, it became more and more dependent on German assistance. The majority of its people, other than Hungarians and German Austrians, became increasingly restless.
In 1917, the Eastern front of the Entente Powers completely collapsed. In spite of this, the Austro-Hungarian Empire then withdrew from all defeated countries due to its dire economic condition, as well as signs of impeding disintegration.
1918: Demise, disintegration, dissolution
By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated. The government had failed badly on the homefront. Historian Alexander Watson reports:
As the Imperial economy collapsed into severe hardship and even starvation, its multi-ethnic army lost its morale and was increasingly hard-pressed to hold its line. At the last Italian offensive, the Austro-Hungarian Army took to the field without any food and munition supply and fought without any political supports for a de facto non-existent empire.
The Austro-Hungarian monarchy collapsed with dramatic speed in the autumn of 1918. Leftist and pacifist political movements organized strikes in factories, and uprisings in the army had become commonplace. These leftist or left-liberal pro-Entente maverick parties opposed the monarchy as a form of government and considered themselves internationalist rather than patriotic. Eventually, the German defeat and the minor revolutions in Vienna and Budapest gave political power to the left/liberal political parties.
As the war went on, the ethnic unity declined; the Allies encouraged breakaway demands from minorities and the Empire faced disintegration. As it became apparent that the Allied powers would win World War I, nationalist movements, which had previously been calling for a greater degree of autonomy for various areas, started pressing for full independence. In the capital cities of Vienna and Budapest, the leftist and liberal movements and opposition parties strengthened and supported the separatism of ethnic minorities. The multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire started to disintegrate, leaving its army alone on the battlefields. The military breakdown of the Italian front marked the start of the rebellion for the numerous ethnicities who made up the multiethnic Empire, as they refused to keep on fighting for a cause that now appeared senseless. The Emperor had lost much of his power to rule, as his realm disintegrated.
As one of his Fourteen Points, President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the nationalities of Austria–Hungary have the "freest opportunity to autonomous development". In response, Emperor Karl I agreed to reconvene the Imperial Parliament in 1917 and allow the creation of a confederation with each national group exercising self-governance. However, the leaders of these national groups rejected the idea; they deeply distrusted Vienna and were now determined to get independence.
On 14 October 1918, Foreign Minister Baron István Burián von Rajecz asked for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. In an apparent attempt to demonstrate good faith, Emperor Karl issued a proclamation ("Imperial Manifesto of 16 October 1918") two days later which would have significantly altered the structure of the Austrian half of the monarchy, allowing the Poles to secede and transforming the rest of Cisleithania into a federal union of Germans, Czechs, South Slavs and Ukrainians. No such proclamation could be issued in Hungary, where Hungarian aristocrats still sought to keep the kingdom intact.
However, on 18 October, United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied that autonomy for the nationalities – the tenth of the Fourteen Points – was no longer enough. In fact, a Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on 14 October. The South Slavs in both halves of the monarchy had already declared in favor of uniting with Serbia in a large South Slav state in the 1917 Corfu Declaration signed by members of the Yugoslav Committee. The Croatians had begun disregarding orders from Budapest earlier in October. Lansing's response was, in effect, the death certificate of Austria–Hungary.
During the Italian battles, the Czechoslovaks and Southern Slavs declared their independence. With defeat in the war imminent after the Italian offensive in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto on 24 October, Czech politicians peacefully took over command in Prague on 28 October (later declared the birth of Czechoslovakia) and followed up in other major cities in the next few days. On 30 October, the Slovaks did the same. On 29 October, the Slavs in both portions of what remained of Austria–Hungary proclaimed the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and declared that their ultimate intention was to unite with Serbia and Montenegro in a large South Slav state. On the same day, the Czechs and Slovaks formally proclaimed the establishment of Czechoslovakia as an independent state.
Alexander Watson argues that, "The Habsburg regime's doom was sealed when Wilson's response to the note, sent two and a half weeks earlier [by the foreign minister Baron István Burián von Rajecz on 14 October 1918], arrived on 20 October." Wilson rejected the continuation of the dual monarchy as a negotiable possibility.
On 16 October 1918, Emperor Karl I of Austria and IV of Hungary proclaimed the People’s Manifesto, which envisaged to turn the Empire into a federal state of five Kingdoms (Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia and Polish-Galicia), in an attempt to take into account the aspirations of the Croats, Czechs, Austrian Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Romanians without affecting the integrity of the lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen. It also promised the unification of Polish lands via an Austro-Polish solution, and an Austro-Bohemian Compromise that would transform the projected Trialism into a proposal with two additional kingdoms. The city of Trieste and its Italian territory would be granted a special status. Karl declared that his objectives were to resolve 'the needs of the Austrian people' and bring 'happiness to all [his] people' (including non-Germans), and that he had thrived to achieve peace in the 'fatherland' and to rebuild society ever since his accession to the throne. However, the People's Manifesto came too late, at a time when Austria-Hungary was collapsing near the end of the war, and was no longer perceived by the national representative bodies as an invitation to reform the monarchy but as an opportunity to carve out their own future in a self-determined way with the option of leaving the monarchy.
On 17 October 1918, the Hungarian Parliament voted in favour of terminating the union with Austria. The most prominent opponent of continued union with Austria, Count Mihály Károlyi, seized power in the Aster Revolution on 31 October. Charles was all but forced to appoint Károlyi as his Hungarian prime minister. One of Károlyi's first acts was to formally repudiate the compromise agreement on 31 October, effectively terminating the personal union with Austria and thus officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state.
By the end of October, there was nothing left of the Habsburg realm but its majority-German Danubian and Alpine provinces, and Karl's authority was being challenged even there by the German-Austrian state council. Karl's last Austrian prime minister, Heinrich Lammasch, concluded that Karl's position was untenable. Lammasch persuaded Karl that the best course was to relinquish, at least temporarily, his right to exercise sovereign authority.
On 11 November, Karl issued a carefully worded proclamation in which he recognized the Austrian people's right to determine the form of the state and "relinquish(ed) every participation" in Austrian state affairs.
On the day after he announced his withdrawal from Austrian politics, the German-Austrian National Council proclaimed the Republic of German Austria. Károlyi followed suit on 16 November, proclaiming the Hungarian Democratic Republic.
Successor states
There were two legal successor states of the former Austro–Hungarian monarchy:
German Austria (which became the Republic of Austria)
Hungarian Democratic Republic (which after a few other short-lived intermediaries became the Kingdom of Hungary)
The 1919 Treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (between the victors of World War I and Austria) and Trianon (between the victors and Hungary) regulated the new borders of Austria and Hungary, reducing them to small-sized and landlocked states. In regard to areas without a decisive national majority, the Entente powers ruled in many cases in favour of the newly emancipated independent nation-states, enabling them to claim vast territories containing sizeable German- and Hungarian-speaking populations.
The decisions contained in the treaties had immense political and economic effects. The previously rapid economic growth of the imperial territories initially stalled because the new borders became major economic barriers. Many established industries and infrastructure elements were intended to satisfy the needs of an extensive realm. As a result, the emerging countries were often compelled to considerable sacrifices in order to transform their economies. A major political unease in the affected regions followed as a result of these economic difficulties, fueling in some cases extremist movements.
Austria
As a result, the Republic of Austria lost roughly 60% of the old Austrian Empire's territory. It also had to drop its plans for union with Germany, as it was not allowed to unite with Germany without League approval.
The new Austrian state was, at least on paper, on shakier ground than Hungary. Unlike its former Hungarian partner, Austria had never been a nation in any real sense. While the Austrian state had existed in one form or another for 700 years, it was united only by loyalty to the Habsburgs. With the loss of 60% of the Austrian Empire's prewar territory, Vienna was now a lavish and oversized imperial capital lacking an empire to support it, thus being sarcastically referred to as the "national hydrocephalus".
However, after a brief period of upheaval and the Allies' foreclosure of union with Germany, Austria established itself as a federal republic. Despite the temporary Anschluss with Nazi Germany, it still survives today. Adolf Hitler cited that all "Germans" – such as him and the others from Austria, etc. – should be united with Germany.
Hungary
By comparison, Hungary had been a nation and a state for over 900 years. Hungary, however, was severely disrupted by the loss of 72% of its territory, 64% of its population and most of its natural resources. The Hungarian Democratic Republic was short-lived and was temporarily replaced by the communist Hungarian Soviet Republic. Romanian troops ousted Béla Kun and his communist government during the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919.
In the summer of 1919, a Habsburg, Archduke Joseph August, became regent, but was forced to stand down after only two weeks when it became apparent the Allies would not recognise him. Finally, in March 1920, royal powers were entrusted to a regent, Miklós Horthy, who had been the last commanding admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy and had helped organize the counter-revolutionary forces. It was this government that signed the Treaty of Trianon under protest on 4 June 1920 at the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, France. The restored Kingdom of Hungary lost roughly 72% of the pre-war territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Habsburg banishment
Austria had passed the "Habsburg Law", which both dethroned the Habsburgs and banished all Habsburgs from Austrian territory. While Karl was banned from ever returning to Austria again, other Habsburgs could return if they gave up all claims to the defunct throne.
In March and again in October 1921, ill-prepared attempts by Karl to regain the throne in Budapest collapsed. The initially wavering Horthy, after receiving threats of intervention from the Allied Powers and the Little Entente, refused his cooperation. Soon afterward, the Hungarian government nullified the Pragmatic Sanction, effectively dethroning the Habsburgs. Subsequently, the British took custody of Karl and removed him and his family to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died the following year.
Territorial legacy
Immediately after World War I
The following states were formed, re-established or expanded at the dissolution of the former Austro–Hungarian monarchy:
German Austria (which became the Republic of Austria)
First Hungarian Republic which became the Hungarian Soviet Republic, subsequently briefly restored and replaced by the Hungarian Republic, ultimately transformed into the Kingdom of Hungary
First Czechoslovak Republic, later "Czechoslovakia"
Second Polish Republic, contested by the short-lived proto-states of Tarnobrzeg Republic and Polish Soviet Socialist Republic
State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia, both later absorbed into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Greater Romania
Kingdom of Italy
Republic of China (former Austro-Hungarian concession of Tianjin)
the short-lived Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Rusyn) proto-states of West Ukrainian People's Republic (later absorbed into Ukrainian People's Republic), Hutsul Republic, Lemko Republic, Komancza Republic and the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic; all were ultimately absorbed mostly into Poland, but also into Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.
The Principality of Liechtenstein, which had formerly looked to Vienna for protection and whose ruling house held sizable real estate in Cisleithania, formed a customs and defense union with Switzerland, and adopted the Swiss currency instead of the Austrian. In April 1919, Vorarlberg – the westernmost province of Austria – voted by a large majority to join Switzerland; however, both the Swiss and the Allies disregarded this result.
Present
The following present-day countries and parts of countries were within the boundaries of Austria–Hungary when the empire was dissolved. Some other provinces of Europe had been part of the Habsburg monarchy at one time before 1867.
Empire of Austria (Cisleithania):
Austria (except Burgenland without Sopron)
Czech Republic (except the Hlučínsko area)
Slovenia (except Prekmurje)
Italy (Trentino, South Tyrol, parts of the province of Belluno and small portions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia)
Croatia (Dalmatia, Istria)
Poland (voivodeships of Lesser Poland, Subcarpathia, southernmost part of Silesia (Bielsko and Cieszyn))
Ukraine (oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil (except its northern corner) and most of the oblast of Chernivtsi)
Romania (county of Suceava)
Montenegro (bay of Boka Kotorska, the coast and the immediate hinterland around the cities of Budva, Petrovac and Sutomore)
Kingdom of Hungary (Transleithania):
Hungary
Slovakia
Austria (Burgenland except Sopron)
Slovenia (Prekmurje)
Croatia (Croatian Baranja and Međimurje county, Fiume as corpus separatum along with Slavonia and Central Croatia were not part of Hungary proper, the latter two were part of the sovereign Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia)
Ukraine (oblast of Zakarpattia)
Romania (region of Transylvania, Partium and parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș)
Serbia (autonomous province of Vojvodina and northern Belgrade region)
Poland (Polish parts of Orava and Spiš)
Austro-Hungarian Condominium
Bosnia and Herzegovina (the villages of Zavalje, Mali Skočaj and Veliki Skočaj including the immediate surrounding area west of the city of Bihać)
Montenegro (Sutorina – western part of the Municipality of Herceg Novi between present borders with Croatia (SW) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (NW), Adriatic coast (E) and the township of Igalo (NE))
Sandžak-Raška region, Austro-Hungarian occupied 1878 until withdrawal in 1908 whilst formally part of the Ottoman Empire
The Empire treated Bosnia-Herzegovina in much the same way the other powers treated their overseas colonies
Other possessions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
People's Republic of China (former Austro-Hungarian concession of Tianjin)
See also
Aftermath of World War I
Austrian nobility
Corporative federalism, a form of administration adopted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Diplomatic history of World War I
Austro-Hungarian entry into World War I
Ethnic composition of Austria–Hungary
Former countries in Europe after 1815
Hungarian nobility
Lands of the Bohemian Crown (1867–1918)
United States of Greater Austria
Notes
References
Bibliography
; highly detailed history; emphasis on ethnicity
; politics and diplomacy
Further reading
online
Fichtner, Paula Sutter. Historical Dictionary of Austria (2nd ed 2009)
Good, David. The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire (1984)
Herman, Arthur. What Life Was Like: At Empire's End : Austro-Hungarian Empire 1848–1918 (Time Life, 2000); heavily illustrated
Jelavich, Barbara. Modern Austria: Empire and Republic, 1815–1986 (Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 72–150.
Johnston, William M. The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 (University of California Press, 1972)
Macartney, Carlile Aylmer The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918, New York, Macmillan 1969.
Mason, John W. The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867–1918 (Routledge, 2014).
May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy 1867–1914 (Harvard University Press, 1951). online
Milward, Alan, and S. B. Saul. The Development of the Economies of Continental Europe 1850–1914 (1977) pp. 271–331. online
Oakes, Elizabeth and Eric Roman. Austria–Hungary and the Successor States: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present (2003)
Palmer, Alan. Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995.
Redlich, Joseph. Emperor Francis Joseph Of Austria. New York: Macmillan, 1929. online free
Roman, Eric. Austria-Hungary & the Successor States: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present (2003)online
Rudolph, Richard L. Banking and industrialization in Austria-Hungary: the role of banks in the industrialization of the Czech crownlands, 1873–1914 (1976) online
Sauer, Walter. "Habsburg Colonial: Austria-Hungary's Role in European Overseas Expansion Reconsidered", Austrian Studies (2012) 20:5–23 ONLINE
Sugar, Peter F. et al. eds. A History of Hungary (1990), pp. 252–294.
Tschuppik, Karl. The reign of the Emperor Fransis Joseph (1930) online
Turnock, David. Eastern Europe: An Historical Geography: 1815–1945 (1989)
Usher, Roland G. "Austro-German Relations Since 1866." American Historical Review 23.3 (1918): 577–595 online.
Várdy, Steven, and Agnes Várdy. The Austro-Hungarian mind: at home and abroad (East European Monographs, 1989)
Vermes, Gabor. "The Impact of the Dual Alliance on the Magyars of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy" East Central Europe (1980) vol 7 DOI: 10.1163/187633080x00211
World war
Bassett, Richard. For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619–1918 (2016)
Crankshaw, Edward. The Fall of the House of Habsburg (Viking, 1963). pp. 449.
Deak, John, and Jonathan E. Gumz. "How to Break a State: The Habsburg Monarchy's Internal War, 1914–1918" American Historical Review 122.4 (2017): 1105–1136. online
online
Kronenbitter, Günther. "Pre-war Military Planning (Austria–Hungary)." online
Sked, Alan. "Austria–Hungary and the First World War." Histoire@ Politique 1 (2014): 16–49. Online
Tunstall, Graydon A. Austro-Hungarian Army and the First World War (Cambridge University Press 2021) online review
Vermes, Gabor István Tisza: The Liberal Vision and Conservative Statecraft of a Magyar Nationalist (Columbia University Press, 1986); online review
Wank, Solomon. In the Twilight of Empire. Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal (1854–1912): Imperial Habsburg Patriot and Statesman. Vol. 2: From Foreign Minister in Waiting to de facto Chancellor (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020).
Primary sources
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Austro-Hungarian red book. (1915) English translations of official documents to justify the war. online
Gooch, G. P. Recent Revelations of European Diplomacy (1940), pp. 103–159 summarizes memoirs of major participants
Steed, Henry Wickham. The Hapsburg monarchy (1919) online detailed contemporary account
Historiography and memory
Boyd, Kelly, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writers (Rutledge, 1999) 1:60–63, historiography
Körner, Axel. "Beyond Nation States: New Perspectives on the Habsburg Empire." European History Quarterly 48.3 (2018): 516–533. online
Sked, Alan. "Explaining the Habsburg Empire, 1830–90." in Pamela Pilbeam, ed., Themes in Modern European History 1830–1890 (Routledge, 2002) pp. 141–176.
Sked, Alan. "Austria–Hungary and the First World War." Histoire Politique 1 (2014): 16–49. online free historiography
In German
. (ed.: Rudolf Rothaug), K. u. k. Hof-Kartographische Anstalt G. Freytag & Berndt, Vienna, 1911.
External links
Articles relating to Austria–Hungary at the International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
Habsburg Empire Austrian line
Microsoft Encarta: The height of the dual monarchy (Archived 31 October 2009)
The Austro-Hungarian Military
Heraldry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
– extensive list of heads of state, ministers, and ambassadors
History of Austro-Hungarian currency
Austria–Hungary, Dual Monarchy
Map of Europe and the collapse of Austria–Hungary at omniatlas.com
Mangham, Arthur Neal. The Social Bases of Austrian Politics: The German Electoral Districts of Cisleithania, 1900–1914. Ph.D. thesis 1974
Austro-Hungarian Land Forces 1848–1918
Oldphoto.info – Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army
HABSBURG is an email discussion list dealing with the culture and history of the Habsburg monarchy and its successor states in central Europe since 1500, with discussions, syllabi, book reviews, queries, conferences; edited daily by scholars since 1994
Former countries in the Balkans
Former empires
Former monarchies of Europe
Habsburg monarchy
House of Habsburg-Lorraine
Modern history of Austria
Modern history of Hungary
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1867 establishments in Europe
States and territories disestablished in 1918
1918 disestablishments in Europe
Christian states
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The Acts of Union () were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act 1707 passed by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotlandwhich at the time were separate states in a personal unionwere, in the words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain".
The two countries had shared a monarch since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his double first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. Although described as a Union of Crowns, and in spite of James's acknowledgement of his accession to a single Crown, England and Scotland were officially separate Kingdoms until 1707 (as opposed to the implied creation of a single unified Kingdom, exemplified by the later Kingdom of Great Britain). Prior to the Acts of Union, there had been three previous attempts (in 1606, 1667, and 1689) to unite the two countries by Acts of Parliament, but it was not until the early 18th century that both political establishments came to support the idea, albeit for different reasons.
The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707. On this date, the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament united to form the Parliament of Great Britain, based in the Palace of Westminster in London, the previous home of the English Parliament. This specific process is sometimes referred to as the "union of the Parliaments" in Scotland.
Political background prior to 1707
1603–1660
Prior to 1603, England and Scotland had different monarchs; as Elizabeth I never married, after 1567, her heir-presumptive became the Stuart king of Scotland, James VI, who was brought up as a Protestant. After her death, the two Crowns were held in personal union by James, as James I of England, and James VI of Scotland. He announced his intention to unite the two, using the royal prerogative to take the title "King of Great Britain", and give a British character to his court and person.
The 1603 Union of England and Scotland Act established a joint Commission to agree terms, but the English Parliament was concerned this would lead to the imposition of an absolutist structure similar to that of Scotland. James was forced to withdraw his proposals, and attempts to revive it in 1610 were met with hostility.
Instead, he set about creating a unified Church of Scotland and England, as the first step towards a centralised, Unionist state. However, despite both being nominally Episcopal in structure, the two were very different in doctrine; the Church of Scotland, or kirk, was Calvinist in doctrine, and viewed many Church of England practices as little better than Catholicism. As a result, attempts to impose religious policy by James and his son Charles I ultimately led to the 1639–1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The 1639–1640 Bishops' Wars confirmed the primacy of the kirk, and established a Covenanter government in Scotland. The Scots remained neutral when the First English Civil War began in 1642, before becoming concerned at the impact on Scotland of a Royalist victory. Presbyterian leaders like Argyll viewed union as a way to ensure free trade between England and Scotland, and preserve a Presbyterian kirk.
Under the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, the Covenanters agreed to provide military support for the English Parliament, in return for religious union. Although the treaty referred repeatedly to 'union' between England, Scotland, and Ireland, political union had little support outside the Kirk Party. Even religious union was opposed by the Episcopalian majority in the Church of England, and Independents like Oliver Cromwell, who dominated the New Model Army.
The Scots and English Presbyterians were political conservatives, who increasingly viewed the Independents, and associated radical groups like the Levellers, as a bigger threat than the Royalists. Both Royalists and Presbyterians agreed monarchy was divinely ordered, but disagreed on the nature and extent of Royal authority over the church. When Charles I surrendered in 1646, they allied with their former enemies to restore him to the English throne.
After defeat in the 1647–1648 Second English Civil War, Scotland was occupied by English troops which were withdrawn once the so-called Engagers whom Cromwell held responsible for the war had been replaced by the Kirk Party. In December 1648, Pride's Purge confirmed Cromwell's political control in England by removing Presbyterian MPs from Parliament, and executing Charles in January 1649. Seeing this as sacrilege, the Kirk Party proclaimed Charles II King of Scotland and England, and agreed to restore him to the English throne.
Defeat in the 1649–1651 Third English Civil War or Anglo-Scottish War resulted in Scotland's incorporation into the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, largely driven by Cromwell's determination to break the power of the kirk, which he held responsible for the Anglo-Scottish War. The 1652 Tender of Union was followed on 12 April 1654 by An Ordinance by the Protector for the Union of England and Scotland, creating the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. It was ratified by the Second Protectorate Parliament on 26 June 1657, creating a single Parliament in Westminster, with 30 representatives each from Scotland and Ireland added to the existing English members.
1660–1707
While integration into the Commonwealth established free trade between Scotland and England, the economic benefits were diminished by the costs of military occupation. Both Scotland and England associated union with heavy taxes and military rule; it had little popular support in either country, and was dissolved after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.
The Scottish economy was badly damaged by the English Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663 and England's wars with the Dutch Republic, Scotland's major export market. An Anglo-Scots Trade Commission was set up in January 1668 but the English had no interest in making concessions, as the Scots had little to offer in return. In 1669, Charles II revived talks on political union; his motives were to weaken Scotland's commercial and political links with the Dutch, still seen as an enemy and complete the work of his grandfather James I. Continued opposition meant these negotiations were abandoned by the end of 1669.
Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a Scottish Convention met in Edinburgh in April 1689 to agree a new constitutional settlement; during which the Scottish Bishops backed a proposed union in an attempt to preserve Episcopalian control of the kirk. William and Mary were supportive of the idea but it was opposed both by the Presbyterian majority in Scotland and the English Parliament. Episcopacy in Scotland was abolished in 1690, alienating a significant part of the political class; it was this element that later formed the bedrock of opposition to Union.
The 1690s were a time of economic hardship in Europe as a whole and Scotland in particular, a period now known as the Seven ill years which led to strained relations with England. In 1698, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies received a charter to raise capital through public subscription. The Company invested in the Darién scheme, an ambitious plan funded almost entirely by Scottish investors to build a colony on the Isthmus of Panama for trade with East Asia. The scheme was a disaster; the losses of over £150,000 severely impacted the Scottish commercial system.
Political motivations
The Acts of Union may be seen within a wider European context of increasing state centralisation during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, including the monarchies of France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain. While there were exceptions, such as the Dutch Republic or the Republic of Venice, the trend was clear.
The dangers of the monarch using one Parliament against the other first became apparent in 1647 and 1651. It resurfaced during the 1679 to 1681 Exclusion Crisis, caused by English resistance to the Catholic James II (of England, VII of Scotland) succeeding his brother Charles. James was sent to Edinburgh in 1681 as Lord High Commissioner; in August, the Scottish Parliament passed the Succession Act, confirming the divine right of kings, the rights of the natural heir "regardless of religion", the duty of all to swear allegiance to that king, and the independence of the Scottish Crown. It then went beyond ensuring James's succession to the Scottish throne by explicitly stating the aim was to make his exclusion from the English throne impossible without "the fatall and dreadfull consequences of a civil war".
The issue reappeared during the 1688 Glorious Revolution. The English Parliament generally supported replacing James with his Protestant daughter Mary, but resisted making her Dutch husband William of Orange joint ruler. They gave way only when he threatened to return to the Netherlands, and Mary refused to rule without him.
In Scotland, conflict over control of the kirk between Presbyterians and Episcopalians and William's position as a fellow Calvinist put him in a much stronger position. He originally insisted on retaining Episcopacy, and the Committee of the Articles, an unelected body that controlled what legislation Parliament could debate. Both would have given the Crown far greater control than in England but he withdrew his demands due to the 1689–1692 Jacobite Rising.
English perspective
The English succession was provided for by the English Act of Settlement 1701, which ensured that the monarch of England would be a Protestant member of the House of Hanover. Until the Union of Parliaments, the Scottish throne might be inherited by a different successor after Queen Anne, who had said in her first speech to the English parliament that a Union was "very necessary". The Scottish Act of Security 1704, however, was passed after the English parliament, without consultation with Scotland, had designated Electoress Sophia of Hanover (granddaughter of James I and VI) as Anne's successor, if Anne died childless. The Act of Security granted the Parliament of Scotland, the three Estates, the right to choose a successor and explicitly required a choice different from the English monarch unless the English were to grant free trade and navigation. Next the Alien Act 1705 was passed in the English parliament designating Scots in England as "foreign nationals" and blocking about half of all Scottish trade by boycotting exports to England or its colonies, unless Scotland came back to negotiate a Union. To encourage a Union, "honours, appointments, pensions and even arrears of pay and other expenses were distributed to clinch support from Scottish peers and MPs".
Scottish perspective
The Scottish economy was severely impacted by privateers during the 1688–1697 Nine Years' War and the 1701 War of the Spanish Succession, with the Royal Navy focusing on protecting English ships. This compounded the economic pressure caused by the Darien scheme, and the seven ill years of the 1690s, when 5–15% of the population died of starvation. The Scottish Parliament was promised financial assistance, protection for its maritime trade, and an end to economic restrictions on trade with England.
The votes of the Court party, influenced by Queen Anne's favourite, the Duke of Queensberry, combined with the majority of the Squadrone Volante, were sufficient to ensure passage of the treaty. Article 15 granted £398,085 and ten shillings sterling to Scotland, a sum known as The Equivalent, to offset future liability towards the English national debt, which at the time was £18 million, but as Scotland had no national debt, most of the sum was used to compensate the investors in the Darien scheme, with 58.6% of the fund allocated to its shareholders and creditors.
The role played by bribery has long been debated; £20,000 was distributed by the Earl of Glasgow, of which 60% went to James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry, the Queen's Commissioner in Parliament. Another negotiator, Argyll was given an English peerage. Robert Burns is commonly quoted in support of the argument of corruption: "We're bought and sold for English Gold, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation." As historian Christopher Whatley points out, this was actually a 17th-century Scots folk song; but he agrees money was paid, though suggests the economic benefits were supported by most Scots MPs, with the promises made for benefits to peers and MPs, even if it was reluctantly. Professor Sir Tom Devine agreed that promises of "favours, sinecures, pensions, offices and straightforward cash bribes became indispensable to secure government majorities". As for representation going forwards, Scotland was, in the new united parliament, only to get 45 MPs, one more than Cornwall, and only 16 (unelected) peers in the House of Lords.
Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, the only Scottish negotiator to oppose Union, noted "the whole nation appears against (it)". Another negotiator, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who was an ardent Unionist, observed it was "contrary to the inclinations of at least three-fourths of the Kingdom". As the seat of the Scottish Parliament, demonstrators in Edinburgh feared the impact of its loss on the local economy. Elsewhere, there was widespread concern about the independence of the kirk, and possible tax rises.
As the Treaty passed through the Scottish Parliament, opposition was voiced by petitions from shires, burghs, presbyteries and parishes. The Convention of Royal Burghs claimed
Not one petition in favour of Union was received by Parliament. On the day the treaty was signed, the carillonneur in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, rang the bells in the tune "Why should I be so sad on my wedding day?" Threats of widespread civil unrest resulted in Parliament imposing martial law.
The Union was carried by members of the Scottish elite against the wishes of the great majority. The Scottish population was overwhelmingly against the union with England, and virtually all of the print discourses of 1699-1706 spoke against incorporating union, creating the conditions for wide spread rejection of the treaty in 1706 and 1707. Country party tracts condemned English influence within the existing framework of the Union of the Crowns and asserted the need to renegotiate this union. During this period, the Darien failure, the succession issue and the Worcester seizure all provided opportunities for Scottish writers to attack the Court Party as unpatriotic and reaffirm the need to fight for true interests of Scotland. According to Scottish historian William Ferguson, the Acts of Union were a 'political job' by England that was achieved by economic incentives, patronage and bribery to secure the passage of the Union treaty in the Scottish Parliament in order satisfy English political imperatives, with the union being unacceptable to the Scottish people including both the Jacobites and Covenanters. The differences between Scottish were "subsumed by the same sort of patriotism or nationalism that first appeared in the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320." Ferguson provides the well-timed payments of salary arrears to members of Parliament as proof of bribery and argues that the Scottish people had been betrayed by their Parliament.
Ireland
Ireland, though a kingdom under the same crown, was not included in the union. It remained a separate kingdom, unrepresented in Parliament, and was legally subordinate to Great Britain until the Renunciation Act of 1783.
In July 1707 each House of the Parliament of Ireland passed a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying that "May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union". The British government did not respond to the invitation and an equal union between Great Britain and Ireland was out of consideration until the 1790s. The union with Ireland finally came about on 1 January 1801.
Treaty and passage of the 1707 Acts
Deeper political integration had been a key policy of Queen Anne from the time she acceded to the throne in 1702. Under the aegis of the Queen and her ministers in both kingdoms, the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed to participate in fresh negotiations for a union treaty in 1705.
Both countries appointed 31 commissioners to conduct the negotiations. Most of the Scottish commissioners favoured union, and about half were government ministers and other officials. At the head of the list was Queensberry, and the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, the Earl of Seafield. The English commissioners included the Lord High Treasurer, the Earl of Godolphin, the Lord Keeper, Baron Cowper, and a large number of Whigs who supported union. Tories were not in favour of union and only one was represented among the commissioners.
Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners took place between 16 April and 22 July 1706 at the Cockpit in London. Each side had its own particular concerns. Within a few days, and with only one face to face meeting of all 62 commissioners, England had gained a guarantee that the Hanoverian dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to the Scottish crown, and Scotland received a guarantee of access to colonial markets, in the hope that they would be placed on an equal footing in terms of trade.
After negotiations ended in July 1706, the acts had to be ratified by both Parliaments. In Scotland, about 100 of the 227 members of the Parliament of Scotland were supportive of the Court Party. For extra votes the pro-court side could rely on about 25 members of the Squadrone Volante, led by the Marquess of Montrose and the Duke of Roxburghe. Opponents of the court were generally known as the Country party, and included various factions and individuals such as the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Belhaven and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who spoke forcefully and passionately against the union, when the Scottish Parliament began its debate on the act on 3 October 1706, but the deal had already been done. The Court party enjoyed significant funding from England and the Treasury and included many who had accumulated debts following the Darien Disaster.
The Act ratifying the Treaty of Union was finally carried in the Parliament of Scotland by 110 votes to 69 on 16 January 1707, with a number of key amendments. News of the ratification and of the amendments was received in Westminster, where the Act was passed quickly through both Houses and received the royal assent on 6 March.<ref>Macrae, The Rev. Alexander: Scotland Since the Union' (1902)</ref> Though the English Act was later in date, it bore the year '1706' while Scotland's was '1707', as the legal year in England began only on 25 March.
In Scotland, the Duke of Queensberry was largely responsible for the successful passage of the Union act by the Parliament of Scotland. In Scotland, he also received much criticism from local residents, but in England he was cheered for his action. He had personally received around half of the funding awarded by the Westminster Treasury for himself. In April 1707, he travelled to London to attend celebrations at the royal court, and was greeted by groups of noblemen and gentry lined along the road. From Barnet, the route was lined with crowds of cheering people, and once he reached London a huge crowd had formed. On 17 April, the Duke was gratefully received by the Queen at Kensington Palace.
Provisions
The Treaty of Union, agreed between representatives of the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland in 1706, consisted of 25 articles, 15 of which were economic in nature. In Scotland, each article was voted on separately and several clauses in articles were delegated to specialised subcommittees. Article 1 of the treaty was based on the political principle of an incorporating union and this was secured by a majority of 116 votes to 83 on 4 November 1706. To minimise the opposition of the Church of Scotland, an Act was also passed to secure the Presbyterian establishment of the Church, after which the Church stopped its open opposition, although hostility remained at lower levels of the clergy. The treaty as a whole was finally ratified on 16 January 1707 by a majority of 110 votes to 69.
The two Acts incorporated provisions for Scotland to send representative peers from the Peerage of Scotland to sit in the House of Lords. It guaranteed that the Church of Scotland would remain the established church in Scotland, that the Court of Session would "remain in all time coming within Scotland", and that Scots law would "remain in the same force as before". Other provisions included the restatement of the Act of Settlement 1701 and the ban on Roman Catholics from taking the throne. It also created a customs union and monetary union.
The Act provided that any "laws and statutes" that were "contrary to or inconsistent with the terms" of the Act would "cease and become void".
Related Acts
The Scottish Parliament also passed the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Act 1707 guaranteeing the status of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The English Parliament passed a similar Act, 6 Ann. c. 8.
Soon after the Union, the Act 6 Ann. c. 40later named the Union with Scotland (Amendment) Act 1707united the English and Scottish Privy Councils and decentralised Scottish administration by appointing justices of the peace in each shire to carry out administration. In effect it took the day-to-day government of Scotland out of the hands of politicians and into those of the College of Justice.
On 18 December 1707 the Act for better Securing the Duties of East India Goods was passed which extended the monopoly of the East India Company to Scotland.
In the year following the Union, the Treason Act 1708 abolished the Scottish law of treason and extended the corresponding English law across Great Britain.
Evaluations
Scotland benefited, says historian G.N. Clark, gaining "freedom of trade with England and the colonies" as well as "a great expansion of markets". The agreement guaranteed the permanent status of the Presbyterian church in Scotland, and the separate system of laws and courts in Scotland. Clark argued that in exchange for the financial benefits and bribes that England bestowed, what it gained was
of inestimable value. Scotland accepted the Hanoverian succession and gave up her power of threatening England's military security and complicating her commercial relations ... The sweeping successes of the eighteenth-century wars owed much to the new unity of the two nations.
By the time Samuel Johnson and James Boswell made their tour in 1773, recorded in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Johnson noted that Scotland was "a nation of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth increasing" and in particular that Glasgow had become one of the greatest cities of Britain.
Economic perspective
Scottish historian Christopher Smout notes that prior to the Union of the Crowns, the Scottish economy had been flourishing completely independently of the English one, with little to no interaction between each other. Developing a closer economic partnership with England was unsustainable, and Scotland's main trade partner was continental Europe, especially the Netherlands, where Scotland could trade its wool and fish for luxurious imports such as iron, spices or wine. Scotland and England were generally hostile to each other and were often at war, and the alliance with France gave Scotland privileges that further encouraged developing cultural and economic ties with the continent rather than England. The union of 1603 only served the political and dynastic ambitions of King James and was detrimental to Scotland economically – exports that Scotland offered were largely irrelevant to English economy, and while the Privy Council of Scotland did keep its ability to manage internal economic policy, the foreign policy of Scotland was now in English hands. This limited Scotland's hitherto expansive trade with continental Europe, and forced it into English wars.
While the Scottish economy already suffered because of English wars with France and Spain in 1620s, the civil wars in England had a particularly disastrous effect on Scotland and left it relatively impoverished as a result. The economy would slowly recover after that, but it came at the cost of being increasingly dependent on trade with England. A power struggle developed between Scotland and England in 1680s, as Scotland recovered from the political turmoil and set on its own economic ambitions, which London considered a threat to its dominant and well-established position. English wars with continental powers undermined Scottish trade with France and the Netherlands, countries that used to be the Scotland's main trade partners before the union, and the English Navigation Acts severely limited Scottish ability to trade by sea, and made the Scottish ambitions to expand the trade beyond Europe unachievable. Opinion in Scotland at the time was that England was sabotaging Scottish economic expansion.
The frustration caused by economic and political rivalry with England led to the Darien scheme - an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Scottish colony in the Gulf of Darién. Christopher Smout argues that the scheme was successfully sabotaged by England in various ways - it was seen as a threat to the privileged position of the East India Company, and as such England did everything to ensure the plan's failure via political and diplomatic overtures to prevent the Netherlands and Hamburg from investing into the scheme while also refusing to assist the settlers in any way. Following the disastrous failure of the scheme, Scottish economy seemed to be on the brink of collapse, but ultimately Scotland was able to recover from it fairly quickly.
By 1703, the Scottish government was highly disillusioned and unsatisfied with the union, and many believed that the only way to let Scottish economy flourish was to separate from England. Fletcher of Saltoun called Scotland 'totally neglected, like a farm managed by servants not under the eye of the master', and the failure of the Darien Scheme was commonly attributed to English sabotage. The Scottish parliament would try to establish its autonomy from England with 1704 Act of Security, which provoked a retaliation from England - Scottish ministers were bribed, and Alien Act 1705 was passed. According to the Alien Act, unless Scotland appointed commissioners to negotiate for union by Christmas, every Scot in England would be treated as an alien, leading to the confiscation of their English estates. Additionally, Scottish wares were to be banned from England. Christopher Smout notes that England desired to expand its influence by annexing Scotland:
The act sparked vehement anti-English sentiment in Scotland, and made the already hostile Scottish public even more opposed to England:
The Scottish economy was now facing a crisis, and the parliament was polarised into a pro-union and anti-union factions, with the former led by Daniel Defoe. The unionists stressed how important trade with England is to the Scottish economy, and portrayed trade with continental Europe as not beneficial, or nowhere as profitable as trading with England. They argued that the Scottish economy could survive by trading with England, and sanctions that would result from the Alien Act would collapse the economy. For Defoe, joining the union would not only prevent the Alien Act, but would also remove additional limitations and regulations, which could lead Scotland to prosperity. Anti-unionists questioned the English goodwill and criticised the unionist faction for submitting to the English blackmail. They argued that Scotland could make a recovery by trading with the Netherlands, Spain and Norway, with the diverse European markets allowing Scotland to diversify its own industries as well. They noted that the union would make Scotland unable to conduct independent trade policy, meaning that any possibility to remove the flaws in Scottish economy would be gone forever, which would turn Scotland into a "mere satellite of the richer kingdom". Ultimately, Scottish ministers voted in favour of the union, which was against the public opinion, as the Scottish population at the time was overwhelmingly against any union with England. Many considered themselves betrayed by their own elite, and Smout argues that the union bill was only able to pass thanks to the English bribery.
300th anniversary
A commemorative two-pound coin was issued to mark the tercentennial—300th anniversary—of the Union, which occurred two days before the Scottish Parliament general election on 3 May 2007.
The Scottish Government held a number of commemorative events through the year including an education project led by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, an exhibition of Union-related objects and documents at the National Museums of Scotland and an exhibition of portraits of people associated with the Union at the National Galleries of Scotland.
Scottish voting records
See also
Acts of Union 1800 (Kingdom of Great Britain with Kingdom of Ireland)
Kingdom of Ireland
English independence
List of treaties
MacCormick v Lord Advocate Parliament of the United Kingdom
Political union
Real union
Scottish independence
Unionism in Scotland
Welsh independence
Notes
References
Sources and further reading
Campbell, R. H. "The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. II. The Economic Consequences". Economic History Review vol. 16, no. 3, 1964, pp. 468–477 online
Smout, T. C. "The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. I. The Economic Background". Economic History Review vol. 16, no. 3, 1964, pp. 455–467. online
Other books
Defoe, Daniel. A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724–27 Defoe, Daniel. The Letters of Daniel Defoe, GH Healey editor. Oxford: 1955.
Fletcher, Andrew (Saltoun). An Account of a Conversation''
Lockhart, George, "The Lockhart Papers", 1702–1728
External links
Union with England Act and Union with Scotland Act – Full original text
Treaty of Union and the Darien Experiment, University of Guelph, McLaughlin Library, Library and Archives Canada
Union with England Act 1707, from Records of the Parliaments of Scotland
Image of original act from the Parliamentary Archives website
1706 in England
1706 in law
1707 in law
1707 in Great Britain
1707 in Scotland
Acts of the Parliament of England
Acts of the Parliament of England still in force
Acts of the Parliament of Scotland
Unionism in the United Kingdom
Constitutional laws of the United Kingdom
England–Scotland relations
Politics of the Kingdom of Great Britain
National unifications
Political charters
Unionism in Scotland
Treaties of England
Treaties of Scotland
1707 in British law
1706 in politics
Church of Scotland
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Amputation is the removal of a limb by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on individuals as a preventive surgery for such problems. A special case is that of congenital amputation, a congenital disorder, where fetal limbs have been cut off by constrictive bands. In some countries, amputation is currently used to punish people who commit crimes. Amputation has also been used as a tactic in war and acts of terrorism; it may also occur as a war injury. In some cultures and religions, minor amputations or mutilations are considered a ritual accomplishment. When done by a person, the person executing the amputation is an amputator. The oldest evidence of this practice comes from a skeleton found buried in Liang Tebo cave, East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo dating back to at least 31,000 years ago, where it was done when the amputee was a young child.
Types
Leg
Lower limb amputations can be divided into two broad categories: minor and major amputations. Minor amputations generally refer to the amputation of digits. Major amputations are commonly below-knee- or above-knee amputations. Common partial foot amputations include the Chopart, Lisfranc, and ray amputations.
Common forms of ankle disarticulations include Pyrogoff, Boyd, and Syme amputations. A less common major amputation is the Van Nes rotation, or rotationplasty, i.e. the turning around and reattachment of the foot to allow the ankle joint to take over the function of the knee.
Types of amputations include:
partial foot amputation amputation of the lower limb distal to the ankle joint
ankle disarticulation amputation of the lower limb at the ankle joint
trans-tibial amputation amputation of the lower limb between the knee joint and the ankle joint, commonly referred to as a below-knee amputation
knee disarticulation amputation of the lower limb at the knee joint
trans-femoral amputation amputation of the lower limb between the hip joint and the knee joint, commonly referred to an above-knee amputation
hip disarticulation amputation of the lower limb at the hip joint
trans-pelvic disarticulation amputation of the whole lower limb together with all or part of the pelvis, also known as a hemipelvectomy or hindquarter amputation
Arm
Types of upper extremity amputations include:
partial hand amputation
wrist disarticulation
trans-radial amputation, commonly referred to as below-elbow or forearm amputation
elbow disarticulation
trans-humeral amputation, commonly referred to as above-elbow amputation
shoulder disarticulation
forequarter amputation
A variant of the trans-radial amputation is the Krukenberg procedure in which the radius and ulna are used to create a stump capable of a pincer action.
Other
Facial amputations include but are not limited to:
amputation of the ears
amputation of the nose (rhinotomy)
amputation of the tongue (glossectomy).
amputation of the eyes (enucleation).
amputation of the teeth (Dental evulsion). Removal of teeth, mainly incisors, is or was practiced by some cultures for ritual purposes (for instance in the Iberomaurusian culture of Neolithic North Africa).
Breasts:
amputation of the breasts (mastectomy).
Genitals:
amputation of the testicles (castration).
amputation of the penis (penectomy).
amputation of the foreskin (circumcision).
amputation of the clitoris (clitoridectomy).
Hemicorporectomy, or amputation at the waist, and decapitation, or amputation at the neck, are the most radical amputations.
Genital modification and mutilation may involve amputating tissue, although not necessarily as a result of injury or disease.
Self-amputation
In some rare cases when a person has become trapped in a deserted place, with no means of communication or hope of rescue, the victim has amputated their own limb. The most notable case of this is Aron Ralston, a hiker who amputated his own right forearm after it was pinned by a boulder in a hiking accident and he was unable to free himself for over five days.
Body integrity identity disorder is a psychological condition in which an individual feels compelled to remove one or more of their body parts, usually a limb. In some cases, that individual may take drastic measures to remove the offending appendages, either by causing irreparable damage to the limb so that medical intervention cannot save the limb, or by causing the limb to be severed.
Urgent
In surgery, a guillotine amputation is an amputation performed without closure of the skin in an urgent setting. Typical indications include catastrophic trauma or infection control in the setting of infected gangrene. A guillotine amputation is typically followed with a more time-consuming, definitive amputation such as an above below knee amputation.
Causes
Circulatory disorders
Diabetic vasculopathy
Sepsis with peripheral necrosis
Peripheral artery disease which can lead to gangrene
A severe deep vein thrombosis (phlegmasia cerulea dolens) can cause compartment syndrome and gangrene
Neoplasm
Cancerous bone or soft tissue tumors (e.g. osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, fibrosarcoma, epithelioid sarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma, synovial sarcoma, sacrococcygeal teratoma, liposarcoma), melanoma
Trauma
Severe limb injuries in which the efforts to save the limb fail or the limb cannot be saved.
Traumatic amputation (an unexpected amputation that occurs at the scene of an accident, where the limb is partially or entirely severed as a direct result of the accident, for example, a finger that is severed from the blade of a table saw)
Amputation in utero (Amniotic band)
Congenital anomalies
Deformities of digits and/or limbs (e.g., proximal femoral focal deficiency, Fibular hemimelia)
Extra digits and/or limbs (e.g., polydactyly)
Infection
Bone infection (osteomyelitis) and/or diabetic foot infections
Gangrene
Trench foot
Necrosis
Meningococcal meningitis
Streptococcus
Vibrio vulnificus
Necrotizing fasciitis
Gas gangrene
Legionella
Influenza A Virus
Animal bites
Sepsis
Bubonic plague
Frostbite
Frostbite is a cold-related injury occurring when an area (typically a limb or other extremity) is exposed to extreme low temperatures, causing the freezing of the skin or other tissues. Its pathophysiology involves the formation of ice crystals upon freezing and blood clots upon thawing, leading to cell damage and cell death. Treatment of severe frostbite may require surgical amputation of the affected tissue or limb; if there is deep injury autoamputation may occur.
Athletic performance
Sometimes professional athletes may choose to have a non-essential digit amputated to relieve chronic pain and impaired performance.
Australian Rules footballer Daniel Chick elected to have his left ring finger amputated as chronic pain and injury was limiting his performance.
Rugby union player Jone Tawake also had a finger removed.
National Football League safety Ronnie Lott had the tip of his little finger removed after it was damaged in the 1985 NFL season.
Criminal penalty
According to Quran 5:38, the punishment for stealing is the amputation of the hand. Under Sharia law, after repeated offense, the foot may also be cut off. This is still in practice today in countries like Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and 11 of the 36 states within Nigeria.
In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill to the Virginia Assembly that ostensibly would have replaced capital punishment with other penalties, including amputation, for certain crimes, although not all were really punishable by death at the time. For the crimes of rape, sodomy, and polygamy (the latter removed from a later version), the punishment was to be castration for men or rhinotomy for women. For intentional maiming, the bill specified literal eye for an eye retribution. The bill never passed, due to the combination of its barbarity in some parts and perceived leniency in others.
From the 16th century, English law provided for cutting off a hand as punishment for striking someone inside a courtroom. Thomas Jefferson's punishments revision bill also intended to repeal this.
As of 2021, this form of punishment is controversial, as most modern cultures consider it to be morally abhorrent, as it has the effect of permanently disabling a person and constitutes torture. It is thus seen as grossly disproportionate for crimes less than those such as murder.
Surgery
Method
The first step is ligating the supplying artery and vein, to prevent hemorrhage (bleeding). The muscles are transected, and finally, the bone is sawed through with an oscillating saw. Sharp and rough edges of bones are filed, skin and muscle flaps are then transposed over the stump, occasionally with the insertion of elements to attach a prosthesis.
Distal stabilisation of muscles is recommended. This allows effective muscle contraction which reduces atrophy, allows functional use of the stump and maintains soft tissue coverage of the remnant bone. The preferred stabilisation technique is myodesis where the muscle is attached to the bone or its periosteum. In joint disarticulation amputations tenodesis may be used where the muscle tendon is attached to the bone. Muscles should be attached under similar tension to normal physiological conditions.
An experimental technique known as the "Ewing amputation" aims to improve post-amputation proprioception.
In 1920, Dr. Janos Ertl, Sr. of Hungary, developed the Ertl procedure in order to return a high number of amputees to the work force. The Ertl technique, an osteomyoplastic procedure for transtibial amputation, can be used to create a highly functional residual limb. Creation of a tibiofibular bone bridge provides a stable, broad tibiofibular articulation that may be capable of some distal weight bearing. Several different modified techniques and fibular bridge fixation methods have been used; however, no current evidence exists regarding comparison of the different techniques.
Post-operative management
A 2019 Cochrane systematic review aimed to determine whether rigid dressings were more effective than soft dressings in helping wounds heal following transtibial (below the knee) amputations. Due to the limited and very low certainty evidence available, the authors concluded that it was uncertain what the benefits and harms were for each dressing type. They recommended that clinicians consider the pros and cons of each dressing type on a case-by-case basis: rigid dressings may potentially benefit patients who have a high risk of falls; soft dressings may potentially benefit patients who have poor skin integrity.
A 2017 review found that the use of rigid removable dressings (RRD's) in trans-tibial amputations, rather than soft bandaging, improved healing time, reduced edema, prevented knee flexion contractures and reduced complications, including further amputation, from external trauma such as falls onto the stump.
Post-operative management, in addition to wound healing, should consider maintenance of limb strength, joint range, edema management, preservation of the intact limb (if applicable) and stump desensitization.
Trauma
Traumatic amputation is the partial or total avulsion of a part of a body during a serious accident, like traffic, labor, or combat.
Traumatic amputation of a human limb, either partial or total, creates the immediate danger of death from blood loss.
Orthopedic surgeons often assess the severity of different injuries using the Mangled Extremity Severity Score. Given different clinical and situational factors, they can predict the likelihood of amputation. This is especially useful for emergency physicians to quickly evaluate patients and decide on consultations.
Causes
Traumatic amputation is uncommon in humans (1 per 20,804 population per year). Loss of limb usually happens immediately during the accident, but sometimes a few days later after medical complications. Statistically, the most common causes of traumatic amputations are:
Vehicle accidents (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trains, etc.)
Labor accidents (equipment, instruments, cylinders, chainsaws, press machines, meat machines, wood machines, etc.)
Agricultural accidents, with machines and mower equipment
Electric shock hazards
Firearms, bladed weapons, explosives
Violent rupture of ship rope or industry wire rope
Ring traction (ring amputation, de-gloving injuries)
Building doors and car doors
Animal attacks
Gas cylinder explosions
Other rare accidents
Treatment
The development of the science of microsurgery over the last 40 years has provided several treatment options for a traumatic amputation, depending on the patient's specific trauma and clinical situation:
1st choice: Surgical amputation - break - prosthesis
2nd choice: Surgical amputation - transplantation of other tissue - plastic reconstruction.
3rd choice: Replantation - reconnection - revascularisation of amputated limb, by microscope (after 1969)
4th choice: Transplantation of cadaveric hand (after 2000)
Epidemiology
In the United States in 1999, there were 14,420 non-fatal traumatic amputations according to the American Statistical Association. Of these, 4,435 occurred as a result of traffic and transportation accidents and 9,985 were due to labor accidents. Of all traumatic amputations, the distribution percentage is 30.75% for traffic accidents and 69.24% for labor accidents.
The population of the United States in 1999 was about 300,000,000, so the conclusion is that there is one amputation per 20,804 persons per year. In the group of labor amputations, 53% occurred in laborers and technicians, 30% in production and service workers, 16% in silviculture and fishery workers.
A study found that in 2010, 22.8% of patients undergoing amputation of a lower extremity in the United States were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.
Prevention
Methods in preventing amputation, limb-sparing techniques, depend on the problems that might cause amputations to be necessary. Chronic infections, often caused by diabetes or decubitus ulcers in bedridden patients, are common causes of infections that lead to gangrene, which, when widespread, necessitates amputation.
There are two key challenges: first, many patients have impaired circulation in their extremities, and second, they have difficulty curing infections in limbs with poor blood circulation.
Crush injuries where there is extensive tissue damage and poor circulation also benefit from hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). The high level of oxygenation and revascularization speed up recovery times and prevent infections.
A study found that the patented method called Circulator Boot achieved significant results in prevention of amputation in patients with diabetes and arteriosclerosis. Another study found it also effective for healing limb ulcers caused by peripheral vascular disease. The boot checks the heart rhythm and compresses the limb between heartbeats; the compression helps cure the wounds in the walls of veins and arteries, and helps to push the blood back to the heart.
For victims of trauma, advances in microsurgery in the 1970s have made replantations of severed body parts possible.
The establishment of laws, rules, and guidelines, and employment of modern equipment help protect people from traumatic amputations.
Prognosis
The individual may experience psychological trauma and emotional discomfort. The stump will remain an area of reduced mechanical stability. Limb loss can present significant or even drastic practical limitations.
A large proportion of amputees (50–80%) experience the phenomenon of phantom limbs; they feel body parts that are no longer there. These limbs can itch, ache, burn, feel tense, dry or wet, locked in or trapped or they can feel as if they are moving. Some scientists believe it has to do with a kind of neural map that the brain has of the body, which sends information to the rest of the brain about limbs regardless of their existence. Phantom sensations and phantom pain may also occur after the removal of body parts other than the limbs, e.g. after amputation of the breast, extraction of a tooth (phantom tooth pain) or removal of an eye (phantom eye syndrome).
A similar phenomenon is unexplained sensation in a body part unrelated to the amputated limb. It has been hypothesized that the portion of the brain responsible for processing stimulation from amputated limbs, being deprived of input, expands into the surrounding brain, (Phantoms in the Brain: V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee) such that an individual who has had an arm amputated will experience unexplained pressure or movement on his face or head.
In many cases, the phantom limb aids in adaptation to a prosthesis, as it permits the person to experience proprioception of the prosthetic limb. To support improved resistance or usability, comfort or healing, some type of stump socks may be worn instead of or as part of wearing a prosthesis.
Another side effect can be heterotopic ossification, especially when a bone injury is combined with a head injury. The brain signals the bone to grow instead of scar tissue to form, and nodules and other growth can interfere with prosthetics and sometimes require further operations. This type of injury has been especially common among soldiers wounded by improvised explosive devices in the Iraq War.
Due to technological advances in prosthetics, many amputees live active lives with little restriction. Organizations such as the Challenged Athletes Foundation have been developed to give amputees the opportunity to be involved in athletics and adaptive sports such as amputee soccer.
Nearly half of the individuals who have an amputation due to vascular disease will die within 5 years, usually secondary to the extensive co-morbidities rather than due to direct consequences of amputation. This is higher than the five year mortality rates for breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Of persons with diabetes who have a lower extremity amputation, up to 55% will require amputation of the second leg within two to three years.
Etymology
The word amputation is borrowed from Latin amputātus, past participle of amputāre "to prune back (a plant), prune away, remove by cutting (unwanted parts or features), cut off (a branch, limb, body part)," from am-, assimilated variant of amb- "about, around" + putāre "to prune, make clean or tidy, scour (wool)". The English word "Poes" was first applied to surgery in the 17th century, possibly first in Peter Lowe's A discourse of the Whole Art of Chirurgerie (published in either 1597 or 1612); his work was derived from 16th-century French texts and early English writers also used the words "extirpation" (16th-century French texts tended to use extirper), "disarticulation", and "dismemberment" (from the Old French desmembrer and a more common term before the 17th century for limb loss or removal), or simply "cutting", but by the end of the 17th century "amputation" had come to dominate as the accepted medical term.
Notable cases
Patch Adams
Rick Allen
Douglas Bader
Götz of the Iron Hand
Carl Brashear
Lisa Bufano
Roberto Carlos
Tammy Duckworth
Kalamandalam Sankaran Embranthiri
Terry Fox
Zach Gowen
Pete Gray
Shaquem Griffin
Robert David Hall
Bethany Hamilton
Hugh Herr
Frida Kahlo
Ronnie Lott
Hari Budha Magar
Aimee Mullins
Oscar Pistorius
Amy Purdy
Aron Ralston
Hans-Ulrich Rudel
Alex Zanardi
See also
Acrotomophilia
Adapted automobile
Flail limb
Robotic prosthesis control
References
Further reading
Miller, Brian Craig. Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South (University of Georgia Press, 2015). xviii, 257 pp.
Surgical removal procedures
Acute pain
Punishments
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In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) in 1450.
History
The anemometer has changed little since its development in the 15th century. Alberti is said to have invented it around 1450. In the ensuing centuries numerous others, including Robert Hooke
(1635–1703), developed their own versions, with some mistakenly credited as its inventor. In 1846, Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) improved the design by using four hemispherical cups and mechanical wheels. In 1926, Canadian meteorologist John Patterson (1872–1956) developed a three-cup anemometer, which was improved by Brevoort and Joiner in 1935. In 1991, Derek Weston added the ability to measure wind direction. In 1994, Andreas Pflitsch developed the sonic anemometer.
Velocity anemometers
Cup anemometers
A simple type of anemometer was invented in 1845 by Rev Dr John Thomas Romney Robinson of Armagh Observatory. It consisted of four hemispherical cups on horizontal arms mounted on a vertical shaft. The air flow past the cups in any horizontal direction turned the shaft at a rate roughly proportional to the wind's speed. Therefore, counting the shaft's revolutions over a set time interval produced a value proportional to the average wind speed for a wide range of speeds. This type of instrument is also called a rotational anemometer.
With a four-cup anemometer, the wind always has the hollow of one cup presented to it, and is blowing on the back of the opposing cup. Since a hollow hemisphere has a drag coefficient of .38 on the spherical side and 1.42 on the hollow side, more force is generated on the cup that presenting its hollow side to the wind. Because of this asymmetrical force, torque is generated on the anemometer's axis, causing it to spin.
Theoretically, the anemometer's speed of rotation should be proportional to the wind speed because the force produced on an object is proportional to the speed of the gas or fluid flowing past it. However, in practice, other factors influence the rotational speed, including turbulence produced by the apparatus, increasing drag in opposition to the torque produced by the cups and support arms, and friction on the mount point. When Robinson first designed his anemometer, he asserted that the cups moved one-third of the speed of the wind, unaffected by cup size or arm length. This was apparently confirmed by some early independent experiments, but it was incorrect. Instead, the ratio of the speed of the wind and that of the cups, the anemometer factor, depends on the dimensions of the cups and arms, and can have a value between two and a little over three. Once the error was discovered, all previous experiment involving anemometers had to be repeated.
The three-cup anemometer developed by Canadian John Patterson in 1926, and subsequent cup improvements by Brevoort & Joiner of the United States in 1935, led to a cupwheel design with a nearly linear response and an error of less than 3% up to . Patterson found that each cup produced maximum torque when it was at 45° to the wind flow. The three-cup anemometer also had a more constant torque and responded more quickly to gusts than the four-cup anemometer.
The three-cup anemometer was further modified by Australian Dr. Derek Weston in 1991 to also measure wind direction. He added a tag to one cup, causing the cupwheel speed to increase and decrease as the tag moved alternately with and against the wind. Wind direction is calculated from these cyclical changes in speed, while wind speed is determined from the average cupwheel speed.
Three-cup anemometers are currently the industry standard for wind resource assessment studies and practice.
Vane anemometers
One of the other forms of mechanical velocity anemometer is the vane anemometer. It may be described as a windmill or a propeller anemometer. Unlike the Robinson anemometer, whose axis of rotation is vertical, the vane anemometer must have its axis parallel to the direction of the wind and is therefore horizontal. Furthermore, since the wind varies in direction and the axis has to follow its changes, a wind vane or some other contrivance to fulfill the same purpose must be employed.
A vane anemometer thus combines a propeller and a tail on the same axis to obtain accurate and precise wind speed and direction measurements from the same instrument. The speed of the fan is measured by a rev counter and converted to a windspeed by an electronic chip. Hence, volumetric flow rate may be calculated if the cross-sectional area is known.
In cases where the direction of the air motion is always the same, as in ventilating shafts of mines and buildings, wind vanes known as air meters are employed, and give satisfactory results.
Hot-wire anemometers
Hot wire anemometers use a fine wire (on the order of several micrometres) electrically heated to some temperature above the ambient. Air flowing past the wire cools the wire. As the electrical resistance of most metals is dependent upon the temperature of the metal (tungsten is a popular choice for hot-wires), a relationship can be obtained between the resistance of the wire and the speed of the air. In most cases, they cannot be used to measure the direction of the airflow, unless coupled with a wind vane.
Several ways of implementing this exist, and hot-wire devices can be further classified as CCA (constant current anemometer), CVA (constant voltage anemometer) and CTA (constant-temperature anemometer). The voltage output from these anemometers is thus the result of some sort of circuit within the device trying to maintain the specific variable (current, voltage or temperature) constant, following Ohm's law.
Additionally, PWM (pulse-width modulation) anemometers are also used, wherein the velocity is inferred by the time length of a repeating pulse of current that brings the wire up to a specified resistance and then stops until a threshold "floor" is reached, at which time the pulse is sent again.
Hot-wire anemometers, while extremely delicate, have extremely high frequency-response and fine spatial resolution compared to other measurement methods, and as such are almost universally employed for the detailed study of turbulent flows, or any flow in which rapid velocity fluctuations are of interest.
An industrial version of the fine-wire anemometer is the thermal flow meter, which follows the same concept, but uses two pins or strings to monitor the variation in temperature. The strings contain fine wires, but encasing the wires makes them much more durable and capable of accurately measuring air, gas, and emissions flow in pipes, ducts, and stacks. Industrial applications often contain dirt that will damage the classic hot-wire anemometer.
Laser Doppler anemometers
In laser Doppler velocimetry, laser Doppler anemometers use a beam of light from a laser that is divided into two beams, with one propagated out of the anemometer. Particulates (or deliberately introduced seed material) flowing along with air molecules near where the beam exits reflect, or backscatter, the light back into a detector, where it is measured relative to the original laser beam. When the particles are in great motion, they produce a Doppler shift for measuring wind speed in the laser light, which is used to calculate the speed of the particles, and therefore the air around the anemometer.
Ultrasonic anemometers
Ultrasonic anemometers, first developed in the 1950s, use ultrasonic sound waves to measure wind velocity. They measure wind speed based on the time of flight of sonic pulses between pairs of transducers. Measurements from pairs of transducers can be combined to yield a measurement of velocity in 1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional flow. The spatial resolution is given by the path length between transducers, which is typically 10 to 20 cm. Ultrasonic anemometers can take measurements with very fine temporal resolution, 20 Hz or better, which makes them well suited for turbulence measurements. The lack of moving parts makes them appropriate for long-term use in exposed automated weather stations and weather buoys where the accuracy and reliability of traditional cup-and-vane anemometers are adversely affected by salty air or dust. Their main disadvantage is the distortion of the air flow by the structure supporting the transducers, which requires a correction based upon wind tunnel measurements to minimize the effect. An international standard for this process, ISO 16622 Meteorology—Ultrasonic anemometers/thermometers—Acceptance test methods for mean wind measurements is in general circulation. Another disadvantage is lower accuracy due to precipitation, where rain drops may vary the speed of sound.
Since the speed of sound varies with temperature, and is virtually stable with pressure change, ultrasonic anemometers are also used as thermometers.
Two-dimensional (wind speed and wind direction) sonic anemometers are used in applications such as weather stations, ship navigation, aviation, weather buoys and wind turbines. Monitoring wind turbines usually requires a refresh rate of wind speed measurements of 3 Hz, easily achieved by sonic anemometers. Three-dimensional sonic anemometers are widely used to measure gas emissions and ecosystem fluxes using the eddy covariance method when used with fast-response infrared gas analyzers or laser-based analyzers.
Two-dimensional wind sensors are of two types:
Two ultrasounds paths: These sensors have four arms. The disadvantage of this type of sensor is that when the wind comes in the direction of an ultrasound path, the arms disturb the airflow, reducing the accuracy of the resulting measurement.
Three ultrasounds paths: These sensors have three arms. They give one path redundancy of the measurement which improves the sensor accuracy and reduces aerodynamic turbulence.
Acoustic resonance anemometers
Acoustic resonance anemometers are a more recent variant of sonic anemometer. The technology was invented by Savvas Kapartis and patented in 1999. Whereas conventional sonic anemometers rely on time of flight measurement, acoustic resonance sensors use resonating acoustic (ultrasonic) waves within a small purpose-built cavity in order to perform their measurement.
Built into the cavity is an array of ultrasonic transducers, which are used to create the separate standing-wave patterns at ultrasonic frequencies. As wind passes through the cavity, a change in the wave's property occurs (phase shift). By measuring the amount of phase shift in the received signals by each transducer, and then by mathematically processing the data, the sensor is able to provide an accurate horizontal measurement of wind speed and direction.
Because acoustic resonance technology enables measurement within a small cavity, the sensors tend to be typically smaller in size than other ultrasonic sensors. The small size of acoustic resonance anemometers makes them physically strong and easy to heat, and therefore resistant to icing. This combination of features means that they achieve high levels of data availability and are well suited to wind turbine control and to other uses that require small robust sensors such as battlefield meteorology. One issue with this sensor type is measurement accuracy when compared to a calibrated mechanical sensor. For many end uses, this weakness is compensated for by the sensor's longevity and the fact that it does not require recalibration once installed.
Ping-pong ball anemometers
A common anemometer for basic use is constructed from a ping-pong ball attached to a string. When the wind blows horizontally, it presses on and moves the ball; because ping-pong balls are very lightweight, they move easily in light winds. Measuring the angle between the string-ball apparatus and the vertical gives an estimate of the wind speed.
This type of anemometer is mostly used for middle-school level instruction, which most students make on their own, but a similar device was also flown on the Phoenix Mars Lander.
Pressure anemometers
The first designs of anemometers that measure the pressure were divided into plate and tube classes.
Plate anemometers
These are the first modern anemometers. They consist of a flat plate suspended from the top so that the wind deflects the plate. In 1450, the Italian art architect Leon Battista Alberti invented the first mechanical anemometer; in 1664 it was re-invented by Robert Hooke (who is often mistakenly considered the inventor of the first anemometer). Later versions of this form consisted of a flat plate, either square or circular, which is kept normal to the wind by a wind vane. The pressure of the wind on its face is balanced by a spring. The compression of the spring determines the actual force which the wind is exerting on the plate, and this is either read off on a suitable gauge, or on a recorder. Instruments of this kind do not respond to light winds, are inaccurate for high wind readings, and are slow at responding to variable winds. Plate anemometers have been used to trigger high wind alarms on bridges.
Tube anemometers
James Lind's anemometer of 1775 consisted of a vertically mounted glass U tube containing a liquid manometer (pressure gauge), with one end bent out in a horizontal direction to face the wind flow and the other vertical end capped. Though the Lind was not the first it was the most practical and best known anemometer of this type. If the wind blows into the mouth of a tube it causes an increase of pressure on one side of the manometer. The wind over the open end of a vertical tube causes little change in pressure on the other side of the manometer. The resulting elevation difference in the two legs of the U tube is an indication of the wind speed. However, an accurate measurement requires that the wind speed be directly into the open end of the tube; small departures from the true direction of the wind causes large variations in the reading.
The successful metal pressure tube anemometer of William Henry Dines in 1892 utilized the same pressure difference between the open mouth of a straight tube facing the wind and a ring of small holes in a vertical tube which is closed at the upper end. Both are mounted at the same height. The pressure differences on which the action depends are very small, and special means are required to register them. The recorder consists of a float in a sealed chamber partially filled with water. The pipe from the straight tube is connected to the top of the sealed chamber and the pipe from the small tubes is directed into the bottom inside the float. Since the pressure difference determines the vertical position of the float this is a measure of the wind speed.
The great advantage of the tube anemometer lies in the fact that the exposed part can be mounted on a high pole, and requires no oiling or attention for years; and the registering part can be placed in any convenient position. Two connecting tubes are required. It might appear at first sight as though one connection would serve, but the differences in pressure on which these instruments depend are so minute, that the pressure of the air in the room where the recording part is placed has to be considered. Thus if the instrument depends on the pressure or suction effect alone, and this pressure or suction is measured against the air pressure in an ordinary room, in which the doors and windows are carefully closed and a newspaper is then burnt up the chimney, an effect may be produced equal to a wind of 10 mi/h (16 km/h); and the opening of a window in rough weather, or the opening of a door, may entirely alter the registration.
While the Dines anemometer had an error of only 1% at , it did not respond very well to low winds due to the poor response of the flat plate vane required to turn the head into the wind. In 1918 an aerodynamic vane with eight times the torque of the flat plate overcame this problem.
Pitot tube static anemometers
Modern tube anemometers use the same principle as in the Dines anemometer but using a different design. The implementation uses a pitot-static tube which is a pitot tube with two ports, pitot and static, that is normally used in measuring the airspeed of aircraft. The pitot port measures the dynamic pressure of the open mouth of a tube with pointed head facing wind, and the static port measures the static pressure from small holes along the side on that tube. The pitot tube is connected to a tail so that it always makes the tube's head to face the wind. Additionally, the tube is heated to prevent rime ice formation on the tube. There are two lines from the tube down to the devices to measure the difference in pressure of the two lines. The measurement devices can be manometers, pressure transducers, or analog chart recorders.
Effect of density on measurements
In the tube anemometer the dynamic pressure is actually being measured, although the scale is usually graduated as a velocity scale. If the actual air density differs from the calibration value, due to differing temperature, elevation or barometric pressure, a correction is required to obtain the actual wind speed. Approximately 1.5% (1.6% above 6,000 feet) should be added to the velocity recorded by a tube anemometer for each 1000 ft (5% for each kilometer) above sea-level.
Effect of icing
At airports, it is essential to have accurate wind data under all conditions, including freezing precipitation. Anemometry is also required in monitoring and controlling the operation of wind turbines, which in cold environments are prone to in-cloud icing. Icing alters the aerodynamics of an anemometer and may entirely block it from operating. Therefore, anemometers used in these applications must be internally heated. Both cup anemometers and sonic anemometers are presently available with heated versions.
Instrument location
In order for wind speeds to be comparable from location to location, the effect of the terrain needs to be considered, especially in regard to height. Other considerations are the presence of trees, and both natural canyons and artificial canyons (urban buildings). The standard anemometer height in open rural terrain is 10 meters.
See also
Air flow meter
Anemoi, for the ancient origin of the name of this technology
Anemoscope, ancient device for measuring or predicting wind direction or weather
Automated airport weather station
Night of the Big Wind
Particle image velocimetry
Savonius wind turbine
Wind power forecasting
Wind run
Windsock, a simple high-visibility indicator of approximate wind speed and direction
Notes
References
Meteorological Instruments, W.E. Knowles Middleton and Athelstan F. Spilhaus, Third Edition revised, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1953
Invention of the Meteorological Instruments, W. E. Knowles Middleton, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1969
External links
Description of the development and the construction of an ultrasonic anemometer
Animation Showing Sonic Principle of Operation (Time of Flight Theory) – Gill Instruments
Collection of historical anemometer
Principle of Operation: Acoustic Resonance measurement – FT Technologies
Thermopedia, "Anemometers (laser doppler)"
Thermopedia, "Anemometers (pulsed thermal)"
Thermopedia, "Anemometers (vane)"
The Rotorvane Anemometer. Measuring both wind speed and direction using a tagged three-cup sensor
Italian inventions
Measuring instruments
Meteorological instrumentation and equipment
Navigational equipment
Wind power
15th-century inventions
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Archaeopteryx (; ), sometimes referred to by its German name, "" ( Primeval Bird), is a genus of avian dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek (archaīos), meaning "ancient", and (ptéryx), meaning "feather" or "wing". Between the late 19th century and the early 21st century, Archaeopteryx was generally accepted by palaeontologists and popular reference books as the oldest known bird (member of the group Avialae). Older potential avialans have since been identified, including Anchiornis, Xiaotingia, and Aurornis.
Archaeopteryx lived in the Late Jurassic around 150 million years ago, in what is now southern Germany, during a time when Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now. Similar in size to a Eurasian magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, the largest species of Archaeopteryx could grow to about in length. Despite their small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx had more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than with modern birds. In particular, they shared the following features with the dromaeosaurids and troodontids: jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest warm-bloodedness), and various features of the skeleton.
These features make Archaeopteryx a clear candidate for a transitional fossil between non-avian dinosaurs and birds. Thus, Archaeopteryx plays an important role, not only in the study of the origin of birds, but in the study of dinosaurs. It was named from a single feather in 1861, the identity of which has been controversial. That same year, the first complete specimen of Archaeopteryx was announced. Over the years, ten more fossils of Archaeopteryx have surfaced. Despite variation among these fossils, most experts regard all the remains that have been discovered as belonging to a single species, although this is still debated.
Archaeopteryx was long considered to be the beginning of the evolutionary tree of birds. However, in recent years, the discovery of several small, feathered dinosaurs has created a mystery for palaeontologists, raising questions about which animals are the ancestors of modern birds and which are their relatives. Most of these eleven fossils include impressions of feathers. Because these feathers are of an advanced form (flight feathers), these fossils are evidence that the evolution of feathers began before the Late Jurassic. The type specimen of Archaeopteryx was discovered just two years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Archaeopteryx seemed to confirm Darwin's theories and has since become a key piece of evidence for the origin of birds, the transitional fossils debate, and confirmation of evolution.
History of discovery
Over the years, twelve body fossil specimens of Archaeopteryx have been found. All of the fossils come from the limestone deposits, quarried for centuries, near , Germany.
The initial discovery, a single feather, was unearthed in 1860 or 1861 and described in 1861 by . It is currently located at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. Though it was the initial holotype, there were indications that it might not have been from the same animal as the body fossils. In 2019 it was reported that laser imaging had revealed the structure of the quill (which had not been visible since some time after the feather was described), and that the feather was inconsistent with the morphology of all other Archaeopteryx feathers known, leading to the conclusion that it originated from another dinosaur. This conclusion was challenged in 2020 as being unlikely; the feather was identified on the basis of morphology as most likely having been an upper major primary covert feather.
The first skeleton, known as the London Specimen (BMNH 37001), was unearthed in 1861 near , Germany, and perhaps given to local physician in return for medical services. He then sold it for £700 (roughly £83,000 in 2020) to the Natural History Museum in London, where it remains. Missing most of its head and neck, it was described in 1863 by Richard Owen as Archaeopteryx macrura, allowing for the possibility it did not belong to the same species as the feather. In the subsequent fourth edition of his On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin described how some authors had maintained "that the whole class of birds came suddenly into existence during the eocene period; but now we know, on the authority of Professor Owen, that a bird certainly lived during the deposition of the upper greensand; and still more recently, that strange bird, the Archaeopteryx, with a long lizard-like tail, bearing a pair of feathers on each joint, and with its wings furnished with two free claws, has been discovered in the oolitic slates of Solnhofen. Hardly any recent discovery shows more forcibly than this how little we as yet know of the former inhabitants of the world."
The Greek word () means 'ancient, primeval'. primarily means 'wing', but it can also be just 'feather'. Meyer suggested this in his description. At first he referred to a single feather which appeared to resemble a modern bird's remex (wing feather), but he had heard of and been shown a rough sketch of the London specimen, to which he referred as a "" ("skeleton of an animal covered in similar feathers"). In German, this ambiguity is resolved by the term which does not necessarily mean a wing used for flying. was the favoured translation of Archaeopteryx among German scholars in the late nineteenth century. In English, 'ancient pinion' offers a rough approximation to this.
Since then, twelve specimens have been recovered:
The Berlin Specimen (HMN 1880/81) was discovered in 1874 or 1875 on the Blumenberg near , Germany, by farmer Jakob Niemeyer. He sold this precious fossil for the money to buy a cow in 1876, to innkeeper Johann Dörr, who again sold it to Ernst Otto Häberlein, the son of K. Häberlein. Placed on sale between 1877 and 1881, with potential buyers including O. C. Marsh of Yale University's Peabody Museum, it eventually was bought for 20,000 Goldmark by the Berlin's Natural History Museum, where it now is displayed. The transaction was financed by Ernst Werner von Siemens, founder of the company that bears his name. Described in 1884 by Wilhelm Dames, it is the most complete specimen, and the first with a complete head. In 1897 it was named by Dames as a new species, A. siemensii; though often considered a synonym of A. lithographica, several 21st century studies have concluded that it is a distinct species which includes the Berlin, Munich, and Thermopolis specimens.
Composed of a torso, the Maxberg Specimen (S5) was discovered in 1956 near Langenaltheim; it was brought to the attention of professor Florian Heller in 1958 and described by him in 1959. The specimen is missing its head and tail, although the rest of the skeleton is mostly intact. Although it was once exhibited at the Maxberg Museum in Solnhofen, it is currently missing. It belonged to Eduard Opitsch, who loaned it to the museum until 1974. After his death in 1991, it was discovered that the specimen was missing and may have been stolen or sold.
The Haarlem Specimen (TM 6428/29, also known as the Teylers Specimen) was discovered in 1855 near , Germany, and described as a Pterodactylus crassipes in 1857 by Meyer. It was reclassified in 1970 by John Ostrom and is currently located at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands. It was the very first specimen found, but was incorrectly classified at the time. It is also one of the least complete specimens, consisting mostly of limb bones, isolated cervical vertebrae, and ribs. In 2017 it was named as a separate genus Ostromia, considered more closely related to Anchiornis from China.
The Eichstätt Specimen (JM 2257) was discovered in 1951 near Workerszell, Germany, and described by Peter Wellnhofer in 1974. Currently located at the Jura Museum in Eichstätt, Germany, it is the smallest known specimen and has the second-best head. It is possibly a separate genus (Jurapteryx recurva) or species (A. recurva).
The Solnhofen Specimen (unnumbered specimen) was discovered in the 1970s near Eichstätt, Germany, and described in 1988 by Wellnhofer. Currently located at the Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum in Solnhofen, it originally was classified as Compsognathus by an amateur collector, the same mayor Friedrich Müller after which the museum is named. It is the largest specimen known and may belong to a separate genus and species, Wellnhoferia grandis. It is missing only portions of the neck, tail, backbone, and head.
The Munich Specimen (BSP 1999 I 50, formerly known as the Solenhofer-Aktien-Verein Specimen) was discovered on 3 August 1992 near Langenaltheim and described in 1993 by Wellnhofer. It is currently located at the Paläontologisches Museum München in Munich, to which it was sold in 1999 for 1.9 million Deutschmark. What was initially believed to be a bony sternum turned out to be part of the coracoid, but a cartilaginous sternum may have been present. Only the front of its face is missing. It has been used as the basis for a distinct species, A. bavarica, but more recent studies suggest it belongs to A. siemensii.
An eighth, fragmentary specimen was discovered in 1990 in the younger Mörnsheim Formation at Daiting, Suevia. Therefore, it is known as the Daiting Specimen, and had been known since 1996 only from a cast, briefly shown at the Naturkundemuseum in Bamberg. The original was purchased by palaeontologist Raimund Albertsdörfer in 2009. It was on display for the first time with six other original fossils of Archaeopteryx at the Munich Mineral Show in October 2009. The Daiting Specimen was subsequently named Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi by Kundrat et al. (2018). After a lengthy period in a closed private collection, it was moved to the Museum of Evolution at Knuthenborg Safaripark (Denmark) in 2022, where it has since been on display and also been made available for researchers.
Another fragmentary fossil was found in 2000. It is in private possession and, since 2004, on loan to the Bürgermeister-Müller Museum in Solnhofen, so it is called the Bürgermeister-Müller Specimen; the institute itself officially refers to it as the "Exemplar of the families Ottman & Steil, Solnhofen". As the fragment represents the remains of a single wing of Archaeopteryx, it is colloquially known as "chicken wing".
Long in a private collection in Switzerland, the Thermopolis Specimen (WDC CSG 100) was discovered in Bavaria and described in 2005 by Mayr, Pohl, and Peters. Donated to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming, it has the best-preserved head and feet; most of the neck and the lower jaw have not been preserved. The "Thermopolis" specimen was described on 2 December 2005 Science journal article as "A well-preserved Archaeopteryx specimen with theropod features"; it shows that Archaeopteryx lacked a reversed toe—a universal feature of birds—limiting its ability to perch on branches and implying a terrestrial or trunk-climbing lifestyle. This has been interpreted as evidence of theropod ancestry. In 1988, Gregory S. Paul claimed to have found evidence of a hyperextensible second toe, but this was not verified and accepted by other scientists until the Thermopolis specimen was described. "Until now, the feature was thought to belong only to the species' close relatives, the deinonychosaurs." The Thermopolis Specimen was assigned to Archaeopteryx siemensii in 2007. The specimen is considered to represent the most complete and best-preserved Archaeopteryx remains yet.
The discovery of an eleventh specimen was announced in 2011; it was described in 2014. It is one of the more complete specimens, but is missing much of the skull and one forelimb. It is privately owned and has yet to be given a name. Palaeontologists of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich studied the specimen, which revealed previously unknown features of the plumage, such as feathers on both the upper and lower legs and metatarsus, and the only preserved tail tip.
A twelfth specimen had been discovered by an amateur collector in 2010 at the Schamhaupten quarry, but the finding was only announced in February 2014. It was scientifically described in 2018. It represents a complete and mostly articulated skeleton with skull. It is the only specimen lacking preserved feathers. It is from the Painten Formation and somewhat older than the other specimens.
Authenticity
Beginning in 1985, an amateur group including astronomer Fred Hoyle and physicist Lee Spetner, published a series of papers claiming that the feathers on the Berlin and London specimens of Archaeopteryx were forged. Their claims were repudiated by Alan J. Charig and others at the Natural History Museum in London. Most of their supposed evidence for a forgery was based on unfamiliarity with the processes of lithification; for example, they proposed that, based on the difference in texture associated with the feathers, feather impressions were applied to a thin layer of cement, without realizing that feathers themselves would have caused a textural difference. They also misinterpreted the fossils, claiming that the tail was forged as one large feather, when visibly this is not the case. In addition, they claimed that the other specimens of Archaeopteryx known at the time did not have feathers, which is incorrect; the Maxberg and Eichstätt specimens have obvious feathers.
They also expressed disbelief that slabs would split so smoothly, or that one half of a slab containing fossils would have good preservation, but not the counterslab. These are common properties of Solnhofen fossils, because the dead animals would fall onto hardened surfaces, which would form a natural plane for the future slabs to split along and would leave the bulk of the fossil on one side and little on the other.
Finally, the motives they suggested for a forgery are not strong, and are contradictory; one is that Richard Owen wanted to forge evidence in support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is unlikely given Owen's views toward Darwin and his theory. The other is that Owen wanted to set a trap for Darwin, hoping the latter would support the fossils so Owen could discredit him with the forgery; this is unlikely because Owen wrote a detailed paper on the London specimen, so such an action would certainly backfire.
Charig et al. pointed to the presence of hairline cracks in the slabs running through both rock and fossil impressions, and mineral growth over the slabs that had occurred before discovery and preparation, as evidence that the feathers were original. Spetner et al. then attempted to show that the cracks would have propagated naturally through their postulated cement layer, but neglected to account for the fact that the cracks were old and had been filled with calcite, and thus were not able to propagate. They also attempted to show the presence of cement on the London specimen through X-ray spectroscopy, and did find something that was not rock; it was not cement either, and is most probably a fragment of silicone rubber left behind when moulds were made of the specimen. Their suggestions have not been taken seriously by palaeontologists, as their evidence was largely based on misunderstandings of geology, and they never discussed the other feather-bearing specimens, which have increased in number since then. Charig et al. reported a discolouration: a dark band between two layers of limestone – they say it is the product of sedimentation. It is natural for limestone to take on the colour of its surroundings and most limestones are coloured (if not colour banded) to some degree, so the darkness was attributed to such impurities. They also mention that a complete absence of air bubbles in the rock slabs is further proof that the specimen is authentic.
Description
Most of the specimens of Archaeopteryx that have been discovered come from the Solnhofen limestone in Bavaria, southern Germany, which is a , a rare and remarkable geological formation known for its superbly detailed fossils laid down during the early Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period, approximately 150.8–148.5million years ago.
Archaeopteryx was roughly the size of a raven, with broad wings that were rounded at the ends and a long tail compared to its body length. It could reach up to in body length and in wingspan, with an estimated mass of . Archaeopteryx feathers, although less documented than its other features, were very similar in structure to modern-day bird feathers. Despite the presence of numerous avian features, Archaeopteryx had many non-avian theropod dinosaur characteristics. Unlike modern birds, Archaeopteryx had small teeth, as well as a long bony tail, features which Archaeopteryx shared with other dinosaurs of the time.
Because it displays features common to both birds and non-avian dinosaurs, Archaeopteryx has often been considered a link between them. In the 1970s, John Ostrom, following Thomas Henry Huxley's lead in 1868, argued that birds evolved within theropod dinosaurs and Archaeopteryx was a critical piece of evidence for this argument; it had several avian features, such as a wishbone, flight feathers, wings, and a partially reversed first toe along with dinosaur and theropod features. For instance, it has a long ascending process of the ankle bone, interdental plates, an obturator process of the ischium, and long chevrons in the tail. In particular, Ostrom found that Archaeopteryx was remarkably similar to the theropod family Dromaeosauridae.
Archaeopteryx had three separate digits on each fore-leg each ending with a "claw". Few birds have such features. Some birds, such as ducks, swans, Jacanas (Jacana sp.), and the hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin), have them concealed beneath their leg-feathers.
Plumage
Specimens of Archaeopteryx were most notable for their well-developed flight feathers. They were markedly asymmetrical and showed the structure of flight feathers in modern birds, with vanes given stability by a barb-barbule-barbicel arrangement. The tail feathers were less asymmetrical, again in line with the situation in modern birds and also had firm vanes. The thumb did not yet bear a separately movable tuft of stiff feathers.
The body plumage of Archaeopteryx is less well-documented and has only been properly researched in the well-preserved Berlin specimen. Thus, as more than one species seems to be involved, the research into the Berlin specimen's feathers does not necessarily hold true for the rest of the species of Archaeopteryx. In the Berlin specimen, there are "trousers" of well-developed feathers on the legs; some of these feathers seem to have a basic contour feather structure, but are somewhat decomposed (they lack barbicels as in ratites). In part they are firm and thus capable of supporting flight.
A patch of pennaceous feathers is found running along its back, which was quite similar to the contour feathers of the body plumage of modern birds in being symmetrical and firm, although not as stiff as the flight-related feathers. Apart from that, the feather traces in the Berlin specimen are limited to a sort of "proto-down" not dissimilar to that found in the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx: decomposed and fluffy, and possibly even appearing more like fur than feathers in life (although not in their microscopic structure). These occur on the remainder of the body—although some feathers did not fossilize and others were obliterated during preparation, leaving bare patches on specimens—and the lower neck.
There is no indication of feathering on the upper neck and head. While these conceivably may have been nude, this may still be an artefact of preservation. It appears that most Archaeopteryx specimens became embedded in anoxic sediment after drifting some time on their backs in the sea—the head, neck and the tail are generally bent downward, which suggests that the specimens had just started to rot when they were embedded, with tendons and muscle relaxing so that the characteristic shape (death pose) of the fossil specimens was achieved. This would mean that the skin already was softened and loose, which is bolstered by the fact that in some specimens the flight feathers were starting to detach at the point of embedding in the sediment. So it is hypothesized that the pertinent specimens moved along the sea bed in shallow water for some time before burial, the head and upper neck feathers sloughing off, while the more firmly attached tail feathers remained.
Colouration
In 2011, graduate student Ryan Carney and colleagues performed the first colour study on an Archaeopteryx specimen. Using scanning electron microscopy technology and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, the team was able to detect the structure of melanosomes in the isolated feather specimen described in 1861. The resultant measurements were then compared to those of 87modern bird species, and the original colour was calculated with a 95% likelihood to be black. The feather was determined to be black throughout, with heavier pigmentation in the distal tip. The feather studied was most probably a dorsal covert, which would have partly covered the primary feathers on the wings. The study does not mean that Archaeopteryx was entirely black, but suggests that it had some black colouration which included the coverts. Carney pointed out that this is consistent with what we know of modern flight characteristics, in that black melanosomes have structural properties that strengthen feathers for flight. In a 2013 study published in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, new analyses of Archaeopteryxs feathers revealed that the animal may have had complex light- and dark-coloured plumage, with heavier pigmentation in the distal tips and outer vanes. This analysis of colour distribution was based primarily on the distribution of sulphate within the fossil. An author on the previous Archaeopteryx colour study argued against the interpretation of such biomarkers as an indicator of eumelanin in the full Archaeopteryx specimen. Carney and other colleagues also argued against the 2013 study's interpretation of the sulphate and trace metals, and in a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports demonstrated that the isolated covert feather was entirely matte black (as opposed to black and white, or iridescent) and that the remaining "plumage patterns of Archaeopteryx remain unknown".
Classification
Today, fossils of the genus Archaeopteryx are usually assigned to one or two species, A. lithographica and A. siemensii, but their taxonomic history is complicated. Ten names have been published for the handful of specimens. As interpreted today, the name A. lithographica only referred to the single feather described by Meyer. In 1954 Gavin de Beer concluded that the London specimen was the holotype. In 1960, Swinton accordingly proposed that the name Archaeopteryx lithographica be placed on the official genera list making the alternative names Griphosaurus and Griphornis invalid. The ICZN, implicitly accepting De Beer's standpoint, did indeed suppress the plethora of alternative names initially proposed for the first skeleton specimens, which mainly resulted from the acrimonious dispute between Meyer and his opponent Johann Andreas Wagner (whose Griphosaurus problematicus – 'problematic riddle-lizard' – was a vitriolic sneer at Meyer's Archaeopteryx). In addition, in 1977, the Commission ruled that the first species name of the Haarlem specimen, crassipes, described by Meyer as a pterosaur before its true nature was realized, was not to be given preference over lithographica in instances where scientists considered them to represent the same species.
It has been noted that the feather, the first specimen of Archaeopteryx described, does not correspond well with the flight-related feathers of Archaeopteryx. It certainly is a flight feather of a contemporary species, but its size and proportions indicate that it may belong to another, smaller species of feathered theropod, of which only this feather is known so far. As the feather had been designated the type specimen, the name Archaeopteryx should then no longer be applied to the skeletons, thus creating significant nomenclatorial confusion. In 2007, two sets of scientists therefore petitioned the ICZN requesting that the London specimen explicitly be made the type by designating it as the new holotype specimen, or neotype. This suggestion was upheld by the ICZN after four years of debate, and the London specimen was designated the neotype on 3 October 2011.
Below is a cladogram published in 2013 by Godefroit et al.
Species
It has been argued that all the specimens belong to the same species, A. lithographica. Differences do exist among the specimens, and while some researchers regard these as due to the different ages of the specimens, some may be related to actual species diversity. In particular, the Munich, Eichstätt, Solnhofen, and Thermopolis specimens differ from the London, Berlin, and Haarlem specimens in being smaller or much larger, having different finger proportions, having more slender snouts lined with forward-pointing teeth, and the possible presence of a sternum. Due to these differences, most individual specimens have been given their own species name at one point or another. The Berlin specimen has been designated as Archaeornis siemensii, the Eichstätt specimen as Jurapteryx recurva, the Munich specimen as Archaeopteryx bavarica, and the Solnhofen specimen as Wellnhoferia grandis.
In 2007, a review of all well-preserved specimens including the then-newly discovered Thermopolis specimen concluded that two distinct species of Archaeopteryx could be supported: A. lithographica (consisting of at least the London and Solnhofen specimens), and A. siemensii (consisting of at least the Berlin, Munich, and Thermopolis specimens). The two species are distinguished primarily by large flexor tubercles on the foot claws in A. lithographica (the claws of A. siemensii specimens being relatively simple and straight). A. lithographica also had a constricted portion of the crown in some teeth and a stouter metatarsus. A supposed additional species, Wellnhoferia grandis (based on the Solnhofen specimen), seems to be indistinguishable from A. lithographica except in its larger size.
Synonyms
If two names are given, the first denotes the original describer of the "species", the second the author on whom the given name combination is based. As always in zoological nomenclature, putting an author's name in parentheses denotes that the taxon was originally described in a different genus.
Archaeopteryx lithographica Meyer, 1861 [conserved name]
Archaeopterix lithographica Anon., 1861 [lapsus]
Griphosaurus problematicus Wagner, 1862 [rejected name 1961 per ICZN Opinion 607]
Griphornis longicaudatus Owen vide Woodward, 1862 [rejected name 1961 per ICZN Opinion 607]
Archaeopteryx macrura Owen, 1862 [rejected name 1961 per ICZN Opinion 607]
Archaeopteryx oweni Petronievics, 1917 [rejected name 1961 per ICZN Opinion 607]
Archaeopteryx recurva Howgate, 1984
Jurapteryx recurva (Howgate, 1984) Howgate, 1985
Wellnhoferia grandis Elżanowski, 2001
Archaeopteryx siemensii Dames, 1897Archaeornis siemensii (Dames, 1897) Petronievics, 1917
Archaeopteryx bavarica Wellnhofer, 1993"Archaeopteryx" vicensensis (Anon. fide Lambrecht, 1933) is a nomen nudum for what appears to be an undescribed pterosaur.
Phylogenetic position
Modern palaeontology has often classified Archaeopteryx as the most primitive bird. However, it is not thought to be a true ancestor of modern birds, but rather a close relative of that ancestor. Nonetheless, Archaeopteryx was often used as a model of the true ancestral bird. Several authors have done so. Lowe (1935) and Thulborn (1984) questioned whether Archaeopteryx truly was the first bird. They suggested that Archaeopteryx was a dinosaur that was no more closely related to birds than were other dinosaur groups. Kurzanov (1987) suggested that Avimimus was more likely to be the ancestor of all birds than Archaeopteryx. Barsbold (1983) and Zweers and Van den Berge (1997) noted that many maniraptoran lineages are extremely birdlike, and they suggested that different groups of birds may have descended from different dinosaur ancestors.
The discovery of the closely related Xiaotingia in 2011 led to new phylogenetic analyses that suggested that Archaeopteryx is a deinonychosaur rather than an avialan, and therefore, not a "bird" under most common uses of that term. A more thorough analysis was published soon after to test this hypothesis, and failed to arrive at the same result; it found Archaeopteryx in its traditional position at the base of Avialae, while Xiaotingia was recovered as a basal dromaeosaurid or troodontid. The authors of the follow-up study noted that uncertainties still exist, and that it may not be possible to state confidently whether or not Archaeopteryx is a member of Avialae or not, barring new and better specimens of relevant species.
Phylogenetic studies conducted by Senter, et al. (2012) and Turner, Makovicky, and Norell (2012) also found Archaeopteryx to be more closely related to living birds than to dromaeosaurids and troodontids. On the other hand, Godefroit et al. (2013) recovered Archaeopteryx as more closely related to dromaeosaurids and troodontids in the analysis included in their description of Eosinopteryx brevipenna. The authors used a modified version of the matrix from the study describing Xiaotingia, adding Jinfengopteryx elegans and Eosinopteryx brevipenna to it, as well as adding four additional characters related to the development of the plumage. Unlike the analysis from the description of Xiaotingia, the analysis conducted by Godefroit, et al. did not find Archaeopteryx to be related particularly closely to Anchiornis and Xiaotingia, which were recovered as basal troodontids instead.
Agnolín and Novas (2013) found Archaeopteryx and (possibly synonymous) Wellnhoferia to be form a clade sister to the lineage including Jeholornis and Pygostylia, with Microraptoria, Unenlagiinae, and the clade containing Anchiornis and Xiaotingia being successively closer outgroups to the Avialae (defined by the authors as the clade stemming from the last common ancestor of Archaeopteryx and Aves). Another phylogenetic study by Godefroit, et al., using a more inclusive matrix than the one from the analysis in the description of Eosinopteryx brevipenna, also found Archaeopteryx to be a member of Avialae (defined by the authors as the most inclusive clade containing Passer domesticus, but not Dromaeosaurus albertensis or Troodon formosus). Archaeopteryx was found to form a grade at the base of Avialae with Xiaotingia, Anchiornis, and Aurornis. Compared to Archaeopteryx, Xiaotingia was found to be more closely related to extant birds, while both Anchiornis and Aurornis were found to be more distantly so.
Hu et al. (2018), Wang et al. (2018) and Hartman et al. (2019) found Archaeopteryx to have been a deinonychosaur instead of an avialan. More specifically, it and closely related taxa were considered basal deinonychosaurs, with dromaeosaurids and troodontids forming together a parallel lineage within the group. Because Hartman et al. found Archaeopteryx isolated in a group of flightless deinonychosaurs (otherwise considered "anchiornithids"), they considered it highly probable that this animal evolved flight independently from bird ancestors (and from Microraptor and Yi). The following cladogram illustrates their hypothesis regarding the position of Archaeopteryx:
The authors, however, found that the Archaeopteryx being an avialan was only slightly less likely than this hypothesis, and as likely as Archaeopterygidae and Troodontidae being sister clades.
Palaeobiology
Flight
As in the wings of modern birds, the flight feathers of Archaeopteryx were somewhat asymmetrical and the tail feathers were rather broad. This implies that the wings and tail were used for lift generation, but it is unclear whether Archaeopteryx was capable of flapping flight or simply a glider. The lack of a bony breastbone suggests that Archaeopteryx was not a very strong flier, but flight muscles might have attached to the thick, boomerang-shaped wishbone, the platelike coracoids, or perhaps, to a cartilaginous sternum. The sideways orientation of the glenoid (shoulder) joint between scapula, coracoid, and humerus—instead of the dorsally angled arrangement found in modern birds—may indicate that Archaeopteryx was unable to lift its wings above its back, a requirement for the upstroke found in modern flapping flight. According to a study by Philip Senter in 2006, Archaeopteryx was indeed unable to use flapping flight as modern birds do, but it may well have used a downstroke-only flap-assisted gliding technique. However, a more recent study solves this issue by suggesting a different flight stroke configuration for non-avian flying theropods.Archaeopteryx wings were relatively large, which would have resulted in a low stall speed and reduced turning radius. The short and rounded shape of the wings would have increased drag, but also could have improved its ability to fly through cluttered environments such as trees and brush (similar wing shapes are seen in birds that fly through trees and brush, such as crows and pheasants). The presence of "hind wings", asymmetrical flight feathers stemming from the legs similar to those seen in dromaeosaurids such as Microraptor, also would have added to the aerial mobility of Archaeopteryx. The first detailed study of the hind wings by Longrich in 2006, suggested that the structures formed up to 12% of the total airfoil. This would have reduced stall speed by up to 6% and turning radius by up to 12%.
The feathers of Archaeopteryx were asymmetrical. This has been interpreted as evidence that it was a flyer, because flightless birds tend to have symmetrical feathers. Some scientists, including Thomson and Speakman, have questioned this. They studied more than 70 families of living birds, and found that some flightless types do have a range of asymmetry in their feathers, and that the feathers of Archaeopteryx fall into this range. The degree of asymmetry seen in Archaeopteryx is more typical for slow flyers than for flightless birds.
In 2010, Robert L. Nudds and Gareth J. Dyke in the journal Science published a paper in which they analysed the rachises of the primary feathers of Confuciusornis and Archaeopteryx. The analysis suggested that the rachises on these two genera were thinner and weaker than those of modern birds relative to body mass. The authors determined that Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis, were unable to use flapping flight. This study was criticized by Philip J. Currie and Luis Chiappe. Chiappe suggested that it is difficult to measure the rachises of fossilized feathers, and Currie speculated that Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis must have been able to fly to some degree, as their fossils are preserved in what is believed to have been marine or lake sediments, suggesting that they must have been able to fly over deep water. Gregory Paul also disagreed with the study, arguing in a 2010 response that Nudds and Dyke had overestimated the masses of these early birds, and that more accurate mass estimates allowed powered flight even with relatively narrow rachises. Nudds and Dyke had assumed a mass of for the Munich specimen Archaeopteryx, a young juvenile, based on published mass estimates of larger specimens. Paul argued that a more reasonable body mass estimate for the Munich specimen is about . Paul also criticized the measurements of the rachises themselves, noting that the feathers in the Munich specimen are poorly preserved. Nudds and Dyke reported a diameter of for the longest primary feather, which Paul could not confirm using photographs. Paul measured some of the inner primary feathers, finding rachises across. Despite these criticisms, Nudds and Dyke stood by their original conclusions. They claimed that Paul's statement, that an adult Archaeopteryx would have been a better flyer than the juvenile Munich specimen, was dubious. This, they reasoned, would require an even thicker rachis, evidence for which has not yet been presented. Another possibility is that they had not achieved true flight, but instead used their wings as aids for extra lift while running over water after the fashion of the basilisk lizard, which could explain their presence in lake and marine deposits (see Origin of avian flight).
In 2004, scientists analysing a detailed CT scan of the braincase of the London Archaeopteryx concluded that its brain was significantly larger than that of most dinosaurs, indicating that it possessed the brain size necessary for flying. The overall brain anatomy was reconstructed using the scan. The reconstruction showed that the regions associated with vision took up nearly one-third of the brain. Other well-developed areas involved hearing and muscle coordination. The skull scan also revealed the structure of its inner ear. The structure more closely resembles that of modern birds than the inner ear of non-avian reptiles. These characteristics taken together suggest that Archaeopteryx had the keen sense of hearing, balance, spatial perception, and coordination needed to fly. Archaeopteryx had a cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio 78% of the way to modern birds from the condition of non-coelurosaurian dinosaurs such as Carcharodontosaurus or Allosaurus, which had a crocodile-like anatomy of the brain and inner ear. Newer research shows that while the Archaeopteryx brain was more complex than that of more primitive theropods, it had a more generalized brain volume among Maniraptora dinosaurs, even smaller than that of other non-avian dinosaurs in several instances, which indicates the neurological development required for flight was already a common trait in the maniraptoran clade.
Recent studies of flight feather barb geometry reveal that modern birds possess a larger barb angle in the trailing vane of the feather, whereas Archaeopteryx lacks this large barb angle, indicating potentially weak flight abilities.Archaeopteryx continues to play an important part in scientific debates about the origin and evolution of birds. Some scientists see it as a semi-arboreal climbing animal, following the idea that birds evolved from tree-dwelling gliders (the "trees down" hypothesis for the evolution of flight proposed by O. C. Marsh). Other scientists see Archaeopteryx as running quickly along the ground, supporting the idea that birds evolved flight by running (the "ground up" hypothesis proposed by Samuel Wendell Williston). Still others suggest that Archaeopteryx might have been at home both in the trees and on the ground, like modern crows, and this latter view is what currently is considered best-supported by morphological characters. Altogether, it appears that the species was not particularly specialized for running on the ground or for perching. A scenario outlined by Elżanowski in 2002 suggested that Archaeopteryx used its wings mainly to escape predators by glides punctuated with shallow downstrokes to reach successively higher perches, and alternatively, to cover longer distances (mainly) by gliding down from cliffs or treetops.
In March 2018, scientists reported that Archaeopteryx was likely capable of flight, but in a manner distinct and substantially different from that of modern birds. This study on Archaeopteryxs bone histology suggests that it was closest to true flying birds, and in particular to pheasants and other burst flyers.
Studies of Archaeopteryx's feather sheaths revealed that like modern birds, it had a center-out, flight related molting strategy. As it was a weak flier, this was extremely advantageous in preserving its maximum flight performance.
Growth
An histological study by Erickson, Norell, Zhongue, and others in 2009 estimated that Archaeopteryx grew relatively slowly compared to modern birds, presumably because the outermost portions of Archaeopteryx bones appear poorly vascularized; in living vertebrates, poorly vascularized bone is correlated with slow growth rate. They also assume that all known skeletons of Archaeopteryx come from juvenile specimens. Because the bones of Archaeopteryx could not be histologically sectioned in a formal skeletochronological (growth ring) analysis, Erickson and colleagues used bone vascularity (porosity) to estimate bone growth rate. They assumed that poorly vascularized bone grows at similar rates in all birds and in Archaeopteryx. The poorly vascularized bone of Archaeopteryx might have grown as slowly as that in a mallard (2.5micrometres per day) or as fast as that in an ostrich (4.2micrometres per day). Using this range of bone growth rates, they calculated how long it would take to "grow" each specimen of Archaeopteryx to the observed size; it may have taken at least 970 days (there were 375 days in a Late Jurassic year) to reach an adult size of . The study also found that the avialans Jeholornis and Sapeornis grew relatively slowly, as did the dromaeosaurid Mahakala. The avialans Confuciusornis and Ichthyornis grew relatively quickly, following a growth trend similar to that of modern birds. One of the few modern birds that exhibit slow growth is the flightless kiwi, and the authors speculated that Archaeopteryx and the kiwi had similar basal metabolic rate.
Daily activity patterns
Comparisons between the scleral rings of Archaeopteryx and modern birds and reptiles indicate that it may have been diurnal, similar to most modern birds.
Palaeoecology
The richness and diversity of the Solnhofen limestones in which all specimens of Archaeopteryx have been found have shed light on an ancient Jurassic Bavaria strikingly different from the present day. The latitude was similar to Florida, though the climate was likely to have been drier, as evidenced by fossils of plants with adaptations for arid conditions and a lack of terrestrial sediments characteristic of rivers. Evidence of plants, although scarce, include cycads and conifers while animals found include a large number of insects, small lizards, pterosaurs, and Compsognathus.
The excellent preservation of Archaeopteryx fossils and other terrestrial fossils found at Solnhofen indicates that they did not travel far before becoming preserved. The Archaeopteryx specimens found were therefore likely to have lived on the low islands surrounding the Solnhofen lagoon rather than to have been corpses that drifted in from farther away. Archaeopteryx skeletons are considerably less numerous in the deposits of Solnhofen than those of pterosaurs, of which seven genera have been found. The pterosaurs included species such as Rhamphorhynchus belonging to the Rhamphorhynchidae, the group which dominated the ecological niche currently occupied by seabirds, and which became extinct at the end of the Jurassic. The pterosaurs, which also included Pterodactylus, were common enough that it is unlikely that the specimens found are vagrants from the larger islands to the north.
The islands that surrounded the Solnhofen lagoon were low lying, semi-arid, and sub-tropical with a long dry season and little rain. The closest modern analogue for the Solnhofen conditions is said to be Orca Basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico, although it is much deeper than the Solnhofen lagoons. The flora of these islands was adapted to these dry conditions and consisted mostly of low () shrubs. Contrary to reconstructions of Archaeopteryx climbing large trees, these seem to have been mostly absent from the islands; few trunks have been found in the sediments and fossilized tree pollen also is absent.
The lifestyle of Archaeopteryx is difficult to reconstruct and there are several theories regarding it. Some researchers suggest that it was primarily adapted to life on the ground, while other researchers suggest that it was principally arboreal on the basis of the curvature of the claws which has since been questioned. The absence of trees does not preclude Archaeopteryx from an arboreal lifestyle, as several species of bird live exclusively in low shrubs. Various aspects of the morphology of Archaeopteryx point to either an arboreal or ground existence, including the length of its legs and the elongation in its feet; some authorities consider it likely to have been a generalist capable of feeding in both shrubs and open ground, as well as along the shores of the lagoon. It most likely hunted small prey, seizing it with its jaws if it was small enough, or with its claws if it was larger.
See also
Dinosaur colouration
Evolution of birds
Feathered dinosaurs
Origin of birds
Ostromia
Rhamphorhynchus
Temporal paradox (paleontology)
Xiaotingia
References
Further reading
G. R. de Beer (1954). Archaeopteryx lithographica: a study based upon the British Museum specimen. Trustees of the British Museum, London.
P. Chambers (2002). Bones of Contention: The Fossil that Shook Science. John Murray, London. .
A. Feduccia (1996). The Origin and Evolution of Birds. Yale University Press, New Haven. .
Heilmann, G. (1926). The Origin of Birds. Witherby, London.
T. H. Huxley. (1871). Manual of the anatomy of vertebrate animals. London.
H. von Meyer (1861). Archaeopterix lithographica (Vogel-Feder) und Pterodactylus von Solenhofen. . 1861: 678–679, plate V. [Article in German]. Full text, Google Books.
P. Shipman (1998). Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London. .
P. Wellnhofer (2008). Archaeopteryx — Der Urvogel von Solnhofen (in German). Verlag Friedrich Pfeil, Munich. .
External links
All About Archaeopteryx, from Talk.Origins.
Use of SSRL X-ray takes 'transformative glimpse' — A look at chemicals linking birds and dinosaurs.
Archaeopteryx: An Early Bird — University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Are Birds Really Dinosaurs? — University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Prehistoric avialans
Jurassic birds
Feathered dinosaurs
Late Jurassic dinosaurs of Europe
Jurassic Germany
Mesozoic birds of Europe
Solnhofen fauna
Fossils of Germany
Transitional fossils
Fossil taxa described in 1861
Taxa named by Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer
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Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats (in the years 1937–45) and Long Sam (1954). He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning".
Capp's comic strips dealt with urban experiences in the Northern United States until the year he introduced "Li'l Abner". Although Capp was from Connecticut, he spent 43 years writing about the fictional Southern town of Dogpatch, reaching an estimated 60 million readers in more than 900 American newspapers and 100 more papers in 28 countries internationally. M. Thomas Inge says Capp made a large personal fortune through the strip and "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South".
Early life and education
Capp was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of East European Jewish heritage. He was the eldest child of Otto Philip Caplin (1885–1964) and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin (1884–1948). His brothers, Elliot and Jerome, were cartoonists, and his sister, Madeline, was a publicist. Capp's parents were both natives of Latvia whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. "My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants", wrote Capp in 1978. "Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true – it was no crime to be a Jew." The Caplins were dirt-poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.
In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp was run down by a trolley car and had his left leg amputated above the knee. According to his father Otto's unpublished autobiography, young Capp was not prepared for the amputation beforehand; having been in a coma for days, he suddenly awoke to discover that his leg had been removed. He was eventually given a prosthetic leg, but only learned to use it by adopting a slow way of walking which became increasingly painful as he grew older. The childhood tragedy of losing a leg likely helped shape Capp's cynical worldview, which was darker and more sardonic than that of the average newspaper cartoonist. "I was indignant as hell about that leg", he revealed in a November 1950 interview in Time magazine.
"The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else", Capp philosophically wrote (in Life magazine on May 23, 1960), "was to be indifferent to that difference." The prevailing opinion among his friends was that Capp's Swiftian satire was, to some degree, a creatively channeled, compensatory response to his disability.
Capp's father, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy. He became quite proficient, advancing mostly on his own. Among his earliest influences were Punch cartoonist–illustrator Phil May and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus, and Milt Gross. At about this same time, Capp became a voracious reader. According to Capp's brother Elliot, Alfred had finished all of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw by the time he turned 13. Among his childhood favorites were Dickens, Smollett, Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, and later, Robert Benchley and S. J. Perelman.
Capp spent five years at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, without receiving a diploma. He liked to joke about how he failed geometry for nine straight terms. His formal training came from a series of art schools in the New England area. Attending three of them in rapid succession, the impoverished Capp was thrown out of each for nonpayment of tuition—the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Designers Art School in Boston—the last before launching his career. Capp already had decided to become a cartoonist. "I heard that Bud Fisher (creator of Mutt and Jeff) got $3,000 a week and was constantly marrying French countesses", Capp said. "I decided that was for me."
In early 1932, Capp hitchhiked to New York City. He lived in "airless rat holes" in Greenwich Village and turned out advertising strips at $2 each while scouring the city hunting for jobs. He eventually found work at the Associated Press when he was 23 years old. By March 1932, Capp was drawing Colonel Gilfeather, a single-panel, AP-owned property created in 1930 by Dick Dorgan. Capp changed the focus and title to Mister Gilfeather but soon grew to hate the feature. He left the Associated Press in September 1932. Before leaving, he met Milton Caniff and the two became lifelong friends. Capp moved to Boston and married Catherine Wingate Cameron, whom he had met earlier in art class. She died in 2006 at the age of 96.
Leaving his new wife with her parents in Amesbury, Massachusetts, he subsequently returned to New York in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. "I was 23, I carried a mass of drawings, and I had nearly five dollars in my pocket. People were sleeping in alleys then, willing to work at anything." There he met Ham Fisher, who hired him to ghost on Joe Palooka. During one of Fisher's extended vacations, Capp's Joe Palooka story arc introduced a stupid, coarse, oafish mountaineer named "Big Leviticus," a crude prototype. (Leviticus was much closer to Capp's later villains Lem and Luke Scragg than to the much more appealing and innocent Li'l Abner.)
Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that eventually became Li'l Abner. He based his cast of characters on the authentic mountain-dwellers he met while hitchhiking through rural West Virginia and the Cumberland Valley as a teenager. (This was years before the Tennessee Valley Authority Act brought basic utilities such as electricity and running water to the region.) Leaving Joe Palooka, Capp sold Li'l Abner to United Feature Syndicate (later known as United Media). The feature was launched on Monday, August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers—including the New York Mirror—and was an immediate success. Alfred G. Caplin eventually became "Al Capp" because the syndicate felt the original would not fit in a cartoon frame. Capp had his name changed legally in 1949.
His younger brother, Elliot Caplin, also became a comic strip writer, best known for co-creating the soap opera strip The Heart of Juliet Jones with artist Stan Drake and conceiving the comic strip character Broom-Hilda with cartoonist Russell Myers. Elliot also authored several off-Broadway plays, including A Nickel for Picasso (1981), which was based on and dedicated to his mother and his famous brother.
Li'l Abner
What began as a hillbilly burlesque soon evolved into one of the most imaginative, popular, and well-drawn strips of the twentieth century. Featuring vividly outlandish characters, bizarre situations, and equal parts suspense, slapstick, irony, satire, black humor, and biting social commentary, Li'l Abner is considered a classic of the genre. The comic strip stars Li'l Abner Yokum—the simple-minded, loutish but good-natured, and eternally innocent hayseed who lives with his parents—scrawny but superhuman Mammy Yokum, and shiftless, childlike Pappy Yokum.
"Yokum" was a combination of yokel and hokum, although Capp established a deeper meaning for the name during a series of visits around 1965–1970 with comics historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price:
The Yokums live in the backwater hamlet of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Described by its creator as "an average stone-age community", Dogpatch mostly consists of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, pine trees, "tarnip" fields, and "hawg" wallows. Whatever energy Abner had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed, but virtuous girlfriend, until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry. This newsworthy event made the cover of Life on March 31, 1952.
Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin' Sam, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, Lena the Hyena, Senator Jack S. Phogbound (Capp's caricature of the anti-New Deal Dixiecrats), the (shudder!) Scraggs, Available Jones, Nightmare Alice, Earthquake McGoon, and a host of others. Especially notable, certainly from a G.I. point of view, are the beautiful, full-figured women such as Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Stupefyin' Jones, and Moonbeam McSwine (a caricature of his wife Catherine, aside from the dirt), all of whom found their way onto the painted noses of bomber planes during World War II and the Korean War. Perhaps Capp's most popular creations were the Shmoos, creatures whose incredible usefulness and generous nature made them a threat to civilization as we know it.
Another famous character was Joe Btfsplk, who wants to be a loving friend but is "the world's worst jinx", bringing bad luck to all those nearby. Btfsplk (his name is "pronounced" by simply blowing a "raspberry" or Bronx cheer) always has an iconic dark cloud over his head.
Dogpatch residents regularly combat the likes of city slickers, business tycoons, government officials, and intellectuals with their homespun simplicity. Situations often take the characters to other destinations, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, tropical islands, the moon, Mars, and some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's invention, including El Passionato, Kigmyland, The Republic of Crumbumbo, Skunk Hollow, The Valley of the Shmoon, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, and a miserable frozen wasteland known as Lower Slobbovia, a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy that remains a contemporary reference.
According to cultural historian Anthony Harkins:
The strip's popularity grew from an original eight papers to eventually more than 900. At its peak, Li'l Abner was estimated to have been read daily in the United States by 60 to 70 million people (the U.S. population at the time was only 180 million), with adult readers far outnumbering children. Many communities, high schools, and colleges staged Sadie Hawkins dances patterned after the similar annual event in the strip.
Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. In response to the question "Which side does Abner part his hair on?", Capp would answer: "Both." Capp said he finally found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with Henry Fonda's character Dave Tolliver in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936).
In later years, Capp always claimed to have effectively created the miniskirt, when he first put one on Daisy Mae in the 1930s.
Parodies, toppers, and alternate strips
Li'l Abner also features a comic strip-within-the-strip: Fearless Fosdick is a parody of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. It first appeared in 1942, and it proved so popular that it ran intermittently during the next 35 years. Gould was parodied personally in the series as cartoonist "Lester Gooch"—the diminutive, much-harassed and occasionally deranged "creator" of Fosdick. The style of the Fosdick sequences closely mimicks Tracy, including the urban setting, the outrageous villains, the galloping mortality rate, the crosshatched shadows, and even the lettering style. In 1952, Fosdick was the star of his own short-lived puppet show on NBC, featuring the Mary Chase marionettes.
Besides Dick Tracy, Capp parodied many other comic strips in Li'l Abner—including Steve Canyon, Superman (at least twice; first as "Jack Jawbreaker" in 1947, and again in 1966 as "Chickensouperman"), Mary Worth as "Mary Worm", Peanuts {with "Peewee" a parody of Charlie Brown with "Croopy" parody of Snoopy" {1968} drawn by Bedley Damp a parody of Charles Schulz}, Rex Morgan, M.D., Little Annie Rooney, and Little Orphan Annie (in which Punjab became "Punjbag," an oleaginous slob). Fearless Fosdick—and Capp's other spoofs such as "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952) and "Jack Jawbreaker"—were almost certainly an early inspiration for Harvey Kurtzman's Mad Magazine, which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same distinctive style and subversive manner.
Capp also lampooned popular recording idols of the day, such as Elvis Presley ("Hawg McCall", 1957), Liberace ("Loverboynik", 1956), the Beatles ("the Beasties", 1964)—and in 1944, Frank Sinatra. "Sinatra was the first great public figure I ever wrote about," Capp once said. "I called him 'Hal Fascinatra.' I remember my news syndicate was so worried about what his reaction might be, and we were all surprised when he telephoned and told me how thrilled he was with it. He always made it a point to send me champagne whenever he happened to see me in a restaurant..." (from Frank Sinatra, My Father by Nancy Sinatra, 1985). On the other hand, Liberace was "cut to the quick" over Loverboynik, according to Capp, and even threatened legal action—as would Joan Baez later, over "Joanie Phoanie" in 1967.
Capp was just as likely to parody himself; his self-caricature made frequent, tongue-in-cheek appearances in Li'l Abner. The gag was often at his own expense, as in the above 1951 sequence showing Capp's interaction with "fans" (see excerpt), or in his 1955 Disneyland parody, "Hal Yappland". Just about anything could be a target for Capp's satire—in one storyline Li'l Abner is revealed to be the missing link between ape and man. In another, the search is on in Dogpatch for a pair of missing socks knitted by the first president of the United States.
In addition to creating Li'l Abner, Capp also co-created two other newspaper strips: Abbie an' Slats with magazine illustrator Raeburn van Buren in 1937, and Long Sam with cartoonist Bob Lubbers in 1954, as well as the Sunday "topper" strips Washable Jones, Small Fry (a.k.a. Small Change), and Advice fo' Chillun.
Critical recognition
According to comics historian Coulton Waugh, a 1947 poll of newspaper readers who claimed they ignored the comics page altogether revealed that many confessed to making a single exception: Li'l Abner. "When Li'l Abner made its debut in 1934, the vast majority of comic strips were designed chiefly to amuse or thrill their readers. Capp turned that world upside-down by routinely injecting politics and social commentary into Li'l Abner. The strip was the first to regularly introduce characters and story lines having nothing to do with the nominal stars of the strip. The technique—as invigorating as it was unorthodox—was later adopted by cartoonists such as Walt Kelly [Pogo] and Garry Trudeau [Doonesbury]", wrote comic strip historian Rick Marschall. According to Marschall, Li'l Abner gradually evolved into a broad satire of human nature. In his book America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989), Marschall's analysis revealed a decidedly misanthropic subtext.
Over the years, Li'l Abner has been adapted to radio, animated cartoons, stage production, motion pictures, and television. Capp has been compared, at various times, to Mark Twain, Dostoevski, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Rabelais. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck—who called Capp "possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953 and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature—to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life". John Updike, comparing Abner to a "hillbilly Candide", added that the strip's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean". Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes, and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li'l Abner.
Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length scholarly assessment of an American comic strip ever published. Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature, and grotesquerie, the place of Li'l Abner in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. "One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture," wrote Professor Berger, "Li'l Abner is worth studying ... because of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994.
The 1940s and 1950s
During World War II and for many years afterward, Capp worked tirelessly going to hospitals to entertain patients, especially to cheer recent amputees and explain to them that the loss of a limb did not mean an end to a happy and productive life. Making no secret of his own disability, Capp openly joked about his prosthetic leg his whole life. In 1946, Capp created a special full-color comic book, Al Capp by Li'l Abner, to be distributed by the Red Cross to encourage the thousands of amputee veterans returning from the war. Capp also was involved with the Sister Kenny Foundation, which pioneered new treatments for polio in the 1940s. Serving in his capacity as honorary chairman, Capp made public appearances on its behalf for years, contributed free artwork for its annual fundraising appeals, and entertained disabled and paraplegic children in children's hospitals with inspirational pep talks, humorous stories, and sketches.
In 1940, an RKO movie adaptation starred Granville Owen (later known as Jeff York) as Li'l Abner, with Buster Keaton taking the role of Lonesome Polecat, and featuring a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle. A successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances, followed by a nationwide tour. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with a score by Nelson Riddle. Several performers repeated their Broadway roles in the film, most memorably Julie Newmar as Stupefyin' Jones and Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam.
Other highlights of that decade included the 1942 debut of Fearless Fosdick as Abner's "ideel" (hero); the 1946 Lena the Hyena Contest, in which a hideous Lower Slobbovian gal was ultimately revealed in the harrowing winning entry (as judged by Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, and Salvador Dalí) drawn by noted cartoonist Basil Wolverton; and an ill-fated Sunday parody of Gone With the Wind that aroused anger and legal threats from author Margaret Mitchell, and led to a printed apology within the strip. In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Comic Strip Syndicate. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!", was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over Superman. It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953). (Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a Superman story in Action Comics #55, December 1942, in which a cartoonist named "Al Hatt" invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly "Tiny Rufe".)
In 1947, Capp earned a Newsweek cover story. That same year the New Yorker's profile on him was so long that it ran in consecutive issues. In 1948, Capp reached a creative peak with the introduction of the Shmoos, lovable and innocent fantasy creatures who reproduced at amazing speed and brought so many benefits that, ironically, the world economy was endangered. The much-copied storyline was a parable that was metaphorically interpreted in many different ways at the outset of the Cold War.
Following his close friend Milton Caniff's lead (with Steve Canyon), Capp had recently fought a successful battle with the syndicate to gain complete ownership of his feature when the Shmoos debuted. As a result, he reaped enormous financial rewards from the unexpected (and almost unprecedented) merchandising phenomenon that followed. As in the strip, Shmoos suddenly appeared to be everywhere in 1949 and 1950—including a Time cover story. A paperback collection of the original sequence, The Life and Times of the Shmoo, became a bestseller for Simon & Schuster. Shmoo dolls, clocks, watches, jewelry, earmuffs, wallpaper, fishing lures, air fresheners, soap, ice cream, balloons, ashtrays, comic books, records, sheet music, toys, games, Halloween masks, salt and pepper shakers, decals, pinbacks, tumblers, coin banks, greeting cards, planters, neckties, suspenders, belts, curtains, fountain pens, and other Shmoo paraphernalia were produced. A garment factory in Baltimore turned out a whole line of Shmoo apparel, including "Shmooveralls". The original sequence and its 1959 sequel The Return of the Shmoo have been collected in print many times since, most recently in 2011, always to high sales figures. The Shmoos later had their own animated television series.
Capp followed this success with other allegorical fantasy critters, including the aboriginal and masochistic "Kigmies", who craved abuse (a story that began as a veiled comment on racial and religious oppression), the dreaded "Nogoodniks" (or bad shmoos), and the irresistible "Bald Iggle", a guileless creature whose sad-eyed countenance compelled involuntary truthfulness—with predictably disastrous results.
Li'l Abner was censored for the first time, but not the last, in September 1947 and was pulled from papers by Scripps-Howard. The controversy, as reported in Time, centered on Capp's portrayal of the United States Senate. Edward Leech of Scripps said, "We don't think it is good editing or sound citizenship to picture the Senate as an assemblage of freaks and crooks ... boobs and undesirables." Capp criticized Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, calling him a "poet". "He uses poetic license to try to create the beautifully ordered world of good guys and bad guys that he wants," said Capp. "He seems at his best when terrifying the helpless and naïve."
Capp received the National Cartoonists Society's Billy DeBeck Memorial Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year. (When the award name was changed in 1954, Capp also retroactively received a Reuben statuette.) He was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the NCS by admitting women cartoonists. Originally, the Society had disallowed female members. Capp briefly resigned his membership in 1949 to protest their refusal of admission to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena. According to Tom Roberts, author of Alex Raymond: His Life and Art (2007), Capp delivered a stirring speech that was instrumental in changing those rules. The NCS finally accepted female members the following year. In December 1952, Capp published an article in Real magazine entitled "The REAL Powers in America" that further challenged the conventional attitudes of the day: "The real powers in America are women—the wives and sweethearts behind the masculine dummies...."
Highlights of the 1950s included the much-heralded marriage of Abner and Daisy Mae in 1952, the birth of their son "Honest Abe" Yokum in 1953, and in 1954 the introduction of Abner's enormous, long-lost kid brother Tiny Yokum, who filled Abner's place as a bachelor in the annual Sadie Hawkins Day race. In 1952, Capp and his characters graced the covers of both Life and TV Guide. The year 1956 saw the debut of Bald Iggle, considered by some Abner enthusiasts to be the creative high point of the strip, as well as Mammy's revelatory encounter with the "Square Eyes" Family—Capp's thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance. (This fable-like story was collected into an educational comic book called Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery! and distributed by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith later that year.) Two years later, Capp's studio issued Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a biographical comic book distributed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Often, Capp had parodied corporate greed—pork tycoon J. Roaringham Fatback had figured prominently in wiping out the Shmoos. But in 1952, when General Motors president Charles E. Wilson, nominated for a cabinet post, told Congress "...what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa", he inspired one of Capp's greatest satires—the introduction of General Bullmoose, the robust, ruthless, and ageless business tycoon. The blustering Bullmoose, who seemed to own and control nearly everything, justified his far-reaching and mercenary excesses by saying "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!" Bullmoose's corrupt interests were often pitted against those of the pathetic Lower Slobbovians in a classic mismatch of "haves" versus "have-nots". This character, along with the Shmoos, helped cement Capp's favor with the Left, and increased their outrage a decade later when Capp, a former Franklin D. Roosevelt liberal, switched targets. Nonetheless, General Bullmoose continued to appear, undaunted and unredeemed, during the strip's final right-wing phase and into the 1970s.
Feud with Ham Fisher
After Capp quit his ghosting job on Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka in 1934 to launch his own strip, Fisher badmouthed him to colleagues and editors, claiming that Capp had "stolen" his idea. For years, Fisher brought the characters back to his strip, billing them as "The ORIGINAL Hillbilly Characters" and advising readers not to be "fooled by imitations". (In fact, Fisher's brutish hillbilly character—Big Leviticus, created by Capp in Fisher's absence—bore little resemblance to Li'l Abner.) According to a November 1950 Time article, "Capp parted from Fisher with a definite impression, (to put it mildly) that he had been underpaid and unappreciated. Fisher, a man of Roman self esteem, considered Capp an ingrate and a whippersnapper, and watched his rise to fame with unfeigned horror."
"Fisher repeatedly brought Leviticus and his clan back, claiming their primacy as comics' first hillbilly family – but he was missing the point. It wasn't the setting that made Capp's strip such a huge success. It was Capp's finely tuned sense of the absurd, his ability to milk an outrageous situation for every laugh in it and then, impossibly, to squeeze even more laughs from it, that found such favor with the public," (from Don Markstein's Toonopedia).
The Capp-Fisher feud was well known in cartooning circles, and it grew more personal as Capp's strip eclipsed Joe Palooka in popularity. Fisher hired away Capp's top assistant, Moe Leff. After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp included a racehorse in Li'l Abner named "Ham's Nose-Bob". In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named "Happy Vermin"—a caricature of Fisher—who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet (after sacking his previous "temporary" assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process). Instead of using Vermin's tired characters, Abner inventively peopled the strip with hillbillies. A bighearted Vermin told his slaving assistant: "I'm proud of having created these characters!! They'll make millions for me!! And if they do – I'll get you a new light bulb!!"
Traveling in the same social circles, the two men engaged in a 20-year mutual vendetta, as described by the New York Daily News in 1998: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks." In 1950, Capp wrote a nasty article for The Atlantic, entitled "I Remember Monster". The article recounted Capp's days working for an unnamed "benefactor" with a miserly, swinish personality, who Capp claimed was a never-ending source of inspiration when it came time to create a new unregenerate villain for his comic strip. The thinly-veiled boss was understood to be Ham Fisher.
Fisher retaliated, doctoring photostats of Li'l Abner and falsely accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities into his comic strip. Fisher submitted examples of Li'l Abner to Capp's syndicate and to the New York courts, in which Fisher had identified pornographic images that were hidden in the background art. However, the X-rated material had been drawn there by Fisher. Capp was able to refute the accusation by simply showing the original artwork.
In 1954, when Capp was applying for a Boston television license, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received an anonymous packet of pornographic Li'l Abner drawings. The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) convened an ethics hearing, and Fisher was expelled for the forgery from the same organization that he had helped found; Fisher's scheme had backfired in spectacular fashion. Around the same time, his mansion in Wisconsin was destroyed by a storm. On December 27, 1955, Fisher committed suicide in his studio. The feud and Fisher's suicide were used as the basis for a lurid, highly fictionalized murder mystery, Strip for Murder by Max Allan Collins.
Another "feud" seemed to be looming when, in one run of Sunday strips in 1957, Capp lampooned the comic strip Mary Worth as "Mary Worm". The title character was depicted as a nosy, interfering busybody. Allen Saunders, the creator of the Mary Worth strip, returned Capp's fire with the introduction of the character "Hal Rapp", a foul-tempered, ill-mannered, and (ironically) inebriated cartoonist, (Capp was a teetotaler). Later, the "feud" was revealed to be a collaborative hoax that Capp and his longtime pal Saunders had cooked up together. The Capp-Saunders "feud" fooled both editors and readers, generated plenty of free publicity for both strips—and Capp and Saunders had a good laugh when all was revealed.
Personality
Capp, Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon) and Walt Kelly (Pogo) were close personal friends and professional associates throughout their adult lives, and occasionally, referenced each other in their strips. According to one anecdote (from Al Capp Remembered, 1994), Capp and his brother Elliot ducked out of a dull party at Capp's home—leaving Walt Kelly alone to fend for himself entertaining a group of Argentine envoys who didn't speak English. Kelly retaliated by giving away Capp's baby grand piano. According to Capp, who loved to relate the story, Kelly's two perfectly logical reasons for doing so were: a. to cement diplomatic relations between Argentina and the United States, and b. "Because you can't play the piano, anyway!" (Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker confirmed the story, relating a slightly expanded version in his autobiography, Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook, 2001.)
Milton Caniff offered another anecdote (from Phi Beta Pogo, 1989) involving Capp and Walt Kelly, "two boys from Bridgeport, Connecticut, nose to nose," onstage at a meeting of the Newspaper Comics Council in the sixties. "Walt would say to Al, 'Of course, Al, this is really how you should draw Daisy Mae, I'm only showing you this for your own good.' Then Walt would do a sketch. Capp, of course, got ticked off by this, as you can imagine! So he retaliated by doing his version of Pogo. Unfortunately, the drawings are long gone; no recording was made. What a shame! Nobody anticipated there'd be this dueling back and forth between the two of them ..."
Although he was often considered a difficult person, some acquaintances of Capp have stressed that the cartoonist also had a sensitive side. In 1973, upon learning that 12-year-old Ted Kennedy Jr., the son of his political rival Ted Kennedy Sr., had his right leg amputated, Capp wrote the boy an encouraging letter that gave candid advice about dealing with the loss of a limb, which Capp himself had experienced as a boy. One of Capp's grandchildren recalls that at one point, tears were streaming down the cartoonist's cheeks while he was watching a documentary about the Jonestown massacre. Capp gave money anonymously to charities and "people in need" at various points in his life.
Sexual harassment and assault claims
In her autobiography, American actress Goldie Hawn stated that Capp sexually propositioned her on a casting couch and exposed himself to her when she was 19 years old. When she refused his advances, Capp became angry and told her that she was "never gonna make anything in your life" and that she should "go and marry a Jewish dentist. You'll never get anywhere in this business."
Two biographies, one about Goldie Hawn and the other about Grace Kelly, describe Capp as trying to force Kelly into having sex with him, and he later tried to do the same with Hawn.
In 1971, investigative journalist Jack Anderson wrote that Capp had exposed his genitals to four female students at the University of Alabama.
In 1972, after an incident at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, Capp was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted adultery, while charges of indecent exposure and sodomy were dropped. He was fined US$500 ().
In 2019, Jean Kilbourne was inspired by the MeToo movement to publish in Hogan's Alley her own experience of being groped and sexually solicited by Al Capp while doing freelance writing and research work for him in contemplation of a permanent job in 1967.
Production methods
Like many cartoonists, Capp made extensive use of assistants (notably Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson, and Frank Frazetta). During the extended peak of the strip, the workload grew to include advertising, merchandising, promotional work, public service comics, and other specialty work—in addition to the regular six dailies and one Sunday strip per week. From the early 1940s to the late 1950s, there were scores of Sunday strip-style magazine ads for Cream of Wheat using the Abner characters, and in the 1950s, Fearless Fosdick became a spokesman for Wildroot Cream-Oil hair tonic in a series of daily strip-style print ads. The characters also sold chainsaws, underwear, ties, detergent, candy, soft drinks—including a licensed version of Capp's moonshine creation, Kickapoo Joy Juice—and General Electric and Procter & Gamble products, all requiring special artwork.
No matter how much help he had, Capp insisted on his drawing and inking the characters' faces and hands—especially of Abner and Daisy Mae—and his distinctive touch is often discernible. "He had the touch," Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. "He knew how to take an otherwise ordinary drawing and really make it pop. I'll never knock his talent."
As is usual with collaborative efforts in comic strips, his name was the only one credited— although, sensitive to his own experience working on Joe Palooka, Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces. A 1950 cover story in Time even included photographs of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. Ironically, this highly irregular policy (along with the subsequent fame of Frank Frazetta) has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. Capp originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the hands and faces of the characters. Frazetta authority David Winiewicz described the everyday working mode of operation in Li'l Abner Dailies: 1954 Volume 20 (Kitchen Sink, 1994):
There was also a separate line of comic book titles published by the Caplin family-owned Toby Press, including Shmoo Comics featuring Washable Jones. Cartoonist Mell Lazarus, creator of Miss Peach and Momma, wrote a comic novel in 1963 entitled The Boss Is Crazy, Too which was partly inspired by his apprenticeship days working with Capp and his brother Elliot at Toby. In a seminar at the Charles Schulz Museum on November 8, 2008, Lazarus called his experience at Toby "the five funniest years of my life". Lazarus went on to cite Capp as one of the "four essentials" in the field of newspaper cartoonists, along with Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, and Milton Caniff.
Capp detailed his approach to writing and drawing the stories in an instructional course book for the Famous Artists School, beginning in 1956. In 1959, Capp recorded and released an album for Folkways Records (now owned by the Smithsonian) on which he identified and described "The Mechanics of the Comic Strip".
Frazetta, later famous as a fantasy artist, assisted on the strip from 1954 to December 1961. Fascinated by Frazetta's abilities, Capp initially gave him a free hand in an extended daily sequence (about a biker named "Frankie," a caricature of Frazetta) to experiment with the basic look of the strip by adding a bit more realism and detail (particularly to the inking). After editors complained about the stylistic changes, the strip's previous look was restored. During most of his tenure with Capp, Frazetta's primary responsibility—along with various specialty art, such as a series of Li'l Abner greeting cards—was tight-penciling the Sunday pages from studio roughs. This work was collected by Dark Horse Comics in a four-volume hardcover series entitled Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years. In 1961, Capp, complaining of declining revenue, wanted to have Frazetta continue with a 50% pay cut. "[Capp] said he would cut the salary in half. Goodbye. That was that. I said goodbye," (from Frazetta: Painting with Fire). However, Frazetta returned briefly a few years later to draw a public service comic book called Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space, distributed by the Job Corps in 1965.
Public service works
Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies, and charitable or nonprofit organizations, spanning several decades. The following titles are all single-issue, educational comic books and pamphlets produced for various public services:
Al Capp by Li'l Abner— Public service giveaway issued by the Red Cross (1946)
Yo' Bets Yo' Life!— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Army ()
Li'l Abner Joins the Navy— Public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of the Navy (1950)
Fearless Fosdick and the Case of the Red Feather— Public service giveaway issued by Red Feather Services, a forerunner of United Way (1951)
The Youth You Supervise— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (1956)
Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery!— Public service giveaway issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (1956)
Operation: Survival!— Public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of Civil Defense (1957)
Natural Disasters!— Public service giveaway issued by the Department of Civil Defense (1957)
Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story— Public service giveaway issued by The Fellowship of Reconciliation (1958)
Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space— Public service giveaway issued by the Job Corps (1965)
In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the U.S. Treasury, the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Sister Kenny Foundation, the Boy Scouts of America, Community Chest, the National Reading Council, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, Christmas Seals, the National Amputation Foundation, and Disabled American Veterans, among others.
Public figure
In the Golden Age of the American comic strip, successful cartoonists received a great deal of attention; their professional and private lives were reported in the press, and their celebrity was often nearly sufficient to rival their creations. As Li'l Abner reached its peak years, and following the success of the Shmoos and other high moments in his work, Al Capp achieved a public profile that is still unparalleled in his profession, and arguably exceeded the fame of his strip. "Capp was the best known, most influential and most controversial cartoonist of his era," writes publisher (and leading Shmoo collector) Denis Kitchen. "His personal celebrity transcended comics, reaching the public and influencing the culture in a variety of media. For many years he simultaneously produced the daily strip, a weekly syndicated newspaper column, and a 500-station radio program..." He ran the Boston Summer Theatre with The Phantom cartoonist Lee Falk, bringing in Hollywood actors such as Mae West, Melvyn Douglas, and Claude Rains to star in their live productions. He even briefly considered running for a Massachusetts Senate seat. Vice President Spiro Agnew urged Capp to run in the Democratic Party Massachusetts primary in 1970 against Ted Kennedy, but Capp ultimately declined. (He did, however, donate his services as a speaker at a $100-a-plate fundraiser for Republican Congressman Jack Kemp.)
Besides his use of the comic strip to voice his opinions and display his humor, Capp was a popular guest speaker at universities, and on radio and television. He remains the only cartoonist to be embraced by television; no other comic artist to date has come close to Capp's televised exposure. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics (1948–'54) and made regular, weekly appearances on Today in 1953. He was also a periodic panelist on ABC and NBC's Who Said That? (1948–'55), and co-hosted DuMont's What's the Story? (1953). Between 1952 and 1972, he hosted at least five television shows–three different talk shows called The Al Capp Show (1952 and 1968) and Al Capp (1971–'72), Al Capp's America (a live "chalk talk," with Capp providing a barbed commentary while sketching cartoons, 1954), and a CBS game show called Anyone Can Win (1953). He also hosted similar vehicles on the radio—and was a familiar celebrity guest on various other broadcast programs, including NBC Radio's long-running Monitor with its famous Monitor Beacon audio signature, as a commentator dubbed "An expert of nothing with opinions on everything."
His frequent appearances on NBC's The Tonight Show spanned three emcees (Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and Johnny Carson), from the 1950s to the 1970s. One memorable story, as recounted to Johnny Carson, was about his meeting with then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Capp was ushered into the Oval Office, his prosthetic leg suddenly collapsed into a pile of disengaged parts and hinges on the floor. The President immediately turned to an aide and said, "Call Walter Reed (Hospital), or maybe Bethesda," to which Capp replied, "Hell no, just call a good local mechanic!" (Capp also spoofed Carson in his strip, in a 1970 episode called "The Tommy Wholesome Show".)
Capp portrayed himself in a cameo role in the Bob Hope film That Certain Feeling, for which he also provided promotional art. He was interviewed live on Person to Person on November 27, 1959, by host Charles Collingwood. He also appeared as himself on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, The Red Skelton Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and guested on Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life on February 12, 1961, with honoree Peter Palmer. Capp also freelanced very successfully as a magazine writer and newspaper columnist, in a wide variety of publications including Life, Show, Pageant, The Atlantic, Esquire, Coronet, and The Saturday Evening Post. Capp was impersonated by comedians Rich Little and David Frye. Although Capp's endorsement activities never rivaled Li'l Abner's or Fearless Fosdick's, he was a celebrity spokesman in print ads for Sheaffer Snorkel fountain pens (along with colleagues and close friends Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly), and—with an irony that became apparent later—a brand of cigarettes (Chesterfield).
Capp resumed visiting war amputees during the Korean War and Vietnam War. He toured Vietnam with the USO, entertaining troops along with Art Buchwald and George Plimpton. He served as chairman of the Cartoonists' Committee in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's People-to-People program in 1954 (although Capp had supported Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952 and 1956), which was organized to promote Savings bonds for the U.S. Treasury. Capp had earlier provided the Shmoo for a special Children's Savings Bond in 1949, accompanying President Harry S. Truman at the bond's unveiling ceremony. During the Soviet Union's blockade of West Berlin in 1948, the commanders of the Berlin airlift had cabled Capp, requesting inflatable shmoos as part of "Operation: Little Vittles". Candy-filled shmoos were air-dropped to hungry West Berliners by America's 17th Military Airport Squadron during the humanitarian effort. "When the candy-chocked shmoos were dropped, a near-riot resulted," (reported in Newsweek—October 11, 1948).
In addition to his public service work for charitable organizations for disabled people, Capp also served on the National Reading Council, which was organized to combat illiteracy. He published a column ("Wrong Turn Onto Sesame Street") challenging federally funded public television endowments in favor of educational comics—which, according to Capp, "didn't cost a dime in taxes and never had. I pointed out that a kid could enjoy Sesame Street without learning how to read, but he couldn't enjoy comic strips unless he could read; and that a smaller investment in getting kids to read by supplying them with educational matter in such reading form might make better sense."
Capp's academic interests included being one of nineteen original "Trustees and Advisors" for "Endicott, Junior College for Young Woman", located in Pride's Crossing (Beverly), Massachusetts, which was founded in 1939. Al Capp is listed in the 1942 Mingotide Yearbook, representing the first graduating class from what is now the 4-year school known as Endicott College. The yearbook entry includes his credential as a "Cartoonist for United Feature Syndicate" and a resident of New York City.
"Comics," wrote Capp in 1970, "can be a combination of the highest quality of art and text, and many of them are." Capp produced many giveaway educational comic books and public services pamphlets, spanning several decades, for the Red Cross, the Department of Civil Defense, the Department of the Navy, the U.S. Army, the Anti-Defamation League, the Department of Labor, Community Chest (a forerunner of United Way), and the Job Corps. Capp's studio provided special artwork for various civic groups and nonprofit organizations as well. Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the Cancer Foundation, the March of Dimes, the National Heart Fund, the Boy Scouts of America, Minnesota Tuberculosis and Health Association, the National Amputation Foundation, and Disabled American Veterans, among others. They were also used to help sell Christmas Seals.
In the early 1960s, Capp regularly wrote a column entitled Al Capp's Column for the newspaper The Schenectady Gazette (currently The Daily Gazette). He was the Playboy interview subject in December 1965, in a conversation conducted by Alvin Toffler. In August 1967, Capp was the narrator and host of an ABC network special called Do Blondes Have More Fun? In 1970, he was the subject of a provocative NBC documentary called This Is Al Capp.
The 1960s and 1970s
Capp and his family lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard during the entire Vietnam War protest era. The turmoil that Americans were watching on their television sets was happening live—right in his own neighborhood. Campus radicals and "hippies" inevitably became one of Capp's favorite targets in the sixties. Alongside his long-established caricatures of right-wing, big business types such as General Bullmoose and J. Roaringham Fatback, Capp began spoofing counterculture icons such as Joan Baez (in the character of Joanie Phoanie, a wealthy folksinger who offers an impoverished orphanage ten thousand dollars' worth of "protest songs"). The sequence implicitly labeled Baez a limousine liberal, a charge she took to heart, as detailed years later in her 1987 autobiography, And A Voice To Sing With: A Memoir. Another target was Senator Ted Kennedy, parodied as "Senator O. Noble McGesture", resident of "Hyideelsport". The town name is a play on Hyannisport, Massachusetts, where a number of the Kennedy clan have lived.
Capp became a popular public speaker on college campuses, where he reportedly relished hecklers. He attacked militant antiwar demonstrators, both in his personal appearances and in his strip. He also satirized student political groups. The Youth International Party (YIP) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged in Li'l Abner as "Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!" (SWINE). In an April 1969 letter to Time, Capp insisted, "The students I blast are not the dissenters, but the destroyers—the less than 4% who lock up deans in washrooms, who burn manuscripts of unpublished books, who make combination pigpens and playpens of their universities. The remaining 96% detest them as heartily as I do."
Capp's increasingly controversial remarks at his campus speeches and during television appearances cost him his semi-regular spot on the Tonight Show. His contentious public persona during this period was captured on a late sixties comedy LP called Al Capp On Campus. The album features his interaction with students at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) on such topics as "sensitivity training," "humanitarianism," "abstract art" (Capp hated it), and "student protest". The cover features a cartoon drawing by Capp of wildly dressed, angry hippies carrying protest signs with slogans like "End Capp Brutality", "Abner and Daisy Mae Smoke Pot", "Capp Is Over [30, 40, 50—all crossed out] the Hill!!", and "If You Like Crap, You'll Like Capp!"
Highlights of the strip's final decades include "Boomchik" (1961), in which America's international prestige is saved by Mammy Yokum, "Daisy Mae Steps Out" (1966), a female-empowering tale of Daisy's brazenly audacious "homewrecker gland", "The Lips of Marcia Perkins" (1967), a satirical, thinly-veiled commentary on venereal disease and public health warnings, "Ignoble Savages" (1968), in which the Mob takes over Harvard, and "Corporal Crock" (1973), in which Bullmoose reveals his reactionary cartoon role model, in a tale of obsession and the fanatical world of comic book collecting.
The cartoonist visited John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their 1969 Bed-In for Peace in Montreal, and their testy exchange later appeared in the documentary film Imagine: John Lennon (1988). Introducing himself with the words "I'm a dreadful Neanderthal fascist. How do you do?", Capp sardonically congratulated Lennon and Ono on their Two Virgins nude album cover: "I think that everybody owes it to the world to prove they have pubic hair. You've done it, and I tell you that I applaud you for it." Following this exchange, Capp insulted Ono ("Good God, you've gotta live with that?"), and was asked to "get out" by Lennon publicist Derek Taylor. Lennon allowed him to stay, however, but the conversation had soured considerably. On Capp's exit, Lennon sang an impromptu version of his song "The Ballad of John and Yoko" with a slightly revised, but nonetheless prophetic lyric: "Christ, you know it ain't easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are goin' / They're gonna crucify Capp! "
Despite his political conservatism in the last decade of his life, Capp is reported to have been liberal in some particular causes; he supported gay rights, and did not tolerate any attempts at homophobic jokes. He is also said to have supported Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for racial equality in American society, although he was very sceptical of the tactics of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X.
In 1968, a theme park called Dogpatch USA opened at Marble Falls, Arkansas, based on Capp's work and with his support. The park was a popular attraction during the 1970s, but was abandoned in 1993 due to financial difficulties. By 2005, the area once devoted to a live-action facsimile of Dogpatch (including a lifesize statue in the town square of Dogpatch "founder" General Jubilation T. Cornpone) had been heavily stripped by vandals and souvenir hunters, and was slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding Arkansas wilderness.
On April 22, 1971, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported allegations that in February 1968 Capp had made indecent advances to four female students when he was invited to speak at the University of Alabama. Anderson and an associate confirmed that Capp was shown out of town by university police, but that the incident had been hushed up by the university to avoid negative publicity.
The following month, Capp was charged in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in connection with another alleged incident following his April 1 lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Capp was accused of propositioning a married woman in his hotel room. Although no sexual act was alleged to have resulted, the original charge included "sodomy". As part of a plea agreement, Capp pleaded guilty to the charge of "attempted adultery" (adultery was a felony in Wisconsin) and the other charges were dropped. Capp was fined $500 and court costs. In a December 1992 article for The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that President Richard Nixon and Charles Colson had repeatedly discussed the Capp case in Oval Office recordings that had recently been made available by the National Archives. Nixon and Capp were on friendly terms, Hersh wrote, and Nixon and Colson had worked to find a way for Capp to run against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate. "Nixon was worried about the allegations, fearing that Capp's very close links to the White House would become embarrassingly public", Hersh wrote. "The White House tapes and documents show that he and Colson discussed the issue repeatedly, and that Colson eventually reassured the president by saying that he had, in essence, fixed the case. Specifically, the president was told that one of Colson's people had gone to Wisconsin and tried to talk to the prosecutors." Colson's efforts failed, however. The Eau Claire district attorney, a Republican, refused to dismiss the attempted adultery charge. In passing sentence in February 1972, the judge rejected the D.A.'s motion that Capp agree to undergo psychiatric treatment.
The resulting publicity led to hundreds of papers dropping his comic strip, and Capp, already in failing health, withdrew from public speaking. Celebrity biographer James Spada has claimed that similar allegations were made by actress Grace Kelly. However, no firsthand allegation has ever surfaced.
"From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. After about 40 years, however, Capp's interest in Abner waned, and this showed in the strip itself," according to Don Markstein's Toonopedia. On November 13, 1977, Capp retired with an apology to his fans for the recently declining quality of the strip, which he said had been the best he could manage due to declining health. "If you have any sense of humor about your strip—and I had a sense of humor about mine—you knew that for three or four years Abner was wrong. Oh hell, it's like a fighter retiring. I stayed on longer than I should have," he admitted, adding that he couldn't breathe anymore. "When he retired Li'l Abner, newspapers ran expansive articles and television commentators talked about the passing of an era. People magazine ran a substantial feature, and even the comics-free New York Times devoted nearly a full page to the event", wrote publisher Denis Kitchen.
Capp's final years were marked by advancing illness and by family tragedy. In October 1977, one of his two daughters died; a few weeks later, a beloved granddaughter was killed in a car accident. A lifelong chain smoker, Capp died in 1979 from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire. Capp is buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Engraved on his headstone is a stanza from Thomas Gray: The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me (from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 1751).
Legacy
"Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the U.S. Postal Service", according to Toonopedia. Li'l Abner was one of 20 American comic strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of USPS commemorative stamps. Al Capp, an inductee into the National Cartoon Museum (formerly the International Museum of Cartoon Art), is one of only 31 artists selected to their Hall of Fame. Capp was also inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2004.
Sadie Hawkins Day and double whammy are two terms attributed to Al Capp that have entered the English language. Other, less ubiquitous Cappisms include skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. The term shmoo also has entered the lexicon, defining highly technical concepts in no fewer than four separate fields of science, including the variations shmooing (a microbiological term for the "budding" process in yeast reproduction), and shmoo plot (a technical term in the field of electrical engineering). In socioeconomics, a "shmoo" refers to any generic kind of good that reproduces itself, (as opposed to "widgets" which require resources and active production). In the field of particle physics, "shmoo" refers to a high energy survey instrument, as used at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to capture subatomic cosmic ray particles emitted from the Cygnus X-3 constellation. Capp also had a knack for popularizing certain uncommon terms, such as druthers, schmooze, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. In his book The American Language, H.L. Mencken credits the postwar mania for adding "-nik" to the ends of adjectives to create nouns as beginning—not with beatnik or Sputnik—but earlier, in the pages of Li'l Abner.
Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a new life-sized mural commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. Created by resident artist Jon P. Mooers, the mural was unveiled in downtown Amesbury on May 15, 2010. According to the Boston Globe (as reported on May 18, 2010), the town has renamed its amphitheater in the artist's honor, and is looking to develop an Al Capp Museum. Capp is also the subject of an upcoming WNET-TV American Masters documentary, The Life and Times of Al Capp, produced by his granddaughter, independent filmmaker Caitlin Manning.
Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as consultant on nearly all of them. Kitchen is currently compiling a biographical monograph on Al Capp.
At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW announced the upcoming publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays as part of their ongoing The Library of American Comics series. The comprehensive series, a reprinting of the entire 43-year history of Li'l Abner, spanning a projected 20 volumes, began on April 7, 2010.
Notes
Further reading
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner in New York (1936) Whitman Publishing
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner Among the Millionaires (1939) Whitman Publishing
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner and Sadie Hawkins Day (1940) Saalfield Publishing
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner and the Ratfields (1940) Saalfield Publishing
Sheridan, Martin, Comics and Their Creators (1942) R.T. Hale & Co, (1977) Hyperion Press
Waugh, Coulton, The Comics (1947) Macmillan Publishers
Capp, Al, Newsweek Magazine (November 24, 1947) "Li'l Abner's Mad Capp"
Capp, Al, Saturday Review of Literature (March 20, 1948) "The Case for the Comics"
Capp, Al, The Life and Times of the Shmoo (1948) Simon & Schuster
Capp, Al, The Nation (March 21, 1949) "There Is a Real Shmoo"
Capp, Al, Cosmopolitan Magazine (June 1949) "I Don't Like Shmoos"
Capp, Al, Atlantic Monthly (April 1950) "I Remember Monster"
Capp, Al, Time Magazine (November 6, 1950) "Die Monstersinger"
Capp, Al, Life Magazine (March 31, 1952) "It's Hideously True!!..."
Capp, Al, Real Magazine (December 1952) "The REAL Powers in America"
Capp, Al, The World of Li'l Abner (1953) Farrar, Straus & Young
Leifer, Fred, The Li'l Abner Official Square Dance Handbook (1953) A.S. Barnes
Mikes, George, Eight Humorists (1954) Allen Wingate, (1977) Arden Library
Lehrer, Tom, The Tom Lehrer Song Book, introduction by Al Capp (1954) Crown Publishers
Capp, Al, Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick: His Life and Deaths (1956) Simon & Schuster
Capp, Al, Al Capp's Bald Iggle: The Life it Ruins May Be Your Own (1956) Simon & Schuster
Capp, Al, et al. Famous Artists Cartoon Course – 3 volumes (1956) Famous Artists School
Capp, Al, Life Magazine (January 14, 1957) "The Dogpatch Saga: Al Capp's Own Story"
Brodbeck, Arthur J, et al. "How to Read Li'l Abner Intelligently" from Mass Culture: Popular Arts in America, pp. 218–224 (1957) Free Press
Capp, Al, The Return of the Shmoo (1959) Simon & Schuster
Hart, Johnny, Back to B.C., introduction by Al Capp (1961) Fawcett Publications
Lazarus, Mell, Miss Peach, introduction by Al Capp (1962) Pyramid Books
Gross, Milt, He Done Her Wrong, introduction by Al Capp (1963 Ed.) Dell Books
White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. The Funnies: An American Idiom (1963) Free Press
White, David Manning, ed. From Dogpatch to Slobbovia: The (Gasp!) World of Li'l Abner (1964) Beacon Press
Capp, Al, Life International Magazine (June 14, 1965) "My Life as an Immortal Myth"
Toffler, Alvin, Playboy Magazine (December 1965) interview with Al Capp, pp. 89–100
Moger, Art, et al. Chutzpah Is, introduction by Al Capp (1966) Colony Publishers
Berger, Arthur Asa, Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire (1969) Twayne Publishers, (1994) Univ. Press of Mississippi
Sugar, Andy, Saga Magazine (December 1969) "On the Campus Firing Line with Al Capp"
Gray, Harold, Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie, introduction by Al Capp (1970) Arlington House
Moger, Art, Some of My Best Friends are People, introduction by Al Capp (1970) Directors Press
Capp, Al, The Hardhat's Bedtime Story Book (1971) Harper & Row
Robinson, Jerry, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art (1974) G.P. Putnam's Sons
Horn, Maurice, The World Encyclopedia of Comics (1976) Chelsea House, (1982) Avon
Blackbeard, Bill, ed. The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (1977) Smithsonian Inst. Press/Harry Abrams
Marschall, Rick, Cartoonist PROfiles No. 37 (March 1978) interview with Al Capp
Capp, Al, The Best of Li'l Abner (1978) Holt, Rinehart & Winston
Lardner, Ring, You Know Me Al: The Comic Strip Adventures of Jack Keefe, introduction by Al Capp (1979) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Van Buren, Raeburn, Abbie an' Slats – 2 volumes (1983) Ken Pierce Books
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner: Reuben Award Winner Series Book 1 (1985) Blackthorne
Marschall, Rick, Nemo, the Classic Comics Library No. 18, pp. 3–32 (April 1986)
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner Dailies – 27 volumes (1988–1999) Kitchen Sink Press
Marschall, Rick, America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989) Abbeville Press
Capp, Al, Fearless Fosdick (1990) Kitchen Sink
Capp, Al, My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg (1991) John Daniel & Co.
Capp, Al, Fearless Fosdick: The Hole Story (1992) Kitchen Sink
Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from Journal of Popular Culture; Vol. 25, Issue 4 (Spring 1992)
Caplin, Elliot, Al Capp Remembered (1994) Bowling Green State University
Theroux, Alexander, The Enigma of Al Capp (1999) Fantagraphics Books
Lubbers, Bob, Glamour International #26: The Good Girl Art of Bob Lubbers (May 2001)
Capp, Al, The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo (2002) Overlook Press
Capp, Al, Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years – 4 volumes (2003–2004) Dark Horse Comics
Al Capp Studios, Al Capp's Complete Shmoo: The Comic Books (2008) Dark Horse
Capp, Al, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays Vol. 1 – Vol. x(ongoing) (2010–present) The Library of American Comics
Capp, Al, Al Capp's Complete Shmoo Vol. 2: The Newspaper Strips (2011) Dark Horse
Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from Comics and the U.S. South, pp. 3–27 (2012) Univ. Press of Mississippi
Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing
External links
Li'l Abner official site
Denis Kitchen biography: Al Capp
Animation Resources: Al Capp part I
Animation Resources: Al Capp part II
Animation Resources: Al Capp part III
Animation Resources: Al Capp part IV
Animation Resources: Al Capp part V
Al Capp Deserves a Tribute (Newburyport News, 28 Sept. 2009)
Dogpatch USA amusement park.
The Dogpatch Family Band Mechanical Toy
Dogpatch and Li'l Abner on Broadway in Life, January 14, 1957, pp. 71–83
Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Art Database
1909 births
1979 deaths
American amputees
American comic strip cartoonists
American parodists
American satirists
Child amputees
20th-century American writers
20th-century American Jews
Deaths from emphysema
American people of Latvian-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
Inkpot Award winners
Jewish American artists
Jewish American writers
Artists from Bridgeport, Connecticut
Artists from New Haven, Connecticut
School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni
Reuben Award winners
Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees
Comedians from Connecticut
Obscenity controversies in comics
American artists with disabilities
American writers with disabilities
20th-century American male artists
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Ann Druyan ( ; born June 13, 1949) is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its sequel series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series.
In the late 1970s, she became the creative director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which produced the golden discs affixed to both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. She also published a novel, A Famous Broken Heart, in 1977, and later co-wrote several best selling non-fiction books with Sagan.
Early life
Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. () and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitwear firm. Her family was Jewish. Druyan's early interest in math and science was, in her word, "derailed" when a junior high-school teacher ridiculed a question she asked about the universality of . "I raised my hand and said, 'You mean this applies to every circle in the universe?', and the teacher told me not to ask stupid questions. And there I was having this religious experience, and she made me feel like such a fool. I was completely flummoxed from then on until after college." Druyan characterized her three years at New York University as "disastrous", and it was only after she left school without graduating that she discovered the pre-Socratic philosophers and began educating herself, thus leading to a renewed interest in science.
Career
In the late 1970s, Druyan became the creative director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project. As creative director, Druyan worked with a team to design a complex message, including music and images, for possible alien civilizations. These golden phonograph records affixed to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are now beyond the outermost planets of the solar system, and Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. Both records have a projected shelf life of one billion years.
Druyan's role on the project was discussed on the July 8, 2018, 60 Minutes segment "The Little Spacecraft That Could". In the segment, Druyan explained her insistence that Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" be included on the Golden Record, saying: "...Johnny B. Goode, rock and roll, was the music of motion, of moving, getting to someplace you've never been before, and the odds are against you, but you want to go. That was Voyager." The segment also discussed Sagan's suggestion, in 1990, that Voyager 1 turn its cameras back towards Earth to take a series of photographs showing the planets of our solar system. The shots, showing Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles as a small point of bluish light, became the basis for Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" passage, first published in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994).
During that time, Druyan also co-wrote (with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter) the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. The thirteen-part series covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. It was highly acclaimed, and became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television at that time. The series won two Emmys and a Peabody Award, and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people. A book was also published to accompany the series. , it is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. Several revised versions of the series were later broadcast; one version, telecast after Sagan's death, opens with Druyan paying tribute to her late husband and the impact of Cosmos over the years.
Druyan wrote and produced the 1987 PBS NOVA episode "Confessions of a Weaponeer" on the life of President Eisenhower's Science Advisor George Kistiakowsky.
In 2000, Druyan, together with Steve Soter, co-wrote Passport to the Universe, the inaugural planetarium show for the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Natural History Museum's Hayden Planetarium. The attraction is narrated by Tom Hanks. Druyan and Soter also co-wrote The Search for Life: Are We Alone, narrated by Harrison Ford, which also debuted at the Hayden's Rose Center.
In 2000, Druyan co-founded Cosmos Studios, Inc, with Joseph Firmage. As CEO of Cosmos Studios, Druyan produces science-based entertainment for all media. In addition to Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Cosmos Studios has produced Cosmic Africa, Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, and the Emmy-nominated documentary Cosmic Journey: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message. In 2009, she distributed a series of podcasts called At Home in the Cosmos with Annie Druyan, in which she described her works, the life of her husband, Carl Sagan, and their marriage.
Druyan is credited, with Carl Sagan, as the co-creator and co-producer of the 1997 feature film Contact.
In 2011, it was announced that Druyan would executive produce, co-write, and be one of the episodic directors for a sequel to Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, to be called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which began airing in March 2014. Episodes premiered on Fox and also aired on National Geographic Channel on the following night. At the time of its release, Fox gave the series the largest global rollout of a television series ever, debuting it in 180 countries. The premiere episode was shown across nine of Fox's cable properties in addition to the broadcast network in a "roadblock" style premiere. The series went on to become the most-watched series ever for National Geographic Channel International, with at least some part of the 13-episode series watched by 135 million people, including 45 million in the U.S.
In March 2020, a third season of Cosmos, named Cosmos: Possible Worlds, for which Druyan was executive producer, writer, and director, premiered on National Geographic. Druyan also said: "I very much have season four in mind, and I know what it's going to be. And I even know some of the stories that I want to tell in it."
Writing
Druyan's first novel, A Famous Broken Heart, was published in 1977.
Druyan co-wrote six New York Times bestsellers with Carl Sagan, including: Comet, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and The Demon-Haunted World. She is co-author, along with Carl Sagan, F. D. Drake, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg and Linda Salzman Sagan, of Murmurs Of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. She also wrote the updated introduction to Sagan's book The Cosmic Connection and the epilogue of Billions and Billions. She wrote the introduction to, and edited The Varieties of Scientific Experience, published from Sagan's 1985 Gifford lectures.
In February 2020, Druyan published Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a companion volume to the television series of the same name, which premiered in March 2020.
Work in science
Druyan is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims for the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Druyan served as program director of the first solar-sail deep-space mission, Cosmos 1, launched on a Russian ICBM in 2005.
Druyan is involved in multiple Breakthrough Initiatives. With Frank Drake, Druyan is the co-chair of Breakthrough Message and also a member of Breakthrough Starshot.
She is a member of the advisory board of The Carl Sagan Institute.
Activism
Druyan has for many years been a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament. She was arrested three times at the Mercury, Nevada nuclear test site during Mikhail Gorbachev's unilateral moratorium on underground nuclear testing, with which President Ronald Reagan did not cooperate. This included an arrest in June 1986, when she crossed a white painted line indicating the test site's boundary. Sagan, who attended the same protest with Druyan, was not arrested.
In the early 1990s, Druyan worked with Sagan and then-Senator Al Gore, Jr. and a host of religious and scientific leaders to bring the scientific and religious worlds together in a unified effort to preserve the environment, resulting in the Declaration of the 'Mission to Washington.
She was a founding director of the Children's Health Fund until the spring of 2004, a project that provides mobile pediatric care to homeless and disadvantaged children in more than half a dozen cities. She is currently a member of their advisory board.
She has been on the board of directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for over 10 years and was its president from 2006 to 2010.
Honors
An asteroid discovered in 1988 was named in Druyan's honor by its discoverer Eleanor F. Helin. In a 2020 interview with Skeptical Inquirer, Druyan discussed 4970 Druyan and the asteroid named after her late husband, saying that 4970 Druyan is in a "wedding ring orbit" around the Sun with 2709 Sagan. Druyan was presented with a plaque on Sagan's sixtieth birthday, which is inscribed: "Asteroid 2709 Sagan in eternal companion orbit with asteroid 4970 Druyan, symbolic of their love and admiration for each other."
In November 2006, Druyan was a speaker at "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival".
In January 2007, she was a juror at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, responsible for selecting the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films about science and technology.
In November 2007, Druyan was awarded the title of "Humanist Laureate" by the International Academy of Humanism.
In October 2019, the Center for Inquiry West opened the Carl Sagan–Ann Druyan Theater in Los Angeles.
Religious and philosophical views
In an interview with Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post, Druyan said that her early interest in science stemmed from a fascination with Karl Marx. Achenbach commented that "She had, at the time, rather vaporous standards of evidence", a reference to her belief in the ancient astronauts of Erich von Däniken and the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky pertaining to the solar system.
Concerning the death of her husband she stated:
When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.
Personal life
Druyan and Sagan's working and resulting romantic relationship has been the subject of numerous treatments in popular culture, including the Radiolab episode "Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's Ultimate Mix Tape" and a segment of the Comedy Central program Drunk Historys episode "Space". The asteroid 4970 Druyan, which is in a companion orbit with asteroid 2709 Sagan named after Druyan's late husband, is named after Druyan. In 2015, it was announced that Warner Brothers was in development on a drama about Sagan and Druyan's relationship, to be produced by producer Lynda Obst and Druyan.
In 2020, Sagan and Druyan's daughter Sasha Sagan released a book For Small Creatures Such As We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in our Unlikely World, which discusses life with her parents and her father's death when she was fourteen years old.
Druyan also gave Sasha a recurring role in Cosmos: Possible Worlds, where she played her own grandmother, including in the episode Man of a Trillion Worlds, which featured the life of Carl Sagan.
Awards
2004 Richard Dawkins Award
2014 Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming Primetime Emmy Award
2015 The Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television from Producers Guild of America
2015 Writers Guild Award for "Documentary Script – Other than Current Events"
2017 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award
2020 National Geographic Further Award
See also
Women in science
List of peace activists
References
External links
Ann Druyan: The Observatory
1949 births
20th-century American novelists
Activists from New York (state)
American agnostics
American cannabis activists
American science writers
American skeptics
American women novelists
Carl Sagan
Hugo Award-winning writers
Interstellar messages
Jewish agnostics
Jewish skeptics
Jewish American novelists
Living people
People associated with the American Museum of Natural History
People from Queens, New York
Sagan family
Scientists from New York (state)
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews
Science communicators
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An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.
Advocates of autonomous building describe advantages that include reduced environmental impacts, increased security, and lower costs of ownership. Some cited advantages satisfy tenets of green building, not independence per se (see below). Off-grid buildings often rely very little on civil services and are therefore safer and more comfortable during civil disaster or military attacks. For example, Off-grid buildings would not lose power or water if public supplies were compromised.
As of 2018, most research and published articles concerning autonomous building focus on residential homes.
In 2002, British architects Brenda and Robert Vale said that
It is quite possible in all parts of Australia to construct a 'house with no bills', which would be comfortable without heating and cooling, which would make its own electricity, collect its own water and deal with its own waste...These houses can be built now, using off-the-shelf techniques. It is possible to build a "house with no bills" for the same price as a conventional house, but it would be (25%) smaller.
History
In the 1970s, groups of activists and engineers were inspired by the warnings of imminent resource depletion and starvation. In the United States a group calling themselves the New Alchemists were famous for the depth of research effort placed in their projects. Using conventional construction techniques, they designed a series of "bioshelter" projects, the most famous of which was The Ark bioshelter community for Prince Edward Island. They published the plans for all of these, with detailed design calculations and blueprints. The Ark used wind-based water pumping and electricity and was self-contained in food production. It had living quarters for people, fish tanks raising tilapia for protein, a greenhouse watered with fish water, and a closed-loop sewage reclamation system that recycled human waste into sanitized fertilizer for the fish tanks. As of January 2010, the successor organization to the New Alchemists has a web page up as the "New Alchemy Institute". The PEI Ark has been abandoned and partially renovated several times.
The 1990s saw the development of Earthships, similar in intent to the Ark project, but organized as a for-profit venture, with construction details published in a series of 3 books by Mike Reynolds. The building material is tires filled with earth. This makes a wall that has large amounts of thermal mass (see earth sheltering). Berms are placed on exposed surfaces to further increase the house's temperature stability. The water system starts with rain water, processed for drinking, then washing, then plant watering, then toilet flushing, and finally black water is recycled again for more plant watering. The cisterns are placed and used as thermal masses. Power, including electricity, heat and water heating, is from solar power.
1990s architects such as William McDonough and Ken Yeang applied environmentally responsible building design to large commercial buildings, such as office buildings, making them largely self-sufficient in energy production. One major bank building (ING's Amsterdam headquarters) in the Netherlands was constructed to be autonomous and artistic as well.
Advantages
As an architect or engineer becomes more concerned with the disadvantages of transportation networks, and dependence on distant resources, their designs tend to include more autonomous elements. The historic path to autonomy was a concern for secure sources of heat, power, water and food. A nearly parallel path toward autonomy has been to start with a concern for environmental impacts, which cause disadvantages.
Autonomous buildings can increase security and reduce environmental impacts by using on-site resources (such as sunlight and rain) that would otherwise be wasted. Autonomy often dramatically reduces the costs and impacts of networks that serve the building, because autonomy short-circuits the multiplying inefficiencies of collecting and transporting resources. Other impacted resources, such as oil reserves and the retention of the local watershed, can often be cheaply conserved by thoughtful designs.
Autonomous buildings are usually energy-efficient in operation, and therefore cost-efficient, for the obvious reason that smaller energy needs are easier to satisfy off-grid. But they may substitute energy production or other techniques to avoid diminishing returns in extreme conservation.
An autonomous structure is not always environmentally friendly. The goal of independence from support systems is associated with, but not identical to, other goals of environmentally responsible green building. However, autonomous buildings also usually include some degree of sustainability through the use of renewable energy and other renewable resources, producing no more greenhouse gases than they consume, and other measures.
Disadvantages
First and fundamentally, independence is a matter of degree. For example, eliminating dependence on the electrical grid is relatively easy. In contrast, running an efficient, reliable food source can be a chore.
Living within an autonomous shelter may also require sacrifices in lifestyle or social opportunities. Even the most comfortable and technologically advanced autonomous homes could require alterations of residents' behavior. Some may not welcome the extra chores. The Vails described some clients' experiences as inconvenient, irritating, isolating, or even as an unwanted full-time job. A well-designed building can reduce this issue, but usually at the expense of reduced autonomy.
An autonomous house must be custom-built (or extensively retrofitted) to suit the climate and location. Passive solar techniques, alternative toilet and sewage systems, thermal massing designs, basement battery systems, efficient windowing, and the array of other design tactics require some degree of non-standard construction, added expense, ongoing experimentation and maintenance, and also have an effect on the psychology of the space.
Systems
This section includes some minimal descriptions of methods, to give some feel for such a building's practicality, provide indexes to further information, and give a sense of modern trends.
Water
There are many methods of collecting and conserving water. Use reduction is cost-effective.
Greywater systems reuse drained wash water to flush toilets or to water lawns and gardens. Greywater systems can halve the water use of most residential buildings; however, they require the purchase of a sump, greywater pressurization pump, and secondary plumbing. Some builders are installing waterless urinals and even composting toilets that eliminate water usage in sewage disposal.
The classic solution with minimal life-style changes is using a well. Once drilled, a well-foot requires substantial power. However, advanced well-foots can reduce power usage by twofold or more from older models. Well water can be contaminated in some areas. The Sono arsenic filter eliminates unhealthy arsenic in well water.
However drilling a well is an uncertain activity, with aquifers depleted in some areas. It can also be expensive.
In regions with sufficient rainfall, it is often more economical to design a building to use rainwater harvesting, with supplementary water deliveries in a drought. Rain water makes excellent soft washwater, but needs antibacterial treatment. If used for drinking, mineral supplements or mineralization is necessary.
Most desert and temperate climates get at least of rain per year. This means that a typical one-story house with a greywater system can supply its year-round water needs from its roof alone. In the driest areas, it might require a cistern of . Many areas average of rain per week, and these can use a cistern as small as .
In many areas, it is difficult to keep a roof clean enough for drinking. To reduce dirt and bad tastes, systems use a metal collecting-roof and a "roof cleaner" tank that diverts the first 40 liters. Cistern water is usually chlorinated, though reverse osmosis systems provide even better quality drinking water.
In the classic Roman house ("Domus"), household water was provided from a cistern (the "impluvium"), which was a decorative feature of the atrium, the house's main public space. It was fed by downspout tiles from the inward-facing roof-opening (the "compluvium"). Often water lilies were grown in it to purify the water. Wealthy households often supplemented the rain with a small fountain fed from a city's cistern. The impluvium always had an overflow drain so it could not flood the house.
Modern cisterns are usually large plastic tanks. Gravity tanks on short towers are reliable, so pump repairs are less urgent. The least expensive bulk cistern is a fenced pond or pool at ground level.
Reducing autonomy reduces the size and expense of cisterns. Many autonomous homes can reduce water use below per person per day, so that in a drought a month of water can be delivered inexpensively via truck. Self-delivery is often possible by installing fabric water tanks that fit the bed of a pick-up truck.
It can be convenient to use the cistern as a heat sink or trap for a heat pump or air conditioning system; however this can make cold drinking water warm, and in drier years may decrease the efficiency of the HVAC system.
Solar stills can efficiently produce drinking water from ditch water or cistern water, especially high-efficiency multiple effect humidification designs, which separate the evaporator(s) and condenser(s).
New technologies, like reverse osmosis can create unlimited amounts of pure water from polluted water, ocean water, and even from humid air. Watermakers are available for yachts that convert seawater and electricity into potable water and brine. Atmospheric water generators extract moisture from dry desert air and filter it to pure water.
Sewage
Resource
Composting toilets use bacteria to decompose human feces into useful, odourless, sanitary compost. The process is sanitary because soil bacteria eat the human pathogens as well as most of the mass of the waste. Nevertheless, most health authorities forbid direct use of "humanure" for growing food. The risk is microbial and viral contamination. In a dry composting toilet, the waste is evaporated or digested to gas (mostly carbon dioxide) and vented, so a toilet produces only a few pounds of compost every six months. To control the odor, modern toilets use a small fan to keep the toilet under negative pressure, and exhaust the gasses to a vent pipe.
Some home sewage treatment systems use biological treatment, usually beds of plants and aquaria, that absorb nutrients and bacteria and convert greywater and sewage to clear water. This odor- and color-free reclaimed water can be used to flush toilets and water outside plants. When tested, it approaches standards for potable water. In climates that freeze, the plants and aquaria need to be kept in a small greenhouse space. Good systems need about as much care as a large aquarium.
Electric incinerating toilets turn excrement into a small amount of ash. They are cool to the touch, have no water and no pipes, and require an air vent in a wall. They are used in remote areas where use of septic tanks is limited, usually to reduce nutrient loads in lakes.
NASA's bioreactor is an extremely advanced biological sewage system. It can turn sewage into air and water through microbial action. NASA plans to use it in the crewed Mars mission. Another method is NASA's urine-to-water distillation system.
A big disadvantage of complex biological sewage treatment systems is that if the house is empty, the sewage system biota may starve to death.
Waste
Sewage handling is essential for public health. Many diseases are transmitted by poorly functioning sewage systems.
The standard system is a tiled leach field combined with a septic tank. The basic idea is to provide a small system with primary sewage treatment. Sludge settles to the bottom of the septic tank, is partially reduced by anaerobic digestion, and fluid is dispersed in the leach field. The leach field is usually under a yard growing grass. Septic tanks can operate entirely by gravity, and if well managed, are reasonably safe.
Septic tanks have to be pumped periodically by a vacuum truck to eliminate non reducing solids. Failure to pump a septic tank can cause overflow that damages the leach field, and contaminates ground water. Septic tanks may also require some lifestyle changes, such as not using garbage disposals, minimizing fluids flushed into the tank, and minimizing non-digestible solids flushed into the tank. For example, septic safe toilet paper is recommended.
However, septic tanks remain popular because they permit standard plumbing fixtures, and require few or no lifestyle sacrifices.
Composting or packaging toilets make it economical and sanitary to throw away sewage as part of the normal garbage collection service. They also reduce water use by half, and eliminate the difficulty and expense of septic tanks. However, they require the local landfill to use sanitary practices.
Incinerator systems are quite practical. The ashes are biologically safe, and less than 1/10 the volume of the original waste, but like all incinerator waste, are usually classified as hazardous waste.
Traditional methods of sewage handling include pit toilets, latrines, and outhouses. These can be safe, inexpensive and practical. They are still used in many regions.
Storm drains
Drainage systems are a crucial compromise between human habitability and a secure, sustainable watershed. Paved areas and lawns or turf do not allow much precipitation to filter through the ground to recharge aquifers. They can cause flooding and damage in neighbourhoods, as the water flows over the surface towards a low point.
Typically, elaborate, capital-intensive storm sewer networks are engineered to deal with stormwater. In some cities, such as the Victorian era London sewers or much of the old City of Toronto, the storm water system is combined with the sanitary sewer system. In the event of heavy precipitation, the load on the sewage treatment plant at the end of the pipe becomes too great to handle and raw sewage is dumped into holding tanks, and sometimes into surface water.
Autonomous buildings can address precipitation in a number of ways:
If a water-absorbing swale for each yard is combined with permeable concrete streets, storm drains can be omitted from the neighbourhood. This can save more than $800 per house (1970s) by eliminating storm drains. One way to use the savings is to purchase larger lots, which permits more amenities at the same cost. Permeable concrete is an established product in warm climates, and in development for freezing climates. In freezing climates, the elimination of storm drains can often still pay for enough land to construct swales (shallow water collecting ditches) or water impeding berms instead. This plan provides more land for homeowners and can offer more interesting topography for landscaping.
A green roof captures precipitation and uses the water to grow plants. It can be built into a new building or used to replace an existing roof.
Electricity
Since electricity is an expensive utility, the first step towards autonomy is to design a house and lifestyle to reduce demand. LED lights, laptop computers and gas-powered refrigerators save electricity, although gas-powered refrigerators are not very efficient. There are also superefficient electric refrigerators, such as those produced by the Sun Frost company, some of which use only about half as much electricity as a mass-market energy star-rated refrigerator.
Using a solar roof, solar cells can provide electric power. Solar roofs can be more cost-effective than retrofitted solar power, because buildings need roofs anyway. Modern solar cells last about 40 years, which makes them a reasonable investment in some areas. At a sufficient angle, solar cells are cleaned by run-off rain water and therefore have almost no life-style impact.
However, many areas have long winter nights or dark cloudy days. In these climates, a solar installation might not pay for itself or large battery storage systems are necessary to achieve electric self-sufficiency. In stormy or windy climates, wind generators can replace or significantly supplement solar power. The average autonomous house needs only one small wind turbine, 5 metres or less in diameter. On a 30-metre (100-foot) tower, this turbine can provide enough power to supplement solar power on cloudy days. Commercially available wind turbines use sealed, one-moving-part AC generators and passive, self-feathering blades for years of operation without service.
The main advantage of wind power is that larger wind turbines have a lower per-watt cost than solar cells, provided there is wind. However, location is critical. Just as some locations lack sun for solar cells, many areas lack enough wind to make a turbine pay for itself. In the Great Plains of the United States, a 10-metre (33-foot) turbine can supply enough energy to heat and cool a well-built all-electric house. Economic use in other areas requires research, and possibly a site-survey.
Some sites have access to a stream with a change in elevation. These sites can use small hydropower systems to generate electricity. If the difference in elevation is above 30 metres (100 feet), and the stream runs in all seasons, this can provide continuous power with a small, inexpensive installation. Lower changes of elevation require larger installations or dams, and can be less efficient. Clogging at the turbine intake can be a practical problem. The usual solution is a small pool and waterfall (a penstock) to carry away floating debris. Another solution is to utilize a turbine that resists debris, such as a Gorlov helical turbine or Ossberger turbine.
During times of low demand, excess power can be stored in batteries for future use. However, batteries need to be replaced every few years. In many areas, battery expenses can be eliminated by attaching the building to the electric power grid and operating the power system with net metering. Utility permission is required, but such cooperative generation is legally mandated in some areas (for example, California).
A grid-based building is less autonomous, but more economical and sustainable with fewer lifestyle sacrifices. In rural areas the grid's cost and impacts can be reduced by using single-wire earth return systems (for example, the MALT-system).
In areas that lack access to the grid, battery size can be reduced with a generator to recharge the batteries during energy droughts such as extended fogs. Auxiliary generators are usually run from propane, natural gas, or sometimes diesel. An hour of charging usually provides a day of operation. Modern residential chargers permit the user to set the charging times, so the generator is quiet at night. Some generators automatically test themselves once per week.
Recent advances in passively stable magnetic bearings may someday permit inexpensive storage of power in a flywheel in a vacuum. Research groups like Canada's Ballard Power Systems are also working to develop a "regenerative fuel cell", a device that can generate hydrogen and oxygen when power is available, and combine these efficiently when power is needed.
Earth batteries tap electric currents in the earth called telluric current. They can be installed anywhere in the ground. They provide only low voltages and current. They were used to power telegraphs in the 19th century. As appliance efficiencies increase, they may become practical.
Microbial fuel cells and thermoelectric generators allow electricity to be generated from biomass. The plant can be dried, chopped and converted or burned as a whole, or it can be left alive so that waste saps from the plant can be converted by bacteria.
Heating
Most autonomous buildings are designed to use insulation, thermal mass and passive solar heating and cooling. Examples of these are trombe walls and other technologies as skylights.
Passive solar heating can heat most buildings in even the mild and chilly climates. In colder climates, extra construction costs can be as little as 15% more than new, conventional buildings. In warm climates, those having less than two weeks of frosty nights per year, there is no cost impact.
The basic requirement for passive solar heating is that the solar collectors must face the prevailing sunlight (south in the Northern Hemisphere, north in the Southern Hemisphere), and the building must incorporate thermal mass to keep it warm in the night.
A recent, somewhat experimental solar heating system "Annualized geo solar heating" is practical even in regions that get little or no sunlight in winter. It uses the ground beneath a building for thermal mass. Precipitation can carry away the heat, so the ground is shielded with skirts of plastic insulation. The thermal mass of this system is sufficiently inexpensive and large that it can store enough summer heat to warm a building for the whole winter, and enough winter cold to cool the building in summer.
In annualized geo solar systems, the solar collector is often separate from (and hotter or colder than) the living space. The building may actually be constructed from insulation, for example, straw-bale construction. Some buildings have been aerodynamically designed so that convection via ducts and interior spaces eliminates any need for electric fans.
A more modest "daily solar" design is very practical. For example, for about a 15% premium in building costs, the Passivhaus building codes in Europe use high performance insulating windows, R-30 insulation, HRV ventilation, and a small thermal mass. With modest changes in the building's position, modern krypton- or argon-insulated windows permit normal-looking windows to provide passive solar heat without compromising insulation or structural strength. If a small heater is available for the coldest nights, a slab or basement cistern can inexpensively provide the required thermal mass. Passivhaus building codes, in particular, bring unusually good interior air quality, because the buildings change the air several times per hour, passing it through a heat exchanger to keep heat inside.
In all systems, a small supplementary heater increases personal security and reduces lifestyle impacts for a small reduction of autonomy. The two most popular heaters for ultra-high-efficiency houses are a small heat pump, which also provides air conditioning, or a central hydronic (radiator) air heater with water recirculating from the water heater. Passivhaus designs usually integrate the heater with the ventilation system.
Earth sheltering and windbreaks can also reduce the absolute amount of heat needed by a building. Several feet below the earth, temperature ranges from in North Dakota to , in Southern Florida. Wind breaks reduce the amount of heat carried away from a building.
Rounded, aerodynamic buildings also lose less heat.
An increasing number of commercial buildings use a combined cycle with cogeneration to provide heating, often water heating, from the output of a natural gas reciprocating engine, gas turbine or stirling electric generator.
Houses designed to cope with interruptions in civil services generally incorporate a wood stove, or heat and power from diesel fuel or bottled gas, regardless of their other heating mechanisms.
Electric heaters and electric stoves may provide pollution-free heat (depending on the power source), but use large amounts of electricity. If enough electricity is provided by solar panels, wind turbines, or other means, then electric heaters and stoves become a practical autonomous design.
Water heating
Hot water heat recycling units recover heat from water drain lines. They increase a building's autonomy by decreasing the heat or fuel used to heat water. They are attractive because they have no lifestyle changes.
Current practical, comfortable domestic water-heating systems combine a solar preheating system with a thermostatic gas-powered flow-through heater, so that the temperature of the water is consistent, and the amount is unlimited. This reduces life-style impacts at some cost in autonomy.
Solar water heaters can save large amounts of fuel. Also, small changes in lifestyle, such as doing laundry, dishes and bathing on sunny days, can greatly increase their efficiency. Pure solar heaters are especially useful for laundries, swimming pools and external baths, because these can be scheduled for use on sunny days.
The basic trick in a solar water heating system is to use a well-insulated holding tank. Some systems are vacuum- insulated, acting something like large thermos bottles. The tank is filled with hot water on sunny days, and made available at all times. Unlike a conventional tank water heater, the tank is filled only when there is sunlight. Good storage makes a smaller, higher-technology collector feasible. Such collectors can use relatively exotic technologies, such as vacuum insulation, and reflective concentration of sunlight.
Cogeneration systems produce hot water from waste heat. They usually get the heat from the exhaust of a generator or fuel cell.
Heat recycling, cogeneration and solar pre-heating can save 50–75% of the gas otherwise used. Also, some combinations provide redundant reliability by having several sources of heat.
Some authorities advocate replacing bottled gas or natural gas with biogas. However, this is usually impractical unless live-stock are on-site. The wastes of a single family are usually insufficient to produce enough methane for anything more than small amounts of cooking.
Cooling
Annualized geo solar buildings often have buried, sloped water-tight skirts of insulation that extend from the foundations, to prevent heat leakage between the earth used as thermal mass, and the surface.
Less dramatic improvements are possible. Windows can be shaded in summer. Eaves can be overhung to provide the necessary shade. These also shade the walls of the house, reducing cooling costs.
Another trick is to cool the building's thermal mass at night, perhaps with a whole-house fan and then cool the building from the thermal mass during the day. It helps to be able to route cold air from a sky-facing radiator (perhaps an air heating solar collector with an alternate purpose) or evaporative cooler directly through the thermal mass. On clear nights, even in tropical areas, sky-facing radiators can cool below freezing.
If a circular building is aerodynamically smooth, and cooler than the ground, it can be passively cooled by the "dome effect." Many installations have reported that a reflective or light-colored dome induces a local vertical heat-driven vortex that sucks cooler overhead air downward into a dome if the dome is vented properly (a single overhead vent, and peripheral vents). Some people have reported a temperature differential as high as () between the inside of the dome and the outside. Buckminster Fuller discovered this effect with a simple house design adapted from a grain silo, and adapted his Dymaxion house and geodesic domes to use it.
Refrigerators and air conditioners operating from the waste heat of a diesel engine exhaust, heater flue or solar collector are entering use. These use the same principles as a gas refrigerator. Normally, the heat from a flue powers an "absorptive chiller". The cold water or brine from the chiller is used to cool air or a refrigerated space.
Cogeneration is popular in new commercial buildings. In current cogeneration systems small gas turbines or stirling engines powered from natural gas produce electricity and their exhaust drives an absorptive chiller.
A truck trailer refrigerator operating from the waste heat of a tractor's diesel exhaust was demonstrated by NRG Solutions, Inc. NRG developed a hydronic ammonia gas heat exchanger and vaporizer, the two essential new, not commercially available components of a waste heat driven refrigerator.
A similar scheme (multiphase cooling) can be by a multistage evaporative cooler. The air is passed through a spray of salt solution to dehumidify it, then through a spray of water solution to cool it, then another salt solution to dehumidify it again. The brine has to be regenerated, and that can be done economically with a low-temperature solar still. Multiphase evaporative coolers can lower the air's temperature by 50 °F (28 °C), and still control humidity. If the brine regenerator uses high heat, they also partially sterilise the air.
If enough electric power is available, cooling can be provided by conventional air conditioning using a heat pump.
Food production
Food production has often been included in historic autonomous projects to provide security.
Skilled, intensive gardening can support an adult from as little as 100 square meters of land per person,
possibly requiring the use of organic farming and aeroponics. Some proven intensive, low-effort food-production systems include urban gardening (indoors and outdoors). Indoor cultivation may be set up using hydroponics, while outdoor cultivation may be done using permaculture, forest gardening, no-till farming, and do nothing farming.
Greenhouses are also sometimes included. Sometimes they are also outfitted with irrigation systems or heat sink-systems which can respectively irrigate the plants or help to store energy from the sun and redistribute it at night (when the greenhouses starts to cool down).
See also
Notes
External links
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is still in existence. B. Fuller left thousands of pages of notes to the university where he last taught.
There is a section on Autonomous Houses in the Reality Sculptors wiki, including links to a mailing list which frequently discusses autonomous design considerations.
Designs for a geodesic dome version of an Autonomous House can be found at reality.sculptors.com.
"Wind Power for Home and Business" by Paul Gipe
An opinion piece by Brenda and Robert Vale
The Cropthorne House - notes on design and comparison with the Vales' Southwell House
Bad End 2 - 21st Century Hobbit Hole - precast concrete in home construction
Off-grid.net
Self Sufficiency Guide
Self Sufficient Living
GreenSpec
Building engineering
Human habitats
Low-energy building
Sustainable architecture
Sustainable building
Self-sustainability
Building
Buildings and structures
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The Aleuts ( ; ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska and the Russian administrative division of Kamchatka Krai. This group is also known as the Unangax̂ (Oo-NUNG-ukh) in Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language.
Etymology
In the Aleut language they are known by the endonyms Unangan (eastern dialect) and Unangas (western dialect), both of which mean "people". The Russian term "Aleut" was a general term used for both the native population of the Aleutian Islands and their neighbors to the east in the Kodiak Archipelago, who were also referred to as "Pacific Eskimos" or Sugpiat/Alutiit.
Language
Aleut people speak Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language, as well as English and Russian in the United States and Russia respectively. An estimated 150 people in the United States and five people in Russia speak Aleut. The language belongs to the Eskimo–Aleut language family and includes three dialects: Eastern Aleut, spoken on the Eastern Aleutian, Shumagin, Fox and Pribilof Islands; Atkan, spoken on Atka and Bering islands; and the now extinct Attuan dialect.
The Pribilof Islands has the highest number of active speakers of Unangam Tunuu. Most native elders speak Aleut, but it is rare for common people to speak the language fluently.
Beginning in 1829, Aleut was written in the Cyrillic script. From 1870, the language has been written in the Latin script. An Aleut dictionary and grammar have been published, and portions of the Bible were translated into Aleut.
Tribes
The Aleut (Unangan) dialects and tribes:
Attuan dialect and speaking tribes:
Sasignan (in Attuan dialect)/Sasxnan (in Eastern dialect)/Sasxinas (in Western dialect) or Near Islanders: in the Near Islands (Attu, Agattu, Semichi).
Kasakam Unangangis (in Aleut, lit. 'Russian Aleut') or Copper Island Aleut: in the Commander Islands of Russian Federation (Bering, Medny).
? Qax̂un or Rat Islanders : in the Buldir Island and Rat Islands (Kiska, Amchitka, Semisopochnoi).
Atkan dialect or Western Aleut or Aliguutax̂ (in Aleut) and speaking tribes:
Naahmiĝus or Delarof Islanders : in the Delarof Islands (Amatignak) and Andreanof Islands (Tanaga).
Niiĝuĝis or Andreanof Islanders : in the Andreanof Islands (Kanaga, Adak, Atka, Amlia, Seguam).
Eastern Aleut dialect and speaking tribes:
Akuuĝun or Uniiĝun or Islanders of the Four Mountains : in the Islands of Four Mountains (Amukta, Kagamil).
Qawalangin or Fox Islanders : in the Fox Islands (Umnak, Samalga, western part of Unalaska).
Qigiiĝun or Krenitzen Islanders : in the Krenitzin Islands (eastern part of Unalaska, Akutan, Akun, Tigalda).
Qagaan Tayaĝungin or Sanak Islanders : in the Sanak Islands (Unimak, Sanak).
Taxtamam Tunuu dialect of Belkofski.
Qaĝiiĝun or Shumigan Islanders : in the Shumagin Islands.
Population and distribution
The Aleut people historically lived throughout the Aleutian Islands, the Shumagin Islands, and the far western part of the Alaska Peninsula, with an estimated population of around 25,000 prior to European contact. In the 1820s, the Russian-American Company administered a large portion of the North Pacific during a Russian-led expansion of the fur trade. They resettled many Aleut families to the Commander Islands (within the Aleutsky District of the Kamchatka Krai in Russia) and to the Pribilof Islands (in Alaska). These continue to have majority-Aleut communities.
According to the 2000 Census, 11,941 people identified as being Aleut, while 17,000 identified as having partial Aleut ancestry. Prior to sustained European contact, approximately 25,000 Aleut lived in the archipelago. The Encyclopædia Britannica Online says more than 15,000 people have Aleut ancestry in the early 21st century. The Aleut suffered high fatalities in the 19th and early 20th centuries from Eurasian infectious diseases to which they had no immunity. In addition, the population suffered as their customary lifestyles were disrupted. Russian traders and later Europeans married Aleut women and had families with them.
History
After Russian contact
After the arrival of Russian Orthodox missionaries in the late 18th century, many Aleuts became Christian. Of the numerous Russian Orthodox congregations in Alaska, most are majority Alaska Native or Native Alaskan in ethnicity. One of the earliest Christian martyrs in North America was Saint Peter the Aleut.
Recorded uprising against the Russians
In the 18th century, Russia promyshlenniki traders established settlements on the islands. There was high demand for the furs that the Aleut provided from hunting. In May 1784, local Aleuts revolted on Amchitka against the Russian traders. (The Russians had a small trading post there.) According to the Aleuts, in an account recorded by Japanese castaways and published in 2004, otters were decreasing year by year. The Russians paid the Aleuts less and less in goods in return for the furs they made. The Japanese learned that the Aleuts felt the situation was at crisis. The leading Aleuts negotiated with the Russians, saying they had failed to deliver enough supplies in return for furs. Nezimov, leader of the Russians, ordered two of his men, Stephanov ( ) and Kazhimov ( ) to kill his mistress Oniishin ( ), who was the Aleut chief's daughter, because he doubted that Oniishin had tried to dissuade her father and other leaders from pushing for more goods.
After the four leaders had been killed, the Aleuts began to move from Amchitka to neighboring islands. Nezimov, leader of the Russian group, was jailed after the whole incident was reported to Russian officials. (According to , written by Katsuragawa Hoshū after interviewing Daikokuya Kōdayū.)
Aleut genocide against Nicoleño Tribe in California
According to Russian American Company (RAC) records translated and published in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, a 200-ton otter hunting ship named Il’mena with a mixed-nationality crew, including a majority Aleut contingent, was involved in conflict resulting in a massacre of the indigenous natives of San Nicolas Island.
In 1811, to obtain more of the commercially valuable otter pelts, a party of Aleut hunters traveled to the coastal island of San Nicolas, near the Alta California-Baja California border. The locally resident Nicoleño nation sought a payment from the Aleut hunters for the large number of otters being killed in the area. Disagreement arose, turning violent; in the ensuing battle, the Aleut killed nearly all the Nicoleño men. Together with high fatalities from European diseases, the Nicoleños suffered so much from the loss of their men that by 1853, only one Nicoleñan (Juana Maria, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas) remained alive.
Internment during World War II
In June 1942, during World War II, Japanese forces occupied Kiska and Attu Islands in the western Aleutians. They later transported captive Attu Islanders to Hokkaidō, where they were held as prisoners of war in harsh conditions. Fearing a Japanese attack on other Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska, the U.S. government evacuated hundreds more Aleuts from the western chain and the Pribilofs, placing them in internment camps in southeast Alaska, where many died of measles, influenza and other infectious diseases which spread quickly in the overcrowded dormitories. In total, about 75 died in American internment and 19 as a result of Japanese occupation. The Aleut Restitution Act of 1988 was an attempt by Congress to compensate the survivors. On June 17, 2017, the U.S. Government formally apologized for the internment of the Unangan people and their treatment in the camps.
The World War II campaign by the United States to retake Attu and Kiska was a significant component of the operations in the American and Pacific theaters.
Population decline
Before major influence from outside, there were approximately 25,000 Aleuts on the archipelago. Foreign diseases, harsh treatment and disruption of aboriginal society soon reduced the population to less than one-tenth this number. The 1910 Census count showed 1,491 Aleuts. In the 2000 Census, 11,941 people identified as being Aleut; nearly 17,000 said Aleuts were among their ancestors.
Culture
Housing
The Aleut constructed partially underground houses called barabara. According to Lillie McGarvey, a 20th-century Aleut leader, s keep "occupants dry from the frequent rains, warm at all times, and snugly sheltered from the high winds common to the area". Aleuts traditionally built houses by digging an oblong square pit in the ground, usually or smaller. The pit was then covered by a roof framed with driftwood, thatched with grass, then covered with earth for insulation. Inside trenches were dug along the sides, with mats placed on top to keep them clean. The bedrooms were at the back of the lodge, opposite the entrance. Several families would stay in one house, with their own designated areas. Rather than fireplaces or bonfires in the middle, lanterns were hung in the house.
Subsistence
The Aleut survived by hunting and gathering. They fished for salmon, crabs, shellfish, and cod, as well as hunting sea mammals such as seal, walrus, and whales. They processed fish and sea mammals in a variety of ways: dried, smoked, or roasted. Caribou, muskoxen, deer, moose, whale, and other types of game were eaten roasted or preserved for later use. They dried berries. They were also processed as , a mixture of berries, fat, and fish. The boiled skin and blubber of a whale is a delicacy, as is that of walrus.
Today, many Aleut continue to eat customary and locally sourced foods but also buy processed foods from Outside, which is expensive in Alaska.
Ethnobotany
A full list of their ethnobotany has been compiled, with 65 documented plant uses.
Visual arts
Customary arts of the Aleut include weapon-making, building of baidarkas (special hunting boats), weaving, figurines, clothing, carving, and mask making. Men as well as women often carved ivory and wood. Nineteenth century craftsmen were famed for their ornate wooden hunting hats, which feature elaborate and colorful designs and may be trimmed with sea lion whiskers, feathers, and walrus ivory. Andrew Gronholdt of the Shumagin Islands has played a vital role in reviving the ancient art of building the chagudax or bentwood hunting visors.
Aleut women sewed finely stitched, waterproof parkas from seal gut and wove fine baskets from sea-lyme grass (Elymus mollis). Some Aleut women continue to weave ryegrass baskets. Aleut arts are practiced and taught throughout the state of Alaska. As many Aleut have moved out of the islands to other parts of the state, they have taken with them the knowledge of their arts. They have also adopted new materials and methods for their art, including serigraphy, video art, and installation art.
Aleut carving, distinct in each region, has attracted traders for centuries, including early Europeans and other Alaska Natives. Historically, carving was a male art and leadership attribute whereas today it is done by both genders. Most commonly the carvings of walrus ivory and driftwood originated as part of making hunting weapons. Sculptural carvings depict local animals, such as seals and whales. Aleut sculptors also have carved human figures.
The Aleut also carve walrus ivory for other uses, such as jewelry and sewing needles. Jewelry is made with designs specific to the region of each people. Each clan would have a specific style to signify their origin. Jewelry ornaments were made for piercing lips (labrum), nose, and ears, as well as for necklaces. Each woman had her own sewing needles, which she made, and that often had detailed end of animal heads.
The main Aleut method of basketry was false embroidery (overlay). Strands of grasses or reeds were overlaid upon the basic weaving surface, to obtain a plastic effect. Basketry was an art reserved for women. Early Aleut women created baskets and woven mats of exceptional technical quality, using only their thumbnail, grown long and then sharpened, as a tool. Today, Aleut weavers continue to produce woven grass pieces of a remarkable cloth-like texture, works of modern art with roots in ancient tradition. Birch bark, puffin feathers, and baleen are also commonly used by the Aleut in basketry. The Aleut term for grass basket is . One Aleut leader recognized by the State of Alaska for her work in teaching and reviving Aleut basketry was Anfesia Shapsnikoff. Her life and accomplishments are portrayed in the book Moments Rightly Placed (1998).
Masks were created to portray figures of their myths and oral history. The Atka people believed that another people lived in their land before them. They portrayed such ancients in their masks, which show anthropomorphic creatures named in their language. Knut Bergsland says their word means "like those found in caves." Masks were generally carved from wood and were decorated with paints made from berries or other natural products. Feathers were inserted into holes carved out for extra decoration. These masks were used in ceremonies ranging from dances to praises, each with its own meaning and purpose.
Tattoos and piercings
The tattoos and piercings of the Aleut people demonstrated accomplishments as well as their religious views. They believed their body art would please the spirits of the animals and make any evil go away. The body orifices were believed to be pathways for the entry of evil entities. By piercing their orifices: the nose, the mouth, and ears, they would stop evil entities, , from entering their bodies. Body art also enhanced their beauty, social status, and spiritual authority.
Before the 19th century, piercings and tattoos were very common among the Aleut people, especially among women. Piercings, such as the nose pin, were common among both men and women and were usually performed a few days after birth. The ornament was made of various materials, a piece of bark or bone, or an eagle's feather shaft. From time to time, adult women decorated the nose pins by hanging pieces of amber and coral from strings on it; the semi-precious objects dangled down to their chins.
Piercing ears was also common. The Aleuts pierced holes around the rim of their ears with dentalium shells (tooth shells or tusk shells), bone, feathers, dried bird wings or skulls and/or amber. Materials associated with birds were important, as birds were considered to defend animals in the spirit world. A male would wear sea lion whiskers in his ears as a trophy of his expertise as a hunter. Worn for decorative reasons, and sometimes to signify social standing, reputation, and the age of the wearer, Aleuts would pierce their lower lips with walrus ivory and wear beads or bones. The individual with the most piercings held the highest respect.
Tattooing for women began when they reached physical maturity, after menstruation, at about age 20. Historically, men received their first tattoo after killing their first animal, an important rite of passage. Sometimes tattoos signaled social class. For example, the daughter of a wealthy, famous ancestor or father would work hard at her tattoos to show the accomplishments of that ancestor or father. They would sew, or prick, different designs on the chin, the side of the face, or under the nose.
Aleut clothing
The Aleut people developed in one of the harshest climates in the world, and learned to create and protect warmth. Both men and women wore parkas that extended below the knees. The women wore the skin of seal or sea-otter, and the men wore bird skin parkas, the feathers turned in or out depending on the weather. When the men were hunting on the water, they wore waterproof parkas made from seal or sea-lion guts, or the entrails of bear, walrus, or whales. Parkas had a hood that could be cinched, as could the wrist openings, so water could not get in. Men wore breeches made from the esophageal skin of seals. Children wore parkas made of downy eagle skin with tanned bird skin caps. They called these parkas , meaning 'rain gear' in the English language.
Sea-lions, harbor seals, and sea otters are the most abundant marine mammals. The men brought home the skins and prepared them by soaking them in urine and stretching them. The women undertook the sewing. Preparation of the gut for clothing involved several steps. The prepared intestines were turned inside out. A bone knife was used to remove the muscle tissue and fat from the walls of the intestine. The gut was cut and stretched, and fastened to stakes to dry. It was then cut and sewn to make waterproof parkas, bags, and other receptacles. On some hunting trips, the men would take several women with them. They would catch birds and prepare the carcasses and feathers for future use. They caught puffins (Lunda cirrhata, Fratercula corniculata), guillemots, and murres.
It took 40 skins of tufted puffin and 60 skins of horned puffin to make one parka. A woman would need a year for all the labor to make one parka. Each lasted two years with proper care. All parkas were decorated with bird feathers, beard bristles of seal and sea-lion, beaks of sea parrots, bird claws, sea otter fur, dyed leather, and caribou hair sewn in the seams.
Women made needles from the wing bones of seabirds. They made thread from the sinews of different animals and fish guts. A thin strip of seal intestine could also be used, twisted to form a thread. The women grew their thumbnail extra long and sharpened it. They could split threads to make them as fine as a hair. They used vermilion paint, hematite, the ink bag of the octopus, and the root of a kind of grass or vine to color the threads.
Gender
Russian travelers making early contact with the Aleut mention traditional tales of two-spirits or third and fourth gender people, known as (male-bodied, 'man transformed into a woman') and (female-bodied, 'woman transformed into a man'), but it is unclear whether these tales are about historical individuals or spirits.
Hunting technologies
Boats
The interior regions of the rough, mountainous Aleutian Islands provided little in terms of natural resources for the Aleutian people. They collected stones for weapons, tools, stoves or lamps. They collected and dried grasses for their woven baskets. For everything else, the Aleuts had learned to use the fish and mammals they caught and processed to satisfy their needs.
To hunt sea mammals and to travel between islands, the Aleuts became experts of sailing and navigation. While hunting, they used small watercraft called baidarkas. For regular travel, they used their large s.
The was a large, open, walrus-skin-covered boat. Aleut families used it when traveling among the islands. It was also used to transport goods for trade, and warriors took them to battle.
The (small skin boat) was a small boat covered in sea lion skin. It was developed and used for hunting because of its sturdiness and maneuverability. The Aleut resembles that of a Yup'ik kayak, but it is hydrodynamically sleeker and faster. They made the for one or two persons only. The deck was made with a sturdy chamber, the sides of the craft were nearly vertical and the bottom was rounded. Most one-man s were about long and wide, whereas a two-man was on average about long and wide. It was from the that Aleut men would stand on the water to hunt from the sea.
Weapons
The Aleuts hunted small sea mammals with barbed darts and harpoons slung from throwing boards. These boards gave precision as well as some extra distance to these weapons.
Harpoons were also called throwing-arrows when the pointed head fit loosely into the socket of the foreshaft and the head was able to detach from the harpoon when it penetrated an animal, and remain in the wound. There were three main kinds of harpoon that the Aleuts used: a simple harpoon, with a head that kept its original position in the animal after striking, a compound (toggle-head) harpoon in which the head took a horizontal position in the animal after penetration, and the throwing-lance used to kill large animals.
The simple Aleut harpoon consisted of four main parts: the wooden shaft, the bone foreshaft, and the bonehead (tip) with barbs pointed backward. The barbed head was loosely fitted into the socket of the foreshaft so that when the animal was stabbed, it pulled the head away from the rest of the harpoon. The sharp barbs penetrated with ease, but could not be pulled out. The bone tip is fastened to a length of braided twine meanwhile; the hunter held the other end of the twine in his hand.
The compound harpoon was the most prevalent weapon of the Aleut people. Also known as the toggle-head spear, it was about the same size as the simple harpoon and used to hunt the same animals, however, this harpoon provided a more efficient and lethal weapon. This harpoon separated into four parts. The longest part was the shaft with the thicker stalk closer to the tip of the harpoon. The shaft was fitted into the socket of the fore shaft and a bone ring was then placed over the joint to hold the two pieces together, as well as, protecting the wooden shaft from splitting. Connected to the fore shaft of the harpoon is the toggle head spear tip. This tip was made of two sub shafts that break apart on impact with an animal. The upper sub shaft held the razor stone head and attached to the lower sub shaft with a small braided twine loop. Once the tip penetrates the animal the upper sub head broke off from the rest of the shaft, however, since it was still connected with the braided loop it rotated the head into a horizontal position inside the animal's body so that it could not get away from the hunter.
The throwing lance may be distinguished from a harpoon because all its pieces are fixed and immovable. A lance was a weapon of war and it was also used to kill large marine animals after it has already been harpooned. The throwing lance usually consisted of three parts: a wooden shaft, a bone ring or belt, and the compound head that was made with a barbed bonehead and a stone tip. The length of the compound head was equivalent to the distance between the planes of a man's chest to his back. The lance would penetrate the chest and pass through the chest cavity and exit from the back. The bone ring was designed to break after impact so that the shaft could be used again for another kill.
Burial practices
They buried their dead ancestors near the village. Archeologists have found many different types of burials, dating from a variety of periods, in the Aleutian Islands. The Aleut developed a style of burials that were accommodated to local conditions, and honored the dead. They have had four main types of burials: , cave, above-ground sarcophagi, and burials connected to communal houses.
burials are the most widely known type of mortuary practice found in the Aleutian Islands. The people created burial mounds, that tend to be located on the edge of a bluff. They placed stone and earth over the mound to protect and mark it. Such mounds were first excavated by archeologists in 1972 on Southwestern Unmak Island, and dated to the early contact period. Researchers have found a prevalence of these burials, and concluded it is a regional mortuary practice. It may be considered a pan-Aleutian mortuary practice.
Cave burials have been found throughout the eastern Aleutian Islands. The human remains are buried in shallow graves at the rear of the cave. These caves tend to be next to middens and near villages. Some grave goods have been found in the caves associated with such burials. For example, a deconstructed boat was found in a burial cave on Kanaga Island. There were no other major finds of grave goods in the vicinity.
Throughout the Aleutian Islands, gravesites have been found that are above-ground sarcophagi. These sarcophagi are left exposed, with no attempt to bury the dead in the ground. These burials tend to be isolated and limited to the remains of adult males, which may indicate a specific ritual practice. In the Near Islands, isolated graves have also been found with the remains, and not just the sarcophagus, left exposed on the surface. This way of erecting sarcophagi above ground is not as common as and cave burials, but it is still widespread.
Another type of practice has been to bury remains in areas next to the communal houses of the settlement. Human remains are abundant in such sites. They indicate a pattern of burying the dead within the main activity areas of the settlement. These burials consist of small pits adjacent to the houses and scattered around them. In these instances, mass graves are common for women and children. This type of mortuary practice has been mainly found in the Near Islands.
In addition to these four main types, other kinds of burials have been found in the Aleutian Islands. These more isolated examples in include mummification, private burial houses, abandoned houses, etc. To date, such examples are not considered to be part of a larger, unifying cultural practice. The findings discussed represent only the sites that have been excavated.
The variety of mortuary practices mostly did not include the ritual of including extensive grave goods, as has been found in other cultures. The remains so far have been mainly found with other human and faunal remains. The addition of objects to "accompany" the dead is rare. Archaeologists have been trying to dissect the absence of grave goods, but their findings have been ambiguous and do not really help the academic community to understand these practices more.
Not much information is known about the ritual parts of burying the dead. Archeologists and anthropologists have not found much evidence related to burial rituals. This lack of ritual evidence could hint at either no ritualized ceremony, or one that has not yet been revealed in the archaeological record. As a result, archaeologists cannot decipher the context to understand exactly why a certain type of burial was used in particular cases.
Notable Aleuts
John Hoover (1919–2011), sculptor
Carl E. Moses (1929–2014) businessman, state representative, who served from 1965 to 1973 as both a Republican and Democrat,
Jacob Netsvetov (1802–1864), Russian Orthodox saint and priest
Sergie Sovoroff (1901–1989), educator, (model sea kayak) builder
Eve Tuck, academic, indigenous studies
Peter the Aleut (1800–1815), Russian Orthodox saint and martyr
In popular culture
In Snow Crash, a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, a central character named Raven is portrayed as an Aleut with incredible toughness and hunting skill. The story is about revenge due in part to perceived mistreatment of the Aleut.
Alaska by James A. Michener.
See also
Adamagan
Aleutian Islands
Aleutian tradition
Alutiiq
Indigenous Amerindian genetics
Maritime Fur Trade
Sadlermiut
Shamanism among Alaska Natives
Unangan Aleut
List of Native American peoples in the United States
Notes
References
Further reading
Lee, Molly, Angela J. Linn, and Chase Hensel. Not Just a Pretty Face: Dolls and Human Figurines in Alaska Native Cultures. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska, 2006. Print.
Black, Lydia T. Aleut Art: Unangam Aguqaadangin. Anchorage, Alaska: Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, 2005.
Jochelson, Waldemar. History, Ethnology, and Anthropology of the Aleut. Washington: Carnegie institution of Washington, 1933.
Jochelson, Waldemar, Bergsland, Knut (Editor) & Dirks, Moses (Editor). Unangam Ungiikangin Kayux Tunusangin = Unangam Uniikangis ama Tunuzangis = Aleut Tales and Narratives. Fairbanks, Alaska: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1990..
Kohlhoff, Dean. When the Wind Was a River Aleut Evacuation in World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press in association with Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, Anchorage, 1995.
Madden, Ryan Howard. "An enforced odyssey: The relocation and internment of Aleuts during World War II" (PhD thesis U of New Hampshire, Durham, 1993) online
Murray, Martha G., and Peter L. Corey. Aleut Weavers. Juneau, AK: Alaska State Museums, Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums, 1997.
Reedy-Maschner, Katherine. "Aleut Identities : Tradition and Modernity in an Indigenous Fishery". Montréal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010.
Veltre, Douglas W. Aleut Unangax̂ Ethnobotany An Annotated Bibliography. Akureyri, Iceland: CAFF International Secretariat, 2006.
"Aleutian World War II." National Park Service.
External links
Aleut Corporation
Aleut Management Services
Aleutian Pribilof Island Association
Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska
Museum of the Aleutians
Unalaska Communities of Memory Project Jukebox
Aleut International Association
A Grammar of Fox Island Aleutian Manuscript at Dartmouth College Library
Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association
Alaska Native ethnic groups
Native American history of Alaska
People from Kamchatka Krai
Ethnic groups in Russia
Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East
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The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971, constituting at the time the largest land claims settlement in United States history. ANCSA was intended to resolve long-standing issues surrounding aboriginal land claims in Alaska, as well as to stimulate economic development throughout Alaska.
The settlement established Alaska Native claims to the land by transferring titles to twelve Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 local village corporations. A thirteenth regional corporation was later created for Alaska Natives who no longer resided in Alaska. The act is codified as 43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.
Background
Alaskan statehood
When Alaska became a state in 1959, section 4 of the Alaska Statehood Act provided that any existing Alaska Native land claims would be unaffected by statehood and held in status quo. Yet while section 4 of the act preserved Native land claims until later settlement, section 6 allowed for the state government to claim lands deemed vacant. Section 6 granted the state of Alaska the right to select lands then in the hands of the federal government, with the exception of Native territory. As a result, nearly from the public domain would eventually be transferred to the state. The state government also attempted to acquire lands under section 6 of the Statehood Act that were subject to Native claims under section 4, and that were currently occupied and used by Alaska Natives. The federal Bureau of Land Management began to process the Alaska government's selections without taking into account the Native claims and without informing the affected Native groups.
It was against this backdrop that the original language for a land claims settlement was developed.
A 9.2-magnitude earthquake struck the state in 1964. Recovery efforts drew the attention of the federal government. The Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska decided that Natives should receive $100 million and 10% of revenue as a royalty. Nothing was done with this proposal, however, and a freeze on land transfers remained in effect.
Founding of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN)
In 1966, Emil Notti called for a statewide meeting inviting numerous leaders around Alaska to gather and create the first meeting of a committee. The historic meeting was held October 18, 1966 - on the 99th anniversary of the transfer of Alaska from Russia. Notti presided over the three-day conference as it discussed matters of land recommendations, claims committees, and political challenges the act would have in getting through congress. Many respected politicians and businessmen attended the meeting and delegates were astonished at the attention which they received from well-known political figures of the state. The growing presence and political importance of Natives was evidenced when members were able to gain election to seven of the sixty seats in the legislature.
When the group met a second time early in 1967, it emerged with a new name, The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), and a new full-time President, Emil Notti. AFN went on to profoundly change the human rights and economic stability of the Alaska Native population.
Native Land Claims Task Force
In 1967, Governor Walter Hickel summoned a group of Indigenous leaders and politicians to work out a settlement that would be satisfactory to Natives. The group met for ten days and asked for $20 million in exchange for requested lands. Among the other task force proposals were an outright grant of 1,000 acres per native village resident; a revenue-sharing program for state land claims and national mineral development projects; secured hunting and fishing rights on public lands; and a Native Commission to administrate state and federal compliance with the provisions of the claims settlement. They proposed receiving 10% of federal mineral lease revenue for ten years, once the freeze which had been placed on land patents to allow oil exploration was lifted.
Oil
In 1968, the Atlantic-Richfield Company discovered oil at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast, catapulting the issue of land ownership into headlines. In order to lessen the difficulty of drilling at such a remote location and transporting the oil to the lower 48 states, the oil companies proposed building a pipeline to carry the oil across Alaska to the port of Valdez. At Valdez, the oil would be loaded onto tankers and shipped to the contiguous states.
The plan had been approved, but a permit to construct the pipeline, which would cross lands involved in the land claims dispute, could not be granted until the Native claims were settled. Hearings were held for the first time before the United States House's Subcommittee on Indian Affairs in July 1968. Among those who attended the hearings were officials and legislators, as well as Laura Bergt, Roger Connor, Thoda Forslund, Cliff Groh, Barry Jackson, Flore Lekanof, Notti, and Morris Thompson.
Government negotiations and policy
In 1969, President Nixon appointed Hickel as Secretary of the Interior. The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) protested against Hickel's nomination, but he was eventually confirmed. He worked with the AFN, negotiating with Native leaders and state government over the disputed lands. Offers went back and forth, with each rejecting the other's proposals. The AFN wanted rights to land, while then-Governor Keith Miller believed Natives did not have legitimate claims to state land in light of the provisions of the Alaska Statehood Act. On July 8, 1970, Nixon delivered a speech reversing the Indian termination policy in favor of allowing tribal self-determination. The following month, he established the National Council on Indian Opportunity, headed by Vice President Spiro Agnew, which included eight Native leaders: Frank Belvin (Choctaw), Bergt (Iñupiat), Betty Mae Jumper (Seminole), Earl Old Person (Blackfeet), John C. Rainer (Taos Pueblo), Martin Seneca, Jr. (Seneca), Harold Shunk (Yankton-Sioux), and Joseph C. "Lone Eagle" Vasquez (Apache-Sioux).
During the state administration of Governor William A. Egan positions were staked out upon which the AFN and other stakeholders could largely agree. Native leaders, in addition to Alaska's congressional delegation and the state's newly elected Governor Egan, eventually reached the basis for presenting an agreement to Congress. Bergt attended a March 1971 conference of the National Congress of American Indians in Kansas City, Missouri and was able to persuade Agnew there to meet with national officials, herself, Christiansen, an Alaska State Senator; Al Ketzler, chair of the Tanana Chiefs Conference; and Don Wright, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives a week later. That meeting held on March 12, marked a turning-point in negotiations with the various parties. The proposed settlement terms faced challenges in both houses but found a strong ally in Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington state. The most controversial issues that continued to hold up approval were methods for determining land selection by Alaska Natives and financial distribution.
With major petroleum dollars on the line, pressure mounted to achieve a definitive legislative resolution at the federal level. In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed into law by President Nixon. It abrogated Native claims to aboriginal lands except those that are the subject of the law. In return, Natives retained up to of land and were paid $963 million. The land and money were to be divided among regional, urban, and village tribal corporations established under the law, often recognizing existing leadership.
Alaskan officials were originally divided on the bill, though by 1970, with Interior Secretary Walter Hickel, Governor William Egan, Representative Nick Begich & Senators Ted Stevens & Mike Gravel all backing the bill, the opposition died down. Stevens was particularly strongminded, and was key in the bill's passage. Stevens, a freshman Senator for most of the fight, would later remark: "ANCSA was my baptism of fire as a Senator from Alaska…. It didn’t occur to me that some Senators had the opportunity to ease into their jobs. Life in the Senate for me was fast-paced from the beginning…. With my experience working in the Department of the Interior and with the Statehood Act, and my faith in the determination and unity of purpose of Alaska’s Native people, I believed from the beginning that a settlement could be achieved…. My memories of the Congressional action as ANCSA took shape aren’t of a battle as much as they are of long hours of tough, hard negotiating, often two steps forward and one step back…"
Effect of land conveyances
In 1971, barely one million acres of land in Alaska were in private hands. ANCSA, together with section 6 of Alaska Statehood Act, which the new act allowed to come to fruition, affected ownership to about of land in Alaska once wholly controlled by the federal government. That is larger by than the combined areas of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
When the bill passed in 1971, it included provisions that had never before been attempted in previous United States settlements with Native Americans. The newly passed Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act created twelve Native regional economic development corporations. Each corporation was associated with a specific region of Alaska and the Natives who had traditionally lived there. This innovative approach to native settlements engaged the tribes in corporate capitalism.
The idea originated with the AFN, who believed that the Natives would have to become a part of the capitalist system in order to survive. As stockholders in these corporations, the Natives could earn some income and stay in their traditional villages. If the corporations were managed properly, they could make profits that would enable individuals to stay, rather than having to leave Native villages to find better work. This was intended to help preserve Native culture.
Native and state land selection
Alaska Natives had three years from passage of ANCSA to make land selections of the granted under the act. In some cases Native corporations received outside aid in surveying the land. For instance, Doyon, Limited (one of the 13 regional corporations) was helped by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska. The Institute determined which land contained resources such as minerals and coal. NASA similarly provided satellite imagery to aid in Native corporations finding areas most suited for vegetation and their traditional subsistence culture. The imagery showed locations of caribou and moose, as well as forests with marketable timber. In total about were analyzed for Doyon. Natives were able to choose tens of thousands of acres of land rich with timber while Doyon used mineral analysis to attract businesses.
The state of Alaska to date has been granted approximately 85% or of the land claims it has made under ANCSA. The state is entitled to a total of under the terms of the Statehood Act. Originally the state had 25 years after passage of the Alaska Statehood Act to file claims under section 6 of the act with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Amendments to ANCSA extended that deadline until 1994, with the expectation that BLM would complete processing of land transfers subject to overlapping Native claims by 2009. Nonetheless, some Native and state selections under ANCSA remained unresolved as late as December 2014.
Criticism of ANCSA
There was largely positive reaction to ANCSA, although not entirely. The act was supported by Natives as well as non-Natives, and likewise enjoyed bipartisan support. Natives were heavily involved in the legislative process, and the final draft of the act used many AFN ideas.
Some Natives have argued that ANCSA has hastened cultural genocide of Alaska Natives. Some Natives critiqued ANCSA as an illegitimate treaty since only tribal leaders were involved and the provisions of the act were not voted on by indigenous populations. One native described it as a social and political experiment. Critics have also argued that Natives so feared massacre or incarceration that they offered no resistance to the act.
Others have argued that the settlement was arguably the most generous afforded by the United States to a Native group. They note that some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the state are the twelve created by ANCSA. Other critics attacked the act as "Native welfare" and such complaints continue to be expressed.
The corporation system has been critiqued, as in some cases stockholders have sold land to outside corporations that have leveled forests and extracted minerals. But supporters of the system argue that it has provided economic benefits for indigenous peoples that outweigh these problems.
Selected provisions of ANCSA
Native claims in Alaska were extinguished by means of section 4 of ANCSA.
In exchange for abrogating Native claims, approximately one-ninth of the state's land plus $962.5 million were distributed to more than 200 local Alaska Native "village corporations" established under section 8, in addition to 12 land-owning for-profit Alaska Native "regional corporations" and a non-land-owning thirteenth corporation for Alaska Natives who had left the state established under section 6.
Of the compensation monies, $462.5 million was to come from the federal treasury and the rest from oil revenue-sharing.
Settlement benefits would accrue to those with at least one-fourth Native ancestry under sections 3(b) and 5(a).
Of the approximately 80,000 Natives enrolled under ANCSA, those living in villages (approximately two-thirds of the total) would receive 100 shares in both a village and a regional corporation.
The remaining one-third would be "at large" shareholders with 100 shares in a regional corporation with additional rights to revenue from regional mineral and timber resources.
The Alaska Native Allotment Act was revoked but with the proviso that pending claims under that act would continue to be processed under section 18. Successful applicants would be excluded under ANCSA by section 14(h)(5) from land to be used for a primary residence.
The twelve regional corporations within the state would administer the settlement.
A thirteenth corporation composed of Natives who had left the state would receive compensation but not land.
Surface rights to were patented to the Native village and regional corporations under sections 12(c), as well as 14(h)(1) and (8).
The surface rights to the patented land were granted to the village corporations and the subsurface right to the land were granted to the regional corporation, creating a split estate pursuant to section 14(f).
Alaska Native regional corporations
The following thirteen regional corporations were created under ANCSA:
Ahtna, Incorporated
The Aleut Corporation
Arctic Slope Regional Corporation
Bering Straits Native Corporation
Bristol Bay Native Corporation
Calista Corporation
Chugach Alaska Corporation
Cook Inlet Region, Inc.
Doyon, Limited
Koniag, Incorporated
NANA Regional Corporation
Sealaska Corporation
The 13th Regional Corporation
Additionally, most regions and some villages have created their own nonprofits providing social services and health care through grant funding and federal compacts. The objectives of these nonprofits are varied, but focus generally on cultural and educational activities. These include scholarships for Native students, sponsorship of cultural and artistic events, preservation efforts for Native languages, and protection of sites with historic or religious importance.
Alaska Native village and urban corporations
ANCSA created about 224 village and urban corporations. Below is a representative list of village and urban corporations created under ANCSA:
Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation, village corporation for Utqiaġvik
Bethel Native Corporation, village corporation for Bethel
Cape Fox Corporation, village corporation for Saxman
Deloycheet, Inc., village corporation for Holy Cross
Huna Totem Corporation, village corporation for Hoonah
Haida Corporation, village corporation for Hydaburg
Goldbelt, Inc., urban corporation for Juneau
Paug-Vik, Inc. Ltd., village corporation for Naknek
Chenega Corporation, village corporation for Chenega
Afognak Native Corporation, village corporation for Afognak and Port Lions
Kavilco Incorporated, village corporation for Kasaan
Klukwan, Inc., village corporation for Klukwan
The Kuskokwim Corporation , village corporation for Aniak, Crooked Creek, Georgetown, Kalskag, Lower Kalskag, Napaimute, Red Devil, Russian Mission, Sleetmute and Stony River
Natives of Kodiak, Inc., urban corporation for Kodiak
Ounalashka Corporation, village corporation for Unalaska
Ouzinkie Native Corporation, village corporation for Ouzinkie
Shee Atika, Incorporated, urban corporation for Sitka
See also
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
Alaska Statehood Act
Alaska Native Allotment Act
Alaska Land Transfer Acceleration Act
Emil Notti
Notes
References
Bibliography
Borneman, Walter R. Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land. Harper Perennial. (2004)
Dombrowski, Kirk. Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska U of Nebraska Press. (2001)
Haycox, Stephen. Alaska: An American Colony. University of Washington Press. (2006)
Haycox, Stephen. Frigid Embrace: Politics, Economics, and Environment in Alaska Oregon University Press. (2002)
Haynes, James B. "Land Selection and Development under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act," Arctic Institute of North America, Vol. 28–3, pp. 201–208 (September 1975)
Linxwiler, James D. "The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: The First Twenty Years," Proceedings from the 38th Annual Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute. (1992)
Roderick, Libby. Alaska Native Cultures and Issues: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions. University of Alaska Press. (2010)
Williams, Maria Sháa Tláa. The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press. (2009).
Worl, Rosita. "Reconstructing Sovereignty in Alaska," Cultural Survival Quarterly. (Fall 2001)
Further reading
Arnold, Robert D. Alaska Native Land Claims, (Alaska Native Foundation 1978).
Berry, Mary Clay. The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land Claims, (Indiana University Press 1975).
Berger, Thomas R. Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1985).
Case, David S. Alaska Natives and American Laws, (University of Alaska Press 3d ed. 2012)
GAO Report: Increased Use of Alaska Native Corporations’ Special 8(a) Provisions Calls for Tailored Oversight (April 2006)
Kentch, Gavin. "A Corporate Culture? The Environmental Justice Challenges of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act". 81 Miss. L.J. 813 (2012)
Lazarus, Arthur Jr. "The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: A Flawed Victory," Law and Contemporary Problems. (Winter 1976)
London, J. Tate. "The "1991 Amendments" to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Protection for Native Lands?", 8 Stan. Envtl. L.J. 200. (1989)
Mitchell, Donald Craig. Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959, (University of Alaska Press 2003).
Mitchell, Donald Craig. Take My Land Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971, (University of Alaska Press 2001).
Morgan, Lael. Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock, (Epicenter Press 1988).
Senungetuk, Joseph E. Give or Take a Century: An Eskimo Chronicle, (The Indian Historian Press 1971).
"Settling the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act", 38 Stan. L. Rev. 227 (1985).
External links
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Resource Center
Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971
Revisiting the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)
Alaska Native Corporation Links
United States federal legislation articles without infoboxes
1971 in Alaska
1971 in American law
91st United States Congress
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Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, United States, located in the East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is primarily located on Alameda Island, but also spans Bay Farm Island and Coast Guard Island, as well as a few other smaller islands in San Francisco Bay. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 78,280.
History
Spanish and Mexican era
Alameda occupies what was originally a peninsula connected to Oakland. Much of it was low-lying and marshy. The higher ground nearby and adjacent parts of what is now downtown Oakland were the site of one of the largest coastal oak forests in the world. Spanish colonists called the area Encinal, meaning "forest of evergreen oak". Alameda is Spanish for "grove of poplar trees" or "tree-lined avenue". It was chosen as the name of the city in 1853 by popular vote.
The inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the late 18th century were a local band of the Ohlone tribe. The peninsula was included in the vast Rancho San Antonio granted in 1820 to Luis Peralta by the Spanish king who claimed California. The grant was later confirmed by the Republic of Mexico upon its independence in 1821 from Spain.
Over time, the place became known as Bolsa de Encinal or Encinal de San Antonio.
Post-Conquest era
The city was founded on June 6, 1853, after the United States acquired California following the Mexican–American War of 1848. The town originally contained three small settlements. "Alameda" referred to the village at Encinal and High streets, Hibbardsville was located at the North Shore ferry and shipping terminal, and Woodstock was on the west near the ferry piers of the South Pacific Coast Railroad and the Central Pacific. Eventually, the Central Pacific's ferry pier became the Alameda Mole. The borders of Alameda were made coextensive with the island in 1872, incorporating Woodstock into Alameda. In his autobiography, writer Mark Twain described Alameda as "The Garden of California."
The first post office opened in 1854. The first school, Schermerhorn School, was opened in 1855 (and eventually renamed as Lincoln School). The San Francisco and Alameda Railroad opened the Encinal station in 1864. The early formation of the Park Street Historic Commercial District (or downtown) was centered near the train lines. Encinal's own post office opened in 1876, was renamed West End in 1877, and closed in 1891. On September 6, 1869, the Alameda Terminal made history; it was the site of the arrival of the first train via the First transcontinental railroad to reach the shores of San Francisco Bay, thus achieving the first coast to coast transcontinental railroad in North America.
The Croll Building, on the corner of Webster Street and Central Avenue, was the site of Croll's Gardens and Hotel, used as training quarters for some of the most popular fighters in boxing from 1883 to 1914. Jack Johnson and several other champions all stayed and trained here.]
The need for expanded shipping facilities and increased flow of current through the estuary led to the dredging of a tidal canal through the marshland between Oakland and Alameda. Construction started in 1874, but it was not completed until 1902, resulting in Alameda becoming an island.
Modern era
In 1917, a private entertainment park called Neptune Beach was built in the area now known as Crab Cove, which became a major recreation destination in the 1920s and 1930s. Both the American snow cone and the popsicle were first sold at Neptune Beach. The Kewpie doll became the original prize for winning games of chance at the beach – another Neptune Beach innovation. The park closed down in 1939.
The Alameda Works Shipyard was one of the largest and best-equipped shipyards in the country. Together with other industrial facilities, it became part of the defense industry buildup before and during World War II, which attracted many migrants from other parts of the United States for the high-paying jobs. In the 1950s, Alameda's industrial and shipbuilding industries thrived along the Alameda Estuary.
In the early 21st century, the Port of Oakland, across the estuary, has become one of the largest ports on the West Coast. Its operators use shipping technologies originally experimented within Alameda. As of March 21, 2006, Alameda is a "Coast Guard City", one of seven then designated in the country. As of 2018, it is one of twenty-one within the country.
In addition to the regular trains running to the Alameda Mole, Alameda was also served by local steam commuter lines of the Southern Pacific (initially, the Central Pacific). Alameda was the site of the Southern Pacific's West Alameda Shops, where all the electric trains were maintained and repaired. These were later adapted as the East Bay Electric Lines. The trains ran to both the Oakland Mole and the Alameda Mole.
In the 1930s Pan American Airways established a seaplane port along with the fill that led to the Alameda Mole, the original home base for the China Clipper flying boat. In 1929, the University of California established the San Francisco Airdrome located near the current Webster Street tube as a public airport. The Bay Airdrome had its gala christening party in 1930. The Airdrome was closed in 1941 when its air traffic interfered with the newly built Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda).
In the late 1950s, the Utah Construction Company began a landfill beyond the Old Sea Wall and created South Shore.
On February 7, 1973, a USN Vought A-7E Corsair II fighter jet on a routine training mission from Lemoore Naval Air Station suddenly caught fire above the San Francisco Bay, crashing into the Tahoe Apartments in Alameda. Eleven people, including pilot Lieutenant Robert Lee Ward, died in the crash and fire.
Geography
Alameda's nickname is "The Island City" (or simply "the island"). The current city occupies three islands as well as a small section of the mainland. Today, the city consists of the main original section, with the former Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda) at the west end of Alameda Island, Southshore along the southern side of Alameda Island, and Bay Farm Island, which is part of the mainland proper.
The area of the former NAS is now known as "Alameda Point." The Southshore area is separated from the main part of Alameda Island by a lagoon; the north shore of the lagoon is located approximately where the original south shore of the island was. Alameda Point and Southshore are built on bay fill.
Not all of Alameda Island is part of the City of Alameda; a small portion of a dump site west of the former runway at Alameda Naval Air Station extends far enough into San Francisco Bay that it is over the county line and therefore part of the City and County of San Francisco.
Coast Guard Island, a small island between Alameda Island and Oakland, is also part of Alameda and is the home of Integrated Support Command Alameda.
Ballena Isle, an even smaller island, is also part of Alameda.
Climate
This region experiences warm (but not hot), dry summers, and cool (but not cold), wet winters. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Alameda has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, abbreviated "Csb" on climate maps. Annual precipitation is about , all rain (snow is extremely rare at sea level in the San Francisco Bay Area).
Hazards
The low-lying island has seen sea-level and groundwater level rise threaten its infrastructure and people not just through flooding events, but through the increased liquefaction risk from more saturated soils. The locations of increasing groundwater-induced risks and flooding risks (such as from another megaflood) may be most precise in private insurance company maps.
Demographics
2010
The 2010 United States Census reported that Alameda had a population of 73,812. (2015 census estimates place the population at 78,630)
The population density was . The racial makeup of Alameda was 37,460 (50.8%) White, 23,058 (31.2%) Asian, 4,759 (6.4%) African American, 426 (0.6%) Native American, 381 (0.5%) Pacific Islander, 2,463 (3.3%) from other races, and 5,265 (7.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8,092 persons (11.0%).
The Census reported that 72,316 people (98.0% of the population) lived in households, 857 (1.2%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 639 (0.9%) were institutionalized.
There were 30,123 households, out of which 9,144 (30.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,440 (44.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,623 (12.0%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,228 (4.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,681 (5.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 459 (1.5%) same-sex married couples or same-sex partnerships. 9,347 households (31.0%) were made up of individuals, and 2,874 (9.5%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40. There were 18,291 families (60.7% of all households); the average family size was 3.06.
The age distribution of the population shows 15,304 people (20.7%) under the age of 18, 5,489 people (7.4%) aged 18 to 24, 21,000 people (28.5%) aged 25 to 44, 22,044 people (29.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 9,975 people (13.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.5 males.
Per capita annual income (in 2013 dollars) in 2009–2013 was $41,340 per the US Census. Median household income in 2009–2013 was $74,606 per the US Census.
There were 32,351 housing units at an average density of , of which 30,123 were occupied, of which 14,488 (48.1%) were owner-occupied, and 15,635 (51.9%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.1%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.7%. 37,042 people (50.2% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 35,274 people (47.8%) lived in rental housing units.
2000
As of the census of 2000, there were 72,259 people, 30,226 households, and 17,863 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,583.3/km (6,693.4/mi2). There were 31,644 housing units at an average density of 1,131.3/km (2,931.2/mi2). The racial makeup of the city was 56.95% White, 6.21% Black or African American, 0.67% Native American, 26.15% Asian, 0.60% Pacific Islander, 3.29% from other races, and 6.13% from two or more races. 9.31% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 30,226 households, out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.7% were married couples living together, 11.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.9% were non-families. Of all households, 32.2% were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 3.04.
In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 21.5% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 33.6% from 25 to 44, 24.6% from 45 to 64, and 13.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.5 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $56,285, and the median income for a family was $68,625. Males had a median income of $49,174 versus $40,165 for females. The per capita income for the city was $30,982. About 6.0% of families and 8.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.4% of those under age 18 and 6.1% of those age 65 or over.
There is a large Filipino community; and also a major Portuguese community, from which Tom Hanks' mother came and where Lyndsy Fonseca was raised for some time. Alameda also has a historic Japanese American community and had a small Japanese business district on a portion of Park Street before World War II, when the city's Japanese population was interned. A Japanese Buddhist church is one of the few remaining buildings left of Alameda's pre-war Japanese American community.
Economy
Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS), decommissioned in 1997, was turned over to the City of Alameda for civilian development, today known as Alameda Point.
A cluster of artisan distilleries, wineries, breweries and tasting rooms along Monarch Street at Alameda Point is now referred to by the City of Alameda as "Spirits Alley". These and surrounding businesses include Almanac Beer Co., Building 43 Winery, Faction Brewing, and St. George Spirits. Admiral Maltings also sits in this area, supplying craft brewers and whisky producers, and is the first craft malting house in California.
The aircraft carrier , a museum ship, has been moored at the former Naval Air Station as the USS Hornet Museum since 1998.
Following the exit of the former Oakland Raiders, the Oakland Roots of the USL Championship have a license agreement for the former Raiders performance center with the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda.
Top employers
According to the city's 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:
Arts and culture
The Alameda Arts Council (AAC) serves as the local Alameda City arts council. The Alameda Civic Ballet is the ballet troupe of the city. The Alameda Museum features displays on the history of Alameda. The Alameda Art Association has about 80 members as of January 2011, and has a gallery space at South Shore Center mall. The Association began in 1944. An annual benefit, Circus for Arts in the Schools, was started by clown artist Jeff Raz in 2004. Photo-realist Robert Bechtle has painted numerous Alameda subjects, including Alameda Gran Torino, which was acquired by SFMOMA in 1974 and remains one of Bechtle's most famous works.
Theaters
The city restored the historic Art Deco city landmark Alameda Theatre, expanding it to include a theater multiplex. The public opening was May 21, 2008.
The Altarena Playhouse, which performs comedies, dramas, and musicals, was founded in 1938 and is the longest continuously operating community theater in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Festivals
The Fourth of July parade is advertised as the second oldest and second-longest Fourth of July parade in the United States. It features homemade floats, classic cars, motorized living room furniture, fire-breathing dragons, and marching bands.
There are three major events when the street in Alameda's historic downtown district is closed to vehicular traffic. The Park Street Spring Festival takes place every May during the weekend of Mother's Day and attracts over 50,000 visitors. The Park Street Art & Wine Faire takes place the last weekend of every July and attracts over 100,000 visitors. The Park Street Classic Car Show is held on the second Saturday every October and displays over 400 vintage vehicles.
The annual Sand Castle and Sculpture Contest takes place in June at the Robert Crown Memorial State Beach. The first contest was held in 1967.
Government
According to the California Secretary of State, as of February 10, 2019, Alameda has 48,609 registered voters. Of those, 27,323 (56.2%) are registered Democrats, 5,240 (10.8%) are registered Republicans, and 13,950 (28.7%) have declined to state a political party.
Alameda Free Library
After two previous failures, voters in the city passed a ballot measure in 2000 authorizing a bond measure for construction of a new main library to replace the city's Carnegie Library, damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The city also received state funds for the new main library and opened the doors to the new facility in November 2006.
There are three library locations: the Main Library in downtown Alameda and two library branches; the Bay Farm Island Library serving the Bay Farm and Harbor Bay communities and the West End Library serving the West End of Alameda.
Education
Public primary and secondary education in Alameda is the responsibility of the Alameda Unified School District, which is legally separate from the City of Alameda government (as is common throughout California). The College of Alameda, a two-year community college in the West End is part of the Peralta Community College District. The city has numerous private primary schools, and one private high school, St. Joseph Notre Dame High School, a Catholic school.
Media
Alameda's first newspaper, the Encinal, appeared in the early 1850s. Following the Encinal, several other papers appeared along geographic lines, and the Daily Argus eventually rose to prominence. Around 1900, the Daily Argus began to fade in importance and east and west papers The Times and The Star combined to take the leading role as the Alameda Times-Star in the 1930s. The Times-Star was sold to the Alameda Newspaper Group in the 1970s. In 1997, the Hills Newspaper chain was bought by Knight Ridder. In 2001, a new locally based newspaper, the Alameda Sun, was founded.
The Alameda community is currently served by two weekly newspapers, the Alameda Journal and the Alameda Sun, and a non-profit online news outlet called the Alameda Post.
Transportation
Vehicle access to Alameda Island is via three bridges from Oakland (Park Street, Fruitvale Avenue, and High Street Bridges), as well as the two one-way Posey and Webster Street Tubes leading into Oakland's Chinatown. Connections from Alameda to Bay Farm Island are provided via the Bay Farm Island Bridge for vehicular traffic as well as the Bay Farm Island Bicycle Bridge (the only pedestrian/bicycle-only drawbridge in the United States).
California State Route 61 runs down city streets from the Posey and Webster Street Tubes, across the Bay Farm Island Bridge, and south to the Oakland Airport. The island is just minutes off Interstate 880 in Oakland. The speed limit for the city is 25 mph (40 km/h) on almost every road.
Public transportation options include:
AC Transit buses, which range from local connections to Oakland and Berkeley to express service to San Francisco
Ferry services – In addition to the Alameda/Oakland Ferry and the Alameda Harbor Bay Ferry routes, San Francisco Bay Ferry also provides service between Alameda Main Street Station and South San Francisco. All ferry services are operated by the Water Transit Authority.
The closest BART stations are Lake Merritt and 12th Street, near the exit to the Posey Tube, and Fruitvale, near the Fruitvale Bridge. BART's long-term plans for a second tunnel include Alameda as a candidate for the first stop on a new East Bay line.
Notable buildings
Alameda City Hall; NRHP-listed
Alameda High School; NRHP-listed
Croll Building; NRHP-listed and a California Historical Landmark
Masonic Temple and Lodge; NRHP-listed, and part of the Park Street Historic Commercial District
Park Street Historic Commercial District; NRHP-listed and a California Historical Landmark
Notable people
Albert Arents, a mining engineer who helped develop mineral resources of the Rocky Mountains.
John Baker, MLB catcher for San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs, was born in Alameda.
Hester A. Benedict (1838–1921), president, Pacific Coast Women's Press Association
Shirley Temple Black, actress and former U.S. ambassador
Mike Brisiel, an offensive guard for Oakland Raiders.
Virginia Lee Burton, Caldecott-winning children's author and illustrator.
Harold Camping, television and radio personality, president and general manager of Family Stations, Inc.
Phyllis Diller, television comedian, attended Sunday school at First Presbyterian, married and lived in Alameda at the start of her comedy act in San Francisco in the 1950s.
General James Doolittle, who received the Medal of Honor for his bombing of Japan during World War II; Doolittle was born in Alameda in 1896.
Garrett Eckbo, landscape architect who lived in Alameda as a child, later forming the Bay Area firm of Eckbo, Royston, Williams with Robert Royston and Edward Williams.
Leif Erickson, actor, born in Alameda in 1911.
Larry Eustachy, college basketball coach, born in Alameda.
Debbi Fields, founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies, attended Alameda High School, where she was a cheerleader.
Albert Ghiorso, nuclear scientist, co-discoverer of 12 chemical elements on the periodic table; in Guinness Book of World Records for Most Elements Discovered.
Brad Gillis, guitarist with Night Ranger, a San Francisco rock band formed in the 1980s.
Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, lived in Alameda as a child, according to Personal History, her autobiography.
Tim Hardaway Jr., a professional basketball player, was born in Alameda.
Horace Heidt, bandleader and radio personality, born in Alameda on May 21, 1901.
Emily Heller, comedian
Marielle Heller, actress and director
Bruce Henderson, author, grew up in Alameda, according to his book Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War.
Benjamin Jealous, former President of the NAACP, lived in Alameda.
Joseph R. Knowland, congressman and Alameda native, was editor and publisher of the Oakland Tribune.
William Fife Knowland, U.S. Senator, was student body president at Alameda High School.
Robert L. Lippert, theater chain owner and film producer, was an Alameda native.
Paul Mantz, air racer and Hollywood stunt pilot, was born in Alameda in 1903.
Louis A. McCall Sr., drummer and musician known as the co-founder of Con Funk Shun.
Margaret McNamara, founder of Reading is Fundamental, and wife of Robert McNamara, grew up in Alameda.
George P. Miller, a congressman from 1945 to 1973.
Jack Mingo, author
Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl, designer of the Seal of California.
Don Perata, former President Pro Tempore of California State Senate, lives in Alameda; once taught at Saint Joseph Notre Dame High, Encinal High, and Alameda High, among other Alameda schools.
Carl Ravazza, bandleader, born in Alameda, 1910.
Bill Rigney, Major League Baseball player and manager, was born in Alameda.
Dutch Ruether, pitcher for 1927 New York Yankees, was born in Alameda.
Jane Sibbett, actress and comedian, grew up in Alameda.
Operatic mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade has lived in Alameda since 1992.
Sharon Tate, actress, resident in early to late-1960s.
Charles Lee Tilden, for whom Tilden Regional Park is named, was a longtime resident of Alameda; Tilden Way at the southeast end of the city is named for him.
Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, MLB player Tommy Harper, MLB player Curtell Howard Motton, 2003 National League Rookie of the Year Dontrelle Willis, 2007 National League Most Valuable Player Jimmy Rollins, NBA player J.R. Rider, and NFL players Melvin Carver and Junior Tautalatasi all attended Encinal High School.
Jason Kidd (NBA player and coach) and Joe Nelson (MLB pitcher) attended St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda.
MLB players Ray French, Johnny Vergez, Andy Carey, Bill Serena, Erik Schullstrom, Dick Bartell, Duffy Lewis, Chris Speier, and Bryan Woo all attended Alameda High School.
Many people from naval families, including celebrities such as Ann Curry, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Tom Hanks, and Jim Morrison of The Doors, have lived in Alameda.
Sister cities
Alameda's relationships with Wuxi and Jiangyin were initiated in 2005, in part, by Stewart Chen, who then served on the City of Alameda Social Service and Human Relations board, and who went on to be elected to Alameda City Council in November 2012.
Wuxi, China, is a so-called friendship city, because the diplomacy organization Sister Cities International does not recognize the relationship.
Jiangyin, China
Arita, Japan
Yeongdong-gun, South Korea
Lidingö, Sweden. Initiated in 1959 as part of President Eisenhower's people-to-people-movement, whose purpose was to develop better understanding among people from different countries after World War II. Both Alameda and Lidingö are islands with a bridge connecting them to a big city.
Dumaguete, Philippines
Friendship city
Wuxi, China (Friendship city since 2004)
See also
Alameda Island
Bay Farm Island
Coast Guard Island
List of islands of California
List of ships built in Alameda, California
References
External links
1854 establishments in California
Cities in Alameda County, California
Incorporated cities and towns in California
Populated places established in 1854
Populated coastal places in California
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Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to "Accy", the town has a population of 35,456 according to the 2011 census.
Accrington is a former centre of the cotton and textile machinery industries. The town is famed for manufacturing the hardest and densest building bricks in the world, "The Accrington NORI" (iron), which were used in the construction of the Empire State Building and for the foundations of Blackpool Tower; famous for Accrington Stanley F.C. and the Haworth Art Gallery which holds Europe's largest collection of Tiffany glass.
History
Etymology
The name "Accrington" likely has Anglo-Saxon origins. The earliest known recording of the name is found in the Parish of Whalley records from 850, where it is written as "Akeringastun". In subsequent records, the name appears in various forms, including "Akarinton" in 1194, "Akerunton", "Akerinton", and "Akerynton" in 1258, "Acrinton" in 1292, "Ackryngton" in 1311, and "Acryngton" in 1324. The name may derive from the Old English words "æcern", meaning "acorn", and "tun", meaning "farmstead" or "village", thus possibly meaning "acorn farmstead". However, some sources argue that this interpretation is not definitive and that alternative explanations may exist.
New Accrington, the southern part of the town, was historically part of the Forest of Blackburnshire. The area's abundance of oak trees can be inferred from local place names such as Broad Oak and Oak Hill. Acorns, a product of oak trees, were once a crucial food source for swine, which may have led to the naming of a farmstead after this resource. In the Lancashire dialect, "acorn" is pronounced "akran", which might have influenced the name's development.
No known Old English personal name corresponds to the first element in "Accrington". Nevertheless, the Frisian names "Akkrum" and "Akkeringa", as well as the Dutch name "Akkerghem", are believed to derive from the personal name "Akker". This finding suggests the possibility of a related Old English name from which "Accrington" could have originated. It is also worth noting that "Ingas" is the Old Norse word for "tribe", which may be relevant to the name's origin.
Overall, the etymology of "Accrington" is complex and there are several theories about its origin. While the "acorn farmstead" interpretation is the most commonly accepted explanation, further research and analysis may be needed to confirm or refute this theory, or to identify alternative possibilities.
Early history
There appears to be no mention of Accrington from the Roman period. The area typically appears to be heavily forested, with very few established settlements. According to folklore, a tall Danish tribal leader named Wada invaded the area between 760 and 798; who seems to have founded Waddington, Paddington (Padiham) and Akeringastun (Accrington). Descendants of the Wada held much of the lands until the sixteenth century. In 1442, the Waddingtons' hold leases on Berefeld (Bellfield), and in 1517 it is recorded that Thomas Waddington transferred the lands Scaytcliff (Scaitcliffe) and Peneworth (Pennyworth) to Nicholas Rishton and to his Son Geoffrey.
Accrington covers two townships which were established in 1507 following disafforestation; those of Old Accrington and New Accrington; which were merged in 1878 with the incorporation of the borough council. The William Yates map of The county Palatine of Lancaster printed in 1786 shows Old Accrington included the area of Oaklea and also the intersection of the Winburn River (now the River Hyndburn) and Warmden Brook. New Accrington included the area of Green Haworth and Broadfield. There have been settlements there since the medieval period, likely in the Grange Lane and Black Abbey area, and the King's Highway which passes above the town was at one time used by the kings and queens of England when they used the area for hunting when the Forest of Accrington was one of the four forests of the hundred of Blackburnshire.
Robert de Lacy gave the manor of Accrington to the monks of Kirkstall in the 12th century. The monks built a grange there; removing the inhabitants to make room for it. The locals got their revenge by setting fire to the new building, destroying its contents and in the process killing the three lay brothers who occupied it. An area of the town is named 'Black Abbey', a possible reference to the murders. Regardless of whatever happened, Accrington did not remain under monastic control for long before reverting to the de Lacys.
It is thought the monks of Kirkstall may have built a small chapel there during their tenure for the convenience of those in charge residing there and their tenants, but the records are uncertain. What is known is that there was a chapel in Accrington prior to 1553 where the vicar of Whalley was responsible for the maintenance of divine worship. However it did not have its own minister and it was served, when at all, by the curate of one of the adjacent chapels. In 1717 Accrington was served by the curate of Church, who preached there only once a month. St. James's Church was built in 1763, replacing the old chapel however it did not achieve parochial status until as late as 1870.
Industrial Revolution
Until around 1830, visitors considered Accrington to be just a "considerable village". The Industrial Revolution, however, resulted in large changes and Accrington's location on the confluence of a number of streams made it attractive to industry and a number of mills were built in the town in the mid-18th century. Further industrialisation then followed in the late-18th century and local landowners began building mansions in the area on the outskirts of the settlement where their mills were located while their employees lived in overcrowded unsanitary conditions in the centre.
Industrialisation resulted in rapid population growth during the 19th century, as people moved from over North West England to Accrington, with the population increasing from 3,266 in 1811 to 10,376 in 1851 to 43,211 in 1901 to its peak in 1911 at 45,029.
This fast population growth and slow response from the established church allowed non-conformism to flourish in the town. By the mid-19th century, there were Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist, United Free Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist, Swedenborgian, Unitarian, Roman Catholic and Catholic Apostolic churches in the town. The Swedenborgian church was so grand that it was considered to be the ‘Cathedral' of that denomination.
For many decades the textiles industry, the engineering industry and coal mining were the central activities of the town. Cotton mills and dye works provided work for the inhabitants, but often in very difficult conditions. There was a regular conflict with employers over wages and working conditions. On 24 April 1826 over 1,000 men and women, many armed, gathered at Whinney Hill in Clayton-le-Moors to listen to a speaker from where they marched on Sykes's Mill at Higher Grange Lane, near the site of the modern police station and magistrates' courts, and smashed over 60 looms. These riots spread from Accrington through Oswaldtwistle, Blackburn, Darwen, Rossendale, Bury and Chorley. In the end, after three days of riots 1,139 looms were destroyed, 4 rioters and 2 bystanders shot dead by the authorities in Rossendale and 41 rioters sentenced to death (all of whose sentences were commuted).
In 1842 'plug riots' a general strike spread from town to town due to conditions in the town. In a population of 9,000 people as few as 100 were fully employed. From 15 August 1842 the situation boiled over and bands of men entered the mills which were running and stopped the machinery by knocking out the boiler plugs. This allowed the water and steam to escape shutting down the mill machinery. Thousands of strikers walked over the hills from one town to another to persuade people to join the strike in civil disturbances that lasted about a week. The strike was associated with the Chartist movement but eventually proved unsuccessful in its aims.
In the early 1860s the Lancashire cotton famine badly affected Accrington, although less so than the wider area due to its more diverse economy, with as many as half of the town's mill employees out of work at one time.
Conditions were such that a Local Board of Health was constituted in 1853 and the town itself incorporated in 1878 allowing the enforcement of local laws to improve the town.
Accrington Pals
One well-known association the town has is with the 'Accrington Pals', the nickname given to the smallest home town battalion of volunteers formed to fight in the First World War. The Pals battalions were a peculiarity of the 1914-18 war: Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, believed that it would help recruitment if friends and work-mates from the same town were able to join up and fight together. Strictly speaking, the 'Accrington Pals' battalion is properly known as the '11th East Lancashire Regiment': the nickname is a little misleading, since of the four 250-strong companies that made up the original battalion only one was composed of men from Accrington. The rest volunteered from other east Lancashire towns such as Burnley, Blackburn and Chorley.
The Pals' first day of action, 1 July 1916, took place in Serre, near Montauban in the north of France. It was part of the 'Big Push' (later known as the Battle of the Somme) that was intended to force the German Army into a retreat from the Western Front, a line they had held since late 1914. The German defences in Serre were supposed to have been obliterated by sustained, heavy, British shelling during the preceding week; however, as the battalion advanced it met with fierce resistance. 235 men were killed and a further 350 wounded — more than half of the battalion — within half an hour. Similarly, desperate losses were suffered elsewhere on the front, in a disastrous day for the British Army (approximately 19,000 British soldiers were killed in a single day).
Later in the year, the East Lancashire Regiment was rebuilt with new volunteers — in all, 865 Accrington men were killed during World War I. All of these names are recorded on a war memorial, an imposing white stone cenotaph, which stands in Oak Hill Park in the south of the town. The cenotaph also lists the names of 173 local fatalities from World War II. The trenches from which the Accrington Pals advanced on 1 July 1916 are still visible in John Copse west of the village of Serre, and there is a memorial there made of Accrington brick.
After the war and until 1986, Accrington Corporation buses were painted in the regimental colours of red and blue with gold lining. The mudguards were painted black as a sign of mourning. The current Mayor of Accrington is Lance Sergeant Gary Archer of the Scots Guards.
Demography
The 2001 census gave the population of Accrington town as 35,200. The figure for the urban area was 71,220, increased from 70,442 in 1991. This total includes Accrington, Church, Clayton-le-Moors, Great Harwood and Oswaldtwistle.
The 2011 census gave a population of 35,456 for the Accrington built-up area subdivision (which includes Huncoat, Baxenden and Rising Bridge in Rossendale) and a population of 125,000 for the wider Accrington/Rossendale Built-up area. The area in 2001 was listed as , whereas in 2011 it was .
The borough of Hyndburn as a whole has a population of 80,734. This includes Accrington Urban Area and other outlying towns and villages such as; Altham, Rishton, part of Belthorn, and Knuzden and Whitebirk (considered suburbs of Blackburn).
Economy
Historically, cotton and textile machinery were important industries in Accrington, with many mills and factories operating in the town during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The town was renowned for its production of cotton cloth, and several of its mills became famous for their high-quality fabrics, including the Victoria and Jubilee mills. However, like many other towns in Lancashire, the decline of the cotton industry in the mid-20th century led to a significant reduction in manufacturing activity in Accrington.
One notable industrial product associated with Accrington is NORI bricks, a type of iron-hard engineering brick that was produced in nearby Huncoat. The NORI brickworks were established in the 1860s, and their products were widely used in the construction of mills, factories, and other industrial buildings throughout the north of England, as well as Blackpool Tower and the Empire State Building. The brickworks closed in 2013 due to declining demand, but reopened in 2015 after being acquired by a local businessman.
Today, the town's economy is more diverse, with a range of businesses and services operating in the area. Many of the old mill and factory buildings have been repurposed as offices, workshops, and other facilities, providing space for a variety of enterprises. The town also has a number of retail and commercial areas, including the Arndale Centre and the Peel Centre, which are home to a range of shops, restaurants, and other businesses.
Accrington power station was a coal and refuse-fired electricity generating station that operated on Argyle Street adjacent to the gasworks between 1900 and 1958. The power station supplied electricity to Accrington, Haslingden, and the Altham and Clayton-le-Moors areas. The site is now a residential area.
Accrington remains a centre of business and industry in the region, with a rich history of manufacturing and innovation. The area benefits from its location close to major transport links, including the M65 motorway and the East Lancashire railway line, which connect Accrington to other parts of the county and beyond.
In recent years, the town has seen investment in new development projects, including the £60 million "Civic Quarter" regeneration scheme, which aims to revitalize the town center and create new jobs and opportunities for local people. The project includes the construction of a new public square, a state-of-the-art leisure center, and new office and retail spaces, as well as the refurbishment of existing buildings.
In addition to its commercial and industrial activities, Accrington is also home to a number of cultural and recreational amenities. The town has a rich sporting heritage, with Accrington Stanley Football Club, founded in 1968, representing the town in the English Football League. The town also has a strong tradition of brass band music, with several local bands competing at regional and national level. Other cultural attractions in the town include the Haworth Art Gallery, which houses a collection of British art and decorative arts, and the Accrington Market Hall, which runs events and activities.
Poverty, regeneration and investment
Some areas of Accrington have high levels of poverty and deprivation. In one area of the town in 2020, 77% of children were living in poverty. Deprivation increased in Accrington from 2004 to 2010. The Accrington Town Centre Investment Plan 2022-2032 states "Accrington has severe pockets of deprivation – particularly around employment, income and living environment - which has been getting worse during the last 20 years".
The council has a regeneration plan in place, which will, according to the council, boost the local economy. The plan is to upgrade old shops and to build a bus station. A memorial for the Accrington Pals may be built outside the town hall.
The Hyndburn Borough Council plans to spend £10 million to refurbish the town centre, including:
Revitalising the town square to attract visitors.
Building a new bus station. Plans for the new bus station were put forward in January 2013 and approved in October 2014. The bus station was completed during and officially opened on 11 July 2016. The new station was criticised by traders as the old station was closer and easier to get to.
Half of Blackburn Road is being refurbished and is now being made into a more attractive shopping street, upgrading shops, adding more trees, and repaving the pavements.
As of 2014, two new phases were being built: the first one called the Acorn Park, where new houses were being built with balconies and greener spaces, and Project Phoenix, which will also include new housing.
Geography
Accrington is a hill town located at between the Pennines and the West Pennine Moors, within a bowl and largely encircled by surrounding hills to rising to a height of in the case of Hameldon Hill to the east. The River Hyndburn or Accrington Brook flows through the centre of the town. Hill settlements origins were as the economic foci of the district engaging in the spinning and weaving of woollen cloth. Wool, lead and coal were other local industries.
Geographical coordinates: 53° 46' 0" North, 2° 21' 0" West. Height above sea level: there is a spot height outside the Market Hall which is the benchmark on the side of the neighbouring Town Hall is . The highest height in the town is which is in Baxenden and the lowest at the town hall which is at .
Transport
Railway
Accrington railway station, located on the East Lancashire Line, provides strong local travel links. The station runs trains locally and from Blackpool to York. However, recent changes to the train timetables have increased the journey time to Preston by up to 1.5 hours, a vital link to London or Scotland. In 2015, a train service to Manchester via the Todmorden Curve opened, providing a new rail link south to Manchester.
Roads
The town is served by junction seven of the M65 motorway and the A680 road, which runs from Rochdale to Whalley. The town is also linked from the A56 dual carriageway which briefly merges with the A680, connecting to the M66 motorway heading towards Manchester. The closest airports are Manchester Airport, Blackpool Airport, and Leeds Bradford Airport, all within 30 miles.
Bus
Several bus companies provide services in the town, including Pilkington Bus, Holmeswood Coaches, Rosso, and Transdev Blazefield subsidiaries Blackburn Bus Company and Burnley Bus Company. Regular bus services connect Accrington to other towns in East Lancashire, including Blackburn, Oswaldtwistle, Rishton, Burnley, and Clitheroe. M&M Coaches provided services in the area until the company ceased business suddenly on 21 September 2016.
Cycleways and Footpaths
The trackbed from Accrington to Baxenden, which was once a rail link south to Manchester, is now a linear treelined cycleway/footpath. The cycleway/footpath is a popular route for cycling and walking, offering views
Public services
Accrington Library, on St James Street, is a Carnegie library that opened in 1908. It is noted for its stained glass window designed by Gustav Hiller and as a place of inspiration for the young Jeanette Winterson.
Near the Tesco supermarket, there is Accrington Skate Park which is popular during the school holidays. On Broadway, Accrington Police Station serves the Borough of Hyndburn. In April 2003, Hyndburn Community Fire Station opened, also serving the Borough of Hyndburn.
Police Services
The town is served by the Lancashire Constabulary Police station on Broadway after moving into town from its previous location on Manchester Road as an effort to save money due to rising expenses and decreasing funding by the government. Crime is very low in Accrington compared to nearby towns.
Policing of the Railway station and railway-owned properties are served by the British Transport Police, nearest post in Preston.
Social
Governance
Accrington is represented in parliament as a part of the constituency of Hyndburn. The constituency boundaries do not align exactly with those of the district of the same name.
Accrington was first represented nationally after the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 after the 1885 general election by Accrington (UK Parliament constituency). This seat was abolished in the 1983 general election and replaced with the present constituency of Hyndburn (UK Parliament constituency).
Accrington became incorporated as a municipal borough in 1878. Under the Local Government Act 1972, since 1974, the town has formed part of the larger Borough of Hyndburn including the former Urban Districts of Oswaldtwistle, Church, Clayton-le-Moors, Great Harwood and Rishton.
Hyndburn consists of 16 wards, electing a total of 35 councillors. Due to its size Accrington is represented by a number of wards in the Borough of Hyndburn. The town largely consists of the Milnshaw, Peel, Central, Barnfield and Spring Hill wards, although some parts of those wards are in other towns in the borough.
Health
The local hospital is Accrington Victoria Hospital however, as it only deals with minor issues, Accident and Emergency is provided by the Royal Blackburn Hospital. Other services are provided at the Accrington Pals Primary Health Care Centre and the Accrington Acorn Primary Health Care Centre.
Media
The chief publications in the area are the weekly Accrington Observer, part of MEN media, and the Lancashire Telegraph. Accrington Observer is currently stationed within the Market Hall.
Accrington Dialect
The dialect spoken in Accrington is part of the broader Lancashire dialect, which belongs to the larger category of Northern English dialects. This dialect has its roots in the Old English and Middle English languages, with influences from Old Norse due to the Viking invasions in the region. Features of the Accrington dialect include pronunciations, vocabulary, and grammatical structures that distinguish it from other dialects in the Lancashire region.
Vocabulary specific to the Accrington dialect may include words such as "ginnel" (a narrow passage between buildings) or "snap" (referring to a packed lunch or a meal taken to work).
In terms of grammar, the Accrington dialect may exhibit features common to other Northern English dialects, such as the use of "thee" and "thou" for "you" and "were" instead of "was" in certain contexts. Additionally, the Accrington dialect might display non-standard verb conjugations and a preference for certain sentence structures or word order.
The Accrington dialect, like many local dialects, is subject to change and variation over time due to factors such as increased mobility, urbanization, and exposure to other dialects and languages. This may lead to a gradual loss or modification of certain dialect features and an increased convergence with more standardised forms of English.
History of Accrington Dialect
The history of the Accrington dialect is intertwined with the broader history of the Lancashire dialect, as well as the linguistic influences that have shaped the region over time. Although specific information about the Accrington dialect's history is limited, it is reasonable to assume that it has been impacted by similar historical events and linguistic developments as the wider Lancashire area.
Influence of Old English and Middle English
The Accrington dialect has its roots in the Old English and Middle English languages that were spoken in England during the early and late medieval periods, respectively. These languages formed the basis for many dialects in the region, including those spoken in Accrington. As the dialect evolved over time, it retained some elements of these early linguistic influences, which can be observed in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of the modern Accrington dialect.
Impact of Viking invasions and Old Norse
The Viking invasions during the late 8th to 11th centuries introduced the Old Norse language to the north of England, including the Lancashire region. This contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers likely influenced the Accrington dialect and other Lancashire dialects, with some Old Norse words and grammatical features being incorporated into the local language. As a result, the Accrington dialect shares some common linguistic traits with other Northern English dialects that have been similarly impacted by the Old Norse influence.
Development and changes over time
The Accrington dialect, like other regional dialects, has undergone various changes and developments throughout its history. Factors contributing to these changes may include the expansion and decline of local industries, increased mobility and migration, and exposure to other dialects and languages. Additionally, educational policies and the influence of mass media may have played a role in shaping the modern Accrington dialect, as people in the area increasingly adopt more standardized forms of English in formal settings. Despite these changes, the Accrington dialect continues to exhibit unique features that distinguish it from other dialects in the Lancashire region and reflects the town's rich linguistic heritage.
Pronunciation and Phonetics
The pronunciation and phonetics of the Accrington dialect are characterized by a few distinctive features that set it apart from other dialects in the Lancashire region. However, specific studies and resources focusing solely on the phonetics and pronunciation of the Accrington dialect are currently unavailable. The limited information available is largely based on the broader Lancashire dialect, which may encompass some of the features present in the Accrington dialect. The lack of specific studies or resources highlights a need for more research and documentation on the Accrington dialect to better understand its unique phonetic and pronunciation features.
Vowel shifts and variations
One example of a vowel shift in the Accrington dialect is the pronunciation of the word "acorn" as "akran". This variation demonstrates a tendency in the Accrington dialect to alter vowel sounds compared to Standard English. Other examples of vowel shifts specific to Accrington are not well-documented, but the "akran" example suggests that similar variations may exist in other words and phrases.
Consonant changes
Information on consonant changes specific to the Accrington dialect is scarce. However, based on the broader tendencies of Lancashire dialects and the limited available evidence, it is possible that the Accrington dialect exhibits consonant changes such as the pronunciation of "th" as "d" or "t" (e.g., "them" pronounced as "dem" or "tem") or the elision of certain consonants in some words. Further research is needed to identify and document specific consonant changes unique to the Accrington dialect.
Accent and stress patterns
The accent and stress patterns of the Accrington dialect have not been thoroughly documented in linguistic research. It is difficult to provide specific examples or details about the stress patterns in the Accrington dialect without more comprehensive data. Further study of the Accrington dialect's pronunciation and phonetics is necessary to fully understand its unique accent and stress patterns.
In conclusion, while the Accrington dialect exhibits some unique features, such as the pronunciation of "acorn" as "akran", more research and documentation are needed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the dialect's specific vowel shifts, consonant changes, and accent and stress patterns. The lack of specific studies on the Accrington dialect highlights an opportunity for linguists and researchers to further explore this unique dialect and its pronunciation and phonetics.
Local and Regional Words
Ginnel - A local term for a narrow passage or alleyway between buildings, commonly found in Accrington and other Lancashire towns.
Mither - A verb meaning to bother or annoy someone, or to be fussy or worried about something.
Industry and Occupation-Related Terminology
Tackler - A term referring to a skilled worker responsible for setting up and maintaining looms in the textile industry, which was used in Accrington during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Landscape and Geography-Related Vocabulary
Clough - A term used in Accrington and other parts of Lancashire to describe a steep-sided, wooded valley or ravine, as in the case of Woodnook Clough.
Brook - A small stream or watercourse, such as the Hyndburn Brook, which runs through Accrington.
Ancient Customs and Traditions of Accrington
Accrington, as a historic town, has been home to several ancient customs and traditions that have shaped its local culture and identity. While some of these customs may no longer be practiced, they offer valuable insights into the town's past.
Rush-Bearing Festival
One of the most notable ancient customs in Accrington was the rush-bearing festival. This annual event involved the gathering of rushes from nearby marshlands and meadows to be used as fresh flooring material in local churches. The rushes were then transported to the churches in decorative carts or wagons, accompanied by a festive procession, music, and dancing. This event was once widespread across Lancashire and the North of England, but its prevalence in Accrington is particularly noteworthy.
Wakes Week
Another significant custom in Accrington was Wakes Week, a holiday period that took place in the town and surrounding areas. Typically, it occurred during the summer months and lasted for one week. During this time, local mills and factories closed, allowing workers to enjoy a much-needed break from their labor-intensive occupations. Wakes Week often featured various festivities, such as fairs, carnivals, and other communal events, which brought the community together in celebration.
Local Sports and Games
In the past, Accrington was known for hosting traditional sports and games, which were enjoyed by the local community. Some of these sports included football, cricket, and quoits. These games not only provided entertainment but also fostered a sense of community spirit and camaraderie.
Sport
Football team
Accrington Stanley F.C., entered the Football League in 1921 with the formation of the old Third Division (North); after haunting the lower reaches of English football for forty years, they eventually resigned from the League in 1962, due to financial problems, and folded in 1965. The club was reformed three years later and then worked its way through the non-league divisions to reach the Nationwide Conference in 2003. In the 2005–06 season, Stanley, after winning against Woking with three matches to spare, secured a place back in the Football League and the town celebrated with a small parade and honours placed on senior executives of the team. One of the teams relegated— and thus being replaced by Stanley—were Oxford United, who was voted into the Football League to replace the previous Accrington Stanley. The football stadium is called the Crown Ground. Until the 2012–13 season, when Fleetwood Town entered the league, Accrington was the smallest town in England and Wales with a Football League club.
Accrington Stanley Football Club has had its own pub in the town, the Crown, since July 2007.
Team history
An earlier club, Accrington F.C., was one of the twelve founder members of the Football League in 1888. However, their time in league football was even less successful and considerably briefer than that of Accrington Stanley: they dropped out of the league in 1893 and folded shortly afterwards due to financial problems. The town of Accrington thus has the unique "distinction" of having lost two separate clubs from league football. Accrington Stanley F.C. are currently placed in EFL League Two after being relegated from EFL League One in the 2022/23 season, having finished 23rd.
Cricket
Accrington Cricket Club plays at Thorneyholme Road in the Lancashire League. Cricket is also played in parks. Schools nearby have shown major interest in cricket and have held cricket training and tournaments.
Other sports
There are two sports centres, the main one being the Hyndburn Sports Centre, which recently renovated its swimming pool area and is situated near Lidl.
Education
Accrington has the following primary schools:
St Mary's RC Primary School, Clayton le Moors
Hyndburn Park Primary School,
Peel Park Primary School,
Sacred Heart Primary School,
Benjamin Hargreaves CE Primary School,
Springhill County Primary School,
Accrington Huncoat Primary School,
St Johns and St Augustines CE Primary School,
St Mary Magdalen's CE Primary School,
St Nicholas' CE Primary School,
Woodnook Primary School,
St James CE Primary School, Altham,
St Johns CE Primary School, Baxenden,
All Saints CE Primary School,
Mount Pleasant Primary School,
Green Haworth CE Primary School,
Stonefold CE Primary School,
St Peters CE Primary School.
St Mary's RC Primary School, Oswaldtwistle.
St Anne's and St Joseph's RC Primary School
St Oswald's RC Primary School
Hippings Methodist Primary School Oswaldtwistle
St Andrews CoE Primary School Oswaldtwistle
St Oswalds CoE Primary School Knuzden
West End Primary School Oswaldtwistle
Moor End Community Primary School Oswaldtwistle
St Paul's CoE Primary School Oswaldtwistle
The secondary schools serving Accrington are:
Accrington Academy
Heathland School
The Hollins
The Hyndburn Academy
Mount Carmel Roman Catholic High School
Rhyddings
St Christopher's Church of England High School
The college in the town centre is Accrington and Rossendale College; nearby universities include University Centre at Blackburn College, and the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.
Landmarks
Haworth Art Gallery
The Haworth Art Gallery is an art museum located in Accrington, Lancashire, England. The gallery is housed in a Tudor-style mansion, originally known as Hollins Hill, which was built in 1909 by William Haworth, a local cotton manufacturer. Upon his death in 1913, William Haworth bequeathed the mansion and its surrounding parkland to the people of Accrington. The gallery opened in 1921.
The Haworth Art Gallery holds the largest public collection of Tiffany glass in Europe, known as the Tiffany Glass Collection. The collection was donated by Joseph Briggs, an Accrington native who worked for the famous American artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany. In addition to the Tiffany Glass Collection, the gallery holds a range of artwork, including 19th and 20th-century oil paintings, watercolours, prints, and sculptures.
The Haworth Art Gallery also holds temporary exhibitions showing contemporary art by local and national artists.
The Viaduct
The Viaduct is a bridge which has a railway line on it, it goes through the town and has many storage units and shop on sale by National Rail. The Viaduct ends at the Accrington Eco Station.
Town Hall
Accrington Town Hall was built in memory of Sir Robert Peel and opened as the Peel Institute in 1858; it is also listed.
The Arcade
The Arcade is a Victorian shopping centre with about 10-15 shops and restaurants.
Oakhill Park
Oakhill Park is a large and old park with a view of Accrington. It has won awards such as the best park in Lancashire. It has also been awarded an Eco Award. It is on Manchester Road.
Haworth Park
Haworth Park can be accessed from Manchester Road and is off Hollins Lane at the top of Harcourt Road. The Park was originally William Haworth's private residence. The Haworth Art Gallery holds the Tiffany Glass collection.
The Coppice and Peel Park
Peel Park is a green space in the centre of Accrington. The park was opened by William Peel on 29 September 1909 and was originally called the Corporation Park. The park was renamed in honour of William Peel, the grandson of Sir Robert Peel, in recognition of his service as a Liberal MP for the town. The park covers an area of approximately 18 acres and includes a wide range of features, including a lake, flower gardens, a bandstand, and a bowling green.
The Coppice is a hill in the park, and provides a 2.2-mile scenic walk around the park, offering visitors views of the surrounding area. The Coppice has been part of the park since it was first opened, and there have been refurbishments to the paths and monuments at the top of the hill over the years.
In 2009, the people of Accrington celebrated the centenary of the Coppice being handed over to the town. The occasion was marked with a series of events and activities, including a refurbishment of the paths and monument at the top of the hill. Since then, there have been several revamps to the playground area of the park.
Events and festivals are held in the park throughout the year, including the annual Accrington Food and Drink Festival, which takes place in the summer.
Early landowners
This section outlines the contributions of landowning families, including the de Lacy, Walmsley, Peel, Hargreaves and Haworth families, to the development of Accrington.
De Lacy family
The de Lacy family were the first recorded landowners in Accrington, instrumental in the town's establishment as a regional center for agriculture and trade.
Walmsley family
The Walmsley family acquired the manor of Accrington in the 16th century and owned several mills, contributing to the expansion of Accrington's textile industry.
Peel family
The Peel family were key figures in the 18th and 19th centuries, with Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet, establishing textile mills in the area, significantly boosting Accrington's economy.
Hargreaves family
The Hargreaves family built the Broad Oak Print Works in 1778, which became one of the largest textile printing establishments in the region.
Haworth family
The Haworth family were prominent landowners in Accrington, with James Haworth establishing Haworth Mill in the early 1800s. The family's investments in local industry contributed to the town's economic development.
Peel, Yates and Co.
Peel, Yates and Co. was a partnership between the Peel family and the Yates family. The Peel family, led by Robert Peel (1750-1830), and the Yates family, led by William Yates (1769-1849), established Peel, Yates and Co. in 1795. The company owned and operated several cotton mills in Accrington, including the Woodnook Mill, which employed around 800 people during its peak operation.
Duckworth Family
The Duckworth family were landowners and industrialists in Accrington during the 19th century. They invested in the local textile industry, owning several mills, such as the Broad Oak Mill and the Spring Hill Mill. The Duckworth family's mills employed hundreds of workers.
Birtwistle family
The Birtwistle family were involved in the cotton industry in Accrington, owning and operating cotton mills during the 19th century. Members of the family, including John Birtwistle (1807-1884), owned mills like the Church Bank Mill and the Wellington Mill, employing over 1,000 workers between the two establishments.
Holden family
The Holden family contributed to Accrington's development through their involvement in various industries, such as coal mining and brick manufacturing. The family-owned Accrington Brick and Tile Company, established by Joseph Holden
Notable residents
Alan Ramsbottom, professional cyclist
Andy Hargreaves, academic
Andy Kanavan, rock drummer with Dire Straits and Level 9 a.k.a. Andy Canavan was born in the town
Jenny (Jane) Kenney, sister of suffragette Annie Kenney who taught at Montessori school in the 1900s
Anthony Rushton, tech entrepreneur
Barry Stanton (actor), actor for RSC and films such as The Madness of King George
David Lloyd, cricketer, now a pundit for Sky Sports
Diana Vickers, singer-songwriter, stage actress and fashion designer
Edward Ormerod, mining engineer and inventor of the Ormerod safety link for use in coal mines
Frederick Higginbottom, journalist and newspaper editor
Graeme Fowler, cricketer, former England batsman, cricket coach and occasional pundit on BBC Radio's Test Match Special
Harrison Birtwistle, composer
Hollie Steel, Britain's Got Talent finalist of 2009
Jeanette Winterson, author; Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is an account of her childhood in the town
John Rex Whinfield, chemist, inventor of Terylene (polyester), the first completely synthetic fibre invented in UK
John Virtue, artist
Jon Anderson, singer with rock band Yes, was born in the town
Jonathan Slinger, RADA trained actor
Julie Hesmondhalgh, actor, Hayley Cropper in the TV Soap Coronation Street
Mick O'Shea, author and scriptwriter
Mike Duxbury, footballer, was born in the town
Mystic Meg, astrologer, was born in the town as Margaret Anne Lake in 1942
Netherwood Hughes, World War I veteran, died in 2009, aged 108
Nicholas Freeston (1907-1978), Award-winning Lancashire poet
Pauline Aitken, artist
Paul Manning, undercover police officer and whistleblower
Reece Bibby, member of Stereo Kicks and 2014 finalist of The X Factor (UK TV series). Now a member of the band New Hope Club
Ron Hill, long-distance and marathon runner
Thomas Birtwistle, trade unionist
Vicky Entwistle, actor, Janice Battersby in the TV Soap Coronation Street
William Macrorie bishop of Maritzburg
Stephen Heys, footballer
Val Robinson, footballer and field hockey player
See also
Listed buildings in Accrington
Howard & Bullough
References
Further reading
William Turner. Pals: the 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington), East Lancashire Regiment. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 1998.
External links
Hyndburn Borough Council
Towns in Lancashire
Unparished areas in Lancashire
Geography of Hyndburn
English royal forests
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Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the first desktop processor to reach speeds of one gigahertz (GHz). It made its debut as AMD's high-end processor brand on June 23, 1999. Over the years AMD has used the Athlon name with the 64-bit Athlon 64 architecture, the Athlon II, and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) chips targeting the Socket AM1 desktop SoC architecture, and Socket AM4 Zen microarchitecture. The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.
Athlon comes from the Ancient Greek (athlon), meaning "(sport) contest", or "prize of a contest", or "place of a contest; arena". With the Athlon name originally used for AMD's high-end processors, AMD currently uses Athlon for budget APUs with integrated graphics. AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium.
Brand history
K7 design and development
The first Athlon processor was a result of AMD's development of K7 processors in the 1990s. AMD founder and then-CEO Jerry Sanders aggressively pursued strategic partnerships and engineering talent in the late 1990s, working to build on earlier successes in the PC market with the AMD K6 processor line. One major partnership announced in 1998 paired AMD with semiconductor giant Motorola to co-develop copper-based semiconductor technology, resulting in the K7 project being the first commercial processor to utilize copper fabrication technology. In the announcement, Sanders referred to the partnership as creating a "virtual gorilla" that would enable AMD to compete with Intel on fabrication capacity while limiting AMD's financial outlay for new facilities. The K7 design team was led by Dirk Meyer, who had previously worked as a lead engineer at DEC on multiple Alpha microprocessors. When DEC was sold to Compaq in 1998 and discontinued Alpha processor development, Sanders brought most of the Alpha design team to the K7 project. This added to the previously acquired NexGen K6 team, which already included engineers such as Vinod Dham.
Original release
The AMD Athlon processor launched on June 23, 1999, with general availability by August 1999. Subsequently, from August 1999 until January 2002, this initial K7 processor was the fastest x86 chip in the world. Wrote the Los Angeles Times on October 5, 1999: "AMD has historically trailed Intel’s fastest processors, but has overtaken the industry leader with the new Athlon. Analysts say the Athlon, which will be used by Compaq, IBM and other manufacturers in their most powerful PCs, is significantly faster than Intel’s flagship Pentium III, which runs at a top speed of 600MHz." A number of features helped the chips compete with Intel. By working with Motorola, AMD had been able to refine copper interconnect manufacturing about one year before Intel, with the revised process permitting 180-nanometer processor production. The accompanying die-shrink resulted in lower power consumption, permitting AMD to increase Athlon clock speeds to the 1 GHz range. The Athlon architecture also used the EV6 bus licensed from DEC as its main system bus, allowing AMD to develop its own products without needing to license Intel's GTL+ bus. By the summer of 2000, AMD was shipping Athlons at high volume, and the chips were being used in systems by Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers among others.
Later Athlon iterations
The second-generation Athlon, the Thunderbird, debuted in 2000. AMD released the Athlon XP the following year, and the Athlon XP's immediate successor, the Athlon 64, was an AMD64-architecture microprocessor released in 2003. After the 2007 launch of the Phenom processors, the Athlon name was also used for mid-range processors, positioned above brands such as Sempron. The Athlon 64 X2 was released in 2005 as the first native dual-core desktop CPU designed by AMD, and the Athlon X2 was a subsequent family based on the Athlon 64 X2. Introduced in 2009, Athlon II was a dual-core family of Athlon chips.
A USD$55 low-power Athlon 200GE with a Radeon graphics processor was introduced in September 2018, sitting under the Ryzen 3 2200G. This iteration of Athlon used AMD's Zen-based Raven Ridge core, which in turn had debuted in Ryzen with Radeon graphics processors. With the release, AMD began using the Athlon brand name to refer to "low-cost, high-volume products", in a situation similar to both Intel's Celeron and Pentium Gold. The modern Athlon 3000G was introduced in 2019 and was positioned as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor. AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium. While CPU processing performance is in the same ballpark, the Athlon 3000G uses Radeon Vega graphics, which are rated as more powerful than the Pentium's Intel UHD Graphics.
Generations
Athlon Classic (1999)
The AMD Athlon processor launched on June 23, 1999, with general availability by August 1999. Subsequently, from August 1999 until January 2002, this initial K7 processor was the fastest x86 chip in the world. At launch it was, on average, 10% faster than the Pentium III at the same clock for business applications and 20% faster for gaming workloads. In commercial terms, the Athlon "Classic" was an enormous success.
Features
The Athlon Classic is a cartridge-based processor, named Slot A and similar to Intel's cartridge Slot 1 used for Pentium II and Pentium III. It used the same, commonly available, physical 242-pin connector used by Intel Slot 1 processors but rotated by 180 degrees to connect the processor to the motherboard. The cartridge assembly allowed the use of higher-speed cache memory modules than could be put on (or reasonably bundled with) motherboards at the time. Similar to the Pentium II and the Katmai-based Pentium III, the Athlon Classic contained 512 KB of L2 cache. This high-speed SRAM cache was run at a divisor of the processor clock and was accessed via its own 64-bit back-side bus, allowing the processor to service both front-side bus requests and cache accesses simultaneously, as compared to pushing everything through the front-side bus.
The Argon-based Athlon contained 22 million transistors and measured 184 mm2. It was fabricated by AMD in a version of their CS44E process, a 250 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process with six levels of aluminium interconnect. "Pluto" and "Orion" Athlons were fabricated in a 180 nm process.
The Athlon's CPU cache consisted of the typical two levels. Athlon was the first x86 processor with a 128 KB split level-1 cache; a 2-way associative cache separated into 2×64 KB for data and instructions (a concept from Harvard architecture). SRAM cache designs at the time were incapable of keeping up with the Athlon's clock scalability, resulting in compromised CPU performance in some computers. With later Athlon models, AMD would integrate the L2 cache onto the processor itself, removing dependence on external cache chips. The Slot-A Athlons were the first multiplier-locked CPUs from AMD, preventing users from setting their own desired clock speed. This was done by AMD in part to hinder CPU remarking and overclocking by resellers, which could result in inconsistent performance. Eventually a product called the "Goldfingers device" was created that could unlock the CPU.
AMD designed the CPU with more robust x86 instruction decoding capabilities than that of K6, to enhance its ability to keep more data in-flight at once. The critical branch-predictor unit was enhanced compared to the K6. Deeper pipelining with more stages allowed higher clock speeds to be attained. Like the AMD K5 and K6, the Athlon dynamically buffered internal micro-instructions at runtime resulting from parallel x86 instruction decoding. The CPU is an out-of-order design, again like previous post-5x86 AMD CPUs. The Athlon utilizes the Alpha 21264's EV6 bus architecture with double data rate (DDR) technology.
AMD ended its long-time handicap with floating point x87 performance by designing a super-pipelined, out-of-order, triple-issue floating-point unit (FPU). Each of its three units could independently calculate an optimal type of instructions with some redundancy, making it possible to operate on more than one floating-point instruction at once. This FPU was a huge step forward for AMD, helping compete with Intel's P6 FPU. The 3DNow! floating-point SIMD technology, again present, received some revisions and was renamed "Enhanced 3DNow!" Additions included DSP instructions and the extended MMX subset of Intel SSE.
Specifications
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
L2-cache: 512 KB, external chips on CPU module with 50%, 40% or 33% of CPU speed
MMX, 3DNow!
Slot A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 200 MT/s (100 MHz double-pumped)
Vcore: 1.6 V (K7), 1.6–1.8 V (K75)
First release: June 23, 1999 (K7), November 29, 1999 (K75)
Clock-rate: 500–700 MHz (K7), 550–1000 MHz (K75)
Athlon Thunderbird (2000–2001)
The second-generation Athlon, the Thunderbird or T-Bird, debuted on June 4, 2000. This version of the Athlon was available in a traditional pin-grid array (PGA) format that plugged into a socket ("Socket A") on the motherboard, or packaged as a Slot A cartridge. The major difference between it and the Athlon Classic was cache design, with AMD adding in 256 KB of on-chip, full-speed exclusive cache. In moving to an exclusive cache design, the L1 cache's contents were not duplicated in the L2, increasing total cache size and functionally creating a large L1 cache with a slower region (the L2) and a fast region (the L1), making the L2 cache into basically a victim cache. With the new cache design, need for high L2 performance and size was lessened, and the simpler L2 cache was less likely to cause clock scaling and yield issues. Thunderbird also moved to a 16-way associative layout.
The Thunderbird was "cherished by many for its overclockability" and proved commercially successful, as AMD's most successful product since the Am386DX-40 ten years earlier. AMD's new fab facility in Dresden increased production for AMD overall and put out Thunderbirds at a fast rate, with the process technology improved by a switch to copper interconnects. After several versions were released in 2000 and 2001 of the Thunderbird, the last Athlon processor using the Thunderbird core was released in 2001 in the summer, at which point speeds were at 1.4 GHz.
The locked multipliers of Socket A Thunderbirds could often be disabled through adding conductive bridges on the surface on the chip, a practice widely known as "the pencil trick".
Specifications
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
MMX, 3DNow!
Slot A & Socket A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 100 MHz (Slot-A, B-models), 133 MHz (C-models) (200 MT/s, 266 MT/s)
Vcore: 1.70–1.75 V
First release: June 4, 2000
Transistor count: 37 million
Manufacturing process: /180 nm
Clock rate:
Slot A: 650–1000 MHz
Socket A, 100 MHz FSB (B-models): 600–1400 MHz
Socket A, 133 MHz FSB (C-models): 1000–1400 MHz
Athlon XP (2001–2003)
Overall, there are four main variants of the Athlon XP desktop CPU: the Palomino, the Thoroughbred, the Thorton, and the Barton. A number of mobile processors were also released, including the Corvette models, and the Dublin model among others.
Palomino
On May 14, 2001, AMD released the Athlon XP processor. It debuted as the Mobile Athlon 4, a mobile version codenamed Corvette, with the desktop Athlon XP released in the fall. The third-generation Athlon, code-named Palomino, came out on October 9, 2001, as the Athlon XP, with the suffix signifying extreme performance and unofficially referencing Windows XP. Palomino's design used 180 nm fabrication process size. The Athlon XP was marketed using a performance rating (PR) system comparing it to the Thunderbird predecessor core. Among other changes, Palomino consumed 20% less power than the Thunderbird, comparatively reducing heat output, and was roughly 10% faster than Thunderbird. Palomino also had enhanced K7's TLB architecture and included a hardware data prefetch mechanism to take better advantage of memory bandwidth. Palomino was the first K7 core to include the full SSE instruction set from the Intel Pentium III, as well as AMD's 3DNow! Professional. Palomino was also the first socketed Athlon officially supporting dual processing, with chips certified for that purpose branded as the Athlon MP (multi processing), which had different specifications. According to HardwareZone, it was possible to modify the Athlon XP to function as an MP.
Specifications
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
Socket A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 133 MHz (266 MT/s)
Vcore: 1.50 to 1.75 V
Power consumption: 68 W
First release: October 9, 2001
Clock-rate:
Athlon 4: 850–1400 MHz
Athlon XP: 1333–1733 MHz (1500+ to 2100+)
Athlon MP: 1000–1733 MHz
Thoroughbred
The fourth-generation of Athlon was introduced with the Thoroughbred core, or T-Bred, on April 17, 2002. The Thoroughbred core marked AMD's first production 130 nm silicon, with smaller die size than its predecessor. There came to be two steppings (revisions) of this core commonly referred to as Tbred-A and Tbred-B. Introduced in June 2002, the initial A version was mostly a direct die shrink of the preceding Palomino core, but did not significantly increase clock speeds over the Palomino. A revised Thoroughbred core, Thoroughbred-B, added a ninth "metal layer" to the eight-layered Thoroughbred-A, offering improvement in headroom over the A and making it popular for overclocking.
Specifications
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
Socket A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 133/166 MHz (266/333 MT/s)
Vcore: 1.50–1.65 V
First release: June 10, 2002 (A), August 21, 2002 (B)
Clock-rate:
Thoroughbred "A": 1400–1800 MHz (1600+ to 2200+)
Thoroughbred "B": 1400–2250 MHz (1600+ to 2800+)
133 MHz FSB: 1400–2133 MHz (1600+ to 2600+)
166 MHz FSB: 2083–2250 MHz (2600+ to 2800+)
Barton / Thorton
Fifth-generation Athlon Barton-core processors were released in early 2003. While not operating at higher clock rates than Thoroughbred-core processors, they featured an increased L2 cache, and later models had an increased 200 MHz (400 MT/s) front side bus. The Thorton core, a blend of thoroughbred and Barton, was a later variant of the Barton with half of the L2 cache disabled. The Barton was used to officially introduce a higher 400 MT/s bus clock for the Socket A platform, which was used to gain some Barton models more efficiency. By this point with the Barton, the four-year-old Athlon EV6 bus architecture had scaled to its limit and required a redesign to exceed the performance of newer Intel processors. By 2003, the Pentium 4 had become more than competitive with AMD's processors, and Barton only saw a small performance increase over the Thoroughbred-B it derived from, insufficient to outperform the Pentium 4. The K7-derived Athlons such as Barton were replaced in September 2003 by the Athlon 64 family, which featured an on-chip memory controller and a new HyperTransport bus.
Notably, the 2500+ Barton with 11× multiplier was effectively identical to the 3200+ part other than the FSB speed it was binned for, meaning that seamless overclocking was possible more often than not. Early Thortons could be restored to the full Barton specification with the enabling of the other half of the L2 cache from a slight CPU surface modification, but the result was not always reliable.
Specifications
Barton (130 nm)
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
L2-cache: 512 KB, full speed
MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
Socket A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 166/200 MHz (333/400 MT/s)
Vcore: 1.65 V
First release: February 10, 2003
Clock rate: 1833–2333 MHz (2500+ to 3200+)
133 MHz FSB: 1867–2133 MHz (2500+ to 2800+); uncommon
166 MHz FSB: 1833–2333 MHz (2500+ to 3200+)
200 MHz FSB: 2100, 2200 MHz (3000+, 3200+)
Thorton (130 nm)
L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (Data + Instructions)
L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
Socket A (EV6)
Front-side bus: 133/166/200 MHz (266/333/400 MT/s)
Vcore: 1.50–1.65 V
First release: September 2003
Clock rate: 1667–2200 MHz (2000+ to 3100+)
133 MHz FSB: 1600–2133 MHz (2000+ to 2600+)
166 MHz FSB: 2083 MHz (2600+)
200 MHz FSB: 2200 MHz (3100+)
Mobile Athlon XP
The Palomino core debuted in the mobile market before the PC market in May 2001, where it was branded as Mobile Athlon 4 with the codename "Corvette". It distinctively used a ceramic interposer much like the Thunderbird instead of the organic pin grid array package used on all later Palomino processors. In November 2001, AMD released a 1.2 GHz Athlon 4 and a 950 MHz Duron. The Mobile Athlon 4 processors included the PowerNow! function, which controlled a laptop's "level of processor performance by dynamically adjusting its operating frequency and voltage according to the task at hand", thus extending "battery life by reducing processor power when it isn't needed by applications". Duron chips also included PowerNow! In 2002, AMD released a version of PowerNow! called Cool'n'Quiet, implemented on the Athlon XP but only adjusting clock speed instead of voltage.
In 2002 the Athlon XP-M (Mobile Athlon XP) replaced the Mobile Athlon 4 using the newer Thoroughbred core, with Barton cores for full-size notebooks. The Athlon XP-M was also offered in a compact microPGA socket 563 version. Mobile XPs were not multiplier-locked, making them popular with desktop overclockers.
Athlon 64 (2003–2009)
The immediate successor to the Athlon XP, the Athlon 64 is an AMD64-architecture microprocessor produced by AMD, released on September 23, 2003. A number of variations, all named after cities, were released with 90 nm architecture in 2004 and 2005. Versions released in 2007 and 2009 utilized 65 nm architecture.
Athlon 64 X2 (2005–2009)
The Athlon 64 X2 was released in 2005 as the first native dual-core desktop CPU designed by AMD using an Athlon 64. The Athlon X2 was a subsequent family of microprocessors based on the Athlon 64 X2. The original Brisbane Athlon X2 models used 65 nm architecture and were released in 2007.
Athlon II (2009–2012)
Athlon II is a family of central processing units. Initially a dual-core version of the Athlon II, the K-10-based Regor was released in June 2009 with 45-nanometer architecture. This was followed by a single-core version Sargas, followed by the quad-core Propus, the triple-core Rana in November 2009, and the Llano 32 nm version released in 2011.
Bristol-Ridge-based Athlon X4 (2017)
Main Article: Athlon X4 "Bristol Ridge" (2017, 28 nm)
The Bristol Ridge Athlon X4 lineup was released in 2017. It was based on the Excavator microarchitecture and used 2 Excavator modules tolalling 4 "cores". It had a dual-channel DDR4-2400 memory controller with clockspeeds up to 4.0GHz. It ran on the new Socket AM4 platform that was being used for Zen1-3 CPU's.
Zen-based Athlon (2018–present)
The Zen-based Athlon with Radeon graphics processors was launched in September 2018 with the Athlon 200GE. Based on AMD's Raven Ridge core previously used in variants of the Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5, the Athlon 200GE had half of the cores but left SMT enabled. It also kept the same 4 MiB L3 cache, but the L2 cache was halved to 1 MiB.
In addition, the number of graphics compute units was limited to 3 in the Athlon 200GE, and the chip was multiplier-locked. Despite its limitations, the Athlon 200GE performed competitively against the 5000-series Intel Pentium-G, displaying similar CPU performance but an advantage in GPU performance.
On November 19, 2019, AMD released the Athlon 3000G, with a higher 3.5 GHz core clock and 1100 MHz graphics clock compared to the Athlon 200GE, also with two cores. The main functional difference between the 200GE was the Athlon 3000G's unlocked multiplier, allowing the latter to be overclocked on B450 and X470 motherboards.
Specifications
Raven Ridge (14 nm), Picasso (12 nm) (see the list article for more details)
L1 cache: 192 KiB (2×64 KiB + 2×32 KiB)
L2 cache: 1 MiB (2×512 KiB)
L3 cache: 4 MiB
Memory: dual-channel DDR4-2666, 64 GiB max.
Socket AM4
TDP: 35 W
First release: September 6, 2018
CPU clock rate: 3.2 to 3.5 GHz
GPU clock rate: 1000 to 1100 MHz
Supercomputers
A number of supercomputers have been built using Athlon chips, largely at universities. Among them:
In 2000, several American students claimed to have built the world's least expensive supercomputer by clustering 64 AMD Athlon chips together, also marking the first time Athlons had been clustered in a supercomputer.
The PRESTO III, a Beowulf cluster of 78 AMD Athlon processors, was built in 2001 by the Tokyo Institute of Technology. That year it ranked 439 on the TOP500 list of supercomputers.
In 2002, a "128-Node 256-Processor AMD Athlon Supercomputer Cluster" was installed at the Ohio Supercomputer Center at the University of Toledo.
Rutgers University, Department of Physics & Astronomy. Machine: NOW Cluster—AMD Athlon. CPU: 512 AthlonMP (1.65 GHz). Rmax: 794 GFLOPS.
See also
List of AMD Athlon processors
List of AMD Duron processors
List of AMD Phenom processors
List of AMD Opteron processors
List of AMD Sempron processors
References
External links
Website
Computer-related introductions in 1999
AMD x86 microprocessors
AMD microarchitectures
Superscalar microprocessors
X86 microarchitectures
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The Amu Darya (also called the Amu, Amo River, and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya is formed by the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and flows from there north-westwards into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea. In its upper course, the river forms part of Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. In ancient history, the river was regarded as the boundary of Greater Iran with "Turan", which roughly corresponded to present-day Central Asia. The Amu Darya has a flow of about 70 cubic kilometres per year on average.
Names
In classical antiquity, the river was known as the in Latin and () in Greek — a clear derivative of Vakhsh, the name of the largest tributary of the river. In Sanskrit texts, the river is also referred to as (). The Brahmanda Purana refers to the river as which means an eye. The Avestan texts too refer to the River as Yakhsha/Vakhsha (and Yakhsha Arta ("upper Yakhsha") referring to the Jaxartes/Syr Darya twin river to Amu Darya). In Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian period the river is known as (lit. 'good river').
The name Amu is said to have come from the medieval city of Āmul, (later, Chahar Joy/Charjunow, and now known as Türkmenabat), in modern Turkmenistan, with Darya being the Persian word for "lake". Medieval Arabic and Islamic sources call the river Jayhoun (; also Jaihun, Jayhoon, or Dzhaykhun) which is derived from Gihon, the biblical name for one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden. River Amu Darya passes through one of the world's highest deserts.
As the river Gozan
Western travelers in the 19th century mentioned that one of the names by which the river was known in Afghanistan was Gozan, and that this name was used by Greek, Mongol, Chinese, Persian, Jewish, and Afghan historians. However, this name is no longer used.
"Hara (Bokhara) and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu, (called the Oxus by Europeans )) ..."
"the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i.e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya ..."
"... and were brought into Halah (modern day Balkh), and Habor (which is Pesh Habor or Peshawar), and Hara (which is Herat), and to the river Gozan (which is the Ammoo, also called Jehoon) ..."
Description
The river's total length is and its drainage basin totals in area, providing a mean discharge of around of water per year. The river is navigable for over . All of the water comes from the high mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over . Even before large-scale irrigation began, high summer evaporation meant that not all of this discharge reached the Aral Sea – though there is some evidence the large Pamir glaciers provided enough meltwater for the Aral to overflow during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Since the end of the 19th century there have been four different claimants as the true source of the Oxus:
The Pamir River, which emerges from Lake Zorkul (once also known as Lake Victoria) in the Pamir Mountains (ancient Mount Imeon), and flows west to Qila-e Panja, where it joins the Wakhan River to form the Panj River.
The Sarhad or Little Pamir River flowing down the Little Pamir in the High Wakhan
Lake Chamaktin, which discharges to the east into the Aksu River, which in turn becomes the Murghab and then Bartang rivers, and which eventually joins the Panj Oxus branch 350 kilometres downstream at Roshan Vomar in Tajikistan.
An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley, in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, near the border with Pakistan.
A glacier turns into the Wakhan River and joins the Pamir River about downstream. Bill Colegrave's expedition to Wakhan in 2007 found that both claimants 2 and 3 had the same source, the Chelab stream, which bifurcates on the watershed of the Little Pamir, half flowing into Lake Chamaktin and half into the parent stream of the Little Pamir/Sarhad River. Therefore, the Chelab stream may be properly considered the true source or parent stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north and then north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for about , passing Termez and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge. It delineates the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. It flows across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, and forms the border of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from Halkabat. It is then split by the Tuyamuyun Hydro Complex into many waterways that used to form the river delta joining the Aral Sea, passing Urgench, Daşoguz, and other cities, but it does not reach what is left of the sea any more and is lost in the desert. Use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s. Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea (from the south), into the Caspian Sea (from the east), or both, similar to the Syr Darya (Jaxartes, in Ancient Greek).
Watershed
The of the Amu Darya drainage basin include most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, a narrow portion of eastern Turkmenistan and the western half of Uzbekistan. Part of the Amu Darya basin divide in Tajikistan forms that country's border with China (in the east) and Pakistan (to the south). About 61% of the drainage lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, while 39% is in Afghanistan.
The abundant water flowing in the Amu Darya comes almost entirely from glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan,
which, standing above the surrounding arid plain, collect atmospheric moisture which otherwise would probably escape somewhere else. Without its mountain water sources, the Amu Darya would not exist—because it rarely rains in the lowlands through which most of the river flows. Of the total drainage area only about actively contribute water to the river.
This is because many of the river's major tributaries (especially the Zeravshan River) have been diverted, and much of the river's drainage is arid. Throughout most of the steppe, the annual rainfall is about .
History
The ancient Greeks called the Amu Darya the Oxus. In ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Greater Iran and Ṫūrān (). The river's drainage lies in the area between the former empires of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, although they occurred at very different times. When the Mongols came to the area, they used the water of the Amu Darya to flood Konye-Urgench. One southern route of the Silk Road ran along part of the Amu Darya northwestward from Termez before going westwards to the Caspian Sea.
It is believed that the Amu Darya's course across the Karakum Desert has gone through several major shifts in the past few thousand years. Much of the time – most recently from the 13th century to the late 16th century – the Amu Darya emptied into both the Aral and the Caspian Seas, reaching the latter via a large distributary called the Uzboy River. The Uzboy splits off from the main channel just south of the river's delta. Sometimes the flow through the two branches was more or less equal, but often most of the Amu Darya's flow split to the west and flowed into the Caspian.
People began to settle along the lower Amu Darya and the Uzboy in the 5th century, establishing a thriving chain of agricultural lands, towns, and cities. In about AD 985, the massive Gurganj Dam at the bifurcation of the forks started to divert water to the Aral. Genghis Khan's troops destroyed the dam in 1221, and the Amu Darya shifted to distributing its flow more or less equally between the main stem and the Uzboy. But in the 18th century, the river again turned north, flowing into the Aral Sea, a path it has taken since. Less and less water flowed down the Uzboy. When Russian explorer Bekovich-Cherkasski surveyed the region in 1720, the Amu Darya did not flow into the Caspian Sea anymore.
By the 1800s, the ethnographic makeup of the region was described by Peter Kropotkin as the communities of "the vassal Khanates of Maimene, Khulm, Kunduz, and even the Badakshan and Wahkran." An Englishman, William Moorcroft, visited the Oxus around 1824 during the Great Game period. Another Englishman, a naval officer called John Wood, came with an expedition to find the source of the river in 1839. He found modern-day Lake Zorkul, called it Lake Victoria, and proclaimed he had found the source. Then, the French explorer and geographer Thibaut Viné collected a lot of information about this area during five expeditions between 1856 and 1862.
The question of finding a route between the Oxus valley and India has been of concern historically. A direct route crosses extremely high mountain passes in the Hindu Kush and isolated areas like Kafiristan. Some in Britain feared that the Empire of Russia, which at the time wielded great influence over the Oxus area, would overcome these obstacles and find a suitable route through which to invade British India – but this never came to pass. The area was taken over by Russia during the Russian conquest of Turkestan.
The Soviet Union became the ruling power in the early 1920s and expelled Mohammed Alim Khan. It later put down the Basmachi movement and killed Ibrahim Bek. A large refugee population of Central Asians, including Turkmen, Tajiks, and Uzbeks, fled to northern Afghanistan. In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets started using the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya to irrigate extensive cotton fields in the Central Asian plain. Before this time, water from the rivers was already being used for agriculture, but not on this massive scale. The Qaraqum Canal, Karshi Canal, and Bukhara Canal were among the largest of the irrigation diversions built. However, the Main Turkmen Canal, which would have diverted water along the dry Uzboy River bed into central Turkmenistan, was never built. The 1970s, in the course of the Soviet–Afghan War, Soviet forces used the valley to invade Afghanistan through Termez. The Soviet Union fell in the 1990s and Central Asia split up into the many smaller countries that lie within or partially within the Amu Darya basin.
During the Soviet era, a resource-sharing system was instated in which Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared water originating from the Amu and Syr Daryas with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in summer. In return, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received Kazakh, Turkmen, and Uzbek coal, gas, and electricity in winter. After the fall of the Soviet Union this system disintegrated and the Central Asian nations have failed to reinstate it. Inadequate infrastructure, poor water-management, and outdated irrigation methods all exacerbate the issue.
Siberian Tiger Introduction Project
The Caspian tiger used to occur along the river's banks. After its extirpation, the Darya's delta was suggested as a potential site for the introduction of its closest surviving relative, the Siberian tiger. A feasibility study was initiated to investigate if the area is suitable and if such an initiative would receive support from relevant decision makers. A viable tiger population of about 100 animals would require at least of large tracts of contiguous habitat with rich prey populations. Such habitat is not available at this stage and cannot be provided in the short term. The proposed region is therefore unsuitable for the reintroduction, at least at this stage.
Resource extraction
Since March 2022, the building of the 285km Qosh Tepa Canal has been underway in northern Afghanistan to divert water from the Amu Darya. Uzbekistan has expressed concern that the canal will have an adverse effect on its agriculture. The canal is also expected to make the Aral Sea disaster worse, and in 2023 Uzbek officials held talks on the canal with the Taliban. The Taliban has made the canal a priority, with images supplied by Planet Labs demonstrate that from April 2022 to February 2023, more than 100 km of canal was excavated. According to the Taliban, the initiative is expected to convert 550,000 hectares of desert into farmland.
In January 2023 the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Company (aka CAPEIC) signed a $720 million four-year investment deal with the Taliban government of Afghanistan for extraction on its side of the Amu Darya basin. The deal will see a 15% royalty given to the Afghan government over the course of its 25-year term. The Chinese see this basin as the third-largest potential gas field in the world.
Literature
The Oxus river, and Arnold's poem, fire the imaginations of the children who adventure with ponies over the moors of the West Country in the 1930s children's book The Far-Distant Oxus. There were two sequels, Escape to Persia and Oxus in Summer.
Robert Byron's 1937 travelogue, The Road to Oxiana, describes its author's journey from the Levant through Persia to Afghanistan, with the Oxus as his stated goal, "to see certain famous monuments, chiefly the Gonbad-e Qabus, a tower built as a mausoleum for an ancient king."
George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman at the Charge, (1973), places Flashman on the Amu Darya and the Aral Sea during the (fictitious) Russian advance on India during The Great Game period.
See also
Oxus Treasure
Vankhsh River
Mount Imeon
Sherabad River
Surkhan Darya
Transoxiana
Zeravshan River
Extreme points of Afghanistan
List of rivers of Afghanistan
Notes
References
Further reading
Curzon, George Nathaniel. 1896. The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus. Royal Geographical Society, London. Reprint: Elibron Classics Series, Adamant Media Corporation. 2005. (pbk; (hbk).
Gordon, T. E. 1876. The Roof of the World: Being the Narrative of a Journey over the high plateau of Tibet to the Russian Frontier and the Oxus sources on Pamir. Edinburgh. Edmonston and Douglas. Reprint by Ch'eng Wen Publishing Company. Taipei. 1971.
Toynbee, Arnold J. 1961. Between Oxus and Jumna. London. Oxford University Press.
Wood, John, 1872. A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. With an essay on the Geography of the Valley of the Oxus by Colonel Henry Yule. London: John Murray.
External links
The Amu Darya Basin Network
Rivers of Afghanistan
Rivers of Tajikistan
Rivers of Turkmenistan
Rivers of Uzbekistan
International rivers of Asia
Afghanistan–Turkmenistan border
Afghanistan–Tajikistan border
Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border
Turkmenistan–Uzbekistan border
Border rivers
Landforms of Badakhshan Province
Siberian Tiger Re-population Project
Rivers in Buddhism
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The Muslim conquests of Afghanistan began during the Muslim conquest of Persia as the Arab Muslims migrated eastwards to Khorasan, Sistan and Transoxiana. Fifteen years after the Battle of Nahāvand in 642 AD, they controlled all Sasanian domains except in Afghanistan. Fuller Islamization was not achieved until the period between 10th and 12th centuries under Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasty's rule who patronized Muslim religious institutions.
Khorasan and Sistan, where Zoroastrianism was well-established, were conquered. The Arabs had begun to move towards the lands east of Persia and in 652 AD they captured the city of Herat, establishing an Arab governor there. The Muslim frontier in modern Afghanistan had become stabilized after the first century of the Lunar Hijri calendar as the relative importance of the Afghan areas diminished. From historical evidence, it appears Tokharistan (Bactria) was the only area heavily conquered by Arabs where Buddhism flourished. Balkh's final conquest was undertaken by Qutayba ibn Muslim in 705. Hui'Chao, who visited around 726, mentions that the Arabs ruled it and all the inhabitants were Buddhists.
The eastern regions of Afghanistan were at times considered politically as parts of India. Buddhism and Hinduism held sway over the region until the Muslim conquest. Kabul and Zabulistan which housed Buddhism and other Indian religions, offered stiff resistance to the early Muslim advance. Nevertheless, the Arab Umayyads regularly claimed nominal overlordship over the Zunbils and Kabul Shahis, and in 711 Qutayba ibn Muslim managed to force them to pay tribute. They would also be conquered by the Saffarids and Ghaznavids.
The Caliph Al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833 AD) was paid double the tribute by the Rutbil. His were the last Arab expeditions on Kabul and Zabul. The king of Kabul was captured by him and converted to Islam. The last Zunbil was killed by Ya'qub bin al-Layth along with his former overlord Salih b. al-Nadr in 865. Meanwhile, the Hindu Shahi of Kabul were defeated under Mahmud of Ghazni. Indian soldiers were a part of the Ghaznavid army, Baihaki mentioned Hindu officers employed by Ma'sud. The 14th-century Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta described the Hindu Kush as meaning "slayer of Indians", because large numbers of slaves brought from India died from its treacherous weather.
The geographer Ya'qubi states that the rulers of Bamiyan, called the Sher, converted in the late 8th century. Ya'qub is recorded as having plundered its pagan idols in 870 while a much later historian Shabankara'i claims that Alp-Tegin obtained conversion of its ruler in 962. No permanent Arab control was established in Ghur and it became Islamised after Ghaznavid raids. By the time of Bahram-Shah, Ghur was converted and politically united.
In the late 15th century, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, arrived from Fergana and captured Kabul from the Arghun dynasty. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb ruled parts of the eastern territory.
The Pashtun habitat during their conquest by Mahmud was located in the Sulaiman Mountains in the south of Afghanistan. They were enlisted by both Sabuktigin and Mahmud according to Tarikh-i-Yamini. Prior to Pashtun migration to the Kabul River valley, Tajiks formed the dominant population of Kabul, Nangarhar, Logar Valley and Laghman in east Afghanistan. The Pashtuns later began migrating westward from Sulaiman Mountains in the south, and displaced or subjugated the indigenous populations such as Tajiks, Hazaras, the Farsiwanis, before or during 16th and 17th centuries. The successive wave of Pashtun immigration displaced the original Kafir and Pashayi people from the Kunar Valley and Laghman Valley, the two eastern provinces near Jalalabad, to the less fertile mountains.
Before their conversion, the Kafir people of Kafiristan practiced a form of ancient Hinduism infused with locally developed accretions. The region from Nuristan to Kashmir was host to a vast number of "Kafir" cultures. They were called Kafirs due to their enduring paganism, remaining politically independent until being conquered and converted by Afghan Amir Abdul Rahman Khan in 1895–1896 while others also converted to avoid paying jizya.
Arab conquests and rule
During the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Arabs were drawn eastwards from the Iraqi plains to central and eastern Persia, then to Media, into Khorasan, Sistan and Transoxania. 15 years after the Battle of Nahāvand, the Arabs controlled all Sasanian domains except the parts of Afghanistan and Makran. Nancy Dupree states that advancing Arabs carrying the religion of Islam easily took over Herat and Sistan, but the other areas often revolted and converted back to their old faiths whenever the Arab armies withdrew. The harshness of the Arab rule caused the native dynasties to revolt after the Arab power weakened like the Saffarids founded by the zealous Yaqub who conquered many cities of the region. Historian Cameron A. Petrie states that while the Arab expansion had both social and religious motives, it was their extraction of taxes from the subjugated people that invited the numerous local rebellions.
Medieval Islamic scholars divided modern-day Afghanistan into two regions - the provinces of Khorasan and Sistan. Khorasan was the eastern satrapy of the Sasanian Empire, containing Balkh and Herat. Sistan included a number of Afghan cities and regions including Ghazni, Zarang, Bost, Qandahar (also called al-Rukhkhaj or Zamindawar), Kabul, Kabulistan and Zabulistan.
Before Muslim rule, the regions of Balkh (Bactria or Tokharistan), Herat and Sistan were under Sasanian rule. Further south in Balkh region, in Bamiyan, indication of Sasanian authority diminishes, with a local dynasty apparently ruling from the late antiquity, probably Hepthalites subject to the Yabgu of Western Turks. While Herat was controlled by Sasanians, its hinterlands were controlled by northern Hepthalites who continued to rule the Ghurid mountains and river valleys. The Arab Umayyads regularly claimed nominal overlordship over the Zunbils and Kabul Shahis, and in 711 Qutayba ibn Muslim managed to force them to pay tribute. They would also be conquered by the Saffarids and Ghaznavids.
In Afghanistan, the frontier of the Islamic conquest had become more or less stationary by the end of the first century of Hijri calendar. One reason was that the relative importance of Sistan and Baluchistan had begun to diminish by the time of Mu'awiyah I, when the conquests of Bactria and Transoxania were undertaken. In addition, the conquest in the eastern direction was extended to Makran and Sind, with Muslim colonies becoming established there in 711–12.
Sistan
The earlier Arabs called Sistan as Sijistan, from the Persian word Sagestan. It is a lowland region, lying round and eastwards from the Zarah lake, which includes deltas of Helmand and other rivers which drain into it. The Muslim conquest of Sistan began in 23 AH (643-644 AD) when Asim bin Amr and Abdallah ibn Amir invaded the region and besieged Zaranj. The Sistanis concluded a treaty with Muslims, mandating them to pay the kharaj.
The cash-strapped Sasanian king Yazdegerd III who had a large retinue, had fled to Kerman in 650. He had to flee from Kerman to Sistan after his arrogance angered the marzban of the place, eluding an Arab force from Basra which defeated and killed the marzban. Yazdegerd lost the support of governor of Sistan after demanding taxes from him and had to leave for Merv. It is not known whether this governor was a Sasanian prince or a local ruler at that time. The Arabs had campaigned in Sistan a few years earlier and Abdallah b. Amir had now gone in pursuit of Yazdegerd. He arrived in Kirman in 651 and sent a force under Rabi ibn Ziyad al-Harithi to Sistan.
Rabi crossed the desert between Kirman and Sistan, reaching the fortress of Zilaq which was within five farsangs of the Sistan frontier. The fort was surrendered by its dihqan. The fortress of Karkuya, whose fire temple is mentioned in the anonymously authored Tarikh-e-Sistan, along with Haysun and Nashrudh, surrendered to Rabi. Rabi then encamped in Zaliq and projected the seizure of Zarang, which though had earlier submitted to Arabs, needed to be subdued again. Although its marzban Aparviz put up a strong resistance, he was forced to surrender.
The Zaranj forces had received heavy casualties during the battle with Arab forces and were driven back to the city. According to sources, when Aparviz appeared before Rabi to discuss the terms, he found the Arab general was sitting on a chair made out of two dead soldiers and his entourage had been instructed to make seats and bolsters in the same fashion. Aparviz was terrified into submission and wished to spare his people of this fate. A peace treaty was concluded with payment of heavy dues. The treaty mandated one million dirhams as annual tribute, in addition to 1,000 slave boys bearing 1,000 gold vessels. The city was also garrisoned by Rabi.
Rabi thus succeeded in gaining Zarang with considerable difficulty and remained at the place for several years. Two years later, the people of Zarang rebelled and expelled Rabi's lieutenant and garrison. Abdallah b. Amir sent 'Abd ar-Rahman b. Samura to take back the city, who also added Bust and Zabul to Arab gains. 'Abd ar-Rahman besieged Zaranj and after the marzban surrendered, the tribute was doubled. The tribute imposed on Zarang was 2 million dirhams and 2,000 slaves.
During the period of the first civil war in the Arab caliphate (656-661), rebels in Zarang imprisoned their governor while Arab bandits started raiding remote towns in Sistan to enslave people. They gave in to the new governor Rib'i, who took control of the city and restored law and order. 'Abdallah b. Amir was made the governor of Basra and its eastern dependencies again from 661 to 664. Samura was sent back to Sistan in 661. An expedition to Khorasan was sent under him that included reputed leaders like Umar b. 'Ubaydillah b. Ma'mar, 'Abdullah b. Khazim, Qatariyy b. al-Fuja'a and Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra. Samura reconquered Zarang, while also conquering the region between Zarang and Kisht, Arachosia, Zamindawar, Bust and Zabul.
Ziyad ibn Abihi was appointed governor of Basra in 664 and was also made governor of Kufa and its dependencies in 670, making him the viceroy of the entire eastern half of the Islamic empire. He sent his kinsman Ubaydallah b. Abi Bakra to destroy the Zoroastrian fire temples in Fars and Sistan, confiscate their property and kill their priests. While the fire temple of Kariyan was destroyed, the one at Karkuya survived along with its herbad. Ziyad's son Abbad was appointed governor of Sijistan by Mu'awiya I in 673 and served until 681. During the course of his governorship, the province apparently remained stable and Abbad led an eastward expedition which brought Kandahar to the caliphate. Caliph Yazid I replaced Abbad with his brother Salm, who was already governor of Khurasan.
Khorasan
There is general agreement among Arabic sources that Khorasan's conquest began in the reign of Uthman under Abdallah b. Amir, who had been appointed the governor of Basra (r. 649–655). Sayf's tradition however disagrees with this, dating it to 639 under the reign of Umar with Ahnaf ibn Qais leading the expedition. Al-Tabari meanwhile relates that Ahnaf's conquests occurred in 643. This could be because of confusion of Ahnaf's later activities under Ibn Amir and an attempt to magnify his role in Khorasan's conquest.
The conquest of southern Persia was completed by 23 AH with Khorasan remaining the only region remaining unconquered. Since the Muslims did not want any Persian land to remain under Persian rule, Umar ordered Ahnaf b. Qais to march upon it. After capturing the towns of Tabas and Tun, he attacked the region's easternmost city Herat. The Persians put up stiff resistance but were defeated and surrendered. A garrison was deployed in the city, while a column was detached which subjugated Nishapur and Tus. Umar had dispatched Ahnaf with 12,000 men from Kufa and Basra after Yazdegerd who had fled to Merv. After the Arabs arrived there, Yazdegerd fled to Marw al-Rudh from where he sent ambassadors to the Khakan of the Turks, the ruler of Soghd and the Chinese emperor, asking for their assistance. Yazdegerd later fled to Balkh, where he was defeated by the Arabs and fled across Oxus River.
Umar forbade Ahnaf from crossing the river as the land beyond it was unknown to Arabs and was very far for them. Yazdegerd proceeded to Soghd whose ruler supplied him with a large army. The Khaqan of Turks after assembling the troops from Ferghana, crossed the Oxus along with Yazdegerd and marched to Balkh. Ribi' b. Amir meanwhile retired with Kufan troops to Marw al-Rudh where he joined al-Ahnaf. The Sasanian king and the Khakan leading an army of 50,000 cavalry composed of men from Soghd, Turkestan, Balkh and Tokharistan, arrived at Marw al-Rudh. Ahnaf had an army of 20,000 men. The two sides fought each other from morning till evening for two months at a place called Deir al-Ahnaf.
The fighting at Deir al-Ahnaf went on until Ahnaf, after being informed of a Turkic chief inspecting the outposts, went there during a particular night and successively killed three Turkic chiefs during their inspection. After learning of their deaths, the Khakan became afflicted by it and withdrew to Balkh, then he withdrew across the river to Turkestan. Yazdegerd meanwhile left from Marw al-Rudh to Merv, from where he took his empire's wealth and proceeded to Balkh to join the Khakan. He told his officials that he wanted to hand himself to the protection of the Turks, but they advised him against it and asked him to seek protection from the Arabs which he refused. He left for Turkestan while his officials took away his treasures and gave them to Ahnaf, submitting to the Arabs and being allowed to go back to their respective homes.
Abdullah b. Amir went to Khorasan from Kerman in 650 and set out along with a vanguard of Tamimi Arabs and 1,000 asawira via Quhistan. The people of Tabasayn had broken their peace treaty and had allied with the Hepthalites of Herat. al-Ahnaf reconquered Quhistan and defeated Herat's Hepthalites at Nishapur. The kanarang or marzban of Tus asked the Arabs for assistance against the raiding Hepthalites of Herat and Badghis. He agreed to a peace agreement for 600,000 dinars.
The Hepthalite action prompted the Muslims undertaking military operation to secure their positions in Khorasan. After the fall of Tus, Ibn Amir sent out an army against Herat. The ruler (marzaban or azim) of the place agreed to a peace treaty for Herat, Badghis and Pushang for a tribute of 1 million dirhams. The ruler who was known as azim or the "mighty one" in Futuh al-Buldan, may have been a Hepthalite chief. The Rashidun Caliphs followed the earlier rule of Muhammad of imposing jizya on several bodies jointly and in some cases also imposed the condition that they host Muslims. This rule was followed in most Iranian towns, with the jizya not specified on per capita basis, but being left to the local rulers, though some Muslim commanders stressed the amount on the ability of the ruler to pay. The same wording can be seen in Ibn Amir's treaty.
In 652, Ibn Amir sent al-Ahnaf to invade Tokharistan with 4,000 Arabs and 1,000 Iranian Muslims (evidently the Tamimis and asawira), probably because of assistance of its ruler to Yazdegerd's son Peroz. While Marw al-Rudh's garrison agreed to a peace term for the entire district under 300,000 dirhams, the town itself remained besieged. It was the last major stronghold of Sasanians and fell to al-Ahnaf after a fierce battle. After bloody fighting, its marzaban agreed to a peace treaty for 60,000 or 600,000 dirhams as well as a mutual defence pact. He was also allowed to keep his ancestral lands, for the office of marzaban to be hereditary in his family, and to be exempt from taxes along with his whole family. Baladhuri quotes Abu Ubayda as stating that the Turks were supporting the inhabitants of the town. These Turks were Hepthalites, probably from Guzgan, which may explain the reason behind the Arabs next attacking Guzgan, Faryab and Talqan.
Al-Mada'ini specifically states that Ahnaf while leading the next expedition, did not want to ask for assistance from the non-Muslims of Marw al-Rudh, probably as he did not trust them. The Arabs camped at Qasr al-Ahnaf, a day's march to the north of Marw al-Rudh. The 30,000-strong army comprising troops of Guzgan, Faryab and Talqan, supported by the Chaghanian troops, advanced to meet them. The battle was inconclusive, but the opposing side dispersed with some remaining at Guzgan while the Arabs withdrew to Marw al-Rudh. Ahnaf sent an expedition, led by al-Aqra' b. Habis and apparently consisting exclusively of Tamimis, to Guzgan. The Arabs defeated Guzgan and entered it by force. Ahnaf meanwhile advanced towards Balkh, making peace treaties with Faryab and Taloqan along the way.
The permanent pacification of Khorasan was a protracted affair with the local potentates often rebelling and appealing to outside powers like the Hepthalites, Western Turks or Turgesh, Sogdians and the imperial Chinese who claimed a degree of suzerainty over Central Asia, for help. Within a year after Yazdegerd's death, a local Iranian notable named Qarin started a revolt against the Arabs in Quhistan. He gathered his supporters from Tabasayn, Herat and Badghis, assembling a reported army of 40,000 insurgents against Arabs in Khorasan. The Arabs made a surprise attack however, killing him and many of his people while many others were taken captive. It was expected that the recently subjugated people would revolt. However, in Khorasan, no all-out effort seems to have been undertaken to the expel the Arabs after Qarin's rebellion. Chinese sources state that there was an attempt to restore Peroz by Tokharistan's army, however this episode is not confirmed by Arab sources.
Peroz had settled among the Turks, took a local wife and had received troops from the king of Tokharistan. In 661, he established himself as king of Po-szu (Persia) with Chinese help in a place the Chinese called Ja-ling (Chi-ling), which is assumed to be Zarang. His campaigns are reflected in Muslim sources, which mention revolts in Zarang, Balkh, Badghis, Herat, Bushanj and also in Khorasan during the First Fitna period in reigns of Ali and Muawiyah. Though they do not mention Peroz, they do state that Ali's newly appointed governor of Khorasan had heard in Nishapur that governors of the Sasanian king had come back from Kabul and Khorasan had rebelled. However, the region was reconquered under Muawiyah. Piroz went back to the Tang Empire's capital and was given a grandiose title as well as permission to build a fire temple in 677.
Yazid ibn al-Muhallab succeeded his father as governor of Khorasan in 702 and campaigned in Central Asia, but achieved little success apart from Nezak Tarkhan's submission at Badghis.
Tokharistan
Tokharistan, roughly ancient Bactria, is today divided between Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. According to the most general usage of the name, Tokharistan is the wide valley around the upper Oxus river surrounded by mountains on three sides before the river moves into open plains. The major city was Balkh, one of the greatest urban centers of northeastern Iran. It was located upon crossroads and conduits of trade in many directions, enabling control of these routes if it was conquered. During the governorship of Abu 'l Abbas 'Abdallah b. Tahir (r. 828–845), a list of districts (kuwar) of the region exists, including as far as Saghaniyan in the north and Kabul in the south. Other places listed are Tirmidh, Juzjan, Bamiyan, Rūb and Samanjan. Some Arab geographers used the name only for the southern part of Oxus valley.
Balkh was also a part of Khorasan along with other areas through varying extensions of time. Per al-Tabari, Yazdegerd fled from Marw-al Rudh to Balkh during Ahnaf's conquest of Khorasan in 643. He fortified himself but was defeated by the Arabs and fled across the Oxus River. Yazdegerd proceeded to Soghd, whose ruler supplied him a large army. The Khaqan of Turks after assembling the troops from Ferghana, crossed the Oxus along with Yazdegerd and marched to Balkh.
In 652, Ibn Amir sent al-Ahnaf to invade Tokharistan with 4,000 Arabs and 1,000 Iranian Muslims (evidently the Tamimis and asawira), probably because of assistance of its ruler to Yazdegerd's son Peroz. He approached Balkh after conquering Marw al-Rudh and fighting an inconclusive battle with a 30,000-strong force from Guzgan, Faryab and Talqan. After arriving at Balkh, he besieged the city, with its inhabitants offering a tribute of 400,000 or 700,000 dirhams. He deputed his cousin to collect the tribute and advanced to Khwarezm but returned to Balkh as winter approached. It was in Balkh in fall of 652 when the local people introduced his cousin Asid to gifting gold and silver to their governor during Mihrijan.
Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan reorganised Basra and Kufa, excluding many from the diwan and inspiring him to settle 50,000 families in Khorasan. Both Baladhuri and Mad'aini agree upon the number, though the latter states each half were from Basra and Kufa. Al-'Ali disagrees, stating the Kufans were 10,000. Ghalib had been unsuccessful in his expedition, and Rabi b. Ziyad al-Harithi, who was appointed governor of Khorasan in 671, led the settlement expedition. He advanced to Balkh and made a peace treaty with the locals who had revolted after al-Ahnaf's earlier treaty.
Qutayba ibn Muslim led the final conquest of Balkh. He was tasked with subduing the revolt in Lower Tokharistan. His army was assembled in the spring of 705 and marched through Marw al-Rudh and Talqan to Balkh. Per one version in Tarikh al-Tabari, the city was surrendered peacefully. Another version, probably to promote a Bahilite claim on the Barmakids, speaks of a revolt among the residents. The latter may be the correct version as Tabari describes the city as ruined four years later. The wife of Barmak, a physician of Balkh, was taken captive during the war and given to 'Abdullah, Qutayba's brother. She was later restored to her lawful husband after spending a period in 'Abdullah's harem. Khalid was thus born in 706 and Abdallah accepted the implications of paternity without disturbing Barmak's conventional responsibilities or affecting Khalid's upbringing.
In 708–709, the Ispahbadh, who was a local ruler, received a letter from the Hepthalite rebel Nezak Tarkhan, who was trying to unite the aristocracy of Tokharistan against Qutayba. The Arabs built a new military encampment called Baruqan two farsangs away from the city. In 725, the governor Asad ibn Abdallah al-Qasri had the city restored after a feud among Arab troops, with Barmak being employed as his agent for the task.
Early Arabs tended to treat Iran as a single cultural unit, however it was a land of many countries with distinct populations and cultures. From historical evidence, it appears that Tokharistan was the only area heavily colonized by Arabs where Buddhism flourished, and the only area incorporated into the Arab empire where Sanskrit studies were pursued up to the conquest. The grandson of Barmak was the vizier of the Arab empire and took personal interest in Sanskrit works and Indian religions. The eighth-century Korean traveller Hui'Chao records Hinayanists in Balkh under Arab rule. He visited the area around 726, mentioning that the true king of Balkh was still alive and in exile. He also describes all the inhabitants of the regions as Buddhists under Arab rule. Other sources indicate however that the Bactrians practiced many different religions.
Among Balkh's Buddhist monasteries, the largest was Nava Vihara, later Persianized to Naw Bahara after the Islamic conquest of Balkh. It is not known how long it continued to serve as a place of worship after the conquest. Accounts of early Arabs offer contradictory narratives. Per al-Baladhuri, its stupa-vihara complex was destroyed under Muawiyah in 650s. Tabari while reporting about the expedition in 650s, does not mention any tension around the temple, stating that Balkh was conquered by Rabi peacefully. He also states that Nizak went to pray at the site during his revolt against Qutayba in 709, implying it may not have been destroyed. Also, the tenth-century geographical treatise Hudud al-'Alam describes remaining royal buildings and Naw Bahara's decorations including painted image and wonderful works, probably secco or fresco murals and carvings on the temple's walls that survived into the author's time.
Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Chinese sources from the 2nd century BC to the 7th century AD, identify a people called "Tukharas", in the country later called Tukharistan. Badakhshan was earlier the seat of the Tukharas. There is no precise date for the Arab conquest of Badakhshan nor any record of how Islam was introduced there. Al-Tabari too mentions this region only once. In 736, Asad ibn Abdallah al-Qasri sent an expedition into Upper Tokharistan and Badakhshan against the rebel Al-Harith ibn Surayj who had occupied the fortress of Tabushkhan. Juday' b. 'Ali al-Kirmani, who was sent on the expedition against al-Harith, captured Tabushkhan. Juday also had its captive defenders killed while its women and children were enslaved and sold in Balkh despite being of Arab origin. al-Harith later allied with the Turgesh and continued his rebellion until being pardoned by Caliph Yazid b. Walid in 744.
Taking advantage of the factional fighting among the Arabs, Transoxania started rebelling and Asad b. 'Abdallah in response attacked Khuttal in 737. Armed forces of Soghd, Chach and many Turks, led by the Turkish Khagan Sulu, arrived to assist them. Asad fled leaving behind the baggage of plunder from Khuttal. When he returned with the main body of his troops, the Turks retired to Tokharistan and he returned to Balkh. In December 737, the Turgesh attacked Khulm but were repelled by the Arabs. Bypassing Balkh, they captured Guzgan's capital and sent out raiding parties. Asad mounted a surprise attack on the Turks at Kharistan, who only had 4,000 troops. The Turgesh suffered a devastating defeat and lost almost whole of their army. Sulu and al-Harith fled to the territory of Tokharistan's Yabghu, with Sulu returning to his territory in winter of 737–738.
The Zunbils
The Zunbils in the pre-Saffarid period ruled in Zabulistan and Zamindawar, stretching between Ghazni and Bost, and had acted as a barrier against Muslim expansion for a long time. Zamindawar is known to have a shrine dedicated to the god Zun. It has been linked with the Hindu god Aditya at Multan, pre-Buddhist religious and kingship practices of Tibet, as well as Shaivism. The followers of the Zunbils were called Turks by the Arabic sources, however they applied the name to all their enemies in eastern fringes of Iran. They are described as having Turkish troops in their service by sources like Tabari and Tarikh-e-Sistan.
The first time the title of Zunbil appears in Arabic sources, it does so along with that of the Kabul Shah and according to Tabari was the title of the brother of Kabul's king (either Barha Tegin or Tegin Shah). The Zunbil apparently broke away from the overlordship of Kabul around 680 AD and established his own kingdom in Zabulistan and al-Rukhkhaj.
The kingdom of Zabulistan (ar-Rukhkhaj) with its capital at Ghazni, where the king Zunbil or Rutbil resided, is mentioned by Chinese sources under the suzerainty of Jabghu of Turkestan. The significance for Arabs of the realm of Zun and its rulers was them preventing their early campaigns from invading the Indus Valley through eastern and southern Afghanistan. It was only under the early Saffarids that mass-Islamization took place unlike the plunder-raids or tribute levies of Arab rule. The expeditions under Caliph al-Ma'mun against Kabul and Zabul were the last ones and the long conflict ended with the dissolution of the Arab empire following soon thereafter.
Sakawand in Zabulistan was a major centre of Hindu pilgrimage.
7th century
After appearing at Zarang, Abd al-Rahman ibn Samura and his force of 6,000 Arabs penetrated to the shrine of Zun in 653–654. He broke off a hand from the idol of Zun and plucked out the rubies used as its eyes to demonstrate to the marzban of Sistan that the idol could neither hurt nor benefit anyone. He also took Zabul by treaty by 656. In the shrine of Zoon in Zamindawar, it is reported that Samura "broke off a hand of the idol and plucked out the rubies which were its eyes in order to persuade the marzbān of Sīstān of the god's worthlessness." Samura explained to the marzbān: "my intention was to show you that this idol can do neither any harm nor good." Bost and Zabul submitted to the Arab invader by treaty in 656 CE. The Muslims soon lost these territories during the First Civil War (656-661).
In 665 CE, after being reappointed to Sistan under Muawiyah, Samura defeated Zabulistan whose people had broken the earlier agreement. Samura was replaced as governor by Rabi b. Ziyad and died in 50 AH (670 AD), while the king of Zabul rebelled along with the Kabul Shah and the two together reconquered Zabulistan and Rukhkhaj according to al-Baladhuri.
Ar-Rabi, the Arab governor, however attacked the Zunbil at Bust and made him flee. He then pursued him to Rukhkhaj, where he attacked him and then subdued the city of ad-Dawar. Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan was appointed governor of Basra in 665, with Khorasan and Sistan coming under his mandate as well. He had first appointed Rabi to Sistan but replaced him later with 'Ubaydallah b. Abi Bakra. During this period, Zunbil's fierce resistance continued until he finally agreed to pay one million dirhams per Baladhuri and Tarikh-e-Sistan. The Zunbil also negotiated for a peace treaty for both Zabul and Kabul.
Al-Baladhuri records that under Muawiyah, Sistan's governor 'Abbad b. Ziyad b. Abihi raided and captured the city of Qandahar after bitter fighting. He also mentions the characteristic high caps of the people of the city. Though his text is somewhat ambiguous, it seems that 'Abbad had renamed the town as Abbadiya after himself. The Muslim rule was probably toppled and the name is never heard after his governorship ended in 680–1, by 698 there was no Muslim-controlled region east of Bost. The city was ruled by Arab Muslims and Zunbils, and then later Saffarids and Ghaznavids. It is infrequently mentioned in the early Islamic sources.
In 681, Salm b. Ziyad was appointed the governor of Khorasan and Sistan by Yazid I. He appointed his brother Yazid b. Ziyad, apparently to lead a military expedition against the Zunbil of Zabulistan. The expedition however was disastrous, with Yazid being killed, his brother Abu-'Ubayda captured, while Arabs received heavy casualties. Salm sent an expedition by Talha b. 'Abdillah al-Khuzai to rescue his brother and pacify the region. The Arab captives were ransomed for half million dirhams and the region was pacified more through diplomacy than force.
After Talha's death in 683–684, a virtual anarchy was unleashed amongst Sistan's Arabs. His army refused allegiance to Yazid or Muawiyah II and his son 'Abadallah had to abandon Zarang, which was left without any in charge. Many Arabs took over various quarters of Zarang and areas of Sistan. This prompted the Zunbil and his allies, who had already inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Arabs earlier, to intervene in the Arab affairs at Sistan and Bust. Baladhuri says of this period:
During the Second Fitna period, the Zunbil attacked Sistan in 685 but was defeated and killed by the Arabs.
Abdalmalik appointed Umayya ibn Abdallah ibn Khalid ibn Asid as governor of Khorasan in 74 AH (693-4 AD), with Sistan included under his governorship. Umayya sent his son Abdullah as head of the expedition in Sistan. Though initially successful, the new Zunbil was able to defeat them. Per some accounts, Abdullah himself was killed. Umayya was dismissed and Sistan was added to the governorship of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.
Under Al-Hajjaj
Al-Hajjaj, who had become governor of Iraq and the East in 78 AH (697–98 AD), had appointed Ubaidallah, who was a mawla of mixed Abyssinian and Iraqi-Persian origins, as his deputy in Sistan. The Zunbils, who had been left unchecked, had completely stopped paying the tribute. This provided a pretext to terminate the peace treaty between the two sides. Ubaidallah was appointed for an expedition against them in 698 and was ordered by Al-Hajjaj to "attack until he laid waste to Zunbil's territories, destroyed his strongholds, killed all his fighting men and enslaved his progeny". The ensuing campaign was called the "Army of Destruction" (Jaish al-Fana). However, it ended disastrously for the Arabs.
Al-Baladhuri's account on the authority of Al-Mada'ini in Futuh al-Buldan and Ansab al-Ashraf, is the fullest documentation of the campaign. Tabari's account runs parallel but is based on Abu Mikhnaf and does not include the poem of A'sha Hamdan included in Ansab al-Ashraf. Ibn Qutaybah's Kitab al-Ma'arif only makes a bare mention. Ta'rikh al-khulafa' has a more detailed account and epitomises accounts of Tabari and Baladhuri. Tarikh-e-Sistan confuses the campaign with another one against the Khwarij of Zarang. The army consisted of Iraqis from Basra and Kufa, though Baladhuri mentions presence of some Syrians. Ubaidallah himself led the Basrans while the Tabi Shuraih b. Hani' al-Harithi ad-Dabbi led the Kufans.
They marched to Zamindawar or al-Rukhkhaj (the classical Arachosia) but found it barren and foodless. Their advance probably happened in summer of 698, as A'sha Hamdan's poem refers to the scorching heat they had to endure. In Zabulistan's regions of Ghazni and Gardiz, they plundered a significant amount of cattle and other animals, in addition to destroying various strongholds. The Zunbils, who were devastating the countryside whilst retreating, were luring the Arabs into a trap to an inhospitable and foodless terrain. Futuh al-Buldan states that the Muslims almost penetrated Kabul. Tabari meanwhile says that they came within 18 farsakhs of the summer capital of Zunbils in the Qandahar region.
The plan of the Zunbils worked and they trapped the Arabs into a valley. Ubaidallah realizing the gravity of the situation, offered 500,000 or 700,000 dirhams as well as his three sons along with some Arab leaders as hostages while promising not to raid again during his tenure as Sistan's governor. Shuraih, who had earlier advised retreat, felt a withdrawal would be dishonorable. He was joined by a group of people into the battle, and all but a handful of them were killed. The remnant of the Arab army withdrew back to Bust and Sistan, suffering from starvation and thirst. Many died in the "Desert of Bust", presumably the Registan Desert, with only 5,000 making it back to Bust. Many of those who survived died by gorging themselves on the food sent to them according to Tabari. Ubaidallah had arranged food for them after seeing their suffering and himself died, either from grief or an ear affliction.
Al-Hajjaj prepared another expedition in 699, reportedly of 40,000 troops from Kufa and Basra under Abdurrahman b. Muhammad b. al-Ash'ath. Though disguised as a military expedition, it was actually a forced migration of the elements from the two Iraqi cities troublesome to Hajjaj. It was equipped to the best standards and was called the "Army of Peacocks" because of the men included in its ranks. It included the proudest and most distinguished leaders of Iraq led by Ibn al-Ash'ath, grandson of Al-Ash'ath ibn Qays. It also included distinguished elders who served in the first armies of conquest as well as those who fought at Battle of Siffin. This Arab army arrived in Sistan in the spring of 699.
The Arabs advanced east into Zabulistan and won several victories. However the troops did not want to fight in this inhospitable region and started becoming restive. Al-Hajjaj instructed them to continue the advance into Zabulistan's heart no matter what it took, making it clear to them he wanted them to return to their homes. Ibn al-Ash'ath also made an agreement with the Zunbils, that no tribute would be demanded if he won and in case he lost, he would be sheltered to protect him from Al-Hajjaj. The troops mutinied against Hajjaj's enforced emigration and returned to Iraq but were crushed by the Syrian troops. They fled back to the east while Ibn al-Ash'ath fled to Sistan where he died in 704 AD.
When Ibn al-Ash'ath returned to Sistan in 702-703 AD, he wasn't allowed into Zarang and fled to Bust where he was abducted by Iyad b. Himyan al-Bakri as-Sadusi, whom he had appointed as the deputy over Bust, so Iyad could resecure favor of al-Hajjaj. The Zunbil however attacked the town and threatened to slaughter or enslave everyone there unless Ibn al-Ash'ath was handed over to him. Iyad set him free and he went to the Zunbil's territory along with his army. The Zunbil was however persuaded by Al-Hajjaj's representative to surrender him. His fate is however unclear. Per some accounts, he committed suicide, while according to others he was killed by the Zunbil, who sent his head to the Umayyads in Sistan. Following this, a truce was declared between Al-Hajjaj and the Zunbil, in return for the latter paying tribute in kind and in return, Al-Hajjaj promised not to attack him.
From 8th century
Qutayba b. Muslim, the conqueror of Transoxiana, called Sijistan an "ill-omened front", and forced the Zunbils to pay tribute. Khalid al-Qasri in Iraq appointed Yazid b. al Ghurayf al-Hamdani as Sistan's governor, a Syrian from Jund al-Urdunn, in 725. Yazid resumed the campaign by sending an army under the command of Balal b. Abi Kabsha. They however did not obtain anything from the Zunbils.
The new governor of Sistan, al-Asfah b. 'Abd Allah al-Kalbi, a Syrian, embarked on an ambitious policy of campaigning against the Zunbils. The first one was carried out in 726. During the second one in late 727–728, he was warned by the Sijistanis who were with him to not campaign in winter, especially in the mountain defiles. Per Ya'qubi, his army was completely annihilated by the Zunbils. Per Tarikh al-Sistani, al-Asfah managed to get back to Sistan where he died. The next two governors did not undertake any campaigns. The Zunbil was unable to take advantage of the annihilation of al-Asfah's army, but the defeat was a heavy one. It would become one in a series of blows for the caliphate.
The Sistan front remained quiet in the latter part of Abd al-Malik's reign except perhaps the Kharjite activity, with long tenures and blank records of 'Abd Allah b. Abi Baruda and Ibrahim b. 'Asim al-'Uqayli suggesting that the instability in the region had been controlled to an extent. It appears this was only possible because no more campaigns were undertaken against the Zunbils.
Al-Mansur sent Ma'n b. Zaida ash-Shabani to Sistan in response to the disturbances there. Ma'n along with his nephew Yazid b. Ziyad undertook an expedition against the Zunbil for making him obedient and restoring the tribute not paid since the time of al-Hajjaj. It is especially well-documented by al-Baladhuri. He ordered the Zunbil to pay the tribute and was offered camels, Turkish tents and slaves, but this did not placate him. Per al-Baldahuri, under the reign of al-Mansur, Hisham b. 'Amr al-Taghlibi after conquering Kandahar, destroyed its idol-temple and built a mosque in its place.
Ma'n and Yazid advanced into Zamindawar but the Zunbil had fled to Zabulistan. They nonetheless pursued and defeated him, taking 30,000 as captives, including Faraj al-Rukhkhaji, who would later become a secretary of the department of private estates of the Caliph under al-Ma'mun. Zunbil's deputy Mawand (who is recorded as his son-in-law Mawld in Tarikh-e-Sistan) offered submission, which was requested, and was sent with 5,000 of their soldiers to Baghdad, where he was treated kindly and given pensions along with his chieftains per Baladhuri.
The tribute was paid by the Zunbils to amils of caliphs al-Mahdi and ar-Rashid, though rather irregularly. When the Caliph Al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833 AD) visited Khorasan, he was paid double the tribute by Rutbil, but was evidently left unmolested and the Arabs later subdued Kabul.
Kabulistan
The area of Kabul was initially ruled by the Nezak Huns. Sometime after the defeat of their last king Ghar-ilchi at the hands of Samura, the Turkic Barha Tegin rebelled and assaulted Kabul. Ghar-ilchi was killed and Barha Tegin proceeded to proclaim himself as the king of Kabul, before taking Zabulistan in the south. The "Turk Shahi" dynasty established by him however split into two around 680 AD. The dynasty was Buddhist and were followed by a Hindu dynasty shortly before the Saffarid conquest in 870 AD.
Al-Ma'mun's expeditions were the last Arab conflict against Kabul and Zabul and the long-drawn conflict ended with the dissolution of the empire. Muslim missionaries converted many people to Islam; however, the entire population did not convert, with repetitive revolts from the mountain tribes in the Afghan area taking place. The Hindu Shahi dynasty was defeated by Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030), who expelled them from Gandhara and also encouraged mass-conversions in Afghanistan and India.
During the caliphate of Uthman, new popular uprisings had broken out in Persia and continued for five years from 644 to 649. The revolts were suppressed and Abdullah b. Amir, who was appointed governor of Basra, had captured many cities including Balkh, Herat and Kabul.
After Muawiyah became the Caliph, he prepared an expedition under 'Abd ar-Rahman b. Samura to Khorasan. Per Baladhuri, after recapturing Zarang as well as conquering other cities, the Arabs besieged Kabul for a few months and finally entered it. Samura concluded a treaty and proceeded to attack Bost, al-Rukhkhaj and Zabulistan. The people of Kabul however rebelled and Samura was forced to recapture the city. The account of Tarjuma-i Futuhat however differs and states that Samura besieged the city for a year. After capturing it, he had all the soldiers massacred and their wives and children taken as captives. He also ordered the captured king Ghar-ilchi to be beheaded, but spared him when he converted. Around the same time according to al-Baladhuri, Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra launched an attack on the Indian frontier, reaching up to Bannu and "al-Ahwaz" (Waihind). The historian Firishta states that while capturing Kabul in 664 AD, Samura had made converts of some 12,000 people.
The new king of Kabul Barha Tegin and the Zunbil campaigned against the Arabs after Samura's departure, recapturing Kabul, Zabulistan and al-Rukhkhaj. Rabi b. Ziyad attacked the Zunbil after becoming governor in 671 AD. His successor Ubayd Allah b. Abi Bakra continued the campaign in 673 AD, with the Zunbil negotiating for both Zabul and Kabul soon afterwards. About the time of death of Yazid I however, "the people of Kabul treacherously broke the compact". The Arab army sent to reimpose it was routed.
In about 680–683, the kingdom split into two with the Zunbil fleeing from his brother, the king of Kabul, and approaching Salm b. Ziyad at Amul in Khorasan. In return for him agreeing to acknowledge Salm as his overlord, the Zunbil was allowed to settle down in Amul. Soon he drove his brother out and established himself in Amul. The location of Amul mentioned by Tabari is not certain, Josef Markwart identified it with Zabul. Tabari however claims the Kabul Shah fled instead from the Zunbil and established himself as an independent king during the reign of Mu'awiya.
Abdur Rehman, who studied the descriptions of Tabari however stated that these events should be seen as having happened in Yazid's time since Salm was governor under his reign. In 152 AH (769 AD), Humayd ibn Qahtaba, the governor of Khorasan, raided Kabul. According to Ibn al-Athir, al-'Abbas b. Ja'far led an expedition against Kabul sent by his father Ja'far b. Muhamamad in 787–78, which Bosworth claims is the one attributed to Ibrahim b. Jibril by Al-Ya'qubi.
The only record of an event in early Abbasid period obviously related to the area south of the Hindu Kush, is the expedition against Kabul in 792-793 ordered by Al-Fadl ibn Yahya and led by Ibrahim b. Jibril. It is mentioned by al-Tabari's chronicle, the tenth century Kitāb al-Wuzarā'wa al-Kuttāb of al-Jahshiyari and by al-Ya'qubi. Per al-Jahshiyari, he conquered Kabul and acquired a lot of wealth. Al-Ya'qubi states that rulers and landlords of Tukharistan, including Bamiyan's king, joined this army, implying it crossed the Hindu Kush from the north. It also mentions the subjugation of "Ghurwand" (present-day Ghorband). He also mentions the "Pass of Ghurwand", which judging by the itinerary of the expedition from Tukharistan to Bamiyan to Ghorband valley, is identical to Shibar Pass. They then marched to Shah Bahar where an idol venerated by the locals was destroyed. The inhabitants of various towns then concluded peace treaties with Fadl, one of which was identified by Josef Markwart as Kapisa.
Al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833 AD) while visiting Khorasan, launched an attack on Kabul, whose ruler submitted to taxation. The king of Kabul was captured and he then converted to Islam. Per sources, when the Shah submitted to al-Ma'mun, he sent his crown and bejeweled throne, later seen by the Meccan historian al-Azraqi, to the Caliph who praised Fadl for "curbing polytheists, breaking idols, killing the refractory" and refers to his successes against Kabul's king and ispahabad. Other near-contemporary sources however refer to the artifacts as a golden jewel-encrusted idol sitting on a silver throne by the Hindu Shahi ruler or by an unnamed ruler of "Tibet" as a sign of his conversion to Islam.
Qutayba's campaigns
Qutayba b. Muslim was appointed the governor of Khorasan in 705 by al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf, the governor of Iraq and the East. He began his rule with the reconquest of western Tokharistan in the same year. Qutayba, who was tasked with subduing the revolt in Lower Tokharistan, led the final conquest of Balkh. His army was assembled in spring of 705 and marched to Balkh. Per one version of al-Tabari, the city was surrendered peacefully. Another version, speaks of a revolt among the residents. In 706, he received the submission of Nizak, the leader of Badghis. In 707, he marched on Bukhara oasis along with Nizak in his army but the campaign did not achieve any major objective.
According to Baldhuri, when Qutayba became the governor of Khorasan and Sistan, he appointed his brother 'Amr to Sistan. 'Amr asked the Zunbil to pay tribute in cash but he refused, prompting Qutayba to march against him. The campaign was also partially encouraged by his desire to eliminate the support of the southern Hepthalites, the Zabulites, for their northern brethren to revolt. Zunbil, who was surprised by this unexpected move and scared of Qutayba's reputation, quickly capitulated. Qutayba, realizing the real strength of the Zunbils, accepted it and returned to Merv, leaving only an Arab representative in Sistan.
Per Al-Mada'ini, Qutayba returned to Merv after conquering Bukhara in 709. The rebellion of the Hepthalite principalities from the region of Guzgan, including Taloqan and Faryab, led Qutayba to dispatch 12,000 men from Merv to Balkh in winter of 709. The rebellion was led and organized by Nezak Tarkhan and was supported by Balkh and Marw al-Rudh's dihqan Bādām. Nizak had realised that independence would not be possible if Arab rule was strengthened in Khorasan, and perhaps was also encouraged by Qutayba's attempts to achieve his objectives through diplomacy. The success of Zunbils may also have encouraged him.
Nizak wrote to the Zunblis asking for help. In addition, he also forced the weak Jābghū of Tokharistan to join his cause to persuade all princes of the Principalities of Tukharistan to do the same. His plan to stage the revolt in spring of 710 was however spoilt by Qutayba. Bādām fled when Qutayba advanced on Marw al-Rudh but his two sons were caught and crucified by him. Qutayba next marched to Taloqan, which was the only place in his campaign where the inhabitants were not given a complete amnesty, concerning which H.A.R. Gibb states the "traditions are hopelessly confused". Per one account, he executed and crucified a band of bandits there, though it is possible it was selected for this severity as it was the only place where there was an open revolt.
Faryab and Guzgan both submitted and their inhabitants were not harmed. From there, Qutayba went on to receive the submission of people of Balkh. Almost all of Nizak's princely allies had reconciled themselves with Qutayba and there were Arab governors in all towns of Tokharistan, spoiling his plans. He fled south to the Hindu Kush, hoping to reach Kabul and entrenched himself in an inaccessible mountain pass guarded by a fortress. The Arabs succeeded in gaining the fort with help of Ru'b Khan, ruler of Ru'b and Siminjan. Nizak fled along the modern road that leads from the Oxus valley to Salang Pass and holed up in an unidentified mountain refuge in a site of Baghlan Province. Qutayba caught up with him and besieged him for two months.
Sulaym al-Nasih (the counsellor), a mawla of Khorasan, helped in obtaining Nizak's surrender to Qutayba who promised a pardon. Nonetheless, he was executed along with 700 of his followers after orders from al-Hajjaj. The Jabghu of Tokharistan was sent as a valuable hostage to Damascus. Qutayba then went in pursuit of Juzjan's king, who requested amnesty and called for exchange of hostages as a precautionary measure. This was agreed upon and Habib b. 'Abd Allah, a Bahilite, was sent as prisoner by Qutayba while the king sent some of his family members in return. The peace treaty was agreed but the king died in Taloqan on his return journey. His subjects accused the Muslims of poisoning him and killed Habib, with Qutayba retaliating by executing Juzjan's hostages.
Other regions
Ghur
Tabari records that in 667 AD, Ziyad b. Abihi had sent Hakam b. 'Amr al-Ghafri to Khorasan as Amir. Hakam raided Ghur and Farawanda, bringing them to submission through force of arms and conquered them. He obtained captives and a large amount of plunder from them. A larger expedition was undertaken under Asad ibn Abdallah al-Qasri, the governor of Khorasan, who raided Gharchistan in 725, receiving its submission as well as the conversion of its king to Islam. He next attacked Ghur whose residents hid their valuables in an inaccessible cave, but he was able to plunder the wealth by lowering his men in crates.
Asad's success prompted him to undertake a second expedition in 108-109 AH against Ghur. The poet Thabit Qutna's eulogical poem of Asad recorded by Tabari called it a campaign against the Turks saying, "Groups of the Turks who live between Kabul and Ghur came to you, since there was no place in which they might find refuge from you." Bosworth states that this campaign may have actually taken place in Guzgan or Bamiyan rather than the purely-Iranian Ghur. He also states that no doubt further sporadic raids continued throughout the Umayyad rule, though not noted by historians. It is known that Nasr ibn Sayyar's commander Sulaiman b. Sul had raided Gharchistan and Ghur some time before 739 AD.
The early history of Ghor is unclear. Minhaj-i-Siraj in Tabaqat-i-Nasiri states that Shansab, who established the Ghurid dynasty, was converted by the Arab Caliph Ali which Mohammad Habib and K. A. Nizami dismissed as unlikely. He further adds that the Ghurid Amir Faulad assisted Abu Muslim in overthrowing the Umayyads during the Abbasid Revolution. He also recounts a legend about a dispute between two prominent families of the area. They sought the intercession of the Abbasids and the ancestor of the Shansabi family, Amir Banji, was subsequently confirmed as the ruler by Harun al-Rashid.
No permanent control was ever established on Ghur. According to Bosworth, its value was only for its slaves which could best be obtained in occasional temporary raids. Arab and Persian geographers never considered it important. In all sources it is cited as supplying slaves to slave markets in Khorasan, indicating it had a mostly "infidel" population. Istakhari called it a land of infidels (dar al-kufr) annexed to Islamic domain because of its Muslim minority. However Hudud al-'Alam stated it had a mostly-Muslim population.
Ghazni
The pre-Ghaznavid royal dynasty of Ghazni were the Lawiks. Afghan historian 'Abd al-Hayy Habibi Qandahari, who in 1957 examined a manuscript containing tales about miracles (karamat) of Shaikh Sakhi Surur of Multan, who lived in the 12th century, concluded it dated to 1500. He recorded one of its anecdotes which records the history of Ghazni by the Indian traditionalist and lexicographer Radi ad-Din Hasan b. Muhammad al-Saghani (died 1252) from Abu Hamid az-Zawuli. According to it, a great mosque at Ghazni was earlier a great idol-temple built in honor of the Rutbils and Kabul-Shahs by Wujwir Lawik. His son Khanan converted to Islam and was sent a poem by the Kabul-Shah saying, "Alas! The idol of Lawik has been interred beneath the earth of Ghazni, and the Lawiyan family have given away [the embodiment of] their kingly power. I am going to send my own army; do not yourself follow the same way of the Arabs [ie., Islam]."
Habibi continues stating that Khanan later reconverted to the faith of the Hindu-Shahis. His grandson Aflah however upon assuming power demolished the idol-temple and built a mosque in its place. When the saint Surur arrived at the mosque, he is said to have found the idol of Lawik and destroyed it. The Siyasatnama of Nizam al-Mulk, the Tabaqat-i Nasiri of Juzjani and the Majma' al-ansāb fī't-tawārīkh of Muhammad Shabankara'i (14th century) mention Lawik. Juzjani gives the Lawik who was defeated by Alp-tegin the Islamic kunya of Abu Bakr, though Shabankara'i claims he was a pagan. A variant of his name appears as Anuk in Tabaqat-i Nasiri.
Bamyan
Ya'qubi states that the lord of Bamyan called the Shēr, was converted to Islam under Caliph Al-Mansur (d.775) by Muzahim b. Bistam, who married his son Abu Harb Muhammad to his daughter. However, in his history he changes it to the rule of Al-Mahdi (r. 775–785). Ya'qubi also states that Al-Fadl ibn Yahya made Hasn, Abu Harb Muhammad's son, as the new Shēr after his successful campaign in Ghorband. Ya'qubi states that the ruler of Bamiyan had accompanied an expedition dispatched by Al-Fadl ibn Yahya in 792–793 against the Kabul Shahi.
Later Shers remained Muslim and were influential at the Abbasid court. However, Muslim sources describe the Saffarid ruler Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar looting Bamiyan's pagan idols. A much later historian Shabankara'i claims that Alp-Tegin obtained conversion of the Sher to Islam in 962. It seems there were lapses to Buddhism among some of the rulers as the Muslim influence grew weak. However, there is no evidence about the role of Buddhism during these periods or whether Buddhist monasteries remained the center of religious life and teaching.
Post-Arab rule
Tahirids
Khurasan was the base for early recruitment of Abbasid armies, especially the Abbasid takeover received support from Arab settlers aiming to undermine the important sections of non-Muslim aristocracy. The Abbasids succeeded in integrating Khorasan and the East into the central Islamic lands. The state was gradually Persianized through political influence and financial support of the dihqans. Al-Ma'mun emerged as the victor in the Fourth Fitna with the help of Khorasani forces and appointed Tahir ibn Husayn as the governor. Later, he appointed Talha as the governor in 822 and Abdallah in 828. But after the Abbasid decline, Khorasan ended up turning into a virtually independent state under a Persian mawla who rose to favour under Al-Ma'mun.
According to Ibn Khordadbeh, the Shah of Kabul had to send 2,000 Oghuz slaves worth 600,000 dirhams as annual tribute to the governor of Khorasan Abdallah ibn Tahir (r. 828-845). In addition to the Oghuz slaves, he also had to pay an annual tribute of 1.5 million dirhams. Mid-9th century, one of their tributaries Abu Da'udid or the Banijurid Amir Da'ud b. Abu Da'ud Abbas, undertook an obscure campaign into eastern Afghanistan and Zabulistan that was profitable. It is recorded that in 864 Muhammad ibn Tahir sent two elephants captured at Kabul, idols and aromatic substances to the caliph.
Saffarids
Ya'qub b. al-Layth
The Tahirid rule was overthrown by Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar of Sistan, the first independent Iranian ruler in the post-Islamic era. He also fought against the Abbasid Caliphate. He joined the 'ayyar band of Salih b. al-Nadr/Nasr, who was recognised as Bust's amir in 852. al-Nasr aimed at taking over whole of Sistan and drove out the Tahirid governor in 854, with Sistan ceasing to be under the direct control of the Caliphate. al-Nasr himself was overthrown by Dirham b. Nasr who was overthrown by Ya'qub in 861. Ya'qub and his brother Amr advanced as far as Baghdad and to Kabul itself in eastern Afghanistan with their dynamism, advancing along the historic route taken by the modern Lashkargah-Qandahar-Ghazni-Kabul road. Their eastern campaigns are documented by Arabic sources of Al-Masudi's Murūj adh-dhahab, Ibn al-Athir's al-Kāmil fi't-tā'rīkh and Tarikh-e-Sistan. The Persian historian Gardizi's Zain al-akhbār also mentions the Saffarid campaigns.
Salih fled to ar-Rukhkhaj or Arachosia, where he received the help of the Zunbil. Both Salih and the Zunbil were killed by Ya'qub in 865. Abu Sa'id Gardezi mentions that Ya'qub advanced from Sistan to Bust and occupied the city. From here he advanced to Panjway and Tiginabad (two of the chief towns of Arachosia), defeating and killing the Zunbil, though the date is not given. This account matches with that of Tarikh-e-Sistan. Satish Chandra states that, "We are told that it was only in 870 AD that Zabulistan was finally conquered by one Yakub who was the virtual ruler of the neighbouring Iranian province of Siestan. The king was killed and his subjects were made Muslims."
Muhammad Aufi's Jawami ul-Hikayat meanwhile states that during his invasion of Zabul, Yaqub employed a ruse to surrender after being allowed to pay homage to the ruler along with his troops, lest they disperse and become dangerous to both sides. Yaqub's troops "carried their lances concealed behind their horses and were wearing coats of mail under their garments. The Almighty made the army of Rusal (probably Rutbil), blind, so that they did not see the lances. When Yaqub drew near Rusal, he bowed his head as if to do homage, but raised a lance and thrust it in the back of Rusal so that he died on the spot. His people also fell like lightning upon the enemy, cutting them down with their swords and staining the earth with the blood of the enemies of the religion. The infidels when they saw the head of Rusal upon the point of a spear took to flight and great bloodshed ensued. This victory, which he achieved, was the result of treachery and deception, such as no one had ever committed."
Ashirbadi Lal Srivastava states that after this victory by Yaqub over Zabul, the position of Lallya alias Kallar, the Brahmin minister who had overthrown the last Kshatriya king of Kabul Lagaturman, seems to have become untenable. He shifted his capital to Udhaband in 870 AD Lallya, credited as an able and strong ruler by Kalhana in Rajatarangini, was driven out by Ya'qub from Kabul within a year of his usurpation according to Srivastava.
Gardezi states that after defeating the Zunbil, Yaqub then advanced into Zabulistan and then Ghazni, whose citadel he destroyed and forced Abu Mansur Aflah b. Muhammad b. Khaqan, the local ruler of nearby Gardez, to tributary status. Tarikh-e-Sistan however in contrast states that he returned to Zarang after killing Salih. This campaign may be related to Gardizi's account of a later expedition in 870 where he advanced as far as Bamiyan and Kabul. Salih b. al-Hujr, described as a cousin of the Zunbil, was appointed as the Saffarid governor of ar-Rukhkhaj, but rebelled two years after Zunbil's death and committed suicide to avoid capture.
Ya'qub had captured several relatives of the Zunbil's family after defeating Salih b. al-Nasr. Zunbil's son escaped from captivity in 869 and quickly raised an army in al-Rukhkhaj, later seeking refuge with the Kabul-Shah. Per Gardizi, Ya'qub undertook another expedition in 870 which advanced as far as Kabul and Bamiyan. According to Tarikh-e-Sistan, Bamiyan was captured in 871 and its idol-temple was plundered. Ya'qub defeated Kabul in 870 and again had to march there in 872 when the Zunbil's son took possession of Zabulistan. Ya'qub captured him from the fortress of Nay-Laman where he had fled. In 871, Ya'qub sent 50 gold and silver idols he gained by campaigning from Kabul to Caliph Al-Mu'tamid, who sent them to Mecca.
According to Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, Ghor, which was ruled by Amir Suri in the 9th century, entered into a war against Ya'qub, but escaped conquest due to its difficult and mountainous terrain.
Amr b. al-Layth
After Ya'qub's death in 879, Al-Mu'tamid recognised his brother and successor 'Amr b. al-Layth (r. 879–902), as governor of Khorasan, Isfahan, Fars, Sistan and Sindh. The caliph however announced divesting him of all his governorships in 885 and reappointed Muhammad b. Tahir as the governor of Khorasan. He was reappointed governor of Khorasan in 892 by Al-Mu'tadid.
Amr led an expedition as far as Sakawand in the Logar Valley, between Ghazni and Kabul, described as a Hindu pilgrimage-centre. In 896, he sent idols captured from Zamindawar and the Indian frontier, including a female copper idol with four arms and two girdles of silver set with jewels and pulled on a trolley by camels, to Baghdad. Al-Baihaki mentions Sakawand as a pass from Kabul to India. It was situated at or near Jalalabad. The idol taken from somewhere in eastern Afghanistan by Amr was displayed for three days in Basra and then for three days in Baghdad. Jamal J. Elias states that it may have been of Lakshmi or Sukhavati at Sakawand. Al-Masudi emphasises the attention it received as a spectacle, with crowds gathering to gawk at it.
Aufi states that Amr had sent Fardaghan as the prefect over Ghazni and he launched the raid on Sakawand, which was a part of the territory of Kabul Shahi and had a temple frequented by Hindus. The Shah of Kabul at this time was Kamaluka, called "Kamalu" in Persian literature. Fardaghan entered it and succeeded in surprising Sakawand. Sakawand was plundered, and its temple destroyed.
Kamalu counter-attacked Fardaghan, who realising his forces were no match for his, resorted to spreading a false rumour that he knew his intentions and had organised a formidable army against him with 'Amr on the way to join him. The rumour had the desired effect and the opposing army slowed its advance, knowing that they could be ambushed and slaughtered if they advanced impetuously into the narrow defiles. Meanwhile, Fardaghan received reinforcements from Khorasan according to Aufi. According to Aufi, he cleverly averted the danger.
Tarikh-e-Sistan does not mention any attack by Fardaghan on Sakawand however, instead beginning with the attack by Kamalu. Per it, when Amr was in Gurgan, he heard that Nasad Hindi and Alaman Hindi had allied and invaded Ghazni. The Saffarid governor 'Fard 'Ali was defeated and fled.
Samanids
The Samanids came to rule over areas including Khorasan, Sistan, Tokharistan and Kabulistan after Ismail (r. 892–907) in 900 AD had defeated the Saffarids, who had taken over Zabulistan and the Kabul region. The Turks were highly noted for their martial prowess by the Muslim sources and were in high demand as slave-soldiers (ghulam, mamluk) by the Caliphate in Baghdad and the provincial emirs. The slaves were acquired either in military campaigns or through trade. The Samanids were heavily involved in this trade of Turkish slaves from lands to the north and east of their state. As the enslavement was limited to non-Muslims and with the Turks increasingly adopting Islam beyond Samanid borders, they also entered Transoxiana as free men due to various causes.
The Ghaznavids arose indirectly from the atmosphere of disintegration, palace revolutions and succession putsches of the Samanid Empire. Abu-Mansur Sabuktigin was one of the Samanid slave guards who rose from the ranks to come under the patronage of the Chief Hajib Alp-Tegin. After the death of the Samanid Amir 'Abd al-Malik b. Nuh, the commander of forces in Khorasan Alp-Tegin along with the vizier Muhammad Bal'ami attempted to place a ruler of their choice on the throne. The attempt failed however and Alp-Tegin decided to withdraw to the eastern fringes of the empire. Per the sources, he wanted to flee to India to avoid his enemies and earn divine merit by raiding the Hindus. He did not intend to capture Ghazni, but was forced to take it when he was denied transit by its ruler.
Alp-Tegin proceeded with his small force of ghulams and ghazis (200 ghulams and 800 ghazis according to Siyasatnama, while Majma al-ansab of Muhammad b. Ali al-Shabankara'i (d. 1358) states 700 ghulams and 2,500 Tajiks). En route, he subdued the Iranian Sher of Bamiyan and the Hindu-Shahi king of Kabul. He then came to Ghazni, whose citadel he besieged for four months and wrested the town from its ruler, Abu 'Ali or Abu Bakr Lawik or Anuk. The origin of this chief was Turkic, though it is not known if he was a Samanid vassal or an independent ruler. Josef Markwart suggests he was a late representative of the Zunbils. The Lawik dynasty of Ghazni was linked to the Hindu Shahi dynasty through marriage. Alp-Tegin was accompanied by Sabuktigin during the conquest of Ghazni.
Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani states that Alp-Tegin had his position regularised by Amir Mansur b. Nuh through an investiture, however Siyasatnama mentions an expedition against Alp-Tegin from Bukhara which was defeated outside Ghazni. His ambiguous, semi-rebel status seems to be reflected in his coins, with two of his coins minted at Parwan mentioning his authority from the Samanids to mint coins only in an indirect way. He was succeeded by his son Abu Ishaq Ibrahim, who lost Ghazni to Abu Ali Lawik, the son of its expelled ruler. He recovered it however with Samanid help in 964–65.
Alp-Tegin's ghulams were reconciled with the Samanids in 965 but maintained their autonomy. After Ibrahim's death in 966, Bilge-Tigin was made the successor and he acknowledged the Samanids as his overlords. He died in 364 AH (974–975 AD) while besieging Gardez and was succeeded by Böritigin or Piri.
Piri's misrule led to resentment among the people who invited Abu Ali to take back the throne. The Kabul Shahis allied with him and the king, most likely Jayapala, sent his son to assist Lawik in the invasion. According to the Majba al-Ansab, Sabuktigin managed to convince the Muslim Turks living in Ghazni, Gardez and Bamyan to participate in a jihad against the Hindus. When the allied forces reached near Charkh on Logar River, they were attacked by Sabuktigin who killed and captured many of them, while also capturing ten elephants. Lawik as well his ally were both killed in the battle. Piri was expelled and Sabuktigin became governor in 977 AD. The accession was endorsed by the Samanid ruler Nuh II.
Hudud al-‘Alam states that Ghor was under the overlordship of Farighunids. Both Gardezi and Baihaqi state that in 379 AH (979–980 AD), the Samanid Amir Nuh b. Mansur dispatched an expedition under Abu Ja'far Zubaidi to conquer Ghur, but he had to return after capturing several forts. As the Samanid governor of Zabulistan and Ghazni, Sabuktigin attacked it several times. He was able to conquer eastern Ghur after initial set-backs and was acknowledged as a sovereign by Muhammad ibn Suri.
Ghaznavids
Sabuktigin
First war against Jayapala
The Ghaznavid campaigns from the time of Sabuktigin are recorded as jihad against the people of al-Hind to destroy idolatry and replace it by expanding Islam. The Kabul Shahis only retained Lamghan in the Kabul-Gandhara area by the time of Alp-Tegin. According to Firishta, Sabuktigin had already begun raiding Multan and Lamghan under Alp-Tegin for slaves. This precipitated an alliance between the Shahi ruler Jayapala, Bhatiya and Sheikh Hamid Khan Lodi. He crossed the Khyber Pass many times and raided the territory of Jaipala.
Jayapala appointed Sheikh Hamid Khan Lodi as ruler over Multan and Lamghan, but Sabuktigin broke up this alliance after his accession through diplomatic means, convincing Lodi to acknowledge him as an overlord. Although Ferishta had identified Lodi and his family as Afghans, historian Yogendra Mishra pointed out that this was an error, since they were descended from the Qurayshite Usama ibn Lawi ibn Ghalib.
Sabuktigin plundered the forts in the outlying provinces of the Kabul Shahi and captured many cities, acquiring huge booty. He also established Islam at many places. Jaipal in retaliation marched with a large force into the valley of Lamghan (Jalalabad) where he clashed with Sabuktigin and his son. The battle stretched on several days until a snow storm affected Jaipala's strategies, forcing him to plead for peace. Sabuktigin was inclined to grant peace to Jayapala but his son Mahmud wanted total victory.
Jaypala upon hearing Mahmud's plans warned Sabuktigin, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death... If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones." Knowing Jaipala could carry out his threat, Sabuktigin granted him peace in return for his promise of paying tribute and ceding some of his territory.
Second war against Jayapala
After making peace with Sabuktigin, Jayapala returned to Waihind but broke the treaty and mistreated the amirs sent to collect the tribute. Sabuktigin launched another invasion in retaliation. While the mamluks remained the core of his army, he also hired the Afghans, especially the Ghilji tribe, in his dominion. According to al-Utbi, Sabuktigin attacked Lamghan, conquering it and burning the residences of the "infidels", while also demolishing its idol-temples and establishing Islam. He proceeded to slaughter the non-Muslims, destroyed their temples and plundered their shrines. It is said that his forces even risked frostbite on their hands while counting the large booty.
To avenge the savage attack of Sabuktigin, Jayapala, who had earlier taken his envoys as hostage, decided to go to war again in revenge. According to al-Utbi, he assembled an army of 100,000 against Sabuktigin. The much later account of Ferishta states that it included troops from Kanauj, Ajmer, Delhi and Kalinjar. The two sides fought on an open battlefield in Laghman. Sabuktigin divided his army into packs of 500 who attacked the Indians in succession. After sensing that they were weakened, his forces mounted a concerted attack. The forces of Kabul Shahi were routed and those still alive were killed in the forest or drowned in the river.
The second battle that took place between Sabuktigin and Jayapala in 988 AD, resulted in the former capturing territory between Lamghan and Peshawar. Al-Utbi also states that the Afghans and Khaljis, living there as nomads, took the oath of allegiance to him and were recruited into his army. He helped Nuh II in expelling the rebel and heretic Abu Ali Simjur from Khorasan, resulting in its governorship being given to Sabuktigin who appointed Mahmud as his deputy there. He also appointed Ismail as the successor to his kingdom and died in 997. A succession war erupted between Ismail and Mahmud, with the latter gaining the throne in 998.
Mahmud
The Samanid amir Mansur II appointed Bektuzun as Khorasan's governor after Sabuktigin's death. Mahmud however wished to reacquire the governorship after defeating his brother Ismail and his allies. Bektuzun and Fa'iq, the de facto power behind the Samanid throne, toppled Mansur II as they did not trust him, and replaced him with Abu'l Fawaris 'Abd al-Malik. Their forces were however defeated in 999 by Mahmud, who acquired all the lands south of Oxus, with even those to the north of the river submitting to him. The Samanid dynasty was later ended by the Karakhanids. In 1002, Mahmud also defeated the Saffarid Amir Khalaf ibn Ahmad and annexed Sistan.
Wars against Kabul Shahi
Mahmud systemized plunder raids into India as a long-term policy of the Ghaznavids. The first raid was undertaken in September 1000, but was meant for reconnaissance and identifying the possible terrain and roads that could be used for future raids. He reached Peshawar by September 1001 and was attacked by Jayapala. The two sides clashed on 27–28 November 1001 and Jayapala was captured. Anandapala who was at Waihind, had to pay a heavy ransom to have his father and others released. Jayapala later self-immolated out of shame and Anandpala succeeded him. Mahmud attacked Anandpala later over his refusal to allow him passage during his attack on Multan, which was controlled by Fateh Daud. The two sides clashed in 1009 in the eastern side of Indus at Chhachh, with Mahmud defeating Anandapala and capturing the fort of Bhimnagar. He was allowed to rule as a feudatory in Punjab for some time.
An alliance between Anandpala's son, Trilochanpala, and Kashmiri troops was later defeated. During the warfare from 990–91 to 1015, Afghanistan, and later Punjab and Multan were lost to the Ghaznavids. Trilochanpala's rule was limited to eastern Punjab and he gained respite from the Muslim invasions with retreat to Sirhind. He allied with the Chandellas and in 1020-21 was defeated at a river called Rahib by Al-Utbi, while Firishta and Nizamuddin Ahmad identify it as Yamuna. He was killed in 1021 AD by his mutinous troops and succeeded by Bhimapala, who became the last ruler of the Kabul Shahi and was killed fighting the Ghaznavids in 1026 AD. The remnants of the royal family sought refuge with the Lohara dynasty of Kashmir and Punjab passed under the control of Muslim conquerors.
Mahmud used his plundered wealth to finance his armies which included mercenaries. The Indian soldiers, presumably Hindus, who were one of the components of the army, with their commander called sipahsalar-i-Hinduwan, lived in their quarter of Ghazni while practicing their own religion. Indian soldiers under their commander Suvendhray remained loyal to Mahmud. They were also used against a Turkic rebel, with the command given to a Hindu named Tilak according to Baihaki.
The renowned 14th-century Moroccan Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta remarked that the Hindu Kush meant the "slayer of Indians", because the slaves brought from India who had to pass through there died in large numbers due to the extreme cold and quantity of snow. He states:
Invasions of Ghur
The conversion of Ghur occurred over a long period and it was mostly pagan until the 10th century, which Mohammad Habib and Khaliq Ahmad Nizami say was probably a result of the missionary activities by the Karramiyya movement established in the region in 10th–11th centuries. Its imperfect conversion is visible by the fact that while the people of Ghur had Muslim names, they led the life of pagans. Muhammad b. Suri, who had acknowledged Sabuktigin as his sovereign, withheld tribute after his death, started plundering caravans and harassed the subjects of Mahmud. Rawżat aṣ-ṣafāʾ called him a pagan, and al-Utbi stated that he was a Hindu.
In 1011, Mahmud dispatched an expedition to conquer Ghur under Altuntash, governor of Herat, and Arslan Hajib, governor of Tus. Muhammad b. Suri, the king, placed himself in inaccessible hills and ravines. The Ghurids were however defeated and Suri was captured along with his son Shith. Abu Ali, who had remained on good terms with the Sultan, was made the ruler of Ghur by him. Eastern Ghur was brought under Ghaznavid control. In 1015, Mahmud attacked Ghur's southwestern district of Khwabin and captured some forts.
In 1020, Mahmud's son Ma'sud was dispatched to take Ghur's northwestern part called Tab. He was helped by Abul Hasan Khalaf and Shirwan, chieftains of the south-western and north-eastern regions respectively. He captured many forts, bringing the entire region of Ghur, except maybe the inaccessible interior, under Ghaznavid control. He also captured the stronghold of the chieftain Warmesh-Pat of Jurwas, levying a tribute of arms. Minhaj al-Siraj Juzjani praises Abu Ali for firmly establishing Islamic institutions in Ghur. The progress of Islam in this divided region after his death is however unknown.
Ghur remained a pagan enclave until the 11th century. Mahmud who raided it, left Muslim precepts to teach Islam to the local population. The region became Muslim by 12th century, though the historian Satish Chandra states that Mahayana Buddhism is believed to have existed until the end of the century. Neither Mahmud nor Ma'sud conquered the interior. Habib and Nizami say that the Ghurids were gradually converted by propagandists of new mystic movements. The Shansabani eventually succeeded in establishing their seniority in Ghor, if not its unification. By the time of Sultan Bahram, Ghur was converted and politically unified. According to Minhaj, both Ghiyasuddin and Mu'izzuddin were Karamis who later converted to Shafi‘i and Hanafi Islam respectively. Tarikh-i guzida however says that the Ghorids were only converted to Islam by Mahmud.
Conversion of Pashtun-Afghan people
The name Afghanistan was first used in a political sense by Saifi Herawi in the 14th century. It was even used during the height of the Durrani Empire. Only after the Durand line was fixed, did its modern usage for the land between it and the Oxus river become usual. The people who were mostly responsible for establishing the Afghan kingdom are referred to as Pashtun, who were also called "Afghans". The name Pashtun (or Pakthun) is the original and oldest name.
The tenth-century Persian geography Hudud al-'Alam is the earliest known mention of the Afghans. In Discourse on the Country of Hindistan and Its Towns, he states that, "Saul, a pleasant village on a mountain. In it live Afghans." Ibn Battuta described Saul as being situated between Gardez and Husaynan along a common trade route, the exact location of Husaynan is unknown. Akhund Darweza states that their original homeland was Qandahar from where they migrated in 11th century upon the request of Mahmud of Ghazni to assist him in his conquests. Afghan tradition considers "Kase Ghar" in Sulayman range as the homeland. Hudud al-'Alam also mentions that the king of Ninhar (Nangarhar) had many wives including "Moslem, Afghan and Hindu".
The Pashtun traditions speak of Islamization during Muhammad's time through Khalid ibn Walid. Qais Abdur Rashid, the presumed ancestor of the Afghans, is said to have led a delegation to Mecca from Ghor after being summoned by Khalid b. Walid and converted to Islam while also distinguishing himself in the service of Muhammad. He adopted the name Abdul Rashid, and his three sons – Saraban, Ghurghust, Karlani, and a foundling Karlanri linked to Saban, are considered to be the progenitors of the major Afghan divisions.
Ni'matullah's Makhzan-i-Afghani traces their history to an Israelite called Afghana who constructed the al-Aqsa mosque. Per it, under the time of King Suleiman, a figure named Bokhtnasser was responsible for "carrying away the Israelites, whom he settled in the mountainous districts of Ghor, Ghazneen, Kabul, Candahar, Koh Firozeh, and the parts lying within the fifth and sixth climates; where they, especially those descended of Asif and Afghana, fixed their habitations, continually increasing in number, and incessantly making war on the infidels around them." Qais traveled to Medina to receive Mohammed's blessings and fought against the Meccans. Muhammad himself conferred the title of Pashtun upon Qais and his people according to the tradition. They returned to Ghor to spread Islam and pledged loyalty to Mahmud. Per Ni'matullah, the Ghurid ruler Mu'izz al-Din had initiated their eastward migration into present-day north-west Pakistan, in course of his military campaigns.
The Arabs, at war with the Kabul Shah, had directed their campaigns in direction of Gandhara. By the time of Muawiya, Sistan's governorship was separated from Khorasan, with the governor looking after the region and keeping a check on Kabul Shah. Ahmed Hassan Dani considers that the Arab activities may have led to conversion of Aghans as well, and it may have been wholesale because of their tribal nature, i.e., all the Afghan tribes adopted Islam at once.
Quoting Matla-al-Anwar, Ferishta states that a man named Khalid, son of Abdullah, stated by some to be a descendant of Khalid bin Walid or Abu Jahl, was for some time governor of Herat, Ghor, Gharjistan and Kabul. After being relieved of the charge, he settled in Koh Sulaiman, with the Lodis and Suris being the descendant of his daughter who married a converted Afghan.
Al-Utbi in Tarikh-i-Yamini states that the Afghans were enlisted by Sabuktigin and also Mahmud. During this period, the Afghan habitat was in the Sulaiman Mountains. After defeating Jayapala in 988 AD, Sabuktigin had acquired the territory between Laghman and Peshawar. Al-Utbi states that the Afghans and Khaljis, living there as nomads, took the oath of allegiance to him and were recruited into his army. Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui citing a 13th-century Persian translation, claims he mentions the "Afghans" were pagans given to rapine and rapacity, they were defeated and converted to Islam.
Writing in the 11th century AD, Al-Biruni in his Tarikh al Hind stated that the Afghan tribes lived in mountains west of India. He notes, "In the western frontier mountains of India there live various tribes of the Afghans and extend up to the neighbourhood of the Sindu valley." He earlier also noted about the mountains, "In marching from our country to Sindh we start from the country of Nimroz, i.e. the country of Sijistan, whilst marching to Hind or India proper we start from the side of Kabul... In the mountains which form the frontier of India towards the west there are tribes of the Hindus, or of people near akin to them — rebellious savage races — which extend as far as the farthermost frontiers of the Hindu race."
Mahmud had gone to war against pagan Afghan while campaigning in the Sulayman mountains. Firishta states that Afghans fought on both sides during the war between Mu'izz al-Din and Pithorai in 1192 AD, which Encyclopaedia of Islam says probably indicates that they were not completely converted yet.
In 1519, Babur mounted an attack on the fort of Bajaur and sent a Dilazak Afghan as an ambassador to the Gibri Sultan of Bajaur, Mir Haidar 'Ali, to surrender and enter his services. Gibri, a Dardic language of Bajaur, was also spoken by the royal family and nobility of the Swat Valley. The Gibris decided to resist and Babur's forces stormed it in two days. He ordered a general massacre of its inhabitants on the pretext that they had rebelled against Kabul's regime and were infidels who had forsaken Islam.
The westward migration of Pashtuns from Sulaiman mountains to Qandahar and Herat is thought to have begun in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the area around Qandahar formed a bone of contention between the Ghilzais and Abdalis. The latter gave in and migrated to Herat during the reign of Safavid Shah Abbas I. Their migration displaced or subjugated the indigenous populations, especially the Tajiks who were also the dominant population in Kabul, Nangarhar and Laghman in east Afghanistan. Before the advent of Ghilzais of the Ahmadzai division in the late 16th century, Logar River was also a Tajik stronghold. The Pashtuns also displaced the original Kafirs and Pashayi people in Kunar Valley and Laghman Valley, located south of Kabul in east Afghanistan, to the infertile mountains. Regions to the south and east of Ghazni were the strongholds of Hazaras before the 16th century. They also lost Wardak to the tribe of the same name when the latter invaded in the 17th century. In Qandahar, the Farsiwanis, Hazaras, Kakars and Baloch people were subjugated.
Conquests of Kafiristan
Kafiristan is a mountainous region of the Hindu Kush that was isolated and politically independent until the Afghan conquest of 1896. Before their conversion to Islam, the Nuristanis or Kafir people practiced a form of ancient Hinduism infused with locally developed accretions.
Kafiristan proper from west to east comprises basins of Alishang, Alingar, Pech or Prasun, Waigal and Bashgal. The region became a refuge of an old group of Indo-European people, probably mixed with an older substratum, as well as a refuge of a distinct Kafiri group of Indo-Iranian languages, forming part of the wider Dardic languages. The inhabitants were known as "kafirs" due to their enduring paganism, while other regions around them became Muslim. However, the influence from district names in Kafiristan of Katwar or Kator and the ethnic name Kati has also been suggested. The Kafirs were divided into Siyah-Posh, comprising five sub-tribes who spoke the Kamkata-vari language; while the others were called Safed-Posh, comprising Prasungeli, Waigeli, Wamai and Ashkun.
The Kafirs called themselves "Balor", a term that appeared in Chinese sources as early as the fifth century AD. In both the Chinese sources and Muslim sources like the 16th-century work of Kashmir's conqueror Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, the terms "Bolor" and "Boloristan" denote the area from the Kabul valley to Kashmir, Yarkand and Kashgar. The country is the most inaccessible part of Hindu Kush. The Muslim conquerors could not achieve a lasting success here.
The vast area extending from modern Nuristan to Kashmir (styled "Peristan" by A. M. Cacopardo) contained a host of "Kafir" cultures and Indo-European languages that became Islamized over a long period. Earlier, it was surrounded by Buddhist areas. The Islamization of the nearby Badakhshan began in the 8th century and Peristan was completely surrounded by Muslim states in the 16th century with the Islamization of Baltistan. The Buddhist states temporarily brought literacy and state rule into the region. The decline of Buddhism resulted in it becoming heavily isolated.
There have been varying theories about the origins of the Kafirs. Oral traditions of some Nuristanis place themselves to be at confluence of Kabul and Kunar River a millennium ago, being driven off from Kandahar to Kabul to Kapisa to Kama with the Muslim invasion. They identify themselves as late arrivals here, being driven by Mahmud of Ghazni, who after establishing his empire, forced the unsubmissive population to flee. George Scott Robertson considered them to be part of the old Indian population of Eastern Afghanistan and stated that they fled to the mountains while refusing to convert to Islam after the Muslim invasion in the 10th century. The name Kator was used by Lagaturman, the last king of the Turk Shahi. The title "Shah Kator" was assumed by Chitral's ruler Mohtaram Shah who assumed it upon being impressed by the majesty of the erstwhile pagan rulers of Chitral. The theory of Kators being related to the Turki Shahis is based on the information of Jami- ut-Tawarikh and Tarikh-i-Binakiti. The region was also named after its ruling elite. The royal usage may be the origin behind the name of Kator.
Mahmud of Ghazni
In 1020–21, Mahmud of Ghazni led a campaign against Kafiristan and the people of the "pleasant valleys of Nur and Qirat" according to Gardizi. The Persian chronicles speak of Qirat and Nur (or Nardin), which H. M. Elliot on authority of Al-Biruni identifies with Nur and Kira tributaries of Kabul river. Ferishta wrongly calls these two valleys as "Nardin" and Qirat and confuses this conquest with the one against "Nardin" or Nandana. He also wrongly mentions that it took place after 412 AH. Alexander Cunningham identifies the places conquered as "Bairath" and "Narayanpura".
These people worshipped the lion. While Clifford Edmund Bosworth considers that Mahmud attacked "pagan Afghans", Joseph Theodore Arlinghaus of Duke University does not consider it correct because his source Gardezi simply calls them "pagan (kafiran)" and not "pagan Afghans", as they were not known to be pagan or live on borders of Nuristan in the 11th century. Mohammad Habib however considers that they might have been worshipping Buddha in the form of a lion (Sakya Sinha). Ramesh Chandra Majumdar states that they had a Hindu temple which was destroyed by Mahmud's general. Ram Sharan Sharma meanwhile states that they may have been Buddhist. Cunningham claims based on the reporting of Ferishta that the place was plundered by 'Amir Ali after being taken.
According to Gardezi, while returning from his recent invasion of India, Mahmud had heard about the Kafirs and the chief of Qirat surrendered without any struggle and accepted to convert, with the inhabitants converting as well. Nur however refused to surrender and his general 'Amir Ali led an attack on it, forcing its people to convert. According to Firshta, the rulers of both of them submitted and accepted Islam in 1022. He adds, "On breaking a great temple situated there, the ornamented figure of a lion came out of it, which according to the belief of the Hindus was four thousand years old."
However, no permanent conquest was attempted. Iqbal namah-i-Jahangiri stated that Kafirs still lived in Darrah-i-Nur which Mahmud of Ghazni had claimed to have converted. The Mughal Emperor Jahangir had received a delegation of these pure Kafirs in Jalalabad and had honoured them with gifts.
Timurids
The campaigns of Timur are recorded by Zafarnama, written by Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi, which is based on another work. On his way to India, Timur attacked the Siyah-Posh in 1398 AD after receiving complaints from the trading city of Andarab about the raids by the Kafirs. He penetrated Kafiristan from Khawak pass and restored an old fortress there. He personally proceeded against the Kator region, which extended from Kabul to Kashmir.
Timur sent a detachment of 10,000 soldiers against the Siyah-Poshas under Burhan Aglan and had the fort of Kator deserted by Kafirs destroyed, while the houses of the city were burnt. The Kafirs took refuge on top of a hill and many were killed in the ensuing clash. Some held out for three days but agreed to convert after Timur offered them the choice between death and Islam. They however soon apostatised and ambushed Muslim soldiers in the night. They Muslims repelled them and a number of the Kafirs were killed, with 150 being taken prisoner and later executed. Timur ordered his men "to kill all the men, to make prisoners of women and children, and to plunder and lay waste all their property." His soldiers carried out the order and he directed them to build a tower of skulls of the dead Kafirs.
Timur had his expedition engraved on a neighbouring hill in the month of Ramadan. His detachment sent against the Siyah-Poshas however met with disaster, with Aglan being routed and forced to flee. A small detachment of 400 men under Muhammad Azad was then sent and defeated the Kafirs, retrieving the horses and armour Aglan lost. Timur later captured a few more places, though nothing more is stated, presumably he left the Siyah-Poshas alone. He proceeded to exterminate the rebellious Afghan tribes and crossed the Indus River in September 1398.
The Timurid Sultan Mahmud Mirza is said to have raided Kafiristan twice by Baburnama, which earned him the title of ghazi.
Yarkand Khanate
Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat invaded Balor under orders of Sultan Said Khan in 1527-1528 AD, and was accompanied by Said's eldest son Rashid Khan. The expedition was an Islamic frontier raid called ghaza. Dughlat undertook highly devastating plundering raids against the region.
Rashid Khan (r. 1533–1569) undertook further expeditions against Bolor (Kafiristan), which are recorded by Tarikh-i-Kashgar and Bahr al-asar of Mahmud b. Amir Wali. The Kashgari author mentions it briefly, though Wali goes into detail. The first campaign failed with a number of Kashgari captured and enslaved by the people of Bolor. A second invasion was successful and forced them to submit. Tarikh-i-Kashgar states that Bolor was governed by Shah Babur after Abdullah Khan's successful campaign in 1640.
Mughals
Babur himself came to the region in the winter of 1507–1508 and had an inscription carved commemorating his transit. While fleeing to India to take refuge in the Afghan-Indian borderlands after Shibani Khan attacked Qandahar, which Babur had recently conquered, he marched from Kabul to Lamghan in September 1507. He eventually reached the Adinapur fort in Nangarhar district and commented that his men had to forage for food and raided the rice fields of the Kafirs in the Alishang district.
While writing in his memoirs, Babur noted that when he captured Chigha Sarai in 1514, the "Kafirs of Pech came to their assistance." He mentions some Muslim nīmčas or half-breeds, probably converted Kafirs, who married with the Kafirs and lived at Chigha Sarai, located at confluence of Kunar River and Pech River. In 1520, he mentions sending Haidar Alamdar to the Kafirs, who returned and met him under Bandpakht along with some Kafir chiefs who gifted him some wineskins.
The relationship between the Siahposh and the residents of Panjshir and Andarab remained the same even more than a century after Timur's expedition. Babur records about Panjshir that, "It lies upon the road, and is in the immediate vicinity of Kafiristan. The inroads of the robbers of Kafiristan are made through Panjshir. In consequence of their vicinity of the Kafirs - the inhabitants of this district are happy to pay them a fixed contribution. Since I last invaded Hindustan, and subdued it (in 1527), the Kafirs have descended into Panjshir, and returned after slaying a great number of people and committing extensive damages."
Per Tabakat-i-Akbari, the Mughal Emperor Akbar had dispatched his younger brother Mirza Muhammad Hakim, who was a staunch adherent of the missionary-minded Naqshbandi Sufi order, against the Kafirs of Katwar in 1582. Hakim was a semi-independent governor of Kabul. The Sifat-nama-yi Darviš Muhammad Hān-i Ğāzī of Kadi Muhammad Salim who accompanied the expedition mentions its details and gives Hakim the epithet of Darviš Khan Gazi.
Muhammad Darvish's religious crusade fought its way from Lamghan to Alishang, and is stated to have conquered and converted 66 valleys to Islam. After conquering Tajau and Nijrau valleys in Panjshir area, his forces established a fort at Islamabad, located at the confluence of Alishang and Alingar rivers. They continued the raid up to Alishang and made their last effort against the non-Muslims of Alingar, fighting up to Mangu, the modern border between Pashai and Ashkun-speaking areas.
The conquest does not seem to have had a lasting effect, as Henry George Raverty mentions that Kafirs still lived in upper part of Alishang and Tagau. Khulasat al-ansab of Hafiz Rahmat Khan stated that the Afghans and Kafirs of Lamghan were still fighting each other during the time of Jahangir.
Final subjugation
Under Amir Sher Ali Khan, Afghanistan was divided into provinces (wilayats) of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Afghan Turkestan. Uruzgan and Kafiristan were later incorporated into Kabul. Some parts of Kafiristan were already following Islam before its conquest. Amir Abdul Rahman Khan tried to persuade them to convert to Islam by deputing Kafir elders. The Kafirs were meanwhile poorly armed as compared to Afghans and numbered only 60,000. By 1895, the demarcation of nearby Chitral under indirect British rule, and the conquest of Pamirs by Russia, worried him about the endangerment of integration of Afghanistan through the independent Kafiristan. Afghan tribes meanwhile undertook slave raids in places like Kafiristan, Hazarajat, Badakhshan and Chitral.
The territory between Afghanistan and British India was demarcated between 1894 and 1896. Part of the frontier lying between Nawa Kotal in outskirts of Mohmand country and Bashgal Valley on outskirts of Kafiristan were demarcated by 1895 with an agreement reached on 9 April 1895. Abdur Rahman wanted to force every community and tribal confederation with his single interpretation of Islam due to it being the only uniting factor. After the subjugation of the Hazaras, Kafiristan was the last remaining autonomous part. Field marshal Ghulam Hayder Khan sent a message to Kafirs of Barikut which stated, "It is not the duty of the government to compel, force or impose on them to accept, or take the path of the religion of Islam. The obligation that does exist is this: they render obedience and pay their taxes. As long as they do not disobey their command, they will not incinerate themselves with the fire of padishah's [king's] wrath. In addition, they are not to block the building of the road [that was planned through their territory]."
Emir Abdur Rahman Khan's forces invaded Kafiristan in the winter of 1895–1896 and captured it in 40 days according to his autobiography. Columns invaded it from the west through Panjshir to Kullum, the strongest fort of the region. The columns from the north came through Badakhshan and from the east through Asmar. A small column also came from south-west through Laghman. The Kafirs were forcibly converted to Islam and resettled in Laghman, while the region was settled by veteran soldiers and other Afghans. Kafiristan was renamed as Nuristan. Other residents also converted to avoid the jizya.
His victory was celebrated with the publishing of a poem in 1896 or 1897 and Faiz Mohammad Katib Hazara gave him the title of "Idol-Smasher". About 60,000 of the Kafirs became converts. Mullahs were deployed after the conquest to teach them about fundamentals of Islam. The large-scale conversion proved difficult however and complete Islamization took some time. Kafir elders are known to have offered sacrifices in their shrines upon hearing rumours of Rahman's death in 1901. Three main roads connecting Badakhshan with Kunar and Lamghan (Chigha Sirai-Munjan, Asmar-Badakhshan and Munjan-Laghman) were built after the conquest.
See also
History of Afghanistan
Timeline of Afghan history
History of Arabs in Afghanistan
Hindu and Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan
Early Muslim conquests
References
Further reading
Elliot, Sir H. M., Edited by Dowson, John. The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period; published by London Trubner Company 1867–1877. (Online Copy: The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period; by Sir H. M. Elliot; Edited by John Dowson; London Trubner Company 1867–1877 - This online Copy has been posted by: The Packard Humanities Institute; Persian Texts in Translation; Also find other historical books: Author List and Title List)
External links
The Guardian: "Lost Tribe Struggles for Survival"
Press Trust of India :"Inscription throws new light to Hindu rule in Afghanistan "
Association for the Protection of Afghan Archeology
Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Medieval Afghanistan
Spread of Islam
Wars involving the Abbasid Caliphate
Wars involving the Rashidun Caliphate
Wars involving the Umayyad Caliphate
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Albert Brooks (born Albert Lawrence Einstein ; July 22, 1947) is an American actor, comedian, director and screenwriter. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for 1987's Broadcast News and was widely praised for his performance in the 2011 action drama film Drive. Brooks has also acted in Taxi Driver (1976), Private Benjamin (1980), Unfaithfully Yours (1984), and My First Mister (2001). He has written, directed, and starred in several comedy films, such as Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), and Defending Your Life (1991). He is also the author of 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America (2011).
His voice acting credits include Marlin in Finding Nemo (2003) and Finding Dory (2016), Tiberius in The Secret Life of Pets (2016), and several one-time characters in The Simpsons, including Hank Scorpio in "You Only Move Twice" (1996) and Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie (2007).
Early life
Brooks was born Albert Lawrence Einstein on July 22, 1947 into a Jewish show business family in Beverly Hills, California, to Thelma Leeds (née Goodman), an actress, and Harry Einstein, a radio comedian who performed on Eddie Cantor's radio program and was known as "Parkyakarkus". He is the youngest of three sons. His older brothers are the late comedic actor Bob Einstein (1942–2019), and Clifford Einstein (b. 1939), a partner and longtime chief creative officer at Los Angeles advertising agency Dailey & Associates. His older half-brother was Charles Einstein (1926–2007), a writer for such television programs as Playhouse 90 and Lou Grant. His grandparents emigrated from Austria and Russia. He grew up among show business families in southern California, attending Beverly Hills High School with Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner.
Career
Early career
Brooks attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (where his classmates included Michael McKean and David L. Lander), but dropped out after one year to focus on his comedy career. By the age of 19, he had changed his professional name to Albert Brooks, joking that "the real Albert Einstein changed his name to sound more intelligent". He quickly became a regular on variety and talk shows during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was on the writing staff for the ill-fated ABC show Turn-On, which was cancelled after one episode. In 1970-71, he also worked with college friends McKean and Lander (alongside Harry Shearer) as a writer/guest performer on some early material by radio and LP record comedy group The Credibility Gap. Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective baby-boomer comics appearing on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. His on-stage persona, that of an egotistical, narcissistic, nervous comic, an ironic showbiz insider who punctured himself before an audience by disassembling his mastery of comedic stagecraft, influenced other '70s post-modern comedians, including Steve Martin, Martin Mull, and Andy Kaufman.
After two successful comedy albums, Comedy Minus One (1973) and the Grammy Award–nominated A Star Is Bought (1975), Brooks left the stand-up circuit to try his hand as a filmmaker. He had already made his first short film, The Famous Comedians School, a satiric short and an early example of the mockumentary subgenre that was aired in 1972 on the PBS show The Great American Dream Machine.
In 1975, Brooks directed six short films for the first season of NBC's Saturday Night Live. In 1976, he appeared in his first mainstream film role, in Martin Scorsese's landmark Taxi Driver; Scorsese allowed Brooks to improvise much of his dialogue. Brooks had landed the role after moving to Los Angeles to enter the film business.
Brooks directed his first feature film, Real Life, in 1979, which he co-wrote with Harry Shearer. The film, in which Brooks (playing a version of himself) films a typical suburban family in an effort to win both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize, was a sendup of PBS's An American Family documentary. It has also been viewed as foretelling the future emergence of reality television. Brooks also appeared in the film Private Benjamin (1980), starring Goldie Hawn.
1981–1999
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Brooks co-wrote (with long-time collaborator Monica Johnson), directed and starred in a series of well-received comedies, playing variants on his standard neurotic and self-obsessed character. These include 1981's Modern Romance, where Brooks played a film editor desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold). The film received a limited release and ultimately grossed under $3 million domestically. His best-received film, Lost in America (1985), featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple who leave their yuppie lifestyle and drop out of society to live in a motor home as they have always dreamed of doing, meeting disappointment.
Brooks' Defending Your Life (1991) placed his lead character in the afterlife, put on trial to justify his human fears and determine his cosmic fate. Critics responded to the off-beat premise and the chemistry between Brooks and Meryl Streep, as his post-death love interest. His later efforts did not find large audiences, but still retained Brooks' touch as a filmmaker. He garnered positive reviews for Mother (1996), which starred Brooks as a middle-aged writer moving back home to resolve tensions between himself and his mother (Debbie Reynolds). 1999's The Muse featured Brooks as a Hollywood screenwriter who has "lost his edge", using the services of an authentic muse (Sharon Stone) for inspiration. In an interview with Brooks with regards to The Muse, Gavin Smith wrote, "Brooks's distinctive film making style is remarkably discreet and unemphatic; he has a light, deft touch, with a classical precision and economy, shooting and cutting his scenes in smooth, seamless successions of medium shots, with clean, high-key lighting."
Brooks has appeared as a guest voice on The Simpsons seven times during its run (always under the name A. Brooks). He is described as the best guest star in the show's history by IGN, particularly for his role as supervillain Hank Scorpio in the episode "You Only Move Twice".
Brooks also acted in other writers' and directors' films during the 1980s and 1990s. He had a cameo in the opening scene of Twilight Zone: The Movie, playing a driver whose passenger (Dan Aykroyd) has a shocking secret. In James L. Brooks's hit Broadcast News (1987), Albert Brooks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing an insecure, supremely ethical network TV reporter, who offers the rhetorical question, "Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?" He also won positive notices for his role in 1998's Out of Sight, playing an untrustworthy banker and ex-convict.
2000–present
Brooks received positive reviews for his portrayal of a dying retail store owner who befriends a disillusioned teenager (played by Leelee Sobieski) in My First Mister (2001). Brooks continued his voiceover work in Pixar's Finding Nemo (2003), as the voice of Marlin, one of the film's protagonists.
In 2005, his film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World was dropped by Sony Pictures due to their desire to change the title. Warner Independent Pictures purchased the film and gave it a limited release in January 2006; the film received mixed reviews and a low box office gross. As with Real Life, Brooks plays a fictionalized "Albert Brooks", a filmmaker ostensibly commissioned by the U.S. government to see what makes the Muslim people laugh, and sending him on a tour of India and Pakistan.
In 2006 he appeared in the documentary film Wanderlust as David Howard from Lost in America. In 2007, he continued his long-term collaboration with The Simpsons by voicing Russ Cargill, the central antagonist of The Simpsons Movie.
He has played Lenny Botwin, Nancy Botwin's estranged father-in-law, on Showtime's television series Weeds. St. Martin's Press published his first novel, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America, on May 10, 2011.
In 2011, Brooks co-starred as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the film Drive, alongside Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. His performance received much critical praise and positive reviews. After receiving awards and nominations from several film festivals and critic groups, but not an Academy Award nomination, Brooks responded humorously on Twitter, "And to the Academy: ‘You don't like me. You really don't like me’."
In 2016, Brooks voiced Tiberius, a curmudgeonly red-tailed hawk, in The Secret Life of Pets, and reprised the role of Marlin from Finding Nemo in the 2016 sequel Finding Dory.
Personal life
In 1997, Brooks married artist Kimberly Shlain, daughter of surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain. They have two children, Jacob and Claire.
Works
Films
Comedy albums
Literature
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Interview: Albert Brooks: Comedy And Dystopia – On Point.
"The films of Albert Brooks". Hell Is For Hyphenates. January 31, 2014.
1947 births
Living people
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American Jews
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American screenwriters
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American male actors
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American screenwriters
ABC Records artists
American film directors
American male comedians
American male film actors
American male screenwriters
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American male writers
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American stand-up comedians
Asylum Records artists
Beverly Hills High School alumni
Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts alumni
Comedians from California
Comedy film directors
Film directors from Los Angeles
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American film directors
Jewish American male actors
Jewish American male comedians
Jewish American screenwriters
Jewish American writers
Jewish male actors
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Male actors from Beverly Hills, California
Male actors from Los Angeles
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national broadcaster of Australia. It is principally funded by direct grants from the Australian Government and is administered by a government-appointed board. The ABC is a publicly-owned body that is politically independent and fully accountable, with its charter enshrined in legislation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983. ABC Commercial, a profit-making division of the corporation, also helps to generate funding for content provision.
The ABC was established as the Australian Broadcasting Commission on 1 July 1932 by an act of federal parliament. It effectively replaced the Australian Broadcasting Company, a private company established in 1924 to provide programming for A-class radio stations. The ABC was given statutory powers that reinforced its independence from the government and enhanced its news-gathering role. Modelled after the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is funded by a television licence, the ABC was originally financed by consumer licence fees on broadcast receivers. Licence fees were abolished in 1973 and replaced by direct government grants, as well as revenue from commercial activities related to its core broadcasting mission. The ABC adopted its current name in 1983.
The ABC provides radio, television, online, and mobile services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia. ABC Radio operates four national networks, a large number of ABC Local Radio stations, several digital stations, and the international service Radio Australia. ABC Television operates five free-to-air channels, as well as the ABC iview streaming service and the ABC Australia satellite channel. News and current affairs content across all platforms is produced by the news division.
The postal address of the ABC in every Australian capital city is PO Box 9994, as a tribute to the record-breaking batting average of Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman.
History
Origins
After public radio stations were established independently in the state capitals from 1924, a licensing scheme administered by the Postmaster-General's Department was established, allowing certain stations (with "Class A" licences") government funding, albeit with restrictions placed on their advertising content. In 1928, the government established the National Broadcasting Service to take over the 12 A-Class licences as they came up for renewal, and contracted the Australian Broadcasting Company, a private company established in 1924, to supply programs to the new national broadcaster.
After it became politically unpopular to continue to allow the Postmaster-General to run the National Broadcasting Service, the government established the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) on 1 July 1932, under the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932. to take over the Australian Broadcasting Company and run the National Broadcasting Service.
The ABC became informally referred to as "Aunty", originally in imitation of the British Broadcasting Corporation's nickname. The structure and programming was broadly modelled on the BBC, and programs not created in Australia were mostly bought in from the BBC.
In 1940 one of the ABC Board's most prominent members, Dick Boyer, was appointed to the ABC, becoming chairman on 1 April 1945. Today known for the continuing series of Boyer Lectures initiated by him in 1959, he had a good but not too close working relationship with Sir Charles Moses (general manager 1935–1965), and remained chair until his retirement in 1961. He was determined to maintain the autonomy of the ABC.
War years
In 1942, The Australian Broadcasting Act was passed, giving the ABC the power to decide when, and in what circumstances, political speeches should be broadcast. Directions from the minister about whether or not to broadcast any matter now had to be made in writing, and any exercise of the power had to be mentioned in the commission's annual report.
1950–2000
The ABC commenced television broadcasting in 1956. ABN-2 in Sydney was inaugurated by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 5 November 1956, with the first broadcast presented by Michael Charlton, and James Dibble reading the first television news bulletin. Television relay facilities were not in place until the early 1960s, so news bulletins had to be sent to each capital city by teleprinter, to be prepared and presented separately in each city. In 1975, colour television was permanently introduced into Australia, and within a decade, the ABC had moved into satellite broadcasting, greatly enhancing its ability to distribute content nationally.
Also in 1975, the ABC introduced a 24-hour-a-day AM rock station in Sydney, 2JJ (Double Jay), which was eventually expanded into the national Triple J FM network. A year later, a national classical music network was established on the FM band, broadcasting from Adelaide. It was initially known as ABC-FM (later ABC Classic FM) – referring both to its "fine music programming and radio frequency.
ABC budget cuts began in 1976 and continued until 1998, the largest cuts (calculated by the ABC as 25% "in real terms") coming between 1985 and 1996.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 changed the name of the organisation to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, effective 1 July 1983. Although funded and owned by the government, the ABC remains editorially independent as ensured by the 1983 Act. At the same time, the newly formed corporation underwent significant restructuring, including a split into separate television and radio divisions, and ABC Radio was restructured significantly again in 1985. Geoffrey Whitehead was managing director of the ABC at this time. Following his resignation in 1986, David Hill (at the time chair of the ABC Board) took over his position and local production trebled from 1986 to 1991.
Live television broadcasts of selected parliamentary sessions started in 1990, and by the early 1990s, all major ABC broadcasting outlets moved to 24-hour-a-day operation. In 1991, the corporation's Sydney radio and orchestral operations moved to a new building, the ABC Ultimo Centre, in the inner-city suburb of Ultimo. In Melbourne, the ABC Southbank Centre was completed in 1994. International television service ABC Australia was established in 1993, while at the same time Radio Australia increased its international reach. Reduced funding in 1997 for Radio Australia resulted in staff and programming cuts.
The ABC Multimedia Unit was established in July 1995 to manage the new ABC website, which was launched in August.
The ABC was registered on the Australian Business Register as a Commonwealth Government Entity on 1 November 1999.
2000s–2010s
In 2001, digital television commenced (see Online, below). At the same time, the ABC's multimedia division was renamed "ABC New Media", becoming an output division of the ABC alongside television and radio.
In 2002, the ABC launched ABC Asia Pacific, the replacement for the defunct Australia Television International operated previously by the Seven Network. A digital radio service, ABC DiG, was also launched in November that year.
On 8 February 2008, ABC TV was rebranded as ABC1, and a new channel for children, ABC3, was funded and announced by the Rudd government in June. A new online video-on-demand service launched in July of the same year, titled ABC iview.
ABC News 24, now known as ABC News, a channel dedicated to news, launched on 22nd July 2010. On 20 July 2014, ABC1 reverted to its original name of ABC TV.
In November 2014, a cut of (4.6% ) to funding over the following five years together with the additional unfunded cost of the news channel meant that the ABC would have to shed about 10% of its staff, around 400 people. There were several programming changes, with regional and local programming losing out to national programs, and the Adelaide TV production studio had to close.
In November 2016, the ABC announced that ABC News 24, ABC NewsRadio, as well as its online and digital news brands, would be rebranded under a unified ABC News brand, which was launched on 10 April 2017.
Michelle Guthrie took over from managing director Mark Scott, whose second five-year contract finished in April 2016. Between July 2017 and June 2018, the whole of the ABC underwent an organisational restructure, after which the Radio and Television Divisions were no longer separate entities each under a director, instead being split across several functional divisions, with different teams producing different genres of content for television, radio and digital platforms. The Entertainment & Specialist (E&S) team focussed on comedy, kids' programs, drama, Indigenous-related programs, music, other entertainment and factual content; the new ABC Specialist team created content across the arts, science, religion & ethics, education and society & culture; while the Regional & Local team focussed on regional and local content.
Around 23 September 2018, Guthrie was sacked. A leadership crisis ensued after allegations arose that ABC Chair, Justin Milne, had, according to the MEAA, engaged in "overt political interference in the running of the ABC that is in clear breach of the ABC charter and the role of the chairperson" by interfering in editorial and staffing matters. After pressure for an independent inquiry or statement from Milne, or his resignation, following meetings by ABC staff in various locations, on 27 September Milne resigned.
In February 2019, after the roles of ABC chair and managing director had been vacant for over four months, Ita Buttrose was named chair. Buttrose named David Anderson as managing director in May 2019.
On 5 June 2019, Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided the headquarters of the ABC looking for articles written in 2017 about alleged misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, later dubbed the Afghan Files. The raid was countered by lawyers for the ABC in litigation against the AFP, challenging the examination of over 9,200 documents, including internal emails. In February 2020 the case was dismissed by the federal court. In June 2020, the AFP sent a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP), the federal public prosecutor, recommending charges be laid against journalist Dan Oakes for breaking the Afghan Files story, but in October 2020, the CDPP dropped the case.
2020s
In June 2020, the ABC announced it needed to cut 229 jobs, a number of programs, and reduce its travel and production budgets after the Turnbull government's announcement of a freeze to indexation of its budget in 2018 this was estimated at the time to cost the ABC over three years, however the actual appropriation did not decrease and the ABC chair was quoted as saying it would actually increase "but by a reduced amount".
In all, over a five-year period, there were 737 redundancies, a further 866 resignations and 203 retirements, but the total number of staff only fell by 313 due to the ABC hiring 650 staff over that period.
In June 2021, the ABC announced its plan to move around 300 staff to offices in Parramatta, in a plan which would see 75% of journalists and producers moving out of the Ultimo building by 2025 in order to reduce costs. Rental from some of the vacant space in the city centre would earn additional income to offset the ongoing effects of the significant funding cuts since 2014 and the recent indexation freeze.
In December 2021 the ABC announced that, in addition to the 83 additional positions already established, it was to create an additional "50-plus" new jobs in regional Australia as a result of commercial agreements with digital platforms flowing from the Morrison government's News Media Bargaining Code.
Lissajous curve logo
The ABC logo is one of the most recognisable logos in Australia. In the early years of television, the ABC had been using Lissajous curves as fillers between programmes. In July 1963, the ABC conducted a staff competition to create a new logo for use on television, stationery, publications, microphone badges and ABC vehicles. In 1965, ABC graphics designer Bill Kennard submitted a design representing a Lissajous display, as generated when a sine wave signal is applied to the "X" input of an oscilloscope and another at three times the frequency at the "Y" input. The letters "ABC" were added to the design and it was adopted as the ABC's official logo. Kennard was presented with £25 (about AU$715 in 2021) for his design.
On 19 October 1974, the Lissajous curve design experienced its first facelift with the line thickened to allow for colour to be used. It would also be treated to the 'over and under' effect, showing the crossover of the line in the design. To celebrate its 70th anniversary on 1 July 2002, the ABC adopted a new logo, which was created by (Annette) Harcus Design in 2001. This logo used a silver 3D texture but the crossover design was left intact and was then used across the ABC's media outlets. After the on-air revival of the 1974 logo since 2014, the ABC gradually reinstated the classic symbol. The most recent change happened in February 2018, with a new logotype and brand positioning under its tagline, Yours. The 2002 silver logo is no longer in use by the corporation.
Governance and structure
The operations of the ABC are governed by a board of directors, consisting of a managing director, five to seven directors, and until 2006, a staff-elected director. The managing director is appointed by the board for a period of up to five years, but is eligible for renewal. The authority and guidelines for the appointment of directors is provided for in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983.
Appointments to the ABC Board made by successive governments have often resulted in criticism of the appointees' political affiliation, background, and relative merit. Past appointments have associated directly with political parties – five of fourteen appointed chairmen have been accused of political affiliation or friendship, include Richard Downing and Ken Myer (both of whom publicly endorsed the Australian Labor Party at the 1972 election), as well as Sir Henry Bland. David Hill was close to Neville Wran, while Donald McDonald was considered to be a close friend of John Howard.
From 2003 the Howard government made several controversial appointments to the ABC Board, including prominent ABC critic Janet Albrechtsen, Ron Brunton, and Keith Windschuttle.
During their 2007 federal election campaign, Labor announced plans to introduce a new system, similar to that of the BBC, for appointing members to the board. Under the new system, candidates for the ABC Board would be considered by an independent panel established "at arm's length" from the Communications Minister. If the minister chose someone not on the panel's shortlist, they would be required to justify this to parliament. The ABC chairman would be nominated by the prime minister and endorsed by the leader of the opposition.
A new merit-based appointment system was announced on 16 October 2008, in advance of the new triennial funding period starting in 2009.
board members are:
As of July 2020 there were 3,730 employees, down from 4,649 in 2019.
Funding
The ABC is primarily funded by the Australian government, in addition to some revenue received from commercial offerings and its retail outlets. The ABC's funding system is set and reviewed every three years.
Until 1948, the ABC was funded directly by radio licence fees; amendments were also made to the Australian Broadcasting Act that meant the ABC would receive its funding directly from the federal government. Licence fees remained until 1973, when they were abolished by the Whitlam Labor government, on the basis that the near-universality of television and radio services meant that public funding was a fairer method of providing revenue for government-owned radio and television broadcasters.
In 2014, the ABC absorbed A$254 million in federal budget deficits.
Since the 2018 budget handed down by then-Treasurer Scott Morrison, the ABC has been subject to a pause of indexation of operation funding, saving the federal government a total of A$83.7 million over 3 years. In fiscal year 2016–17, the ABC received A$861 million in federal funding, which increased to $865 million per year from 2017 to 2018 to 2018–19, representing a cut in funding of $43 million over three years when accounting for inflation. In 2019–20, the federal budget forecast funding of $3.2 billion over three years ($1.06 billion per year) for the ABC. The Enhanced Newsgathering Fund, a specialised fund for regional and outer-suburban news gathering set up in 2013 by the Gillard government, currently sits at $44 million over three years, a reduction of $28 million per year since the 2016 Australian federal election. This came after speculation that the fund would be removed, to which ABC Acting managing director David Anderson wrote to Communications Minister Mitch Fifield expressing concerns.
However, despite the cuts made by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the freeze introduced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, the ABC itself has published financial data that shows an increase in the taxpayer appropriation to the ABC of 10% in real terms (i.e. above inflation) between 1998 and 2021.
The term "where your 8 cents a day goes", coined in the late 1980s during funding negotiations, is often used in reference to the services provided by the ABC. It was estimated that the cost of the ABC per head of population per day was 7.1 cents a day, based on the corporation's 2007–08 "base funding" of .
Services
Radio
The ABC operates 54 local radio stations, in addition to four national networks and international service Radio Australia. In addition, DiG Radio (rebranded as Double J in 2014) launched on digital platforms in 2002, and later spinning off ABC Country and ABC Jazz.
ABC Local Radio is the corporation's flagship radio station in each broadcast area. There are 54 individual stations, each with a similar format consisting of locally presented light entertainment, news, talk back, music, sport and interviews, in addition to some national programming such as AM, PM, The World Today, sporting events and Nightlife.
the ABC operates 15 radio networks, variously available on AM and FM as well as on digital platforms and the internet.
Radio National – A generalist station, also known as RN, broadcasting more than 60 special interest programmes per week covering a range of topics including music, comedy, book readings, radio dramas, poetry, science, health, the arts, religion, social history and current affairs.
ABC NewsRadio – A news based service, also known as ABC News on Radio, broadcasting federal parliamentary sittings and news on a 24/7 format with updates on the quarter-hour. Broadcast's news content produced by the ABC itself, as well as programmes relayed from ABC Radio Australia, the BBC World Service, NPR, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands and CNN Radio.
ABC Classic – A classical music based station, formerly known as ABC Classic FM. It also plays some jazz and world music. ABC Classic was the ABC's first FM radio service. It was originally known simply as "ABC FM", and for a short time "ABC Fine Music".
Triple J – A youth-oriented radio network, with a strong focus on alternative and independent music (especially Australian artists); it is targeted at people aged 18–35.
The ABC also operates several stations only available online and on digital platforms:
ABC Classic 2 – a sister station to ABC Classic, focussing on performances by Australian artists. Only available on streaming platforms.
Double J – a Triple J sister station, focussed on an older audience to Triple J.
Triple J Unearthed – a Triple J sister station, playing unsigned and independent Australian talent.
Triple j Hottest - a Triple J sister station, playing tracks from the past 30 years of Triple J Hottest 100 countdowns.
ABC Jazz – A station exclusively dedicated to Jazz from Australia and the world.
ABC Country – An exclusively country music station, mainly focussing on Australian country music.
ABC Grandstand – Since November 2020 merged to ABC Sport.
ABC Extra – A temporary special events station.
ABC Kids – Children's based programming, and a sister station to the ABC Kids television channel.
There is also ABC Radio Australia, the international radio station of the ABC (see below).
ABC Listen app
The ABC Radio app was launched in 2012. This was replaced by the ABC Listen app in September 2017, which included 45 ABC radio stations and audio networks.
Television
The ABC operates five national television channels:
ABC TV (formerly ABC1 from 2008 to 2014), the corporation's original television service, receives the bulk of funding for television and shows first-run comedy, drama, documentaries, and news and current affairs. In each state and territory a local news bulletin is shown at 7pm nightly.
ABC TV Plus (formerly ABC2 and ABC Comedy), launched in 2005, shows comedic content in addition to some repeats from ABC TV of which the amount has decreased gradually since ABC TV Plus's inception. It is not a 24-hour channel, but is broadcast daily from 7:30pm to around 3am the following night. The channel shares airspace with the ABC Kids programming block from 5am to 7:30pm.
ABC Me (originally ABC3) became a fully fledged channel on 4 December 2009, but has been part of the electronic guide line-up since 2008, broadcasting an ABC1 simulcast until 4 December 2009, then an ABC Radio simulcast and teaser graphic until its official launch. It is broadcast from 6am to around 10pm on weekdays and 6am to 2am the next day on weekends, and consists of a broad range programmes aimed at a young audience aged 6–15, with a core demographic of 8–12.
ABC Kids (formerly ABC For Kids on 2 and ABC 4 Kids) is a preschool children's block featuring children's programming aimed at the 0 to 5 age groups. ABC Kids broadcasts during ABC TV Plus downtime, from 5am to 7:30pm daily.
ABC News (originally ABC News 24), a 24-hour news channel, featuring the programming from ABC News and Current Affairs, selected programs from the BBC World News channel, coverage of the Federal Parliament's Question Time, documentaries and factual, arts programming and state or national election coverage.
Although the ABC's headquarters in Sydney serve as a base for program distribution nationally, ABC Television network is composed of eight state- and territory-based stations, each based in their respective state capital and augmented by repeaters:
ABN (Sydney)
ABV (Melbourne)
ABQ (Brisbane)
ABS (Adelaide)
ABW (Perth)
ABT (Hobart)
ABC (Canberra)
ABD (Darwin)
The eight ABC stations carry opt outs for local programming. In addition to the nightly 7pm news, the stations also broadcast weekly state editions of 7.30 on Friday evenings (until 5 December 2014), state election coverage and in most areas, live sport on Saturday afternoons.
There is also ABC Australia, the international TV service of the ABC (see below).
Online and digital
ABC Online is the name given to the online services of the ABC, which have evolved to cover a large network of websites including those for ABC News, its various television channels, ABC radio; podcasts; SMS, mobile apps and other mobile phone services; vodcasts and video-on-demand through ABC iView.
The official launch of ABC Online, then part of the ABC's Multimedia Unit, was on 14 August 1995, charged with developing policy for the ABC's work in web publishing. At first it relied upon funding allocation to the corporation's TV and radio operations, but later began to receive its own. The ABC provided live, online election coverage for the first time in 1996, and limited news content began to be provided in 1997. This unit continued until 2000, when the New Media division was formed, bringing together the ABC's online output as a division similar to television or radio. In 2001 the New Media division became New Media and Digital Services, reflecting the broader remit to develop content for digital platforms such as digital television, becoming an "output division" similar to Television or Radio. In addition to ABC Online, the division also had responsibility over the ABC's two digital television services, Fly TV and the ABC Kids channel, until their closure in 2003.
ABC TV Plus, a digital-only free-to-air television channel, launched on 7 March 2005, as ABC2. Unlike its predecessors the new service was not dependent on government funding, instead running on a budget of per year. Minister for Communications Helen Coonan inaugurated the channel at Parliament House three days later. Genre restrictions limiting the types of programming the channel could carry were lifted in October 2006 – ABC TV Plus (then ABC2) was henceforth able to carry programming classified as comedy, drama, national news, sport, and entertainment.
In conjunction with the ABC's radio division, New Media and Digital Services implemented the ABC's first podcasts in December 2004. By mid-2006 the ABC had become an international leader in podcasting with over fifty podcast programmes delivering hundreds of thousands of downloads per week, including trial video podcasts of The Chaser's War on Everything and jtv.
In February 2007, the New Media & Digital Services division was dissolved and divided up among other areas of the ABC. It was replaced by a new Innovation division, to manage ABC Online and investigate new technologies for the ABC.
In 2008, Crikey reported that certain ABC Online mobile sites in development were planned to carry commercial advertising. Screenshots, developed in-house, of an ABC Grandstand sport page include advertising for two private companies. Media Watch later revealed that the websites were to be operated by ABC Commercial and distinguished from the main, advertising-free, mobile website by a distinct logo.
In 2015 the Innovation Division was replaced with the Digital Network Division. Angela Clark was head from 2012 until at least the end of financial year 2015/6, but by 2017 she was gone, and the Digital Network fell into the Technology division under the Chief Technology Officer.
In May 2017, Helen Clifton was appointed to the new role of Chief Digital and Information Officer, which continues .
In December 2019, a refreshed ABC homepage was launched. ABC News is one of Australia's largest and most-visited web sites; from its position as 11th most popular in the country in 2008, in recent years up to 2021 it has maintained top position in the rankings.
In June 2023, the broadcaster released its five-year plan, outlining that it would move its resources away from radio and television, and instead dedicate these resources to improving and promoting its digital platforms.
International
ABC International is responsible for its international operations, which include the internationally broadcast Radio Australia, the Asia-Pacific TV channel ABC Australia, and its ABC International Development (ABCID) branch.
In June 2012 Lynley Marshall, former head of ABC Commercial, was appointed CEO of ABC International, filling a role left empty by the retirement of Murray Green. At the time, it was intended that Radio Australia, ABC Australia and ABC News would work together more closely ABC International was at this time a division of the ABC, but it has not been represented as a separate division in the organisational structure of the ABC since 2016, after Marshall's departure in February 2017.
There were fears of job losses in the division after the huge budget cuts in 2014, as well as an earlier termination of a contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs, one year into the 10-year contract.
On 24 May 2021, Claire Gorman was appointed to an expanded role to manage both the International Strategy and the International Development teams.
ABC Australia is an international satellite television service operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, funded by advertising and grants from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Aimed at the Asia-Pacific region, the service broadcasts a mixture of English language programming, including general entertainment, sport, and current affairs.
Radio Australia is an international satellite and internet radio service with transmissions aimed at South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands, although its signals are also audible in many other parts of the world. It features programmes in various languages spoken in these regions, including Mandarin, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Khmer and Tok Pisin. Before 31 January 2017 Radio Australia broadcast short-wave radio signals. Radio Australia bulletins are also carried on WRN Broadcast, available via satellite in Europe and North America.
ABC International Development, or ABCID, is a media development unit that promotes public interest journalism and connects with local media in the region. ABCID employs local people in Papua New Guinea and many Pacific countries. The team "provides expertise, training, technical and program support to partner organisations", by working with a variety of organisations, including international development donors, for example through the through the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS).
Independence and impartiality
Under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983, the ABC Board is bound to "maintain the independence and integrity of the Corporation" and to ensure that "the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism".
In relation to impartiality and diversity of perspectives, the current ABC editorial policy requires of the broadcaster that:
ABC Commercial
The commercial arm of the ABC was established in 1974 under the name Enterprises as a self-funding unit, marketing products relating to the ABC's activities. It was renamed in 2007 to ABC Commercial, The aim of ABC Commercial was "to create, market and retail high quality consumer products which reflect and extend the scope of the ABC's activities". At this time it comprised the ABC Shop, ABC Consumer Publishing and Content Sales, ABC Resource Hire, and ABC Content Services (Archives).
ABC Commercial was registered as a business name under Australian Broadcasting Corporation in April 2007 and continues to exist . It includes ABC Music, a leading independent record label; ABC Events, which stages concerts and other events; and publishing and licensing activities by ABC Books, ABC Audio, ABC Magazines and ABC Licensing.
ABC Shop Online was wound up at the end of 2018, along with the in-store ABC Centres. In early 2019, ABC Commercial split from the Finance division and became an independent business unit of the ABC.
In the financial year 2018–2019, ABC Commercial turned a profit of , which was invested in content production.
The ABC Studios and Media Production hires out some of the ABC studios and sound stages, operating as part of ABC Commercial. The studios for hire are in Sydney (Studios 21, 22, 16), Melbourne (31), Adelaide (51B) and Perth (61).
Orchestras
Up until the installation of disc recording equipment in 1935, all content broadcast on the ABC was produced live, including music. For this purpose, the ABC established broadcasting orchestras in each state, and in some centres also employed choruses and dance bands. This became known as the ABC Concert Music Division, which was controlled by the Federal Director of Music – the first of whom was W. G. James.
In 1997, the ABC divested all ABC orchestras from the Concerts department of the ABC into separate subsidiary companies, allied to a service company known as Symphony Australia, and on 1 January 2007 the orchestras were divested into independent companies. The six state orchestras are:
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
West Australian Symphony Orchestra
ABC Friends
ABC Friends, formerly Friends of the ABC (FABC), consists of independent organisations in each state and territory, under an umbrella organisation established in December 2016, ABC Friends National Inc. In 1976, three independent groups were formed: Aunty's Nieces and Nephews in Melbourne, Friends of the ABC (NSW) Inc. (now ABC Friends NSW & ACT) and Friends of the ABC (SA) (since 2007/2008, ABC Friends SA/NT). The groups were formed by citizens who were concerned about government threats to make deep cuts to the ABC's budget. Historian Ken Inglis wrote that "The Friends were in the line of those people who had affirmed over the years that the ABC was essential to the nation". Over the years, independent state organisations were established, run by committees, and in January 2014 the name of each was changed to ABC Friends.
The objectives of ABC Friends National are stated as follows:
Controversies
Defamation
The ABC infamously lost a defamation case against Heston Russell, where they withdrew a truth defence and opted for the case to be heard under a public interest defence.
In the landmark ruling, Justice Lee awarded Heston $390,000 + interest and damages which are ultimately funded by taxpayer dollars. Estimates of legal expenses range from AUD$1.2m – $3m and could have been avoided if an earlier settlement offer of $99,000 and removal of the published articles had been taken by the broadcaster. The ABC Managing Director, David Anderson, who took home a six-figure pay rise shortly after the defamation case loss, outlined in senate estimates that he would not apologise to Russell for the false reporting.
Recordings of Willacy's interviews that formed part of the defamation case were garnished as part of the legal discovery process. They demonstrated the inappropriate and targeted style of journalism employed for the story and were made available to Ben Fordham's 2GB radio program.
Perceived bias
External critics have complained in particular of left-wing political bias at the broadcaster, citing a prominence of Labor Party-connected journalists hosting masthead political programs or a tendency to favour "progressive" over "conservative" political views on issues such as immigration, asylum seekers, the republic, multiculturalism, Indigenous reconciliation, feminism, environmentalism, and same-sex marriage.
In December 2013, former judge and ABC chair James Spigelman announced that four independent audits would be conducted each year in response to the allegations of bias in the reporting of news and current affairs. ABC Friends have observed that "Most of the complaints about bias in the ABC have come from the government of the day – Labor or Liberal. Significantly both parties have been far less hostile to the ABC when in opposition".
Reviews and investigations
Reviews of the ABC are regularly commissioned and sometimes not released.
Both internal and external research has been conducted on the question of bias at the ABC. These include the following:
A 2004 Roy Morgan media credibility survey found that journalists regarded ABC Radio as the most accurate news source in the country and the ABC as the second "most politically biased media organisation in Australia".
A 2013 University of the Sunshine Coast study of the voting intentions of journalists found that 73.6% of ABC journalists supported Labor or The Greens – with 41% supporting the Greens (whereas only around 10% of people in the general population voted Green).
At the 2016 federal election, a study commissioned by the ABC and conducted by Isentia compiled share-of-voice data and found that the ABC devoted 42.6% of election coverage to the Coalition government (this compares to the 42.04% vote received by the Coalition in the House of Representatives (HOR)), 35.9% to the Labor opposition (34.73% HOR), 8% to The Greens(10.23% HOR), 3.1% to independents (1.85% HOR), 2.2% to the Nick Xenophon Team (1.85% HOR) and 8.1% to the rest. However, the ABC itself notes the "significant limitations around the value of share of voice data" as "duration says nothing about tone or context".
In December 2020, the Board commissioned its 19th editorial review by an independent reviewer, which found that the ABC's news coverage of lead-up to the 2019 Australian election was "overwhelmingly positive and unbiased", although it also found that specific episodes of The Drum and Insiders reflected too narrow a range of viewpoints. The government forced the publication of the report after Coalition senator James McGrath raised a motion in the Senate, which led to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose and managing director David Anderson writing to the president of the Senate, Scott Ryan, to express their concerns about the use of the such powers, which went against the public interest.
Relationships with government
Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke considered the ABC's coverage of the 1991 Gulf War to be biased. In 1996, conservative Opposition Leader John Howard refused to have Kerry O'Brien of the ABC moderate the television debates with Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating because Howard saw O'Brien as biased against the Coalition.
Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott perceived the ABC to be left wing and hostile to his government, while Malcolm Turnbull enjoyed better relations with the national broadcaster. Turnbull's successor, Scott Morrison, once again presided over "strained" relations between the Government and the ABC. Under Morrison's leadership, an investigation was launched into the ABC and its complaints-handling process—a decision which was criticised by Ita Buttrose as "political interference". The inquiry was abandoned the following June.
Specific topics
The Catholic Church and George Pell
The ABC's coverage of the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church received praise and criticism. The Melbourne Press Club presented the 2016 Quill for Coverage of an Issue or Event for the report George Pell and Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, and the 2016 Golden Quill award to Louise Milligan and Andy Burns for their extensive coverage of Cardinal George Pell's evidence given at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The ABC Media Watch program of 20 April 2020 noted that the ABC had been accused of leading a "witch hunt" against Cardinal Pell. Media Watch reported that, following his acquittal, Pell said the ABC gave an "overwhelming presentation of one view and only one view". Media Watch also canvassed other criticisms including from The Australian newspaper's editor-at-large Paul Kelly, who charged the ABC with having run a "sustained campaign against Pell". Media Watch also offered criticism of its own, noting Louise Milligan and the Four Corners program had failed to canvass any of Pell's defence from the trial and "lined up witnesses condemning Pell", while social media commentary by Barrie Cassidy and Quentin Dempster had undermined the presumption of innocence. Margaret Simons similarly noted in The Guardian that "there has been some social media activity by ABC journalists that looks very much like lobbying against Pell..."
Environmentalism
Planet Slayer was an ABC website run by scientist Bernie Hobbs to teach children about the environment in around 2008/9. It included a "Greenhouse Calculator" which aimed to help children to work out their carbon footprint by providing an estimate of the age a person needs to die if they are not to use more than their fair share of the Earth's resources. Victorian Liberal senator Mitch Fifield criticised a cartoon series on the site for portraying those who eat meat, loggers, and workers in the nuclear industry as "evil". ABC managing director Mark Scott said the site was not designed to offend anyone, but instead have children think about environmental issues.
See also
History of broadcasting in Australia
Timeline of Australian radio
References
Further reading
Cater, Nick The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class (2013) pp 199–228
Curgenven, Geoffrey. Dick Boyer, an Australian humanist (Bolton, 1967) (Dick Boyer was chair of the ABC Board from 1940 until his death in 1961.)
Inglis, K. S. This is the ABC – the Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932 – 1983 (2006)
Inglis, K. S. Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983–2006 (2006)
Moran, Albert, and Chris Keating. The A to Z of Australian Radio and Television (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
Semmler, Clement. The ABC: Aunt Sally and Sacred Cow (1981)
External links
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983
Commercial-free television networks
Public television in Australia
Publicly funded broadcasters
Commonwealth Government agencies of Australia
Mass media companies established in 1932
Organizations established in 1932
Articles containing video clips
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Alexandria ( ; ; ) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly and became a major centre of Hellenic civilization, eventually replacing Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt's capital. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" internationally, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.
The city extends about along the northern coast of Egypt, and is the largest city on the Mediterranean, the second-largest in Egypt (after Cairo), the fourth-largest city in the Arab world, the ninth-largest city in Africa, and the ninth-largest urban area in Africa.
The city was founded originally in the vicinity of an Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis (that became the Egyptian quarter of the city). Alexandria grew rapidly, becoming a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, and replacing Memphis as Egypt's capital during the reign of the Ptolemaic pharaohs who succeeded Alexander. It retained this status for almost a millennium, through the period of Roman and Eastern Roman rule until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD, when a new capital was founded at Fustat (later absorbed into Cairo).
Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its Great Library, the largest in the ancient world; and the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. Alexandria was the intellectual and cultural centre of the ancient Mediterranean for much of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity. It was at one time the largest city in the ancient world before being eventually overtaken by Rome.
The city was a major centre of early Christianity and was the centre of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which was one of the major centres of Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the modern world, the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria both lay claim to this ancient heritage. By 641, the city had already been largely plundered and lost its significance before re-emerging in the modern era. From the late 18th century, Alexandria became a major centre of the international shipping industry and one of the most important trading centres in the world, both because it profited from the easy overland connection between the Mediterranean and Red Seas and the lucrative trade in Egyptian cotton.
History
Ancient era
Radiocarbon dating of seashell fragments and lead contamination show human activity at the location during the period of the Old Kingdom (27th–21st centuries BC) and again in the period 1000–800 BC, followed by the absence of activity after that. From ancient sources it is known there existed a trading post at this location during the time of Rameses the Great for trade with Crete, but it had long been lost by the time of Alexander's arrival. A small Egyptian fishing village named Rhakotis (Egyptian: , 'That which is built up') existed since the 13th century BC in the vicinity and eventually grew into the Egyptian quarter of the city. Just east of Alexandria (where Abu Qir Bay is now), there were in ancient times marshland and several islands. As early as the 7th century BC, there existed important port cities of Canopus and Heracleion. The latter was recently rediscovered underwater.
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in April 331 BC as (), as one of his many city foundations. After he captured the Egyptian Satrapy from the Persians, Alexander wanted to build a large Greek city on Egypt's coast that would bear his name. He chose the site of Alexandria, envisioning the building of a causeway to the nearby island of Pharos that would generate two great natural harbours. Alexandria was intended to supersede the older Greek colony of Naucratis as a Hellenistic centre in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt and never returned to the city during his life.
After Alexander's departure, his viceroy Cleomenes continued the expansion. The architect Dinocrates of Rhodes designed the city, using a Hippodamian grid plan. Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, his general Ptolemy Lagides took possession of Egypt and brought Alexander's body to Egypt with him. Ptolemy at first ruled from the old Egyptian capital of Memphis. In 322/321 BC he had Cleomenes executed. Finally, in 305 BC, Ptolemy declared himself Pharaoh as Ptolemy I Soter ("Savior") and moved his capital to Alexandria.
Although Cleomenes was mainly in charge of overseeing Alexandria's early development, the and the mainland quarters seem to have been primarily Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage. In one century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and, for some centuries more, was second only to Rome. It became Egypt's main Greek city, with Greek people from diverse backgrounds.
The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Tanakh, was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic centre of learning (Library of Alexandria, which faced destruction during Caesar's siege of Alexandria in 47 BC), but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Egyptian and Jewish. By the time of Augustus, the city grid encompassed an area of , and the total population during the Roman principate was around 500,000–600,000, which would wax and wane in the course of the next four centuries under Roman rule.
According to Philo of Alexandria, in the year 38 AD, disturbances erupted between Jews and Greek citizens of Alexandria during a visit paid by King Agrippa I to Alexandria, principally over the respect paid by the Herodian nation to the Roman emperor, and which quickly escalated to open affronts and violence between the two ethnic groups and the desecration of Alexandrian synagogues. This event has been called the Alexandrian pogroms. The violence was quelled after Caligula intervened and had the Roman governor, Flaccus, removed from the city.
In 115 AD, large parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Kitos War, which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. In 215 AD, the emperor Caracalla visited the city and, because of some insulting satires that the inhabitants had directed at him, abruptly commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms. On 21 July 365 AD, Alexandria was devastated by a tsunami (365 Crete earthquake), an event annually commemorated years later as a "day of horror".
Islamic era
In 619, Alexandria fell to the Sassanid Persians. The city was mostly uninjured by the conquest and a new palace called Tarawus was erected in the eastern part of the city, later known as Qasr Faris, "fort of the Persians". Although the Byzantine emperor Heraclius recovered it in 629, in 641 the Arabs under the general 'Amr ibn al-'As invaded it during the Muslim conquest of Egypt, after a siege that lasted 14 months. The first Arab governor of Egypt recorded to have visited Alexandria was Utba ibn Abi Sufyan, who strengthened the Arab presence and built a governor's palace in the city in 664–665.
In reference to Alexandria, Ibn Battuta speaks of a number of Muslim saints that resided in the city. One such saint was Imam Borhan Oddin El Aaraj, who was said to perform miracles. Another notable figure was Yaqut al-'Arshi, a disciple of Abu Abbas El Mursi. Ibn Battuta also writes about Abu 'Abdallah al-Murshidi, a saint that lived in the Minyat of Ibn Murshed. Although al-Murshidi lived in seclusion, Ibn Battuta writes that he was regularly visited by crowds, high state officials, and even by the Sultan of Egypt at the time, al-Nasir Muhammad. Ibn Battuta also visited the Pharos lighthouse on two occasions: in 1326 he found it to be partly in ruins and in 1349 it had deteriorated to the point that it was no longer possible to enter.During the Middle Ages, the Mamluk Sultanate provided amenities for European merchants to stay in the port cities of Alexandria and Damietta, so hotels were built and placed at the merchants' disposal so that they could live according to the pattern they were accustomed to in their country. Alexandria lost much of its importance in international trade after Portuguese navigators discovered a new sea route to India in the late 15th century. This reduced the amount of goods that needed to be transported through the Alexandrian port, as well as the Mamluks' political power. After the Battle of Ridaniya in 1517, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained under Ottoman rule until 1798. Alexandria lost much of its former importance to the Egyptian port city of Rosetta during the 9th to 18th centuries, and only regained its former prominence with the construction of the Mahmoudiyah Canal in 1820.
Alexandria figured prominently in the military operations of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. French troops stormed the city on 2 July 1798, and it remained in their hands until the arrival of a British expedition in 1801. The British won a considerable victory over the French at the Battle of Alexandria on 21 March 1801, following which they besieged the city, which fell to them on 2 September 1801. Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, began rebuilding and redevelopment around 1810, and by 1850, Alexandria had returned to something akin to its former glory. Egypt turned to Europe in their effort to modernize the country. Greeks, followed by other Europeans and others, began moving to the city. In the early 20th century, the city became a home for novelists and poets.In July 1882, the city came under bombardment from British naval forces and was occupied.
In July 1954, the city was a target of an Israeli bombing campaign that later became known as the Lavon Affair. On 26 October 1954, Alexandria's Mansheya Square was the site of a failed assassination attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Europeans began leaving Alexandria following the 1956 Suez Crisis that led to an outburst of Arab nationalism. The nationalization of property by Nasser, which reached its highest point in 1961, drove out nearly all the rest.
Geography
Alexandria is located in the country of Egypt, on the southern coast of the Mediterranean. It is in the Far West Nile delta area. Its a densely populated city, its core areas belie its large administrative area.
Notes:2020 CAPMAS projection based on 2017 revised census figures, may differ significantly from 2017 census preliminary tabulations. The 14 kisms were reported simply as Alexandria city by CAPMAS in 2006 but given explosive growth definitions, likely informal, may have change or may be set to change. Same area with 12 kisms existed in 1996. Kisms are considered 'fully urbanized'
Climate
Alexandria has a hot steppe climate (Köppen climate classification: BSh), formerly hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification: BWh). Like the rest of Egypt's northern coast, the prevailing north wind, blowing across the Mediterranean, gives the city a less severe climate than the desert hinterland. Rafah and Alexandria are the wettest places in Egypt; the other wettest places are Rosetta, Baltim, Kafr el-Dawwar, and Mersa Matruh. The city's climate is influenced by the Mediterranean Sea, moderating its temperatures, causing variable rainy winters and moderately hot and slightly prolonged summers that, at times, can be very humid; January and February are the coolest months, with daily maximum temperatures typically ranging from and minimum temperatures that could reach .
Alexandria experiences violent storms, rain and sometimes sleet and hail during the cooler months; these events, combined with a poor drainage system, have been responsible for occasional flooding in the city in the past though they rarely occur anymore. July and August are the hottest and driest months of the year, with an average daily maximum temperature of .
The average annual rainfall is around but has been as high as
Port Said, Kosseir, Baltim, Damietta and Alexandria have the least temperature variation in Egypt.
The highest recorded temperature was on 30 May 1961, and the coldest recorded temperature was on 31 January 1994.
Climate change
A 2019 paper published in PLOS One estimated that under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, a "moderate" scenario of climate change where global warming reaches ~ by 2100, the climate of Alexandria in the year 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Gaza City. The annual temperature would increase by , and the temperature of the warmest and the coldest month by and . According to Climate Action Tracker, the current warming trajectory appears consistent with , which closely matches RCP 4.5.
Due to its location on a Nile river delta, Alexandria is one of the most vulnerable cities to sea level rise in the entire world. According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of people in its low-lying areas may already have to be relocated before 2030. The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report estimates that by 2050, Alexandria and 11 other major African cities (Abidjan, Algiers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Durban, Lagos, Lomé, Luanda and Maputo) would collectively sustain cumulative damages of US$65 billion for the "moderate" climate change scenario RCP 4.5 and US$86.5 billion for the high-emission scenario RCP 8.5, while RCP 8.5 combined with the hypothetical impact from marine ice sheet instability at high levels of warming would involve up to US$137.5 billion in damages. Additional accounting for the "low-probability, high-damage events" may increase aggregate risks to US$187 billion for the "moderate" RCP4.5, US$206 billion for RCP8.5 and US$397 billion under the high-end ice sheet instability scenario. In every single estimate, Alexandria alone bears around half of these costs. Since sea level rise would continue for about 10,000 years under every scenario of climate change, future costs of sea level rise would only increase, especially without adaptation measures.
Ancient layout
Greek Alexandria was divided into three regions:
Rhakotis
Rhakotis (from Coptic , "Alexandria") was the old city that was absorbed into Alexandria. It was occupied chiefly by Egyptians.
Brucheum
Brucheum was the Royal or Greek quarter and formed the most magnificent portion of the city. In Roman times, Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making four regions in all. The city was laid out as a grid of parallel streets, each of which had an attendant subterranean canal.
Jewish quarter
The Jewish quarter was the northeast portion of the city.
Two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about wide, intersected in the centre of the city, close to the point where the Sema (or Soma) of Alexander (his Mausoleum) rose. This point is very near the present mosque of Nebi Daniel; the line of the great East–West "Canopic" street is also present in modern-day Alexandria, having only slightly diverged from the line of the modern Boulevard de Rosette (now Sharae Fouad). Traces of its pavement and canal have been found near the Rosetta Gate, but remnants of streets and canals were exposed in 1899 by German excavators outside the east fortifications, which lie well within the area of the ancient city.Alexandria consisted originally of little more than the island of Pharos, which was joined to the mainland by a mole and called the ("seven stadia"—a stadium was a Greek unit of length measuring approximately ). The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand Square, where the "Moon Gate" rose. All that now lies between that point and the modern "Ras al-Tin" quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras al-Tin quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour.
In Strabo's time (latter half of the 1st century BC), the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour.
The Royal Palaces, filling the northeast angle of the town and occupying the promontory of Lochias, which shut in the Great Harbour on the east. Lochias (the modern Pharillon) has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, together with the palaces, the "Private Port", and the island of Antirrhodus. There has been a land subsidence here, as throughout the northeast coast of Africa.
The Great Theater, on the modern Hospital Hill near the Ramleh station. This was used by Julius Caesar as a fortress, where he withstood a siege from the city mob after he took Egypt after the battle of Pharsalus.
The Poseidon, or Temple of the Sea God, close to the theater
The Timonium built by Marc Antony
The Emporium (Exchange)
The Apostases (Magazines)
The Navalia (Docks), lying west of the Timonium, along the seafront as far as the mole
Behind the Emporium rose the Great Caesareum, by which stood the two great obelisks, which become known as "Cleopatra's Needles", and were transported to New York City and London. This temple became, in time, the Patriarchal Church, though some ancient remains of the temple have been discovered. The actual Caesareum, the parts not eroded by the waves, lies under the houses lining the new seawall.
The Gymnasium and the Palaestra are both inland, near the Boulevard de Rosette in the eastern half of the town; sites unknown.
The Temple of Saturn; site unknown.
The Mausolea of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptolemies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection of the two main streets.
The Musaeum with its famous Library and theater in the same region; site unknown.
The Serapeum of Alexandria, the most famous of all Alexandrian temples. Strabo tells that this stood in the west of the city; and recent discoveries go far as to place it near "Pompey's Pillar", which was an independent monument erected to commemorate Diocletian's siege of the city.
The names of a few other public buildings on the mainland are known, but there is little information as to their actual position. None, however, are as famous as the building that stood on the eastern point of Pharos island. There, The Great Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, reputed to be high, was situated. The first Ptolemy began the project, and the second Ptolemy (Ptolemy II Philadelphus) completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It took 12 years to complete and served as a prototype for all later lighthouses in the world. The light was produced by a furnace at the top and the tower was built mostly with solid blocks of limestone. The Pharos lighthouse was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century, making it the second longest surviving ancient wonder, after the Great Pyramid of Giza. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole.
In the 1st century, the population of Alexandria contained over 180,000 adult male citizens, according to a census dated from 32 AD, in addition to a large number of freedmen, women, children and slaves. Estimates of the total population range from 216,000 to 500,000, making it one of the largest cities ever built before the Industrial Revolution and the largest pre-industrial city that was not an imperial capital.
Cityscape
Due to the constant presence of war in Alexandria in ancient times, very little of the ancient city has survived into the present day. Much of the royal and civic quarters sank beneath the harbour and the rest has been built over in modern times.
Pompey's Pillar
"Pompey's Pillar", a Roman triumphal column, is one of the best-known ancient monuments still standing in Alexandria today. It is located on Alexandria's ancient acropolis—a modest hill located adjacent to the city's Arab cemetery—and was originally part of a temple colonnade. Including its pedestal, it is 30 m (99 ft) high; the shaft is of polished red granite, in diameter at the base, tapering to at the top. The shaft is high, and made out of a single piece of granite. Its volume is and weight approximately 396 tons. Pompey's Pillar may have been erected using the same methods that were used to erect the ancient obelisks. The Romans had cranes but they were not strong enough to lift something this heavy. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehrner conducted several obelisk erecting experiments including a successful attempt to erect a 25-ton obelisk in 1999. This followed two experiments to erect smaller obelisks and two failed attempts to erect a 25-ton obelisk.
"Pompey's Pillar" is a misnomer, as it has nothing to do with Pompey, having been erected in 293 for Diocletian, possibly in memory of the rebellion of Domitius Domitianus. The structure was plundered and demolished in the 4th century when a bishop decreed that Paganism must be eradicated. Beneath the acropolis itself are the subterranean remains of the Serapeum, where the mysteries of the god Serapis were enacted, and whose carved wall niches are believed to have provided overflow storage space for the ancient Library. In more recent years, many ancient artifacts have been discovered from the surrounding sea, mostly pieces of old pottery.
Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa
Alexandria's catacombs, known as Kom El Shoqafa, are a short distance southwest of the pillar, consist of a multi-level labyrinth, reached via a large spiral staircase, and featuring dozens of chambers adorned with sculpted pillars, statues, and other syncretic Romano-Egyptian religious symbols, burial niches, and sarcophagi, as well as a large Roman-style banquet room, where memorial meals were conducted by relatives of the deceased. The catacombs were long forgotten by the citizens until they were discovered by accident in 1900.
Kom El Deka
The most extensive ancient excavation currently being conducted in Alexandria is known as Kom El Deka. It has revealed the ancient city's well-preserved theater, and the remains of its Roman-era baths.
Temple of Taposiris Magna
The temple was built in the Ptolemy era and dedicated to Osiris, which finished the construction of Alexandria. It is located in Abusir, the western suburb of Alexandria in Borg el Arab city. Only the outer wall and the pylons remain from the temple. There is evidence to prove that sacred animals were worshiped there. Archaeologists found an animal necropolis near the temple. Remains of a Christian church show that the temple was used as a church in later centuries. Also found in the same area are remains of public baths built by the emperor Justinian, a seawall, quays and a bridge. Near the beach side of the area, there are the remains of a tower built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The tower was an exact scale replica of the destroyed Alexandrine Pharos Lighthouse.
Citadel of Qaitbay
Citadel of Qaitbay is a defensive fortress located on the Mediterranean sea coast. It was established in 1477 AD (882 AH) by the mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa'it Bay. The Citadel is located on the eastern side of the northern tip of Pharos Island at the mouth of the Eastern Harbour. It was erected on the exact site of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was built on an area of 17,550 square metres.
Excavation
Persistent efforts have been made to explore the antiquities of Alexandria. Encouragement and help have been given by the local Archaeological Society, and by many individuals. Excavations were performed in the city by Greeks seeking the tomb of Alexander the Great without success.
The past and present directors of the museum have been enabled from time to time to carry out systematic excavations whenever opportunity is offered; D. G. Hogarth made tentative researches on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1895; and a German expedition worked for two years (1898–1899). But two difficulties face the would-be excavator in Alexandria: lack of space for excavation and the underwater location of some areas of interest.
Since the great and growing modern city stands immediately over the ancient one, it is almost impossible to find any considerable space in which to dig, except at enormous cost. Cleopatra VII's royal quarters were inundated by earthquakes and tsunami, leading to gradual subsidence in the 4th century AD. This underwater section, containing many of the most interesting sections of the Hellenistic city, including the palace quarter, was explored in 1992 and is still being extensively investigated by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio and his team. It raised a noted head of Caesarion. These are being opened up to tourists, to some controversy. The spaces that are most open are the low grounds to northeast and southwest, where it is practically impossible to get below the Roman strata.
The most important results were those achieved by Dr. G. Botti, late director of the museum, in the neighborhood of "Pompey's Pillar", where there is a good deal of open ground. Here, substructures of a large building or group of buildings have been exposed, which are perhaps part of the Serapeum. Nearby, immense catacombs and columbaria have been opened which may have been appendages of the temple. These contain one very remarkable vault with curious painted reliefs, now artificially lit and open to visitors.
The objects found in these researches are in the museum, the most notable being a great basalt bull, probably once an object of cult in the Serapeum. Other catacombs and tombs have been opened in Kom El Shoqafa (Roman) and Ras El Tin (painted).
The German excavation team found remains of a Ptolemaic colonnade and streets in the north-east of the city, but little else. Hogarth explored part of an immense brick structure under the mound of Kom El Deka, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea, or a Roman fortress.
The making of the new foreshore led to the dredging up of remains of the Patriarchal Church; and the foundations of modern buildings are seldom laid without some objects of antiquity being discovered.
Places of worship
Islam
The most famous mosque in Alexandria is Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi Mosque in Bahary. Other notable mosques in the city include Ali ibn Abi Talib mosque in Somouha, Bilal mosque, al-Gamaa al-Bahari in Mandara, Hatem mosque in Somouha, Hoda el-Islam mosque in Sidi Bishr, al-Mowasah mosque in Hadara, Sharq al-Madina mosque in Miami, al-Shohadaa mosque in Mostafa Kamel, Al Qa'ed Ibrahim Mosque, Yehia mosque in Zizinia, Sidi Gaber mosque in Sidi Gaber, Sidi B esher mosque, Rokay el-Islam mosque in Elessway, Elsadaka Mosque in Sidibesher Qebly, Elshatbi mosque and Sultan mosque.
Alexandria is the base of the Salafi movements in Egypt. Al-Nour Party, which is based in the city and overwhelmingly won most of the Salafi votes in the 2011–12 parliamentary election, supports the president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Christianity
Alexandria was once considered the third-most important see in Christianity, after Rome and Constantinople. Until 430, the Patriarch of Alexandria was second only to the bishop of Rome. The Church of Alexandria had jurisdiction over most of the continent of Africa. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, the Alexandrian Church split between the Miaphysites and the Melkites. The Miaphysites went on to constitute what is known today as the Coptic Orthodox Church. The Melkites went on to constitute what is known today as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria. In the 19th century, Catholic and Protestant missionaries converted some of the adherents of the Orthodox churches to their respective faiths.
Today the Patriarchal seat of the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church is Saint Mark Cathedral (though in practice the Patriarch has long resided in Cairo). The most important Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria include Pope Cyril I Church in Cleopatra, Saint George's Church in Sporting, Saint Mark & Pope Peter I Church in Sidi Bishr, Saint Mary Church in Assafra, Saint Mary Church in Gianaclis, Saint Mina Church in Fleming, Saint Mina Church in Mandara and Saint Takla Haymanot's Church in Ibrahimeya.
The most important Eastern Orthodox churches in Alexandria are Agioi Anárgyroi Church, Church of the Annunciation, Saint Anthony Church, Archangels Gabriel & Michael Church, Taxiarchon Church, Saint Catherine Church, Cathedral of the Dormition in Mansheya, Church of the Dormition, Prophet Elijah Church, Saint George Church, Saint Joseph Church in Fleming, Saint Joseph of Arimathea Church, Saint Mark & Saint Nektarios Chapel in Ramleh, Saint Nicholas Church, Saint Paraskevi Church, Saint Sava Cathedral in Ramleh, Saint Theodore Chapel and the Russian church of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Alexandria, which serves the Russian speaking community in the city.
The Apostolic Vicariate of Alexandria in Egypt-Heliopolis-Port Said has jurisdiction over all Latin Catholics in Egypt. Member churches include Saint Catherine Church in Mansheya and Church of the Jesuits in Cleopatra. The city is also the nominal see of the Melkite Greek Catholic titular Patriarchate of Alexandria (generally vested in its leading Patriarch of Antioch) and the actual cathedral see of its Patriarchal territory of Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan, which uses the Byzantine Rite, and the nominal see of the Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Alexandria (for all Egypt and Sudan, whose actual cathedral is in Cairo), a suffragan of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia, using the Armenian Rite.
The Saint Mark Church in Shatby, founded as part of Collège Saint Marc, is multi-denominational and holds liturgies according to Latin Catholic, Coptic Catholic and Coptic Orthodox rites.
In antiquity Alexandria was a major centre of the cosmopolitan religious movement called Gnosticism (today mainly remembered as a Christian heresy).
Judaism
Alexandria's Jewish community declined rapidly following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, after which negative reactions towards Zionism among Egyptians led to Jewish residents in the city, and elsewhere in Egypt, being perceived as Zionist collaborators. Most Jewish residents of Egypt moved to the newly settled Israel, France, Brazil and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s. The community once numbered 50,000 but is now estimated at below 50. The most important synagogue in Alexandria is the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue.
Education
Colleges and universities
Alexandria has a number of higher education institutions. Alexandria University is a public university that follows the Egyptian system of higher education. Many of its faculties are internationally renowned, most notably its Faculty of Medicine & Faculty of Engineering. In addition, the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology in New Borg El Arab city is a research university set up in collaboration between the Japanese and Egyptian governments in 2010. The Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport is a semi-private educational institution that offers courses for high school, undergraduate level, and postgraduate students. It is considered the most reputable university in Egypt after the AUC American University in Cairo because of its worldwide recognition from board of engineers at UK & ABET in US. Université Senghor is a private French university that focuses on the teaching of humanities, politics and international relations, which mainly recruits students from the African continent. Other institutions of higher education in Alexandria include Alexandria Institute of Technology (AIT) and Pharos University in Alexandria.
On September 2023, The Greek University of Patras announced that it is opening a branch in Alexandria, in a first-of-its-kind move by a Greek higher education institution. The Greek university of Patras branch will operate two departments, one Greek-speaking and one English-speaking in the subjects of Greek culture, Greek language and Greek philosophy.
Schools
Alexandria has a long history of foreign educational institutions. The first foreign schools date to the early 19th century, when French missionaries began establishing French charitable schools to educate the Egyptians. Today, the most important French schools in Alexandria run by Catholic missionaries include Collège de la Mère de Dieu, Collège Notre Dame de Sion, Collège Saint Marc, Écoles des Soeurs Franciscaines (four different schools), École Girard, École Saint Gabriel, École Saint-Vincent de Paul, École Saint Joseph, École Sainte Catherine, and Institution Sainte Jeanne-Antide. As a reaction to the establishment of French religious institutions, a secular (laic) mission established Lycée el-Horreya, which initially followed a French system of education, but is currently run by the Egyptian government. The only school in Alexandria that completely follows the French educational system is Lycée Français d'Alexandrie (École Champollion). It is usually frequented by the children of French expatriates and diplomats in Alexandria. The Italian school is the Istituto "Don Bosco".
English-language schools in Alexandria are the most popular; those in the city include: Riada American School, Riada Language School, Alexandria Language School, Future Language School, Future International Schools (Future IGCSE, Future American School and Future German school), Alexandria American School, British School of Alexandria, Egyptian American School, Pioneers Language School, Egyptian English Language School, Princesses Girls' School, Sidi Gaber Language School, Zahran Language School, Taymour English School, Sacred Heart Girls' School, Schutz American School, Victoria College, El Manar Language School for Girls (previously called Scottish School for Girls), Kawmeya Language School, El Nasr Boys' School (previously called British Boys' School), and El Nasr Girls' College (previously called English Girls' College).
There are only two German schools in Alexandria which are Deutsche Schule der Borromärinnen (DSB of Saint Charles Borromé) and Neue Deutsche Schule Alexandria, which is run by Frau Sally Hammam.
The Montessori educational system was first introduced in Alexandria in 2009 at Alexandria Montessori.
Women
Around the 1890s, twice the percentage of women in Alexandria knew how to read compared to the same percentage in Cairo. As a result, specialist women's publications like al-Fatāh by Hind Nawal, the country's first women's journal, appeared.
Transport
Airports
The city's principal airport is currently Borg El Arab Airport, which is located about away from the city centre.
From late 2011, El Nouzha Airport (Alexandria International Airport) was to be closed to commercial operations for two years as it underwent expansion, with all airlines operating out of Borg El Arab Airport from then onwards, where a brand new terminal was completed there in February 2010. In 2017, the government announced that Alexandria International Airport will shut down permanently and will no longer reopen.
Port
Alexandria has four ports; namely the Western Port also known as Alexandria Port, which is the main port of the country that handles about 60% of the country's exports and imports, Dekhela Port west of the Western Port, the Eastern Port which is a yachting harbour, and Abu Qir Port at the northern east of the governorate. It is a commercial port for general cargo and phosphates.
Highways
International Coastal Road (Mersa Matruh – Alexandria – Port Said)
Cairo–Alexandria desert road (Alexandria – Cairo – , 6–8 lanes)
Cairo-Alexandria Agriculture Road (Alexandria – Cairo)
Mehwar El Ta'meer – (Alexandria – Borg El Arab)
Rail
Alexandria's intracity commuter rail system extends from Misr Station (Alexandria's primary intercity railway station) to Abu Qir, parallel to the tram line. The commuter line's locomotives operate on diesel, as opposed to the overhead-electric tram.
Alexandria plays host to two intercity railway stations: the aforementioned Misr Station (in the older Manshia district in the western part of the city) and Sidi Gaber railway station (in the district of Sidi Gaber in the centre of the eastern expansion in which most Alexandrines reside), both of which also serve the commuter rail line. Intercity passenger service is operated by Egyptian National Railways.
Trams
An extensive tramway network was built in 1860 and is the oldest in Africa. The network begins at the El Raml district in the west and ends in the Victoria district in the east.
Metro
Construction of the Alexandria Metro was due to begin in 2020 at a cost of $1.05 billion.
Culture
Libraries
The Royal Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the world. It is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt. It was likely created after his father had built what would become the first part of the library complex, the temple of the Muses—the Museion, Greek Μουσείον (from which the Modern English word museum is derived).
It has been reasonably established that the library, or parts of the collection, were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library fires were common and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming). To this day the details of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of controversy.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2002, near the site of the old Library.
Museums
The Alexandria National Museum was inaugurated 31 December 2003. It is located in a restored Italian style palace in Tariq El Horreya Street (formerly Rue Fouad), near the centre of the city. It contains about 1,800 artifacts that narrate the story of Alexandria and Egypt. Most of these pieces came from other Egyptian museums. The museum is housed in the old Al-Saad Bassili Pasha Palace, who was one of the wealthiest wood merchants in Alexandria. Construction on the site was first undertaken in 1926.
The Graeco-Roman Museum was the city's main archeological museum, focused on artifacts from its Greco-Roman period. It was opened in 1892 and was closed in 2005 for extensive renovations and expansion. Renovations were still ongoing as of 2023.
Other museums in the city include the Cavafy Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Royal Jewelry Museum.
Theaters
Alexandria Opera House hosts performances of classical music, Arabic music, ballet, and opera.
Sports
The main sport that interests Alexandrians is football, as is the case in the rest of Egypt and Africa. Alexandria Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Alexandria, Egypt. It is currently used mostly for football matches, and was used for the 2006 African Cup of Nations. The stadium is the oldest stadium in Egypt, being built in 1929. The stadium holds 20,000 people. Alexandria was one of three cities that participated in hosting the African Cup of Nations in January 2006, which Egypt won. Sea sports such as surfing, jet-skiing and water polo are practiced on a lower scale. The Skateboarding culture in Egypt started in this city. The city is also home to the Alexandria Sporting Club, which is especially known for its basketball team, which traditionally provides the country's national team with key players. The city hosted the AfroBasket, the continent's most prestigious basketball tournament, on four occasions (1970, 1975, 1983, 2003).
Alexandria has four stadiums:
Alexandria Stadium
Borg El Arab Stadium
El Krom Stadium
Harras El Hodoud Stadium
Other less popular sports like tennis and squash are usually played in private social and sports clubs, like:
Alexandria Sporting Club – in "Sporting"
Smouha Sporting Club – in "Smouha"
Al Ittihad Alexandria Club
Olympic Club
Haras El Hodoud SC Club
Koroum Club
Lagoon Resort Courts
Alexandria Country club
Alexandria is also known as the yearly starting point of Cross Egypt Challenge and a huge celebration is conducted the night before the rally starts after all the international participants arrive to the city. Cross Egypt Challenge is an international cross-country motorcycle and scooter rally conducted throughout the most difficult tracks and roads of Egypt.
Twin towns and sister cities
Alexandria is twinned with:
Almaty, Kazakhstan
Baltimore, United States
Bratislava, Slovakia
Catania, Italy
Cleveland, United States
Constanța, Romania
Durban, South Africa
Incheon, South Korea
Kazanlak, Bulgaria
Limassol, Cyprus
Odesa, Ukraine
Paphos, Cyprus
Port Louis, Mauritius
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Shanghai, China
Thessaloniki, Greece
See also
Baucalis
History of the Jews in Alexandria
Cultural tourism in Egypt
List of cities and towns in Egypt
List of cities founded by Alexander the Great
Of Alexandria
Alexandria on the Indus
Alexandrian Kings
Notes
References
Further reading
A. Bernand, Alexandrie la Grande (1966)
A. Bernard, E. Bernand, J. Yoyotte, F. Goddio, et al., Alexandria, the submerged royal quarters, Periplus Publishing Ltd., London 1998,
A. J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt (2nd. ed., 1978)
P.-A. Claudel, Alexandrie. Histoire d'un mythe (2011)
A. De Cosson, Mareotis (1935)
J.-Y. Empereur, Alexandria Rediscovered (1998)
E. M. Forster, Alexandria A History and a Guide (1922) (reprint ed. M. Allott, 2004)
P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972)
Franck Goddio, David Fabre (eds), Egypt's Sunken Treasures, Prestel Vlg München, 2008 (2nd edition), Exhibition Catalogue,
M. Haag, Alexandria: City of Memory (2004) [20th-century social and literary history]
M. Haag, Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City 1860–1960 (2008)
M. Haag, Alexandria Illustrated
R. Ilbert, I. Yannakakis, Alexandrie 1860–1960 (1992)
R. Ilbert, Alexandrie entre deux mondes (1988)
Judith McKenzie et al., The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 300 B.C.–A.D. 700. (Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, 2007)
Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, London, John Murray, 11 November 2010, hardback, 480 pages, , New Haven, Yale University Press, 24 May 2011, hardback, 470 pages,
Don Nardo, A Travel Guide to Ancient Alexandria, Lucent Books. (2003)
D. Robinson, A. Wilson (eds), Alexandria and the North-Western Delta, Oxford 2010, Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology,
V. W. Von Hagen, The Roads that Led to Rome (1967)
External links
Details on the archaïc port with a pdf of Gaston Jondet's report, 1916
Map of Alexandria, ca.1930, Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The National Library of Israel.
Photos of Alexandria at the American Center of Research
Alexandria
Governorate capitals in Egypt
Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Egypt
Populated places in Alexandria Governorate
Populated coastal places in Egypt
Metropolitan areas of Egypt
Roman towns and cities in Egypt
Mediterranean port cities and towns in Egypt
Populated places along the Silk Road
Cities in Egypt
Cities founded by Alexander the Great
330s BC establishments
330s BC
Populated places established in the 4th century BC
Former capitals of Egypt
Historic Jewish communities in North Africa
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Alexandria is the ninth-largest city in the state of Louisiana and is the parish seat of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies on the south bank of the Red River in almost the exact geographic center of the state. It is the principal city of the Alexandria metropolitan area (population 153,922) which encompasses all of Rapides and Grant parishes. Its neighboring city is Pineville. In 2010, the population was 47,723, an increase of 3 percent from the 2000 census.
History
Located along the Red River, the city of Alexandria was originally home to a community which supported activities of the adjacent French trader outpost of Post du Rapides. The area developed as an assemblage of traders, Caddo people, and merchants in the agricultural lands bordering the mostly unsettled areas to the north and providing a link from the south to the El Camino Real and then larger settlement of Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase.
Alexander Fulton, a businessman from Washington County, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received a land grant from Spain in 1762, and the first organized settlement was made at some point in the 1780s. In 1805, Fulton and business partner Thomas Harris Maddox laid out the town plan and named the town in Fulton's honor. The earliest deed that survives for an Alexandria resident is from June 24, 1801, when a William Cochren, who identifies himself as "Slave master of the Southern Americas", sold a tract of land across the Red River to a William Murrey.
That same year, Fulton was appointed coroner in Rapides Parish by territorial Governor William C.C. Claiborne. Alexandria was incorporated as a town in 1818 and received a city charter in 1832.
In 1942, Alexandria was the site of the Lee Street Riot, an incident of racial violence that occurred between mostly unarmed African Americans and armed military police. Witnesses state that as many as 20 people may have been killed, however the official report indicates that 3 African American soldiers were critically injured, and does not mention any deaths.
Geography and climate
Alexandria is located at and has an elevation of .
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which 26.4 square miles (68.4 km2) is land and 0.6 square mile (1.5 km2) (2.15%) is water.
Alexandria is on a level plain in the center of the Louisiana Longleaf Pine forests, in which pine is interspersed with various hardwoods. A number of small bayous, such as Bayou Rapides, Bayou Robert, and Hynson Bayou, meander throughout the city. In the immediate vicinity of the city, cotton, sugar, alfalfa, and garden vegetables are cultivated.
The climate is humid subtropical with some continental influence in the winter. Summers are consistently hot and humid, whereas winters are mild, with occasional cold snaps. On average, the first freeze occurs in early to mid November and the last freeze occurs in early to mid March. The area receives plentiful rainfall year-round, with thunderstorms possible throughout the year. Some storms can be severe, especially during the spring months. According to 'Cities Ranked and Rated' (Bert Sperling and Peter Sander), Alexandria reports an average of 69 days per year with thunder reported, which is nearly double the national average. Snowfall is rare, with measurable snow having occurred 27 times since 1895. The heaviest snowfall event took place February 12–13, 1960, when 9.1" of snow fell.
Tropical storms and hurricanes affect Alexandria from time to time, but rarely cause severe damage, unlike areas closer to the coast. In September 2005, Hurricane Rita moved inland and affected Alexandria and surrounding areas, causing widespread power outages and damaging the roofs of some structures. The most recent hurricane, Gustav in 2008, caused widespread flooding, knocked over trees and power lines leading to power outages, and damaged structures. Some low-lying Alexandria neighborhoods had substantial flooding from Gustav, leaving several feet of water in houses.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 45,275 people, 17,920 households, and 10,933 families residing in the city.
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 47,723 people, 17,816 households, and 11,722 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,754.6/sq mi (677.5/km2). There were 19,806 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 38.32% White, 57.25% Black, 1.25% Native American, 1.85% Asian, 0.14% Pacific Islander, 1.03% from other races, and 1.09% from two or more races. 6.98% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 17,816 households, out of which 31.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.5% were married couples living together, 23.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.2% were non-families. 30.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.13.
In the city, the population was spread out, with 28.1% under the age of 18, 9.2% from 18 to 24, 26.2% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 15.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 83.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $26,097, and the median income for a family was $31,978. Males had a median income of $29,456 versus $20,154 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,242. About 23.2% of families and 27.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.7% of those under age 18 and 18.5% of those age 65 or over.
Religion
Like many other southern cities, the largest single church denomination in the Alexandria area is Southern Baptist. Large congregations include the Emmanuel Baptist Church and Calvary Baptist Church. Alexandria is the headquarters of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Alexandria also has a significant number of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Pentecostals.
A significant Catholic population is also present, a result of the large Catholic Acadian French population which resides in and around Alexandria, many from neighboring Avoyelles Parish. Alexandria is the headquarters for the Diocese of Alexandria.
Alexandria has a small, though active Jewish community which dates back to the mid-19th century. Jews have held positions in local government, civic organizations, education, and medicine. At one time, many large businesses in the downtown were Jewish-owned. The Jewish community in Alexandria maintains two synagogues, which are approximately two blocks apart: Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim (Reform) and B'nai Israel Traditional Synagogue (Conservative).
Annual cultural events and festivals
Mardi Gras
Though Alexandria is north of the Cajun cultural area, the city recognizes Mardi Gras as an official holiday. The annual Mardi Gras Krewes Parade – occurring on the Sunday before Mardi Gras – on Texas Avenue is a major cultural festivity in the area. It is featured as a family-oriented event, and parade goers can enjoy over 20 New Orleans style floats, high school and college marching bands, as well as appearances by local celebrities. In addition to the main Sunday parade, the College Cheerleaders & Classic Cars Parade, which was established in 2008, takes place downtown on the Friday before Mardi Gras, the Children's Parade takes place downtown on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, and the Krewe of Provine Parade is held on Fat Tuesday, processing along Coliseum Boulevard. All the events are organized by the Alexandria Mardi Gras Association (AMGA). The Krewe Parade can attract from 120,000 to 150,000; the Children's parade, up to 40,000 to 50,000, and the College Cheerleaders & Classic Cars, about 5,000 to 15,000 people.
Alex River Fête
An annual three-day festival is held in downtown Alexandria around late April and early May. The festival, established in 2013, was created around a former successful stand-alone event, the Louisiana Dragon Boat Races. It features the race and other former stand-alone events such as Dinner on the Bricks and the ArtWalk (now Art Fête) along with various booth venues, food, and live music, as well as the Kids Fête and Classic Car Fête.
Alex Winter Fête
An annual three day festival held in downtown Alexandria around early December. Launched in 2015, the festival first year drew about double the anticipated crowd of 15,000. The festival, like the Alex River Fête, feature booth venues, food, and live music but also features an ice rink. In January 2017, the Alex Winter Fête was voted Festival of the Year by the Louisiana Travel Promotion Association.
Former events
Cenlabration
Begun in the late 1980s, Cenlabration
was one of the largest festivals in Central Louisiana (Cenla). The name comes from Central Louisiana ("LA") Celebration, and reflects local culture and heritage, as well as serving as a means of celebrating Labor Day as the end of summer.
As many as three stages support a particular type of music, including Cajun and zydeco, blues and jazz, and Country music. In addition there are arts and crafts booths for local artists to sell their wares. In the Children's Village, children can participate in arts and crafts, listen to storytellers, play games with clowns, or watch a play. The festival has plenty of carnival rides available as well. Cenlabration ends with a large fireworks display.
The festival ran for 20 years until cancellation due to finances. The city ended its annual support of $40,000 because of budget constraints.
RiverFest
In 2002, representatives of local government, businesses, organizations, and community formed the nonprofit organization River Cities Cultural Alliance, Inc. to promote tourism and the arts through a celebration of Central Louisiana's diverse cultural heritage. The nonprofit served to organize and put on RiverFest: Heritage and Arts on the Red. More than ten thousand festival-goers attending the event.
RiverFest was held in downtown Alexandria and on the Alexandria and Pineville levees. The festival features the work of visual artists from across the South, food booths exemplifying southern cuisine, a variety of children's activities, three outdoor stages with a wide range of music, dance, and theatrical performances, and a literary component with readings and panel discussions by Louisiana authors and scholars.
RiverFest was canceled in 2007.
Que'in on the Red
An annual barbecue festival launched in 2006, the festival was held on the levee near downtown Alexandria and was well known for its big-name entertainment. The event was cancelled in 2012 due to its high cost and the city deciding against continued support of $100,000 annually.
Museums
The Alexandria Museum of Art was founded in 1977 and occupies an historic Rapides Bank Building on the banks of the Red River. The building was built c. 1898 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The museum opened to the public in March 1998. In 1998, the Alexandria Museum of Art expanded and constructed its grand foyer and offices as an annex to the Rapides Bank Building. In 1999, the Alexandria Museum of Art was honored as an Outstanding Arts Organization in the Louisiana Governor's Arts Awards. In 2007, the Alexandria Museum of Art entered into a collaborative endeavor agreement with Louisiana State University of Alexandria (LSUA). The Alexandria Museum of Art now also serves as a downtown campus for LSUA classes, and is host to multidisciplinary community events, including concerts and recitals, lectures, yoga classes, Second Saturday Markets, and Museum Afterhours.
The Louisiana History Museum is located downtown on the bottom floor of the former library. A small facility, it showcases the history of all Louisiana, with emphasis on the central portion of the state, Rapides Parish, and Alexandria. Major exhibit areas concern Native Americans, Louisiana geography, politics, health care, farming, and the impact of war.
The T.R.E.E. House Children's Museum and Arna Bontemps African American Museum are located within the Cultural Arts District.
The Kent Plantation House in Alexandria, completed by 1800, was located on a Spanish land grant. It is the oldest standing structure in Central Louisiana, one of only two buildings in the city to survive the burning of 1864 by Union troops fleeing after having been defeated at the Battle of Mansfield in DeSoto Parish. The house has been moved from its original location but is still located on part of the first land grant. It is open for tours daily except Sundays at 9, 10, and 11 a.m. and 1, 2, and 3 p.m. The tour is led by costumed docents and includes the house furnished in period pieces, some belonging to the original family, and all nine outbuildings, including an 1840-50s sugar mill, blacksmith shop, barn, two slave cabins, open-hearth kitchen, and milk house.
Performing arts
The performing arts are centered in the Alexandria Cultural Arts District in the downtown. Located within a few blocks of each other are three performance venues: Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center, the Hearn Stage, and the Riverfront Amphitheater.
The Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center is the home of the Rapides Symphony Orchestra, which has performed in Alexandria since 1968. The center hosts the Performing Arts Series of the Arts Council of Central Louisiana, the Red River Chorale (an auditioned community chorus), and presentations of numerous local theater groups. The land for the center was donated by The Alexandria Town Talk newspaper, owned by the Gannett Company of McLean, Virginia.
Businesswoman Jacqueline Seagall Caplan (1935–2016) was the president of the Arts Council of Central Louisiana and the chairman of the group's executive committee when the Coughlin-Saunders Performing Arts Center opened in 2004. She predicted that Coughlin-Saunders would in time "provide a place people can point to and say it's theirs. ... [Until now], we've never had a performing arts center where every type of performing art can come."
The Hearn Stage is a black box theater for smaller productions. The Arts Council provides day-to-day management of both the Coughlin-Saunders Center and the Hearn Stage.
The Riverfront Amphitheater hosts each April a "Jazz on the River" music festival, sponsored by the Arna Bontemps African American Museum. The Rapides Symphony holds an annual fall Pops concert in the amphitheater. In recent years, the amphitheater has welcomed musical guests in conjunction with the springtime Dragonboat Races sponsored by the Alexandria Museum of Art.
The spring and fall seasons also feature Downtown Rocks, a free outdoor concert series in nearby Fulton Park.
Sports
Alexandria was home to the Alexandria Aces, a summer college league baseball team. The Aces were champions in various leagues in 1997, 1998, 2006, and 2007. They played their home games at Bringhurst Field. Due to lack of repairs on the stadium, combined with the aging of it caused interest in the team to drop, with much of the wooden stands being barricaded. The remaining games of the 2013 season were canceled in mid-July because of low attendance, which averaged fewer than two hundred per game. The stadium's office and clubhouse were destroyed by a fire in 2014 and were subsequently torn down. In 2017, it was decided that the stadium would become a green space, open to the public and welcome news to those concerned about the building's future. The scoreboard and outfield walls have been removed, but most of the stadium is still intact. In 1974, a Little League team from Alexandria won the Louisiana state championship.
Alexandria had a minor league ice hockey team, the Alexandria Warthogs. They played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum.
A professional indoor football team, the Louisiana Rangers, played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum. They played in the Central District of the Southern American Football League, and the Southern Conference of the National Indoor Football League (NIFL). The team was owned by a Lafayette business group before moving in 2003 to Beaumont, Texas.
Alexandria is also home to the U-14 Crossroads Pride soccer team. They won the 2012 Louisiana Soccer Association State Cup. The Pool Boys FC soccer team, a member of the Gulf Coast Premier League, plays at Johnny Downs Sports Complex.
Nearby is Bringhurst Golf Course, popularly known as "the nation's oldest par-three course." A full-scale renovation was completed in mid-2010. In addition to Bringhurst, named for the late industrialist R.W. Bringhurst, Alexandria is home to four other golf courses: Oak Wing, The Links on the Bayou, at LSUA, and Alexandria Golf and Country Club.
Alexandria was also home to the Cenla Derby Dames, a roller derby team that operates under the Women's Flat Track Derby Association. The Dames played their home games at the Rapides Parish Coliseum.
Notable people
Anna Margaret – singer, actress
Emmanuel Arceneaux – Canadian football player
Jay Aldrich – Major League Baseball player
John Ardoin – music critic for The Dallas Morning News
Louis Berry – first African-American to practice law in Alexandria; civil rights advocate
Chris Boniol - American football player
Arna Bontemps – African American poet and member of Harlem Renaissance
Thomas "Bud" Brady – state representative (1976-1988) from La Salle Parish; thereafter a real estate appraiser in Alexandria
Bubby Brister – Quarterback Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Jets, Denver Broncos, and Minnesota Vikings
Markel Brown – guard in the Israeli Basketball Premier League
Arthur H. Butler – Marine Corps Major General and Navy Cross recipient
D. J. Chark - American football player
Carl B. Close – state representative (1944-1947) and mayor of Alexandria (1947-1953)
Luther F. Cole – associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1986 to 1992, former state representative from East Baton Rouge Parish; born in Alexandria
Clifford Ann Creed – golfer; winner of eleven LPGA Tour events
Israel "Bo" Curtis – African-American Democrat member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 26 from 1992 to 2008
Cleveland Dear – U.S. representative from 1933 to 1937, district attorney, and state district court judge
Demar Dotson - American football player
C. H. "Sammy" Downs – attorney and politician
James R. Eubank – Alexandria lawyer; member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for Rapides Parish in 1952; died in office at the age of thirty-seven
Steve Gainer – Cinematographer and Director
H. N. Goff – state representative from Rapides Parish, 1952–1956; insurance agent in Alexandria
Layon Gray – Playwright and director of the Off-Broadway hit play Black Angels Over Tuskegee. The story of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Lawrence Preston Joseph Graves – Roman Catholic bishop of Alexandria from 1973 to 1982
Charles Pasquale Greco – Roman Catholic bishop of Alexandria from 1946 to 1973
Jeff Hall – first African-American mayor of Alexandria, 2018-2022; state representative for District 26 in Rapides Parish, 2015-2018
Eric Johanson – blues rock musician
Josh Johnson – comedian.
Catherine D. Kimball – former Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court
Maxie Lambright – football coach for Louisiana Tech University, 1967–1978; coached at Bolton High School in Alexandria, 1955 to 1958
D.L. Lang - Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California
John Leglue - NFL player
F.A. Little, Jr. – retired judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
George S. Long – former U.S. representative
Gillis William Long – former U.S. representative
Jay Luneau – lawyer and state senator, effective January 2016
Gerald Archie Mangun – late pastor of the Pentecostal Church, the largest congregation in Alexandria
Rod Masterson – actor
Terry Alan "Tet" Mathews – former Major League Pitcher, Born 1964 died 2012. Pitched for Texas Rangers, Florida Marlins, Baltimore Orioles, and Kansas City Royals
Warren Morris – Major League Baseball player
Craig Nall – National Football League player
J. Tinsley Oden – mathematician
Jewel Prestage – first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science, former Dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University.
Juan Pierre – Major League Baseball player
Ed Rand – state representative from 1960 to 1964
Joe Ray – contemporary visual artist
Joseph E. Ransdell – U.S. Senator from Louisiana, 1913-1931
Slater Rhea – Singer and TV personality on national TV in China.
Jalen Richard - NFL player
Sterling Ridge – Arizona legislator
Alvin Benjamin Rubin – federal judge, 1966-1991
Bill Schroll – National Football League player
Gustav Anton von Seckendorff – author, actor and declaimer
William Tecumseh Sherman – first superintendent; Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy (later to become LSU)
Russ Springer – Major League Baseball player for 18 years
Grove Stafford, Sr. – Alexandria lawyer and state senator from 1940 to 1948
Leroy Augustus Stafford – planter and Confederate brigadier general mortally wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864
Lloyd George Teekell – state representative from 1953 to 1960 and 9th Judicial District Court judge from 1979 to 1990
Jeff R. Thompson – former state representative for Bossier Parish; judge of the 26th Judicial District Court since 2015; born in Alexandria in 1965
Cullen Washington Jr. – contemporary abstract painter.
Muse Watson – actor
James Madison Wells – 19th century governor of Louisiana
Rebecca Wells – author, actor, and playwright, best known for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Joanne Lyles White – humanitarian, philanthropist; founder and first president of the Louisiana Speech League
J. Robert Wooley – Louisiana insurance commissioner from 2000 to 2006, was reared in Alexandria, where his father was a principal at the Louisiana Special Education Center there.
Media
Newspapers
Established March 17, 1883, The Alexandria Town Talk is a daily newspaper for Alexandria-Pineville and the thirteen parishes which comprise central Louisiana. The newspaper was owned by the family of the late Jane Wilson Smith and Joe D. Smith, Jr., until March 1996, when it was sold to Central Newspapers. In August 2000, the Gannett Company acquired the Central Newspapers properties, including The Town Talk. The name of the paper on its inaugural issue was the Alexandria Daily Town Talk. Although it has since been shorted to the current The Town Talk, it is still frequently referred to by long-time residents as the Daily Town Talk.
Television
Alexandria is served by local television stations KALB-TV (NBC / CBS), WNTZ (Fox), KLAX-TV (ABC), KLPA (PBS/LPB), and KBCA (The CW). KALB is the oldest television station in central Louisiana.
Radio
Parks and outdoor attractions
Alexandria Zoological Park
The Alexandria Zoological Park is a zoo first opened to the public in 1926. Owned by the City of Alexandria and operated by the Division of Public Works, it is home to about 500 animals and includes an award-winning Louisiana Habitat exhibit. The zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and takes part in about 20 Species Survival Plans (SSP) as part of its conservation efforts.
Cotile Lake Recreation Area
Cotile Lake is a man-made impoundment located in the uplands approximately west-northwest of Alexandria, Louisiana. The lake is approximately in size and was completed in October 1965. The Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission stocked this impoundment with the proper species and number of game fish in 1965–66 shortly after its completion date. The recreational facilities include a large area cleared and zoned for swimming with complete bath house facilities nearby. There is a water skiing area that is cleared and snagged for safety of the skiers. The picnic and camping areas are modern and complete. There is also space available for campers.
Indian Creek Lake and Recreation Area
Encompasses a lake, of developed recreation facilities and a primitive camping area all within the Alexander State Forest. The lake, located in central Louisiana, was constructed as a joint venture of the Louisiana Forestry Commission, the Rapides Parish Police Jury, and the Lower West Red River Soil and Water Conservation District as a reservoir for agricultural irrigation in times of need and for recreation purposes.
The recreation area camping area contains 109 campsites with conventional full utility hookups, 3 beaches for swimming, bath houses, a boat launch, and 75 picnic sites. A covered pavilion within the developed area provides for groups up to 100 people. The recreation area is open year-round and operates on user fees.
Kisatchie National Forest
Alexandria sits in the middle of the Kisatchie National Forest. Ranger districts are north, northwest, west and southwest of the city. An abundance of large timberlands and forest nurseries, as well as lake and recreation areas, are within a short driving distance.
Other points of interest
Alexandria Memorial Gardens – large cemetery on U.S. Highway 165 south. Other cemeteries are also available in Pineville.
Alexandria Levee Park – a park located downtown, adjacent to the Red River, that serves as the grounds for some local festivals. It contains an amphitheatre that is used for concerts.
Alexandria Mall – the local shopping mall located on Masonic Drive, established 1973
Alexandria Riverfront Center – convention center located downtown
Bringhurst Field – home of the Alexandria Aces
Bringhurst Park – contains the Alexandria Zoo, Bringhurst Field, a playground, a golf course and tennis courts
Hotel Bentley – historic hotel built in 1908
Inglewood Plantation – plantation located south of Alexandria
Kent Plantation House – French colonial plantation house
Masonic Home – a now defunct orphanage in south Alexandria completed in 1924.
Rapides Parish Coliseum – a multi-purpose arena used for sporting events, conventions and other events
Military
Louisiana National Guard
Alexandria is home to both Headquarters and Company B of the 199th Brigade Support Battalion (BSB). The 199th BSB is the logistical component of the 256th Infantry Brigade that served in Operation Iraqi Freedom from October 2004 until September 2005. The 199th BSB provides supply and transportation (Company A), medical (Company C) and maintenance (Company B) support and services that keep the 256th Brigade operational. The battalion also has units located in Jonesboro, Winnfield, Colfax, and St. Martinville, Louisiana.
England Air Force Base
Alexandria served as the home of England Air Force Base from its origins as an emergency airstrip for Esler Regional Airport until its closure. England AFB was officially closed on December 15, 1992, pursuant to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act (Public Law 101–510) and recommendations of the Defense Secretary's Commission on Base Realignment and Closure. The base now serves as Alexandria International Airport (see below).
Economy
According to Census ACS 1-year survey for 2016, the per capita income of Alexandria was $23,962. This is $1,702 lower than the Louisiana average for per capita income in the same period. That figure is at $31,128 nationally. The Alexandria workforce consists of about 55,000 residents. Union Tank Car Company has recently located a plant northwest of Alexandria near the airport creating hundreds of jobs. Expansions at the Procter & Gamble plant and the construction of a PlastiPak plant in nearby Pineville have also created a number of new jobs for the area. Sundrop Fuels Inc., a Colorado-based biofuels start-up, plans to construct an over 1,200 acre plant just southwest of Alexandria in Rapides Station area. The facility will serve as the headquarters for the company because aside from the plant itself, Sundrop has also bought Cowboy Town, an abandon entertainment venue that sits inside the surrounding land that was purchased, to house their offices and their maintenance and fabrication operations.
In 2007, Inc. Magazine rated Alexandria as the 77th best place in which to conduct business out of the 393 U.S. cities ranked, a significant increase from its ranking as No. 276 in 2006. Among other Louisiana cities, Alexandria ranked second, following only Baton Rouge, which ranked 59th nationally.
Healthcare
Alexandria is home to two major hospitals: Rapides Regional Medical Center, a former Baptist hospital is located downtown. Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital was opened in 1950 and is located at the corner of Masonic Drive and Texas Avenue. Both hospitals have undergone expansion.
Additionally, located just across the Red River in Pineville, the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center at Alexandria serves central Louisiana and surrounding areas.
Meanwhile, in 2013, the state allocated $15 million to move the medical services long provided at no or minimal charge at the Huey P. Long Medical Center in Pineville to the former hospital at England Park at the site of the closed England Air Force Base.
Port of Alexandria
In the early 19th century, the Port of Alexandria brought goods to the area and shipped cotton and other local products to the rest of the country. A ferry connected the cities of Alexandria and Pineville until a bridge was built across the Red in 1900.
Today, Port facilities include: a 40-ton crane for off-loading, a warehouse, 13,600-ton bulk fertilizer warehouse, a 3,400-ton bulk fertilizer dome structure and a 5,000-ton dome which was added in January 2005.
The petroleum off-loading facility includes two tanks, one tank capable of handling two barges and five truck off-loading simultaneously. There is also a general cargo dock with access to rail and a hopper barge unloading dock with conveyor system.
Today's modern facilities and the Port's central location with its connection to the Mississippi River provide excellent opportunities for importers and exporters.
Alexandria International Airport
Alexandria International Airport (AEX) is a regional airport, providing flights to Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Houston. In 2006 a new-state-of-the-art passenger terminal was dedicated. Alexandria is served by American, United, and Delta.
Current military use
Formerly known as England AFB until 1992, Alexandria International Airport additionally has numerous international charter airlines using the airport in the transport of military personnel attached to the United States Army base at Fort Polk. A new military personnel terminal opened in 2007.
Government and politics
Local government
History
Following the Civil War, all public records in Alexandria had been destroyed. On September 29, 1868, the city was granted a new charter with a government consisting of a Mayor, Treasurer, and Justice of the Peace. Nine aldermen represented the four wards of the city – two from each ward and one elected at-large.
In 1912, the Lawrason Act established Alexandria municipal government in a strong mayor format, where the mayor was also the Commissioner of Public Health and Safety (Police, Fire, Sanitation). There were separate Commissioners of Streets and Parks and Finance and Utilities, elected citywide. Those positions were discontinued in 1977.
Today
Alexandria has a mayoral-council system of government. The Mayor serves as the executive branch of the local government.
The City Council serves as the legislative branch. The five districts of the city are represented on the council; in addition there are two council members elected to serve as at-large representatives of the city.
The Alexandria Court has a limited jurisdiction, consisting of the citizens of Wards 1, 2 and 8 in Rapides Parish. Within those boundaries the court has the power to hear and decide both criminal and civil cases, rule in civil cases and hand down judgment for punishment in criminal cases.
Area politics
Overall, the people of the Alexandria area tend to be conservative. Even though the majority typically elects Republicans in national elections, they vote for Democrats in local elections, many of which are not contested by the GOP.
United States Congressional district
From 1913 to 1993, Alexandria served as the seat of Louisiana's Eighth Congressional district. A Democratic seat, it was held by the Long family for nearly half of its existence, from 1953 to 1987, broken only by the two terms of Harold B. McSween and three terms of Republican Clyde Holloway of Forest Hill. The seat was removed after the 1990 census indicated Louisiana no longer had the population to support it. The district was split among the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Congressional districts. Alexandria is now in the Fifth district and was represented from 2003 to 2013 by Rodney Alexander, a Democrat-turned-Republican. From November 2013 to January 2015 the representative is Vance McAllister of Ouachita Parish. Since March 2021, the Fifth has been represented by Julia Letlow of Start in Richland Parish.
Education
Colleges and universities
Situated south of the city, Louisiana State University at Alexandria (or LSUA) is a regional campus of the state's flagship university system, Louisiana State University. From its establishment in 1959, the campus offered only two-year degrees; students seeking baccalaureate degrees had to commute or move to the main campus in Baton Rouge in order to gain a four-year degree. After 1976, students could either commute or telecommute in order to attend upper-level courses, including graduate classes. In 2002, following approval by the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors and the Louisiana Board of Regents the Louisiana Legislature passed legislation allowing LSUA to offer baccalaureate degrees.
A four-year degree is also attainable through Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana Christian University in Pineville, founded in 1906.
Alexandria also has one of the Region 6 Louisiana Technical College campuses.
Primary and secondary schools
Rapides Parish School Board operates public schools.
Alexandria has three public high schools: Bolton High School, Alexandria Senior High School, and Peabody Magnet High School. In addition, there are two private high schools: the Roman Catholic Holy Savior Menard Central High School, and Grace Christian.
Transportation
Roads
Alexandria serves as the crossroads of Louisiana. To reach either Shreveport or Monroe from the southern portion of the state, the easiest method of travel takes the driver through Alexandria. Likewise, if a visitor is to head from the northern portion of the state to the Cajun portions of the state (Lake Charles and Lafayette), or the greater metropolitan areas of either Baton Rouge or New Orleans, the easiest method of travel involves driving down Interstate 49 through Alexandria.
In addition to I-49, travelers can follow Louisiana 1 up to Alexandria from Baton Rouge and points south. Also, Highway 167 could be taken from Opelousas north to Ruston, crossing through Alexandria at one of the few bridges over the Red River in central Louisiana. Highways 165 and 71 also link Alexandria and points south with the northern and southern portions of the state via the Curtis-Coleman bridge.
There are talks about a 50-80 mile, 4 lane beltway to encircle Alexandria and Pineville, and an East-West Interstate (I14) connecting Natchez, MS and Jasper, TX called the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway. As of now, they are in the planning stages of development.
Bridges
Three road bridges cross the Red River in the Alexandria area. They are:
The Purple Heart Memorial Bridge. Part of the Alexandria-Pineville Expressway (also referred to as the Cottingham Expressway), it connects Interstate 49 to Highway 167 by crossing the Red River from downtown Alexandria to Pineville. It replaced the Fulton Street Bridge and has six lanes of traffic. Designed by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD), the bridge cost $15.9 million in federal and state funds. The northbound portion was completed in 1995, the southbound in 1998.
The U.S. 165 Business Bridge (alternatively, the Gillis Long Bridge, the Red River Bridge or the Jackson Street Bridge) connecting downtown Pineville with the business district in Alexandria. It is a two-lane vertical-lift bridge with a sidewalk/bikepath on either side. The bridge is named after U.S. Representative Gillis Long, who represented Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District. It was built in 1985 to replace the Murray Street Bridge.
The Curtis-Coleman (Fort Buhlow) Bridge A new four-lane (two lanes in each direction) bridge was built beside the aging OK Allen Bridge and opened in May, 2016. At that time US 165 will be completely four-laned for most of its traverse of Louisiana. It was demolished on September 26, 2015.
Former bridges include:
The Murray Street Bridge. One of the first bridges in Alexandria. A two-lane steel truss swing bridge, it decayed over time, finally being demolished in 1983. The approach on the Alexandria side was turned into a river overlook as part of the Alexandria Levee Park.
The Fulton Street Bridge. Named after Fulton Street which it connected with Highway 167. Technically part of the Alexandria-Pineville Expressway, it was a four-lane steel vertical-lift bridge. It was demolished in 1994 to make way for the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge.
The Oscar K. Allen Bridge connected Highway 165/71 on both sides of the Red River. It was a two-lane K-truss type bridge, named after Governor Oscar K. Allen. It was built in 1936 to connect Alexandria to the (former) Fort Buhlow. It was replaced by the Curtis-Coleman (Fort Buhlow) Bridge next to it.
There are two railroad bridges over the Red River in Alexandria. One is located near the Buhlow area north of the OK Allen bridge. The other is south of the Purple Heart Memorial Bridge.
Mass transit
Regional mass transit is handled by ATRANS (Alexandria Transportation Authority).
For those leaving or arriving at the city by bus, Greyhound Lines has a terminal downtown.
Airports
Alexandria is served by the Alexandria International Airport and the Esler Regional Airport in Pineville.
Rail
Alexandria does not have Amtrak service, nor a commuter rail system. The Kansas City Southern (Southern Belle) and the Missouri Pacific (since absorbed by Union Pacific) (Louisiana Eagle and Louisiana Daylight) operated train stations in the area in the early part of the 20th century but passenger services ended in the 1960s and the stations have closed.
Surrounding cities and towns
Rapides Parish
Ball
Boyce
Cheneyville
Deville
Forest Hill
Lecompte
Pineville
Tioga
Woodworth
Grant Parish
Colfax
Creola
Dry Prong
Pollock
Prospect
Gallery
References
External links
City of Alexandria : Government and community services.
The Town Talk : Alexandria's Local Daily Newspaper.
Visit Alexandria : Business Directory.
Cities in Louisiana
Cities in Rapides Parish, Louisiana
Parish seats in Louisiana
Populated places established in 1785
Cities in Alexandria metropolitan area, Louisiana
Cities in the Central Louisiana
1785 establishments in New Spain
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is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his best-known work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama is regarded as one of the authors who changed the history of manga, as his works are highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world. Having sold 260 million copies worldwide, it is one of the best-selling manga series of all time and is considered to be one of the main reasons for the period when manga circulation was at its highest in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Balls anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world. In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts.
Early life
Akira Toriyama was born in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. He drew pictures from a young age, mainly of the animals and vehicles that he was also fond of. He related being blown away after seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and said he was drawn deeper into the world of illustration by hoping to draw pictures that good. He was shocked again in elementary school when he saw the manga collection of a classmate's older brother, and again when he saw a television set for the first time at a neighbor's house. He cited Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (1952–1968) as the original source for his interest in manga. Toriyama has recalled that when he was in elementary school all of his classmates drew imitating anime and manga, as a result of not having many forms of entertainment. He believes that he began to advance above everyone else when he started drawing pictures of his friends. Despite being engrossed with manga in elementary school, Toriyama said he took a break from it in middle school, probably because he became more interested in films and TV shows. When asked if he had any formative experiences with tokusatsu entertainment, Toriyama said he enjoyed the Ultraman TV show and Gamera series of kaiju films.
Toriyama said it was a "no-brainer" that he would attend a high school focused on creative design, but admitted he was more interested in having fun with friends. Although he still did not read much manga, he would draw one himself every once in a while. Despite his parents' strong opposition to it, Toriyama was confident about going into the work force upon graduation instead of continuing his education. He worked at an advertising agency in Nagoya designing posters for three years. Although Toriyama said he adapted to the job quickly, he admitted that he was often late because he is not a "morning person" and often got reprimanded for dressing casually, until he got sick of the environment and quit.
Career
Early work and Dr. Slump (1978–1983)
Needing money after quitting his job at the age of 23, Toriyama entered the manga industry by submitting a work to an amateur contest in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which he had randomly picked up in a coffee shop. The timing did not line up for that contest, but another shōnen magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, accepted submissions for their Newcomer Award every month. Kazuhiko Torishima, who would become his editor, read and enjoyed Toriyama's manga, but it was not eligible to compete because it was a parody of Star Wars instead of an original work. Torishima sent the artist a telegram and encouraged him to keep drawing and sending him manga. This resulted in Wonder Island, which became Toriyama's first published work when it was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1978. However, it came in last place in the readers survey. Toriyama later said that he had planned to quit manga after getting paid, but because Wonder Island 2 (1978) was also a "flop," his stubbornness would not let him and he continued to draw failed stories for a year; claiming around 500 pages' worth, including the published Today's Highlight Island (1979). He said he learned a lot during this year and even had some fun. When Torishima told him to draw a female lead character, Toriyama hesitantly created 1979's Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe, which had some success. Feeling encouraged, he decided to draw another female lead and created Dr. Slump.
Dr. Slump, which was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1980 to 1984, was a huge success and made Toriyama a household name. It follows the adventures of a perverted professor and his small but super-strong robot Arale. In 1981, Dr. Slump earned Toriyama the Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen or shōjo manga series of the year. An anime adaptation began airing that same year, during the prime time Wednesday 19:00 slot on Fuji TV. Adaptations of Toriyama's work would occupy this time slot continuously for 18 years—through Dr. Slumps original run, Dragon Ball and its two sequels, and finally a rebooted Dr. Slump concluding in 1999. By 2008, the Dr. Slump manga had sold over 35 million copies in Japan.
Although Dr. Slump was popular, Toriyama wanted to end the series within roughly six months of creating it, but Shueisha would only allow him to do so if he agreed to start another serial for them shortly after. So he worked with Torishima on several one-shots for Weekly Shōnen Jump and the monthly Fresh Jump. In 1981, Toriyama was one of ten artists selected to create a 45-page work for Weekly Shōnen Jumps Reader's Choice contest. His manga Pola & Roid took first place. Toriyama was selected to participate in the contest again in 1982 and submitted Mad Matic. His one-shot Pink was published in the December issue of Fresh Jump. Selected to participate in Weekly Shōnen Jumps Reader's Choice contest for a third time, Toriyama had the bad luck of drawing the first slot and had to work over New Year's on 1983's Chobit. Angry that it was unpopular, he decided to try again and created Chobit 2 (1983).
An official Toriyama fan club, , was established in 1982. Its newsletters were called Bird Land Press and were sent to members until the club closed in 1987. Toriyama founded Bird Studio in the early 1980s, which is a play on his name; meaning "bird". He began employing an assistant, mostly to work on backgrounds.
Dragon Ball and international success (1983–1997)
Torishima suggested that, as Toriyama enjoyed kung fu films, he should create a kung fu shōnen manga. This led to the two-part Dragon Boy, published in the August and October 1983 issues of Fresh Jump. It follows a boy, adept at martial arts, who escorts a princess on a journey back to her home country. Dragon Boy was well-received and evolved to become the serial Dragon Ball in 1984. But before that, The Adventure of Tongpoo was published in Weekly Shōnen Jumps 52nd issue of 1983 and also contained elements that would be included in Dragon Ball.
Serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995 and having sold 159.5million tankōbon copies in Japan alone, Dragon Ball is one of the best-selling manga of all time. It began as an adventure/gag manga but later turned into a martial arts fighting series, considered by many to be the "most influential shōnen manga." Dragon Ball was one of the main reasons for the magazine's circulation hitting a record high of 6.53 million copies (1995). At the series' end, Toriyama said that he asked everyone involved to let him end the manga, so he could "take some new steps in life." During that near-11-year period, he produced 519 chapters that were collected into 42 volumes. Moreover, the success of the manga led to five anime adaptations, several animated films, numerous video games, and mega-merchandise. Aside from its popularity in Japan, Dragon Ball was successful internationally as well, including Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with 300–350million copies of the manga sold worldwide.
While Toriyama was serializing Dragon Ball weekly, he continued to create the occasional one-shot manga. In 1986, Mr. Ho was published in the 49th issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump. The following year saw publication of Young Master Ken'nosuke, which had a Japanese jidaigeki setting. Toriyama published two Weekly Shōnen Jump one-shots in 1988; The Elder and Little Mamejiro. Karamaru and the Perfect Day followed in issue #13 of 1989.
Also during Dragon Balls serialization, Torishima recruited him to work as character designer for the 1986 role-playing video game Dragon Quest. The artist admitted he was pulled into it without even knowing what an RPG was and that it made his already busy schedule even more hectic, but he was happy to have been a part after enjoying the finished game. Toriyama has continued to work on every installment in the Dragon Quest series. He has also served as the character designer for the Super Famicom RPG Chrono Trigger (1995) and for the fighting games Tobal No. 1 (1996) and Tobal 2 (1997) for the PlayStation.
The September 23, 1988 festival film Kosuke & Rikimaru: The Dragon of Konpei Island marks the first time Toriyama made substantial contributions to an animation. He came up with the original story idea, co-wrote the screenplay with its director Toyoo Ashida, and designed the characters.
Short stories and other projects (1996–2011)
A third anime adaptation based on Dragon Ball, entitled Dragon Ball GT, began airing in 1996, though this was not based on Toriyama's manga directly. Toriyama was still however involved in some overarching elements, including the name of the series and designs for the main cast. Toriyama continued drawing manga in this period, predominantly one-shots and short (100–200-page) pieces, including Cowa! (1997–1998), Kajika (1998), and Sand Land (2000). On December 6, 2002, Toriyama made his only promotional appearance in the United States at the launch of Weekly Shōnen Jumps North American counterpart, Shonen Jump, in New York City. Toriyama's Dragon Ball and Sand Land were published in the magazine in the first issue, which also included an in-depth interview with him.
On March 27, 2005, CQ Motors began selling an electric car designed by Toriyama. The one-person QVOLT is part of the company's Choro-Q series of small electric cars, with only 9 being produced. It costed 1,990,000 yen (about $19,000 US), has a top speed of and was available in 5 colors. Toriyama stated that the car took over a year to design, "but due to my genius mini-model construction skills, I finally arrived at the end of what was a very emotional journey."
He worked on a 2006 one-shot called Cross Epoch, in cooperation with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda. The story is a short crossover that presents characters from both Dragon Ball and One Piece. Toriyama was the character designer and artist for the 2006 Mistwalker Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Blue Dragon, working with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, both of whom he had previously worked with on Chrono Trigger. At the time, Toriyama felt the 2007 Blue Dragon anime might potentially be his final work in animation.
In 2008, he collaborated with Masakazu Katsura, his good friend and creator of I"s and Zetman, for the Jump SQ one-shot Sachie-chan Good!!. It was later published in North America in the free SJ Alpha Yearbook 2013, which was mailed out to annual subscribers of the digital manga magazine Shonen Jump Alpha in December 2012. The two worked together again in 2009, for the three-chapter one-shot Jiya in Weekly Young Jump.
Toriyama was engaged by 20th Century Fox as a creative consultant on Dragonball Evolution, an American live-action film adaptation of Dragon Ball. He is also credited as an executive producer on the 2009 film, which failed both critically and financially. Toriyama later stated in 2013 that he had felt the script did not "capture the world or the characteristics" of his series and was "bland" and not interesting, so he cautioned them and gave suggestions for changes. But the Hollywood producers did not heed his advice, "And just as I thought, the result was a movie I cannot call Dragon Ball." Avex Trax commissioned Toriyama to draw a portrait of pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki, and it was printed on the CD of her 2009 single "Rule", which was used as the theme song to the film.
Toriyama drew a 2009 manga titled Delicious Island's Mr. U for Anjō's Rural Society Project, a nonprofit environmental organization that teaches the importance of agriculture and nature to young children. They originally asked him to do the illustrations for a pamphlet, but Toriyama liked the project and decided to expand it into a story. It is included in a booklet about environmental awareness that is distributed by the Anjō city government. As part of Weekly Shōnen Jumps "Top of the Super Legend" project, a series of six one-shots by famed Jump artists, Toriyama created Kintoki for its November 15, 2010 issue. He collaborated with Weekly Shōnen Jump to create a video to raise awareness and support for those affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
Return to Dragon Ball (2012–present)
In 2012, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods was announced to be in development, with Toriyama involved in its creation. The film marked the series' first theatrical film in 17 years, and the first time Toriyama had been involved in one as early as the screenwriting stages. The film opened on March 30, 2013. A special "dual ticket" that could be used to see both Battle of Gods and One Piece Film: Z was created with new art by both Toriyama and Eiichiro Oda.
On March 27, the "Akira Toriyama: The World of Dragon Ball" exhibit opened at the Takashimaya department store in Nihonbashi, garnering 72,000 visitors in its first nineteen days. The exhibit was separated into seven areas. The first provided a look at the series' history, the second showed the 400-plus characters from the series, the third displayed Toriyama's manga manuscripts from memorable scenes, the fourth showed special color illustrations, the fifth displayed rare Dragon Ball-related materials, the sixth included design sketches and animation cels from the anime, and the seventh screened Dragon Ball-related videos. It was there until April 15, when it moved to Osaka from April 17 to 23, and ended in Toriyama's native Nagoya from July 27 to September 1.
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Jump, Toriyama launched a new manga series in its July 13, 2013 issue titled Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. Viz Media began serializing it in English in their digital Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, beginning just two days later. The final chapter reveals that the story is set before the events of Dragon Ball and features some of its characters.
The follow-up film to Battle of Gods, Resurrection 'F', released on April 18, 2015, features even more contributions from Toriyama, who personally wrote its original script. Toriyama provides the basic story outline and some character designs for Dragon Ball Super, which began serialization in V Jump in June 2015 with an anime counterpart following in July. Although the anime ended in 2018, he continues to provide story ideas for the manga while Toyotarou illustrates it. Dragon Ball Super: Broly, released in theaters on December 14, 2018, and Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, released on June 11, 2022, continued Toriyama's deep involvement with the films.
Personal life
Toriyama married on May 2, 1982. She is a former manga artist from Nagoya under the pen name , and occasionally helped Toriyama and his assistant on Dr. Slump when they were short on time. They have two children: a son named born on March 23, 1987, and a daughter born in October 1990. Toriyama lives in his home studio in Kiyosu. He is a well-known recluse, who avoids appearing in public or media.
Toriyama has a love of cars and motorcycles, something he inherited from his father who used to race motorbikes and operated an auto repair business for a brief time, although he does not understand the mechanics himself. The author is an animal lover, having kept many different species of birds, dogs, cats, fish, lizards, and bugs as pets since childhood. Some were used as models for characters he created such as Karin and Beerus. Toriyama has had a lifelong passion for plastic models, and has designed several for the Fine Molds brand. He also collected autographs of famous manga artists, having over 30 including Yudetamago and Hisashi Eguchi, a hobby he gave to the character Peasuke Soramame.
Style
Toriyama admires Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy and was impressed by Walt Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which he remembers for its high-quality animation. He was a fan of Hong Kong martial arts films, especially Bruce Lee films such as Enter the Dragon (1973) and Jackie Chan films such as Drunken Master (1978), which went on to have a large influence on his later work. The artist has also cited the science fiction films Alien (1979) and Galaxy Quest (1999) as influences. Toriyama stated he was influenced by animator Toyoo Ashida and the anime television series adaptation of his own Dragon Ball; from which he learned that separating colors instead of blending them makes the art cleaner and coloring illustrations easier.
It was Toriyama's sound effects in Mysterious Rain Jack that caught the eye of Kazuhiko Torishima, who explained that usually they are written in katakana, but Toriyama used the Roman alphabet which he found refreshing. Torishima has stated that Toriyama aimed to be a gag manga artist because the competitions that he submitted to early on required entries in the gag category to only be 15 pages long, compared to story manga entries which had to be 31. In his opinion, Torishima stated that Toriyama excels in black and white, utilizing black areas, as a result of not having had the money to buy screentone when he started drawing manga. He also described Toriyama as a master of convenience and "sloppy, but in a good way." For instance, in Dragon Ball, destroying scenery in the environment and giving Super Saiyans blond hair were done in order to have less work in drawing and inking. Torishima claimed that Toriyama draws what he finds interesting and is not mindful of what his readers think. Torishima stated that Toriyama does not get much inspiration from other comics as Toriyama chooses not to re-read previous works nor read works done by other manga artists; Torishima supports that practice.
Dr. Slump is mainly a comedy series, filled with puns, toilet humor, and sexual innuendos. But it also contained many science fiction elements: aliens, anthropomorphic characters, time travel, and parodies of works such as Godzilla, Star Wars, and Star Trek. Toriyama also included many real-life people in the series, such as his assistants, wife, and colleagues (such as Masakazu Katsura), but most notably his editor Kazuhiko Torishima as the series' main antagonist, Dr. Mashirito. A running gag in Dr. Slump that utilizes feces has been reported as an inspiration for the Pile of Poo emoji.
When Dragon Ball began, it was loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, with Goku being Sun Wukong and Bulma as Tang Sanzang. It was also inspired by Hong Kong martial arts films, particularly those of Jackie Chan, and was set in a fictional world based on Asia, taking inspiration from several Asian cultures including Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Central Asian, Arabic, and Indonesian cultures. Toriyama continued to use his characteristic comedic style in the beginning, but over the course of serialization this slowly changed, with him turning the series into a "nearly-pure fighting manga" later on. He did not plan out in advance what would happen in the series, instead choosing to draw as he went. This, coupled with him simply forgetting things he had already drawn, caused him to find himself in situations that he had to write himself out of.
Toriyama was commissioned to illustrate the characters and monsters for the first Dragon Quest video game (1986) in order to separate it from other role-playing games of the time. He has since worked on every installment in the series. For each game Yuji Horii first sends rough sketches of the characters with their background information to Toriyama, who then re-draws them. Lastly, Horii approves the finished work. Toriyama explained in 1995 that for video games, because the sprites are so small, as long as they have a distinguishing feature so people can tell which character it is, he can make complex designs without concern of having to reproduce it like he usually would in manga. Besides the character and monster designs, Toriyama also does the games' packaging art and, for Dragon Quest VIII, the boats and ships. In 2016, Toriyama revealed that because of the series' established time period and setting, his artistic options are limited, which makes every iteration harder to design for than the last. The series' Slime character, which has become a mascot for the franchise, is considered to be one of the most recognizable figures in gaming.
Manga critic Jason Thompson declared Toriyama's art influential, saying that his "extremely personal and recognizable style" was a reason for Dragon Ball'''s popularity. He points out that the popular shōnen manga of the late 1980s and early 1990s had "manly" heroes, such as City Hunter and Fist of the North Star, whereas Dragon Ball starred the cartoonish and small Goku, thus starting a trend that Thompson says continues to this day. Toriyama himself said he went against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, designing many of the series' most powerful characters with small statures. Thompson concluded his analysis by saying that only Akira Toriyama drew like this at the time and that Dragon Ball is "an action manga drawn by a gag manga artist." However, James S. Yadao, author of The Rough Guide to Manga, points out that an art shift does occur in the series, as the characters gradually "lose the rounded, innocent look that [Toriyama] established in Dr. Slump and gain sharper angles that leap off the page with their energy and intensity."
Legacy and accolades
Thompson stated in 2011 that "Dragon Ball is by far the most influential shonen manga of the last 30 years, and today, almost every Shōnen Jump artist lists it as one of their favorites and lifts from it in various ways." David Brothers of ComicsAlliance wrote that: "Like Osamu Tezuka and Jack Kirby before him, Toriyama created a story with his own two hands that seeped deep into the hearts of his readers, creating a love for both the cast and the medium at the same time." In a rare 2013 interview, commenting on Dragon Balls global success, Toriyama admitted, "Frankly, I don't quite understand why it happened. While the manga was being serialized, the only thing I wanted as I kept drawing was to make Japanese boys happy." He had previously stated in 2010, "The truth is, I didn't like being a manga artist very much. It wasn't until relatively recently that I realized it's a wonderful job." Many artists have named Toriyama and Dragon Ball as influences, including One Piece author Eiichiro Oda, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto, Fairy Tail and Rave author Hiro Mashima, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations illustrator Mikio Ikemoto, Venus Versus Virus author Atsushi Suzumi, Bleach creator Tite Kubo, Black Cat author Kentaro Yabuki, and Mr. Fullswing author Shinya Suzuki. German comic book artist Hans Steinbach was strongly influenced by Toriyama, and Thai cartoonist Wisut Ponnimit cited Toriyama as one of his favorite cartoonists. Ian Jones-Quartey, a producer of the American animated series Steven Universe, is a fan of both Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and uses Toriyama's vehicle designs as reference for his own. He also stated that "We're all big Toriyama fans on [Steven Universe], which kind of shows a bit." French director Pierre Perifel cited Toriyama and Dragon Ball as influences on his DreamWorks Animation film The Bad Guys.
In 2008, Oricon conducted a poll of people's favorite manga artists, with Toriyama coming in second, behind only Nana author Ai Yazawa. However, he was number one among male respondents and among those over 30 years of age. They held a poll on the Mangaka that Changed the History of Manga in 2010, mangaka being the Japanese word for a manga artist. Toriyama came in second, after only Osamu Tezuka, due to his works being highly influential and popular worldwide. Toriyama won the Special 40th Anniversary Festival Award at the 2013 Angoulême International Comics Festival, honoring his years in cartooning. He actually received the most votes for the festival's Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême award that year; however, the selection committee chose Willem as the recipient. In a 2014 NTT Docomo poll for the manga artist that best represents Japan, Toriyama came in third place. That same year, entomologist Enio B. Cano named a new species of beetle Ogyges toriyamai after Toriyama, and another Ogyges mutenroshii, after the Dragon Ball character Muten Roshi. Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier or "Knight" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government on May 30, 2019 for his contributions to the arts. He was also a 2019 nominee for entry into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. Due to his video game design work, IGN named Toriyama number 74 on their list of the Top 100 Game Creators of All Time.
Works
Manga
Art books
Anime
Dr. Slump – Arale-chan (1981–1986, television series) – original concept, based on his manga Dr. Slump Crusher Joe (1983, film) – designed the MAX 310 space station
Dragon Ball (1986–1989, television series) – original concept, based on the first half of his manga Dragon Ball – original concept, script, and character designs
Dragon Quest (1989–1991, television series) – original character designs
Dragon Ball Z (1989–1996, television series) – original concept, based on the second half of Dragon Ball, and title
Pink: Water Bandit, Rain Bandit (1990, film) – original concept, based on his manga Pink – original concept, based on his manga of the same name
Go! Go! Ackman (1994, film) – original concept, based on his manga of the same name
Imagination Science World Gulliver Boy (1995, television series) – mechanical designs
Dragon Ball GT (1996–1997, television series) – character designs, title, and logo
Doctor Slump (1997–1999, television series) – original concept, based on Dr. Slump – based on his manga of the same name
Blue Dragon (2007–2008, television series) – original character designs
Dragon Ball: Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!! (2008, short film) – original concept and story concept
Dragon Ball Kai (2009–2011, 2014–2015, television series) – original concept, based on the second half of Dragon Ball.
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013, film) - original concept, story concept, and character designs
Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' (2015, film) - original concept, screenplay, character designs, and title
Dragon Ball Super (2015–2018, television series) – original concept, story concepts, character designs, and title
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018, film) - original concept, screenplay, and character designs
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero (2022, film) - original concept, screenplay, and character designs
Dragon Ball Daima (2024–, television series) - original concept, story, and character designs
Video games
Dragon Quest series (1986–present) – character designs
Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo (1986) – designed several characters including
Famicom Jump II: Saikyō no Shichinin (1991) – designed the character
Chrono Trigger (1995) – character and setting designs. Alongside Toei Animation, he and his studio also created the animated cutscenes for the 1999 PlayStation port.
Tobal No. 1 (1996) – character designs
Tobal 2 (1997) – character designs
Blue Dragon (2006) – character designs
Blue Dragon Plus (2008) – character designs
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow (2009) – character designs and voices the character Toripo, which is modeled after his "Toribot" self-insert
Chōsoku Henkei Gyrozetter (2012) – designed the Beeman 500SS character
Dragon Ball FighterZ (2018) – designed the character Android 21
Dragon Ball Legends (2018) – designed the characters and
Jump Force (2019) – designed several original characters
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (2020) – designed the character Bonyū
Fantasian (2021) – designed a diorama used to create a level
Shueisha
Weekly Shōnen Jump (1988) – designed the magazine's 20th anniversary character , who later appeared in the video game Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden V Jump (1990) – designed the magazine's character, who later appeared in the video games Dragon Quest X (2012), Gaist Crusher (2013), and Monster Strike (2014).
Weekly Jump F-1 Club (1990) – designed the Weekly Shōnen Jump column's mascot character
V-Net (1994) – designed the Weekly Shōnen Jump column's mascot characters and
Souvenirs entomologiques (Jean-Henri Fabre book, 1996) – cover illustrations for the Shueisha Bunko edition of the Japanese translation
Shueisha (2002) – designed the character for the 25th anniversary of Shueisha Bunko
– designed the V Jump column's logo
Jump Shop (2005) – designed the Weekly Shōnen Jump online shop's character
Weekly Shōnen Jump (2009) – designed the magazine's website's character
My Jump (2016) – designed the mobile app's and characters
Other work
Fuel Album (George Tokoro album, 1981) – insert illustration
– album cover
Polkadot Magic (Mami Koyama album, 1984) – album cover and lyrics to "Crilla" and "Helicopter"
Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens (1984) – designed the logo for the zoo's koala exhibit
Fine Molds (1985) – illustrated the package and instructions for the Lisa model
– cover illustration
– character designs
Fine Molds (1991) – designed the model maker's mascot
Super Sense Story (Honda road safety brochure, 1991) – character designs
Fine Molds (1994) – designed seven of their World Fighter Collection line of models, their packaging and instructions
Bitch's Life Illustration File (art book, 2001) – illustration
– wrote and illustrated the book
QVOLT (electric car, 2005) – designed the automobile
"Rule/Sparkle" (Ayumi Hamasaki single, 2006) – an illustration of Ayumi Hamasaki as Son Goku printed on the single's CD and DVD
– an illustration of Chiaki for the cover
Invade (Jealkb album, 2011) – album cover
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons'' (2014) – an illustration of Sun Wukong for a poster for the film's Japanese release
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
1955 births
Anime character designers
Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême winners
Japanese cartoonists
Living people
Manga artists from Aichi Prefecture
Mechanical designers (mecha)
Mythopoeic writers
People from Nagoya
People named in the Paradise Papers
Video game artists
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The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer, "redefining the home computer market and making so-called luxury features such as multitasking and colour a standard long before Microsoft or Apple sold these to the masses". It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that of the Commodore 128.
Commodore announced the Amiga 500 at the January 1987 winter Consumer Electronics Showat the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000. It was initially available in the Netherlands in April 1987, then the rest of Europe in May. In North America and the UK it was released in October 1987 with a list price. It competed directly against models in the Atari ST line.
The Amiga 500 was sold in the same retail outlets as the Commodore 64, as opposed to the computer store-only Amiga 1000. It proved to be Commodore's best-selling model, particularly in Europe. Although popular with hobbyists, arguably its most widespread use was as a gaming machine, where its graphics and sound were of significant benefit. It was followed by a revised version of the computer, the Amiga 500 Plus, and the 500 series was discontinued in 1992.
Releases
In mid-1988, the Amiga 500 dropped its price from £499 to £399 (https://amr.abime.net/issue_535_pages page 7), and it was later bundled with the Batman Pack in the United Kingdom (from October 1989 to September 1990) which included the games Batman, F/A-18 Interceptor, The New Zealand Story and the bitmap graphics editor Deluxe Paint 2. Also included was the Amiga video connector which allows the A500 to be used with a conventional CRT television.
In November 1991, the enhanced Amiga 500 Plus replaced the 500 in some markets. It was bundled with the Cartoon Classics pack in the United Kingdom at £399, although many stores still advertised it as an 'A500'. The Amiga 500 Plus was virtually identical except for its new operating system, different 'trap-door' expansion slot and slightly different keyboard, and in mid-1992, the two were discontinued and effectively replaced by the Amiga 600. In late 1992, Commodore released the Amiga 1200, a machine closer in concept to the original Amiga 500, but with significant technical improvements. Despite this, neither the A1200 nor the A600 replicated the commercial success of its predecessor. By this time, the home market was strongly shifting to IBM PC compatibles with VGA graphics and the "low-cost" Macintosh Classic, LC, and IIsi models.
Description
Outwardly resembling the Commodore 128 and codenamed "Rock Lobster" during development, the Amiga 500's base houses a keyboard and a CPU in one shell, unlike the Amiga 1000. The keyboard for Amiga 500s sold in the United States contains 94 keys, including ten function keys, four cursor keys, and a number pad. All European versions the keyboard have an additional two keys, except for the British variety, which still uses 94 keys. It uses a Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at in NTSC regions and in PAL regions. The CPU implements a 32-bit model and has 32-bit registers, but it has a 16-bit main ALU and uses a 16-bit external data bus and a 23-bit address bus, providing a maximum of 16 MB of address space. Also built in to the base of the computer is a -inch floppy disk drive. The user can also install up to three external floppy drives, either - or -inch, via the disk drive port. The second and third additional drives are installed by daisy-chaining them. Supported by these drives are double-sided disks with a capacity of 901,120 bytes, as well as 360- and 720-KB disks formatted for IBM PC compatibles.
The earliest Amiga 500 models use nearly the same Original Amiga chipset as the Amiga 1000. So graphics can be displayed in multiple resolutions and color depths, even on the same screen. Resolutions vary from 320×200 (up to 32 colors) to 640×400 (up to 16 colors) for NTSC (704×484 overscan) and 320×256 to 640×512 for PAL (704×576 overscan.) The system uses planar graphics, with up to five bitplanes (four in high resolution) allowing 2-, 4-, 8-, 16-, and 32-color screens, from a palette of 4096 colors. Two special graphics modes are also available: Extra HalfBrite, which uses a 6th bitplane as a mask to cut the brightness of any pixel in half (resulting in 32 arbitrary colors plus 32 more colors set at half the value of the first 32), and Hold-And-Modify (HAM) which allows all 4096 colors to be used on screen simultaneously. Later revisions of the chipset are PAL/NTSC switchable in software.
The sound chip produces four hardware-mixed channels, two to the left and two to the right, of 8-bit PCM at a sampling frequency up to . Each hardware channel has its own independent volume level and sampling rate, and can be designated to another channel where it can modulate both volume and frequency using its own output. With DMA disabled it's possible to output with a sampling frequency up to . There is a common trick to output sound with 14-bit precision that can be combined to output 14-bit sound.
The stock system comes with AmigaOS version 1.2 or 1.3 and of chip RAM (150 ns access time), one built-in double-density standard floppy disk drive that is completely programmable and can read IBM PC disks, standard Amiga disks, and up to using custom-formatting drivers.
Despite the lack of Amiga 2000-compatible internal expansion slots, there are many ports and expansion options. There are two DE9M Atari joystick ports for joysticks or mice, and stereo audio RCA connectors (1 V p-p). There is a floppy drive port for daisy-chaining up to three extra floppy disk drives via a DB23F connector. The then-standard RS-232 serial port (DB25M) and Centronics parallel port (DB25F) are also included. The power supply is (, ).
The system displays video in analog RGB PAL or NTSC through a proprietary DB23M connector and in NTSC mode the line frequency is HSync for standard video modes, which is compatible with NTSC television and CVBS/RGB video, but out of range for most VGA-compatible monitors, while a multisync monitor is required for some of the higher resolutions. This connection can also be genlocked to an external video signal. The system was bundled with an RF adapter to provide output on televisions with a coaxial RF input, while monochrome video is available via an RCA connector (also coaxial). On the left side, behind a plastic cover, there is a Zorro (Zorro I) bus expansion external edge connector with 86 pins. Peripherals such as a hard disk drive can be added via the expansion slot and are configured automatically by the Amiga's AutoConfig standard, so that multiple devices do not conflict with each other. Up to of so-called "fast RAM" (memory that can be accessed by the CPU only) can be added using the side expansion slot. This connector is electronically identical with the Amiga 1000's, but swapped on the other side.
The Amiga 500 has a "trap-door" slot on the underside for a RAM upgrade (typically ). This extra RAM is classified as "fast" RAM, but is sometimes referred to as "slow" RAM: due to the design of the expansion bus, it is actually on the chipset bus. Such upgrades usually include a battery-backed real-time clock. All versions of the A500 can have the additional RAM configured as chip RAM by a simple hardware modification, which involves fitting a later model (8372A) Agnus chip. Likewise, all versions of the A500 can be upgraded to chip RAM by fitting the chip and adding additional memory.
The Amiga 500 also sports an unusual feature for a budget machine, socketed chips, which allow easy replacement of defective chips. The CPU can be directly upgraded on the motherboard to a 68010; or to a 68020, 68030, or 68040 via the side expansion slot; or by removing the CPU and plugging a CPU expansion card into the CPU socket (this requires opening the computer and thus voided any remaining warranty). In fact, all the custom chips can be upgraded to the Amiga Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) versions.
The plastic case is made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS. ABS degrades with time due to exposure to oxygen, causing a yellowing of the case. Other factors contributing to the degradation and yellowing include heat, shear, and ultraviolet light. The yellowing can be reversed by using an optical brightener, though without stabilizing agents or antioxidants to block oxygen, the yellowing will return.
Technical specifications
OCS (1.2 & 1.3 models) or ECS (1.3 and 500+ 2.04 models) chipset. ECS revisions of the chipset made PAL/NTSC mode switchable in software.
Sound: 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to . The hardware channels have independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and are mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs. A software controllable low-pass audio filter is also included.
512 KB of chip RAM (150 ns access time)
AmigaOS 1.2 or 1.3 (upgradeable up to 3.1.4 if 2 MB of RAM are installed)
One 3.5" double-density floppy disk drive is built in, which is completely programmable and thus can read IBM PC disks, standard Amiga disks, and up to with custom formatting (such as Klaus Deppich's diskspare.device). Uses (5 rotations/second) and .
Built-in keyboard
A two-button mouse is included.
Graphics
PAL mode: 768×580 maximum (overscan interlaced if viewed on composite monitor/TV). Typical resolutions: 320×256, 640×256 or 640×512 (all displayed with borders).
NTSC mode: 768×484 maximum (overscan interlaced if viewed on composite monitor/TV). Typical resolutions: 320×200, 640×200 or 640×400 (all displayed with borders).
Graphics can be of arbitrary dimensions, resolution and colour depth, even on the same screen. The Amiga can show multiple resolution modes at the same time, splitting the screen vertically.
Planar graphics are used, with up to 5 bitplanes (4 in hires); this allowed 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 colour screens, from a palette of 4096 colours.
Two special graphics modes are also included:
Extra Half Brite (EHB), which uses a 6th bitplane as a mask that halved the brightness of any colour seen
Hold-And-Modify (HAM), which allows all 4096 colours on screen at once. HAM makes it possible to use over a wide span. This works by letting each pixel position use the previous RGB value and modify one of the red, green or blue values to a new 4-bit value. This will cause some negligible colour artifacts however.
Memory
Using various expansion techniques, the A500's total RAM can reach up to 138 MB – 2 MB Chip RAM, 8 MB 16-bit Fast RAM, and 128 MB 32-bit Fast RAM.
Chip RAM
The stock 512 KB Chip RAM can be complemented by 512 KB using a "trapdoor" expansion (Commodore A501 or compatible). While that expansion memory is connected to the chip bus, hardware limitations of early stock Agnus chip revisions prevent its use as Chip RAM, only the CPU can access it. Suffering from the same contention limitations as Chip RAM, that memory is known as "Slow RAM" or "Pseudo-fast RAM". Agnus revisions shipped with late A500 are ECS and allow use of trapdoor RAM as real Chip RAM for a total 1 MB.
Additionally, several third-party expansions exist with up to 2 MB on the trapdoor board. Using a Gary adapter, that memory will be mapped as either split on Chip RAM and Slow RAM or fully as Slow RAM, depending on configuration.
Furthermore, using an A3000 Agnus on an adapter board, it is possible to expand the Chip RAM to 2 MB, matching the A500+.
Fast RAM
"Fast" RAM is located on the CPU-side bus. Its access is exclusive to the CPU and not slowed by any chipset access. The side expansion port allows for up to 8 MB of Zorro-style expansion RAM. Alternatively, a CPU adapter allows for internal expansion.
Accelerator RAM
Internal or external CPU accelerators often include their own expansion memory. 16-bit CPUs are limited by the 24-bit address space but they can repurpose otherwise unused memory space for their included RAM. 32-bit CPU accelerators aren't limited by 24-bit addressing and can include up to 128 MB of Fast RAM (and potentially more).
Memory map
Connectors
Two Atari joystick ports for joysticks or mice
Stereo audio RCA connectors ( p-p)
A floppy drive port (DB23F), for daisy-chaining up to 3 extra floppy disk drives via a DB23F connector
A standard RS-232 serial port (DB25M)
A parallel port (DB25F)
Power inlet (, )
Analogue RGB PAL and NTSC video output, provided on an Amiga-specific DB23M video connector. Can drive video with HSync for standard Amiga video modes. This is not compatible with most VGA monitors. A Multisync monitor is required for some higher resolutions. This connection can also be genlocked to an external video signal. An RF adapter (A520) was frequently bundled with the machine to provide output on regular televisions or on composite monitors. A digital 16 colour Red-Green-Blue-Intensity signal is available too on the same connector.
Monochrome video via an RCA connector
Zorro II bus expansion on the left side behind a plastic cover
Trapdoor slot under the machine, for RAM expansion and real-time clock
Expansions
Expansion ports are limited to a side expansion port and a trapdoor expansion on the underside of the machine. The casing can also be opened up (voiding the warranty), all larger chips are socketed rather than being TH/SMD soldered directly to the motherboard, so they can be replaced by hand.
The CPU can be upgraded to a Motorola 68010 directly or to a 68020, 68030 or 68040 via the side expansion slot or a CPU socket adapter board.
The chip RAM can be upgraded to directly on the motherboard, provided a Fat Agnus chip is also installed to support it.
Likewise, all the custom chips can be upgraded to the ECS chipset.
The A500+ model instead allowed upgrading by trapdoor chip RAM without clock, but there was no visible means on board to map any of this as FAST, causing incompatibility with some stubbornly coded programs.
There were modification instructions available for the A500 to solder or socket another RAM on the board, then run extra address lines to the trapdoor slot to accommodate an additional of fast or chip RAM depending on the installed chipset.
Up to of "fast RAM" can be added via the side expansion slot, even more if an accelerator with a non-EC (without reduced data/address bus) processor and 32-bit RAM is used.
Hard drive and other peripherals can be added via the side expansion slot.
Several companies provided combined CPU, memory and hard drive upgradesor provided chainable expansions that extended the bus as they were addedas there is only one side expansion slot.
Expansions are configured automatically by AutoConfig software, so multiple pieces of hardware did not conflict with each other.
Diagnostics
When the computer is powered on a self-diagnostic test is run that will indicates failure with a specific colour:
Medium green means no chip RAM found or is damaged.
Red means bad kickstart-ROM.
Yellow means the CPU has crashed (no trap routine or trying to run bad code) or a bad Zorro expansion card.
Blue means a custom chip problem (Denise, Paula, or Agnus).
Light green means CIA problem.
Light gray means that the CIA might be defective.
mean there is a ROM or CIA problem.
Black-only (no video) means there is no video output.
The keyboard LED uses blink codes:
One blink means the keyboard ROM has a checksum error.
Two blinks means RAM failure.
Three blinks means watchdog timer failure.
Measurements
Overall (base): 6.2 cm x 47.4 cm x 33 cm; 2 7/16 in x 18 11/16 in x 13 in.
Trap-door expansion 501
A popular expansion for the Amiga 500 was the Amiga 501 circuit board that can be installed underneath the computer behind a plastic cover. The expansion contains RAM configured by default as "Slow RAM" or "trap-door RAM" and a battery-backed real-time clock (RTC).
The 512 KB trap-door RAM and 512 KB of original chip RAM will result in 1 MB of total memory. The added memory is known as "Slow RAM", as its access is impacted by chip-bus bandwidth contention, while the chipset is not actually able to address it.
Later revisions of the motherboard provide solder-jumpers to relocate the trap-door RAM to the chip memory pool, given the Agnus chip is the newer ECS version, shipped in later A500 motherboards. Newest (rev 8) A500s would share motherboard with A500+, and configure the expansion memory as CHIP by default.
Software
Each time the Amiga 500 is booted, it executes code from the Kickstart ROM. The Amiga 500 initially came shipped with AmigaOS 1.2, but units since October 1988 had version 1.3 installed.
Reception and sales
The Amiga 500 was the best-selling model in the Amiga family of computers. The German computer magazine Chip awarded the model the annual "Home Computer of the Year" title three consecutive times. At the European Computer Trade Show 1991, it also won the Leisure Award for the similar "Home Computer of the Year" title.
Owing to the inexpensive cost of the Amiga 500 in then price-sensitive Europe, sales of the Amiga family of computers were strongest there, constituting 85 percent of Commodore's total sales in the fourth quarter of 1990. The Amiga 500 was widely perceived as a gaming machine and the Amiga 2000 a computer for artists and hobbyists.
It has been claimed that Commodore sold as many as six million units worldwide. However, Commodore UK refuted that figure and said that the entire Amiga line sold between four and five million computers. Indeed, Ars Technica provides a year-by-year graph of the sales of all Amiga computers.
The machine is reported to have sold 1,160,500 units in Germany (including Amiga 500 Plus sales).
Amiga 500 Plus
The Amiga 500 Plus (often A500 Plus or simply A500+) is a revised version of the original Amiga 500 computer. The A500+ featured minor changes to the motherboard to make it cheaper to produce than the original A500. It was notable for introducing new versions of Kickstart and Workbench, and for some minor improvements in the custom chips, known as the Enhanced Chip Set (or ECS).
Although officially introduced in 1992, some Amiga 500 units sold in late 1991 actually featured the revised motherboard used in the A500+. Although the Amiga 500+ was an improvement to the Amiga 500, it was minor. It was discontinued and replaced by the Amiga 600 in summer 1992, making it the shortest-lived Amiga model.
Compatibility problems
Due to the new Kickstart v2.04, quite a few popular games (such as Treasure Island Dizzy, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, and SWIV) failed to work on the Amiga 500+, and some people took them back to dealers demanding an original Kickstart 1.3 Amiga 500. This problem was largely solved by third parties who produced Kickstart ROM switching boards, that could allow the Amiga 500+ to be downgraded to Kickstart 1.2 or 1.3. It also encouraged game developers to use better programming habits, which was important since Commodore already had plans for the introduction of the next-generation Amiga 1200 computer. A program, Relokick, was also released (and included with an issue of CU Amiga) which loaded a Kickstart 1.3 ROM image into memory and booted the machine into Kickstart 1.3, allowing most incompatible software to run (the software did take up 512 KB of system memory, meaning that some 1 MB only games would now fail for lack of available memory). In some cases, updated compatible versions of games were later released, such as budget versions of Lotus 1 and SWIV, and an update to Bubble Bobble. Double Dragon 2 by Binary Design received an update for ECS machines with the "Amiga phase-alternated linescan version 4.01/ECS". This solved compatibility issues with the graphics which appeared garbled on ECS machines, and it also slashed the in-game loading times from around 20 seconds to just over 6.
Technical specifications
Motorola 68000 CPU running at (PAL) / (NTSC), like its predecessor
1 MB of Chip RAM (very early versions came with 512 KB)
Kickstart 2.04 (v37.175)
Workbench 37.67 (release 2.04)
Built-in battery backed RTC (Real Time Clock)
Full ECS chipset including new version of the Agnus chip and Denise chip
See also
Amiga models and variants
Minimigan open-source hardware FPGA implementation
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Amiga 500 Buyers guide
Amiga
Products introduced in 1987
68000-based home computers
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The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced graphics and sound systems in its class. It runs a preemptive multitasking operating system that fits into of read-only memory and was shipped with 256 KB of RAM. The primary memory can be expanded internally with a manufacturer-supplied 256 KB module for a total of 512 KB of RAM. Using the external slot the primary memory can be expanded up to
Design
The A1000 has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from later Amiga models: It is the only model to feature the short-lived Amiga check-mark logo on its case, the majority of the case is elevated slightly to give a storage area for the keyboard when not in use (a "keyboard garage"), and the inside of the case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers (similar to the Macintosh); including Jay Miner and the paw print of his dog Mitchy. The A1000's case was designed by Howard Stolz. As Senior Industrial Designer at Commodore, Stolz was the mechanical lead and primary interface with Sanyo in Japan, the contract manufacturer for the A1000 casing.
The Amiga 1000 was manufactured in two variations: One uses the NTSC television standard and the other uses the PAL television standard. The NTSC variant was the initial model manufactured and sold in North America. The later PAL model was manufactured in Germany and sold in countries using the PAL television standard. The first NTSC systems lack the EHB video mode which is present in all later Amiga models.
Because AmigaOS was rather buggy at the time of the A1000's release, the OS was not placed in ROM then. Instead, the A1000 includes a daughterboard with 256 KB of RAM, dubbed the "writable control store" (WCS), into which the core of the operating system is loaded from floppy disk (this portion of the operating system is known as the "Kickstart"). The WCS is write-protected after loading, and system resets do not require a reload of the WCS. In Europe, the WCS was often referred to as WOM (Write Once Memory), a play on the more conventional term "ROM" (read-only memory).
Technical information
The preproduction Amiga (which was codenamed "Velvet") released to developers in early 1985 contained of RAM with an option to expand it to Commodore later increased the system memory to due to objections by the Amiga development team. The names of the custom chips were different; Denise and Paula were called Daphne and Portia respectively. The casing of the preproduction Amiga was almost identical to the production version: the main difference being an embossed Commodore logo in the top left corner. It did not have the developer signatures.
The Amiga 1000 has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 7.15909 MHz on NTSC systems or 7.09379 MHz on PAL systems, precisely double the video color carrier frequency for NTSC or 1.6 times the color carrier frequency for PAL. The system clock timings are derived from the video frequency, which simplifies glue logic and allows the Amiga 1000 to make do with a single crystal. In keeping with its video game heritage, the chipset was designed to synchronize CPU memory access and chipset DMA so the hardware runs in real time without wait-state delays.
Though most units were sold with an analog RGB monitor, the A1000 also has a built-in composite video output which allows the computer to be connected directly to some monitors other than their standard RGB monitor. The A1000 also has a "TV MOD" output, into which an RF Modulator can be plugged, allowing connection to older televisions that did not have a composite video input.
The original 68000 CPU can be directly replaced with a Motorola 68010, which can execute instructions slightly faster than the 68000 but also introduces a small degree of software incompatibility. Third-party CPU upgrades, which mostly fit in the CPU socket, use faster 68020 or 68030 microprocessors and integrated memory, as well as provide support for a 68881 or 68882 FPU. Such upgrades often have the option to revert to 68000 mode for full compatibility. Some boards have a socket to seat the original 68000, whereas the 68030 cards typically come with an on-board 68000.
The original Amiga 1000 is the only model to have 256 KB of Amiga Chip RAM, which can be expanded to 512 KB with the addition of a daughterboard under a cover in the center front of the machine. RAM may also be upgraded via official and third-party upgrades, with a practical upper limit of about 9 MB of "fast RAM" due to the 68000's 24-bit address bus. This memory is accessible only by the CPU permitting faster code execution as DMA cycles are not shared with the chipset.
The Amiga 1000 features an 86-pin expansion port (electrically identical to the later Amiga 500 expansion port, though the A500's connector is inverted). This port is used by third-party expansions such as memory upgrades and SCSI adapters. These resources are handled by the Amiga Autoconfig standard. Other expansion options are available including a bus expander which provides two Zorro-II slots.
Specifications
Retail
Introduced on July 23, 1985, during a star-studded gala featuring Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry held at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City, machines began shipping in September with a base configuration of 256 KB of RAM at the retail price of . A analog RGB monitor was available for around , bringing the price of a complete Amiga system to US$1,595 (). Before the release of the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 models in 1987, the A1000 was marketed as simply the Amiga, although the model number was there from the beginning, as the original box indicates.
In the US, the A1000 was marketed as The Amiga from Commodore, with the Commodore logo omitted from the case. The Commodore branding was retained for the international versions.
Additionally, the Amiga 1000 was sold exclusively in computer stores in the US rather than the various non computer-dedicated department and toy stores through which the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 were retailed. These measures were an effort to avoid Commodore's "toy-store" computer image created during the Tramiel era.
Along with the operating system, the machine came bundled with a version of AmigaBASIC developed by Microsoft and a speech synthesis library developed by Softvoice, Inc.
Aftermarket upgrades
Many A1000 owners remained attached to their machines long after newer models rendered the units technically obsolete, and it attracted numerous aftermarket upgrades. Many CPU upgrades that plugged into the Motorola 68000 socket functioned in the A1000. Additionally, a line of products called the Rejuvenator series allowed the use of newer chipsets in the A1000, and an Australian-designed replacement A1000 motherboard called The Phoenix utilized the same chipset as the A3000 and added an A2000-compatible video slot and on-board SCSI controller.
Reception and impact
In its product preview, Byte magazine was impressed by the computer's multitasking capabilities and the quality of its graphics and sound systems. It also praised its text-to-speech library for voice output, and predicted that the Amiga would be successful enough to influence the personal computer industry.
The Amiga 1000 was released to positive reviews. Compute! lauded it as an inexpensive, truly general-purpose computer that might break preconceptions dividing the microcomputer marketplace. In this case, it was capable of outperforming most business, as well as arcade game machines and delivering sampled sound, making it suitable for offices, gamers, and digital artists. Computer Gaming World praised the machine's versatility without any obvious hardware shortcomings and stressed that it was ideal for game designers demanding fewer system constraints. Creative Computing magazine had only minor criticisms for what they otherwise called a "dream machine." These criticisms were directed toward its case quality, the disk drives slowing during certain operations, and not finding an AUTOEXEC command in AmigaDOS, though the marketing vice president of Commodore, Clive Smith, assured the magazine that later production units would address most of its complaints. Months after the Amiga 1000 was released, InfoWorld offered a mixed review. It praised Intuition and the customizability of Workbench, but took issue with the operating system's bugs such as memory overflow and screen flickering of single lines as a result of their being interleaved when displayed in high resolution mode. It also criticized the sparseness of the software library preventing the publication from fully realizing the computer's potential.
In 1994, as Commodore filed for bankruptcy, Byte magazine called the Amiga 1000 "the first multimedia computer... so far ahead of its time that almost nobody—including Commodore's marketing department—could fully articulate what it was all about". In 2006, PC World rated the Amiga 1000 as the 7th greatest PC of all time. In 2007, it was rated by the same magazine as the 37th best tech product of all time. Also that year, IDG Sweden ranked it the 10th best computer of all time.
Joe Pillow
"Joe Pillow" was the name given on the ticket for the extra airline seat purchased to hold the first Amiga prototype while on the way to the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. The airlines required a name for the airline ticket and Joe Pillow was born. The engineers (RJ Mical and Dale Luck) who flew with the Amiga prototype (codenamed Lorraine) drew a happy face on the front of the pillowcase and even added a tie.
Joe Pillow extended his fifteen minutes of fame when the Amiga went to production. All fifty-three Amiga team members who worked on the project signed the Amiga case. This included Joe Pillow and Jay Miner's dog Michy who each got to "sign" the case in their own unique way.
See also
Amiga models and variants
Amiga Sidecarfor using MS-DOS with Intel 8088 @ 4.77 MHz with 256 KB RAM
References
External links
The Commodore Amiga A1000 at OLD-COMPUTERS.COM
Who was Joe Pillow?
Amiga computers
68000-based home computers
Computer-related introductions in 1985
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Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
He is the author of MINIX, a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and has written multiple computer science textbooks regarded as standard texts in the field. He regards his teaching job as his most important work. Since 2004 he has operated Electoral-vote.com, a website dedicated to analysis of polling data in federal elections in the United States.
Biography
Tanenbaum was born in New York City and grew up in suburban White Plains, New York, where he attended the White Plains High School. He is Jewish. His paternal grandfather was born in Khorostkiv in the Austro-Hungarian empire.
He received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from MIT in 1965 and his PhD degree in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Tanenbaum also served as a lobbyist for the Sierra Club.
He moved to the Netherlands to live with his wife, who is Dutch, but he retains his United States citizenship. He taught courses on Computer Organization and Operating Systems and supervised the work of PhD candidates at the VU University Amsterdam. On July 9, 2014, he announced his retirement.
Teaching
Books
Tanenbaum's textbooks on computer science include:
Structured Computer Organization (1976)
Computer Networks, co-authored with David J. Wetherall and Nickolas Feamster (1981)
Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, co-authored with Albert Woodhull (1987)
Modern Operating Systems (1992)
Distributed Operating Systems (1994)
Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, co-authored with Maarten van Steen (2001)
His book, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and MINIX were Linus Torvalds' inspiration for the Linux kernel. In his autobiography Just for Fun, Torvalds describes it as "the book that launched me to new heights".
His books have been translated into many languages including Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mexican Spanish, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish. They have appeared in over 175 editions and are used at universities around the world.
Doctoral students
Tanenbaum has had a number of PhD students who themselves have gone on to become widely known computer science researchers.
These include:
Henri Bal, professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam
Frans Kaashoek, professor at MIT
Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com
Dean of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging
In the early 1990s, the Dutch government began setting up a number of thematically oriented research schools that spanned multiple universities. These schools were intended to bring professors and PhD students from different Dutch (and later, foreign) universities together to help them cooperate and enhance their research.
Tanenbaum was one of the cofounders and first Dean of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI). This school initially consisted of nearly 200 faculty members and PhD students from the Vrije Universiteit, University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, and Leiden University. They were especially working on problems in advanced computer systems such as parallel computing and image analysis and processing.
Tanenbaum remained dean for 12 years, until 2005, when he was awarded an Academy Professorship by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, at which time he became a full-time research professor. ASCI has since grown to include researchers from nearly a dozen universities in The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. ASCI offers PhD level courses, has an annual conference, and runs various workshops every year.
Projects
Amsterdam Compiler Kit
The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is a toolkit for producing portable compilers. It was started sometime before 1981 and Andrew Tanenbaum was the architect from the start until version 5.5.
MINIX
In 1987, Tanenbaum wrote a clone of UNIX, called MINIX (MINi-unIX), for the IBM PC. It was targeted at students and others who wanted to learn how an operating system worked. Consequently, he wrote a book that listed the source code in an appendix and described it in detail in the text. The source code itself was available on a set of floppy disks. Within three months, a Usenet newsgroup, comp.os.minix, had sprung up with over 40,000 subscribers discussing and improving the system. One of these subscribers was a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds, who began adding new features to MINIX and tailoring it to his own needs. On October 5, 1991, Torvalds announced his own (POSIX-like) kernel, called Linux, which originally used the MINIX file system but is not based on MINIX code.
Although MINIX and Linux have diverged, MINIX continues to be developed, now as a production system as well as an educational one. The focus is on building a highly modular, reliable, and secure operating system. The system is based on a microkernel, with only 5000 lines of code running in kernel mode. The rest of the operating system runs as a number of independent processes in user mode, including processes for the file system, process manager, and each device driver. The system continuously monitors each of these processes, and when a failure is detected is often capable of automatically replacing the failed process without a reboot, without disturbing running programs, and without the user even noticing. MINIX 3, as the current version is called, is available under the BSD license for free.
In 2017, Google discovered that the Intel Management Engine runs MINIX in ring -3. After Tanenbaum read about this, he published an open letter to Intel, detailing conversations with Intel software engineers that occurred several years ago, where they wanted his assistance in modifying MINIX to work on "some secret project". He believes that Intel chose MINIX for this purpose because it is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause license, which allowed Intel to modify the MINIX source code without freely distributing their modified version. In his letter, Tanenbaum claims that MINIX is the most widespread operating system, and this is interpreted by the community as Tanenbaum believing that he has won the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate. It is hard to know if MINIX or Linux is more popular, as Intel does not publish chipset sales figures, and there is no direct way to find the number of systems running Linux or MINIX. However, Linux has seen much more widespread use in the server space, is widely used in embedded systems, and also runs on all Android phones, which account for at least 3 billion active devices, meaning that it is likely that Linux is the most widespread operating system, although there is no concrete data to back up this claim.
Research projects
Tanenbaum has also been involved in numerous other research projects in the areas of operating systems, distributed systems, and ubiquitous computing, often as supervisor of PhD students or a postdoctoral researcher. These projects include:
Amoeba
Globe
Mansion
Orca
Paramecium
RFID Guardian
Turtle F2F
Electoral-vote.com
In 2004, Tanenbaum created Electoral-vote.com, a web site analyzing opinion polls for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, using them to project the outcome in the Electoral College. He stated that he created the site as an American who "knows first hand what the world thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America again." The site provided a color-coded map, updated each day with projections for each state's electoral votes. Through most of the campaign period Tanenbaum kept his identity secret, referring to himself as "the Votemaster" and acknowledging only that he personally preferred John Kerry. Mentioning that he supported the Democrats, he revealed his identity on November 1, 2004, the day before the election, and also stating his reasons and qualifications for running the website.
Through the site he also covered the 2006 midterm elections, correctly predicting the winner of all 33 Senate races that year.
For the 2008 elections, he got every state right except for Indiana, which he said McCain would win by 2% (Obama won by 1%) and Missouri, which he said was too close to call (McCain won by 0.1%). He correctly predicted all the winners in the Senate except for Minnesota, where he predicted a 1% win by Norm Coleman over Al Franken. After 7 months of legal battling and recounts, Franken won by 312 votes (0.01%).
In 2010, he correctly projected 35 out of 37 Senate races in the Midterm elections on the website. The exceptions were Colorado and Nevada.
Electoral-vote.com incorrectly predicted Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 United States presidential election. The website incorrectly predicted Clinton would win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. Electoral-vote.com did not predict a winner for Nevada, which Clinton would win. The website predicted the winners of the remaining 44 states and the District of Columbia correctly.
Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate
The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate was a famous debate between Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds regarding kernel design on Usenet in 1992.
Awards
Fellow of the ACM
Fellow of the IEEE for outstanding contributions to research and education in computer networks and operating systems.
Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
IEEE Computer Society Tech. Committee on Distributed Processing Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, 2022
Eurosys Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015
Honorary doctorate from Petru Maior University, Targu Mures, Romania, 2011
Winner of the TAA McGuffey award for classic textbooks for Modern Operating Systems, 2010
Coauthor of the Best Paper Award at the LADC Conference, 2009
Winner of a 2.5 million euro European Research Council Advanced Grant, 2008
USENIX Flame Award 2008 for his many contributions to systems design and to openness both in discussion and in source
Honorary doctorate from Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania
Coauthor of the Best Paper Award at the Real-Time and Network Systems Conf., 2008
Winner of the 2007 IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal
Coauthor of the Best Paper Award at the USENIX LISA Conf., 2006
Coauthor of the Best Paper for High Impact at the IEEE Percom Conf., 2006
Academy Professor, 2004
Winner of the 2005 PPAP Award for best education on computer science software
Winner of the 2003 TAA McGuffey award for classic textbooks for Computer Networks
Winner of the 2002 TAA Texty Award for new textbooks
Winner of the 1997 ACM SIGCSE for contributions to computer science education
Winner of the 1994 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
Coauthor of the 1984 ACM SOSP Distinguished Paper Award
Honorary doctorates
On May 12, 2008, Tanenbaum received an honorary doctorate from Universitatea Politehnica din București. The award was given in the academic senate chamber, after which Tanenbaum gave a lecture on his vision of the future of the computer field. The degree was given in recognition of Tanenbaum's career work, which includes about 150 published papers, 18 books (which have been translated into over 20 languages), and the creation of a large body of open-source software, including the Amsterdam Compiler Kit, Amoeba, Globe, and MINIX.
On October 7, 2011, Universitatea Petru Maior din Târgu Mureș (Petru Maior University of Târgu Mureș) granted Tanenbaum the Doctor Honoris Causa (honorary doctorate) title for his remarkable work in the field of computer science and achievements in education. The academic community is hereby honoring his devotion to teaching and research with this award. At the ceremony, the Chancellor, the Rector, the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences and Letters, and others all spoke about Tanenbaum and his work. The pro-rector then read the 'laudatio,' summarizing Tanenbaum's achievements. These include his work developing MINIX (the predecessor to Linux), the RFID Guardian, his work on Globe, Amoeba, and other systems, and his many books on computer science, which have been translated in many languages, including Romanian, and which are used at Petru Maior University.
Keynote talks
Tanenbaum has been keynote speaker at numerous conferences, most recently
ICDCS 2022 Bologna, Italy, July 12, 2022
Qualcomm Security Summit San Diego, May 18, 2022
RIOT Summit 2020 Online Event, September 14, 2020
FrOSCon 2015 Sankt Augustin, Germany, August 22, 2015
BSDCan 2015 Ottawa, Canada, June 12, 2015
HAXPO 2015 Amsterdam May 28, 2015
Codemotion 2015 Rome Italy, March 28, 2015
SIREN 2010 Veldhoven, The Netherlands, November 2, 2010
FOSDEM Brussels, Belgium, February 7, 2010
NSCNE '09 Changsha, China, November 5, 2009
E-Democracy 2009 Conference Athens, Greece, September 25, 2009
Free and Open Source Conference Sankt Augustin, Germany, August 23, 2008
XV Semana Informática of the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, March 13, 2008
NLUUG 25 year anniversary conference, Amsterdam, November 7, 2007
linux.conf.au in Sydney, Australia, January 17, 2007
Academic IT Festival in Cracow, Poland, February 23, 2006 (2nd edition)
ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles, Brighton, England, October 24, 2005
References
External links
Minix Article in Free Software Magazine contains an interview with Andrew Tanenbaum
1944 births
American political writers
American male non-fiction writers
American technology writers
Computer systems researchers
American computer scientists
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Free software programmers
Kernel programmers
Living people
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
MINIX
Scientists from New York City
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Academic staff of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Information technology in the Netherlands
Computer science educators
Jewish American writers
European Research Council grantees
21st-century American Jews
American emigrants to the Netherlands
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Ariane 5 was a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle developed and operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), low Earth orbit (LEO) or further into space. The launch vehicle had a streak of 82 consecutive successful launches between 9 April 2003 and 12 December 2017. Since 2014, Ariane 6, a direct successor system, is in development.
The system was designed as an expendable launch system by the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), the French government's space agency, in cooperation with various European partners. Despite not being a direct derivative of its predecessor launch vehicle program, it was classified as part of the Ariane rocket family. ArianeGroup was the prime contractor for the manufacturing of the vehicles, leading a multi-country consortium of other European contractors. Ariane 5 was originally intended to launch the Hermes spacecraft, and thus it was rated for human space launches.
Since its first launch, Ariane 5 was refined in successive versions: "G", "G+", "GS", "ECA", and finally, "ES". The system had a commonly used dual-launch capability, where up to two large geostationary belt communication satellites can be mounted using a SYLDA (Système de Lancement Double Ariane, meaning "Ariane Double-Launch System") carrier system. Up to three, somewhat smaller, main satellites are possible depending on size using a SPELTRA (Structure Porteuse Externe Lancement Triple Ariane, which translates to "Ariane Triple-Launch External Carrier Structure"). Up to eight secondary payloads, usually small experiment packages or minisatellites, could be carried with an ASAP (Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads) platform.
Following the launch of 15 August 2020, Arianespace signed the contracts for the last eight Ariane 5 launches, before it was succeeded by the new Ariane 6 launcher, according to Daniel Neuenschwander, director of space transportation at the ESA. Ariane 5 flew its final mission on 5 July 2023.
Vehicle description
Cryogenic main stage
Ariane 5's cryogenic H173 main stage (H158 for Ariane 5G, G+, and GS) was called the EPC (Étage Principal Cryotechnique — Cryotechnic Main Stage). It consisted of a diameter by high tank with two compartments, one for liquid oxygen and one for liquid hydrogen, and a Vulcain 2 engine at the base with a vacuum thrust of . The H173 EPC weighed about , including of propellant. After the main cryogenic stage runs out of fuel, it re-entered the atmosphere for an ocean splashdown.
Solid boosters
Attached to the sides were two P241 (P238 for Ariane 5G and G+) solid rocket boosters (SRBs or EAPs from the French Étages d'Accélération à Poudre), each weighing about full and delivering a thrust of about . They were fueled by a mix of ammonium perchlorate (68%) and aluminium fuel (18%) and HTPB (14%). They each burned for 130 seconds before being dropped into the ocean. The SRBs were usually allowed to sink to the bottom of the ocean, but, like the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, they could be recovered with parachutes, and this was occasionally done for post-flight analysis. Unlike Space Shuttle SRBs, Ariane 5 boosters were not reused. The most recent attempt was for the first Ariane 5 ECA mission in 2009. One of the two boosters was successfully recovered and returned to the Guiana Space Center for analysis. Prior to that mission, the last such recovery and testing was done in 2003.
The French M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) shared a substantial amount of technology with these boosters.
In February 2000, the suspected nose cone of an Ariane 5 booster washed ashore on the South Texas coast, and was recovered by beachcombers before the government could get to it.
Second stage
The second stage was on top of the main stage and below the payload. The original Ariane — Ariane 5G — used the EPS (Étage à Propergols Stockables — Storable Propellant Stage), which was fueled by monomethylhydrazine (MMH) and nitrogen tetroxide, containing of storable propellant. The EPS was subsequently improved for use on the Ariane 5G+, GS, and ES.
The EPS upper stage was capable of repeated ignition, first demonstrated during flight V26 which was launched on 5 October 2007. This was purely to test the engine, and occurred after the payloads had been deployed. The first operational use of restart capability as part of a mission came on 9 March 2008, when two burns were made to deploy the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into a circular parking orbit, followed by a third burn after ATV deployment to de-orbit the stage. This procedure was repeated for all subsequent ATV flights.
Ariane 5ECA used the ESC (Étage Supérieur Cryotechnique — Cryogenic Upper Stage), which was fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The ESC used the HM7B engine previously used in the Ariane 4 third stage. The propellent load of 14.7 tonne allowed the engine to burn for 945 seconds while providing 6.5 tonne of thrust. The ESC provided roll control during powered flight and full attitude control during payload separation using hydrogen gas thrusters. Oxygen gas thrusters allowed longitudinal acceleration after engine cutoff. The flight assembly included the Vehicle Equipment Bay, with flight electronics for the entire rocket, and the payload interface and structural support.
Fairing
The payload and all upper stages were covered at launch by a fairing for aerodynamic stability and protection from heating during supersonic flight and acoustic loads. It was jettisoned once sufficient altitude has been reached, typically above . It was made by Ruag Space and since flight VA-238 it was composed of 4 panels.
Variants
Launch system status:
Launch pricing and market competition
, the Ariane 5 commercial launch price for launching a "midsize satellite in the lower position" was approximately €50 million, competing for commercial launches in an increasingly competitive market.
The heavier satellite was launched in the upper position on a typical dual-satellite Ariane 5 launch and was priced higher than the lower satellite, on the order of €90 million .
Total launch price of an Ariane 5 – which could transport up to two satellites to space, one in the "upper" and one in the "lower" positions – was around €150 million .
Cancelled plans for future developments
Ariane 5 ME
The Ariane 5 ME (Mid-life Evolution) was in development into early 2015, and was seen as a stopgap between Ariane 5ECA/Ariane 5ES and the new Ariane 6. With first flight planned for 2018, it would have become ESA's principal launcher until the arrival of the new Ariane 6 version. ESA halted funding for the development of Ariane 5ME in late 2014 to prioritize development of Ariane 6.
The Ariane 5ME was to use a new upper stage, with increased propellant volume, powered by the new Vinci engine. Unlike the HM-7B engine, it was to be able to restart several times, allowing for complex orbital maneuvers such as insertion of two satellites into different orbits, direct insertion into geosynchronous orbit, planetary exploration missions, and guaranteed upper stage deorbiting or insertion into graveyard orbit. The launcher was also to include a lengthened fairing up to and a new dual launch system to accommodate larger satellites. Compared to an Ariane 5ECA model, the payload to GTO was to increase by 15% to and the cost-per-kilogram of each launch was projected to decline by 20%.
Development
Originally known as the Ariane 5ECB, Ariane 5ME was to have its first flight in 2006. However, the failure of the first ECA flight in 2002, combined with a deteriorating satellite industry, caused ESA to cancel development in 2003. Development of the Vinci engine continued, though at a lower pace. The ESA Council of Ministers agreed to fund development of the new upper stage in November 2008.
In 2009, EADS Astrium was awarded a €200 million contract, and on 10 April 2012 received another €112 million contract to continue development of the Ariane 5ME with total development effort expected to cost €1 billion.
On 21 November 2012, ESA agreed to continue with the Ariane 5ME to meet the challenge of lower priced competitors. It was agreed the Vinci upper stage would also be used as the second stage of a new Ariane 6, and further commonality would be sought. Ariane 5ME qualification flight was scheduled for mid-2018, followed by gradual introduction into service.
On 2 December 2014, ESA decided to stop funding the development of Ariane 5ME and instead focus on Ariane 6, which was expected to have a lower cost per launch and allow more flexibility in the payloads (using two or four P120C solid boosters depending on total payload mass).
Solid propellant stage
Work on the Ariane 5 EAP motors was continued in the Vega programme. The Vega 1st stage engine – the P80 engine – was a shorter derivation of the EAP. The P80 booster casing was made of filament wound graphite epoxy, much lighter than the current stainless steel casing. A new composite steerable nozzle was developed while new thermal insulation material and a narrower throat improved the expansion ratio and subsequently the overall performance. Additionally, the nozzle had electromechanical actuators which replaced the heavier hydraulic ones used for thrust vector control.
These developments could maybe have made their way back into the Ariane programme, but this was most likely an inference based on early blueprints of the Ariane 6 having a central P80 booster and 2-4 around the main one. The incorporation of the ESC-B with the improvements to the solid motor casing and an uprated Vulcain engine would have delivered to LEO. This would have been developed for any lunar missions but the performance of such a design might not have been possible if the higher Max-Q for the launch of this launch vehicle would have posed a constraint on the mass delivered to orbit.
Ariane 6
The design brief of the next generation launch vehicle Ariane 6 called for a lower-cost and smaller launch vehicle capable of launching a single satellite of up to to GTO. However, after several permutations the finalized design was nearly identical in performance to the Ariane 5, focusing instead on lowering fabrication costs and launch prices. , Ariane 6 was projected to be launched for about €70 million per flight, about half of the Ariane 5 price.
Initially development of Ariane 6 was projected to cost €3.6 billion. In 2017, the ESA set 16 July 2020 as the deadline for the first flight. As of June 2022, Arianespace expects the maiden flight to occur in 2023.
Notable launches
Ariane 5's first test flight (Ariane 5 Flight 501) on 4 June 1996 failed, with the rocket self-destructing 37 seconds after launch because of a malfunction in the control software. A data conversion from 64-bit floating-point value to 16-bit signed integer value to be stored in a variable representing horizontal bias caused a processor trap (operand error) because the floating-point value was too large to be represented by a 16-bit signed integer. The software had been written for the Ariane 4 where efficiency considerations (the computer running the software had an 80% maximum workload requirement) led to four variables being protected with a handler while three others, including the horizontal bias variable, were left unprotected because it was thought that they were "physically limited or that there was a large margin of safety". The software, written in Ada, was included in the Ariane 5 through the reuse of an entire Ariane 4 subsystem despite the fact that the particular software containing the bug, which was just a part of the subsystem, was not required by the Ariane 5 because it has a different preparation sequence than the Ariane 4.
The second test flight (L502, on 30 October 1997) was a partial failure. The Vulcain nozzle caused a roll problem, leading to premature shutdown of the core stage. The upper stage operated successfully, but it could not reach the intended orbit. A subsequent test flight (L503, on 21 October 1998) proved successful and the first commercial launch (L504) occurred on 10 December 1999 with the launch of the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory satellite.
Another partial failure occurred on 12 July 2001, with the delivery of two satellites into an incorrect orbit, at only half the height of the intended GTO. The ESA Artemis telecommunications satellite was able to reach its intended orbit on 31 January 2003, through the use of its experimental ion propulsion system.
The next launch did not occur until 1 March 2002, when the Envisat environmental satellite successfully reached an orbit of above the Earth in the 11th launch. At , it was the heaviest single payload until the launch of the first ATV on 9 March 2008, at .
The first launch of the ECA variant on 11 December 2002 ended in failure when a main booster problem caused the rocket to veer off-course, forcing its self-destruction three minutes into the flight. Its payload of two communications satellites (STENTOR and Hot Bird 7), valued at about €630 million, was lost in the Atlantic Ocean. The fault was determined to have been caused by a leak in coolant pipes allowing the nozzle to overheat. After this failure, Arianespace SA delayed the expected January 2003 launch for the Rosetta mission to 26 February 2004, but this was again delayed to early March 2004 due to a minor fault in the foam that protects the cryogenic tanks on the Ariane 5. The failure of the first ECA launch was the last failure of an Ariane 5 until flight 240 in January 2018.
On 27 September 2003, the last Ariane 5G boosted three satellites (including the first European lunar probe, SMART-1), in Flight 162. On 18 July 2004, an Ariane 5G+ boosted what was at the time the heaviest telecommunication satellite ever, Anik F2, weighing almost .
The first successful launch of the Ariane 5ECA took place on 12 February 2005. The payload consisted of the XTAR-EUR military communications satellite, a 'SLOSHSAT' small scientific satellite and a MaqSat B2 payload simulator. The launch had been scheduled for October 2004, but additional testing and a military launch (of a Helios 2A observation satellite) delayed the attempt.
On 11 August 2005, the first Ariane 5GS (featuring the Ariane 5ECA's improved solid motors) boosted Thaicom 4, the heaviest telecommunications satellite to date at , into orbit.
On 16 November 2005, the third Ariane 5ECA launch (the second successful ECA launch) took place. It carried a dual payload consisting of Spaceway F2 for DirecTV and Telkom-2 for PT Telekomunikasi of Indonesia. This was the launch vehicle's heaviest dual payload to date, at more than .
On 27 May 2006, an Ariane 5ECA launch vehicle set a new commercial payload lifting record of . The dual-payload consisted of the Thaicom 5 and Satmex 6 satellites.
On 4 May 2007, the Ariane 5ECA set another new commercial record, lifting into transfer orbit the Astra 1L and Galaxy 17 communication satellites with a combined weight of , and a total payload weight of . This record was again broken by another Ariane 5ECA, launching the Skynet 5B and Star One C1 satellites, on 11 November 2007. The total payload weight for this launch was of .
On 9 March 2008, the first Ariane 5ES-ATV was launched to deliver the first ATV called Jules Verne to the International Space Station (ISS). The ATV was the heaviest payload ever launched by a European launch vehicle, providing supplies to the space station with necessary propellant, water, air and dry cargo. This was the first operational Ariane mission which involved an engine restart in the upper stage. The ES-ATV Aestus EPS upper stage was restartable while the ECA HM7-B engine was not.
On 1 July 2009, an Ariane 5ECA launched TerreStar-1 (now EchoStar T1), which was then, at , the largest and most massive commercial telecommunication satellite ever built at that time until being overtaken by Telstar 19 Vantage, at , launched aboard Falcon 9. The satellite was launched into a lower-energy orbit than a usual GTO, with its initial apogee at roughly .
On 28 October 2010, an Ariane 5ECA launched Eutelsat's W3B (part of its W Series of satellites) and Broadcasting Satellite System Corporation (B-SAT)'s BSAT-3b satellites into orbit. But the W3B satellite failed to operate shortly after the successful launch and was written off as a total loss due to an oxidizer leak in the satellite's main propulsion system. The BSAT-3b satellite, however, is operating normally.
The VA253 launch on 15 August 2020 introduced two small changes that increased lift capacity by about ; these were a lighter avionics and guidance-equipment bay, and modified pressure vents on the payload fairing, which were required for the subsequent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. It also debuted a location system using Galileo navigation satellites.
On 25 December 2021, VA256 launched the James Webb Space Telescope towards a Sun–Earth L2 halo orbit. The precision of trajectory following launch led to fuel savings credited with potentially doubling the lifetime of the telescope by leaving more hydrazine propellant on-board for station-keeping than was expected. According to Rudiger Albat, the program manager for Ariane 5, efforts had been made to select components for this flight that had performed especially well during pre-flight testing, including "one of the best Vulcain engines that we've ever built."
GTO payload weight records
On 22 April 2011, the Ariane 5ECA flight VA-201 broke a commercial record, lifting Yahsat 1A and Intelsat New Dawn with a total payload weight of to transfer orbit. This record was later broken again during the launch of Ariane 5ECA flight VA-208 on 2 August 2012, lifting a total of into the planned geosynchronous transfer orbit, which was broken again 6 months later on flight VA-212 with sent towards geosynchronous transfer orbit. In June 2016, the GTO record was raised to , on the first rocket in history that carried a satellite dedicated to financial institutions. The payload record was pushed a further , up to on 24 August 2016 with the launch of Intelsat 33e and Intelsat 36. On 1 June 2017, the payload record was broken again to carrying ViaSat-2 and Eutelsat-172B. In 2021 VA-255 put 11,210 kg into GTO.
VA241 anomaly
On 25 January 2018, an Ariane 5ECA launched SES-14 and Al Yah 3 satellites. About 9 minutes and 28 seconds after launch, a telemetry loss occurred between the launch vehicle and the ground controllers. It was later confirmed, about 1 hour and 20 minutes after launch, that both satellites were successfully separated from the upper stage and were in contact with their respective ground controllers, but that their orbital inclinations were incorrect as the guidance systems might have been compromised. Therefore, both satellites conducted orbital procedures, extending commissioning time. SES-14 needed about 8 weeks longer than planned commissioning time, meaning that entry into service was reported early September instead of July. Nevertheless, SES-14 is still expected to be able to meet the designed lifetime. This satellite was originally to be launched with more propellant reserve on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle since the Falcon 9, in this specific case, was intended to deploy this satellite into a high inclination orbit that would require more work from the satellite to reach its final geostationary orbit. The Al Yah 3 was also confirmed healthy after more than 12 hours without further statement, and like SES-14, Al Yah 3's maneuvering plan was also revised to still fulfill the original mission. As of 16 February 2018, Al Yah 3 was approaching the intended geostationary orbit, after series of recovery maneuvers had been performed. The investigation showed that invalid inertial units' azimuth value had sent the vehicle 17° off course but to the intended altitude, they had been programmed for the standard geostationary transfer orbit of 90° when the payloads were intended to be 70° for this supersynchronous transfer orbit mission, 20° off norme. This mission anomaly marked the end of 82nd consecutive success streak since 2003.
Launch history
Launch statistics
Ariane 5 launch vehicles had accumulated 117 launches, 112 of which were successful, yielding a success rate. Between April 2003 and December 2017, Ariane 5 flew 83 consecutive missions without failure, but the launch vehicle suffered a partial failure in January 2018.
Rocket configurations
Launch outcomes
List of launches
All launches are from Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG), Kourou, ELA-3.
See also
List of Ariane launches
Ariane 6, two initial variants
Heavy-lift launch vehicle
Comparison of orbital launchers families
Comparison of orbital launch systems
Future Launchers Preparatory Programme (ESA, beyond Ariane 5)
References
External links
Ariane 5 Overview at Arianespace
Ariane 5 Programme Information at Astrium
Ariane (rocket family)
Articles containing video clips
Vehicles introduced in 1996
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Arianespace SA is a French company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It undertakes the operation and marketing of the Ariane programme. The company offers a number of different launch vehicles: the heavy-lift Ariane 5 for dual launches to geostationary transfer orbit, the Soyuz-2 as a medium-lift alternative, and the solid-fueled Vega for lighter payloads.
, Arianespace had launched more than 850 satellites in 287 launches over 41 years. The first commercial flight managed by the new entity was Spacenet F1 launched on 23 May 1984. Arianespace uses the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana as its main launch site. Through shareholding in Starsem, it can also offer commercial Soyuz launches from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. It has its headquarters in Évry-Courcouronnes, Essonne, France.
History
The formation of Arianespace SA is closely associated with the desire of several European nations to pursue joint collaboration in the field of space exploration and the formation of a pan-national organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), to oversee such undertaking during 1973. Prior to the ESA's formation, France had been lobbying for the development of a new European expendable launch system to serve as a replacement for the Europa rocket. Accordingly, one of the first programmes launched by the ESA was the Ariane heavy launcher. The express purpose of this launcher was to facilitate the delivery of commercial satellites into geosynchronous orbit.
France was the largest stakeholder in the Ariane development programme. French aerospace manufacturer Aérospatiale served as the prime contractor and held responsibility for performing the integration of all sections of the vehicle, while French engine manufacturer Société Européenne de Propulsion (SEP) provided the first, second and third stage engines (the third stage engines were produced in partnership with German aerospace manufacturer MBB). Other major companies involved included the French firms Air Liquide and Matra, Swedish manufacturer Volvo, and German aircraft producer Dornier Flugzeugwerke. Development of the third stage was a major focus point for the project - prior to Ariane, only the United States had ever flown a launcher that utilised hydrogen-powered upper stages.
Immediately following the successful first test launch of an Ariane 1 on 24 December 1979, the French space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) and the ESA created a new company, Arianespace, for the purpose of promoting, marketing, and managing Ariane operations. According to Arianespace, at the time of its establishment, it was the world's first launch services company. Following a further three test launches, the first commercial launch took place on 10 September 1982, which ended in failure as a result of a turbopump having failed in the third stage. The six remaining flights of the Ariane 1 were successful, with the final flight occurring during February 1986. As a result of these repeated successes, orders for the Ariane launcher quickly mounted up; by early 1984, a total of 27 satellites had been booked to use Ariane, which was estimated to be half of the world's market at that time. As a result of the commercial success, after the tenth Ariane mission was flown, the ESA formally transferred responsibility for Ariane over to Arianespace.
By early 1986, the Ariane 1, along with its Ariane 2 and Ariane 3 derivates, were the dominant launcher on the world market. The Ariane 2 and Ariane 3 were short-lived platforms while the more extensive Ariane 4 was being developed; it was a considerably larger and more flexible launcher that the earlier members of its family, having been intended from the onset to compete with the upper end of launchers worldwide. In comparison, while the Ariane 1 had a typical weight of 207 tonnes and could launch payloads of up to 1.7 tonnes into orbit; the larger Ariane 4 had a typical weight of 470 tonnes and could orbit payloads of up to 4.2 tonnes. Despite this, the Ariane 4 was actually 15 per cent smaller than the Ariane 3.
On 15 June 1988, the first successful launch of the Ariane 4 was conducted. This maiden flight was considered a success, having placed multiple satellites into orbit. For the V50 launch onwards, an improved third stage, known as the H10+, was adopted for the Ariane 4, which raised the rocket's overall payload capacity by 110 kg and increased its burn time by 20 seconds.
Even prior to the first flight of the Ariane 4 in 1988, development of a successor, designated as the Ariane 5, had already commenced. In January 1985, the Ariane 5 was officially adopted as an ESA programme, and began an eleven-year development and test program to the first launch in 1996. It lacked the high levels of commonality that the Ariane 4 had with its predecessors, and had been designed not only for launching heavier payloads of up to 5.2 tonnes and at a 20 per cent cost reduction over the Ariane 4, but for a higher margin of safety due to the fact that the Ariane 5 was designed to conduct crewed space launches as well, being intended to transport astronauts using the proposed Hermes space vehicle. Development of the Ariane 5 was not without controversy as some ESA members considered the mature Ariane 4 platform to be more suited for meeting established needs for such launchers; it was reportedly for this reason that Britain chose not to participate in the Ariane 5 programme. For several years, Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 launchers were operated interchangeably; however, it was eventually decided to terminate all Ariane 4 operations in favour of concentrating on the newer Ariane 5.
During the mid-1990s, French firms Aérospatiale and SEP, along with Italian firm Bombrini-Parodi-Delfino (BPD), held discussions on the development of a proposed Ariane Complementary Launcher (ACL). Simultaneously, Italy championed the concept of a new solid-propellant satellite launcher, referred to as Vega. During March 2003, contracts for Vega's development were signed by the ESA and CNES; Italy provided 65 per cent of funding while six additional nations contributed the remainder. In May 2004, it was reported that a contract was signed between commercial operator Arianespace and prime contractor ELV to perform vehicle integration at Kourou, French Guiana. On 13 February 2012, the first launch of the Vega took place; it was reported as being an "apparently perfect flight". Since entering commercial service, Arianespace markets Vega as a launch system tailored for missions to polar and sun-synchronous orbits.
During 2002, the ESA announced the Arianespace Soyuz programme in cooperation with Russia; a launch site for Soyuz was constructed as the Guiana Space Centre, while the Soyuz launch vehicle was modified for use at the site. On 4 February 2005, both funding and final approval for the initiative were granted. Arianespace had offered launch services on the modified Soyuz ST-B to its clients. On 21 October 2011, Arianespace launched the first Soyuz rocket ever from outside former Soviet territory. The payload consisted of two Galileo navigation satellites. Since 2011, Arianespace has ordered a total of 23 Soyuz rockets, enough to cover its needs until 2019 at a pace of three to four launches per year.
On 21 January 2019, ArianeGroup and Arianespace announced that it had signed a one-year contract with the ESA to study and prepare for a mission to the Moon to mine regolith.
In 2020, Arianespace suspended operations for nearly two months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Operations were suspended on 18 March and are, as of 29 April, expected to resume on 11 May. The return to operations will observe a number of new health and safety guidelines including social distancing in the workplace.
Company and infrastructure
Arianespace "is the marketing and sales organization for the European space industry and various component suppliers."
The primary shareholders of Arianespace are its suppliers, in various European nations.
Arianespace had 24 shareholders in 2008, 21 in 2014,
and just 17 .
In 2015, Arianespace shareholding was restructured due to the creation of Airbus Safran Launchers (later renamed ArianeGroup), which is tasked with developing and manufacturing the Ariane 6 carrier rocket. Industrial groups Airbus and Safran pooled their shares along with the French government's CNES stake to form a partnership company holding just under 74% of Arianespace shares, while the remaining 26% is spread across suppliers in nine countries including further Airbus subsidiaries.
Corporate management
, the Arianespace management team was:
Regional offices
Subsidiaries
Arianespace inc. (U.S. Subsidiary)
Arianespace Singapore PTE LTD. (Asian Subsidiary)
Starsem S.A. (European-Russian Soyuz commercialization)
Competition and pricing
By 2004, Arianespace reportedly held more than 50% of the world market for boosting satellites to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
During the 2010s, the disruptive force represented by the new sector entrant SpaceX forced Arianespace to cut back on its workforce and focus on cost-cutting to decrease costs to remain competitive against the new low-cost entrant in the launch sector. In the midst of pricing pressure from such companies, during November 2013, Arianespace announced that it was enacting pricing flexibility for the "lighter satellites" that it carries to Geostationary orbits aboard its Ariane 5. According to Arianespace's managing director: "It's quite clear there's a very significant challenge coming from SpaceX (...) therefore things have to change (...) and the whole European industry is being restructured, consolidated, rationalised and streamlined."
During early 2014, Arianespace was considering requesting additional subsidies from European governments to face competition from SpaceX and unfavorable changes in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate. The company had halved subsidy support by €100m per year since 2002 but the fall in the value of the US Dollar meant Arianespace was losing €60m per year due to currency fluctuations on launch contracts. SpaceX had reportedly begun to take market share from Arianespace, Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen, a major customer of Arianespace, stated that: "Each year that passes will see SpaceX advance, gain market share and further reduce its costs through economies of scale."
By September 2014, Arianespace had reportedly to sign four additional contracts for lower slots on an Ariane 5 SYLDA dispenser for satellites that otherwise could be flown on a SpaceX launch vehicle; this was claimed to have been allowed via cost reductions; it had signed a total of 11 contracts by that point, while two additional ones that were under advanced negotiations. At the time, Arianespace has a backlog of launches worth billion with 38 satellites to be launched on Ariane 5, 7 on Soyuz and 9 on Vega, claiming 60% of the global satellite launch market. However, since 2017, Arianespace's market share has been passed by SpaceX in commercial launches.
Launch vehicles
Currently Arianespace operates 1 launch vehicle:
Additionally Arianespace offers optional back-up launch service on H-IIA through Launch Services Alliance.
Ariane launch vehicles
Since the first launch in 1979, there have been several versions of the Ariane launch vehicle:
Ariane 1, first successful launch on December 24, 1979
Ariane 2, first successful launch on November 20, 1987 (the first launch on May 30, 1986, failed)
Ariane 3, first successful launch on August 4, 1984
Ariane 4, first successful launch on June 15, 1988
Ariane 5, first successful launch on October 30, 1997 (the first launch on June 4, 1996, failed).
Ariane 6, in development. It would have a similar payload capacity to that of Ariane 5 but considerably lower costs. Tentatively, its first flight is planned for 2023.
Ariane Next, in early development. It will be a partially reusable launcher that should succeed Ariane 6 from the 2030s. The objective of this reusable launcher is to halve the launch costs.
See also
French space program
Europa rocket
NewSpace
Other launch service providers
United Launch Alliance
International Launch Services
SpaceX
Antrix Corporation
References
Citations
Bibliography
Harvey, Brian. Europe's Space Programme: To Ariane and Beyond. Springer Science & Business Media, 2003. .
Aerospace companies of France
Space tourism
Airbus joint ventures
Commercial launch service providers
Companies based in Île-de-France
French companies established in 1980
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In a computer's central processing unit (CPU), the accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic logic unit results are stored.
Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, shift, etc.) to main memory, perhaps only to be read right back again for use in the next operation.
Access to main memory is slower than access to a register like an accumulator because the technology used for the large main memory is slower (but cheaper) than that used for a register. Early electronic computer systems were often split into two groups, those with accumulators and those without.
Modern computer systems often have multiple general-purpose registers that can operate as accumulators, and the term is no longer as common as it once was. However, to simplify their design, a number of special-purpose processors still use a single accumulator.
Basic concept
Mathematical operations often take place in a stepwise fashion, using the results from one operation as the input to the next. For instance, a manual calculation of a worker's weekly payroll might look something like:
look up the number of hours worked from the employee's time card
look up the pay rate for that employee from a table
multiply the hours by the pay rate to get their basic weekly pay
multiply their basic pay by a fixed percentage to account for income tax
subtract that number from their basic pay to get their weekly pay after tax
multiply that result by another fixed percentage to account for retirement plans
subtract that number from their basic pay to get their weekly pay after all deductions
A computer program carrying out the same task would follow the same basic sequence of operations, although the values being looked up would all be stored in computer memory. In early computers, the number of hours would likely be held on a punch card and the pay rate in some other form of memory, perhaps a magnetic drum. Once the multiplication is complete, the result needs to be placed somewhere. On a "drum machine" this would likely be back to the drum, an operation that takes considerable time. And then the very next operation has to read that value back in, which introduces another considerable delay.
Accumulators dramatically improve performance in systems like these by providing a scratchpad area where the results of one operation can be fed to the next one for little or no performance penalty. In the example above, the basic weekly pay would be calculated and placed in the accumulator, which could then immediately be used by the income tax calculation. This removes one save and one read operation from the sequence, operations that generally took tens to hundreds of times as long as the multiplication itself.
Accumulator machines
An accumulator machine, also called a 1-operand machine, or a CPU with accumulator-based architecture, is a kind of CPU where, although it may have several registers, the CPU mostly stores the results of calculations in one special register, typically called "the accumulator". Almost all computers were accumulator machines with only the high-performance "supercomputers" having multiple registers. Then as mainframe systems gave way to microcomputers, accumulator architectures were again popular with the MOS 6502 being a notable example. Many 8-bit microcontrollers that are still popular as of 2014, such as the PICmicro and 8051, are accumulator-based machines.
Modern CPUs are typically 2-operand or 3-operand machines. The additional operands specify which one of many general-purpose registers (also called "general-purpose accumulators") are used as the source and destination for calculations. These CPUs are not considered "accumulator machines".
The characteristic which distinguishes one register as being the accumulator of a computer architecture is that the accumulator (if the architecture were to have one) would be used as an implicit operand for arithmetic instructions. For instance, a CPU might have an instruction like: ADD memaddress that adds the value read from memory location memaddress to the value in the accumulator, placing the result back in the accumulator. The accumulator is not identified in the instruction by a register number; it is implicit in the instruction and no other register can be specified in the instruction. Some architectures use a particular register as an accumulator in some instructions, but other instructions use register numbers for explicit operand specification.
History of the computer accumulator
Any system that uses a single "memory" to store the result of multiple operations can be considered an accumulator. J. Presper Eckert refers to even the earliest adding machines of Gottfried Leibniz and Blaise Pascal as accumulator-based systems. Percy Ludgate was the first to conceive a multiplier-accumulator (MAC) in his Analytical Machine of 1909.
Historical convention dedicates a register to "the accumulator", an "arithmetic organ" that literally accumulates its number during a sequence of arithmetic operations:
"The first part of our arithmetic organ ... should be a parallel storage organ which can receive a number and add it to the one already in it, which is also able to clear its contents and which can store what it contains. We will call such an organ an Accumulator. It is quite conventional in principle in past and present computing machines of the most varied types, e.g. desk multipliers, standard IBM counters, more modern relay machines, the ENIAC" (Goldstine and von Neumann, 1946; p. 98 in Bell and Newell 1971).
Just a few of the instructions are, for example (with some modern interpretation):
Clear accumulator and add number from memory location X
Clear accumulator and subtract number from memory location X
Add number copied from memory location X to the contents of the accumulator
Subtract number copied from memory location X from the contents of the accumulator
Clear accumulator and shift contents of register into accumulator
No convention exists regarding the names for operations from registers to accumulator and from accumulator to registers. Tradition (e.g. Donald Knuth's (1973) hypothetical MIX computer), for example, uses two instructions called load accumulator from register/memory (e.g. "LDA r") and store accumulator to register/memory (e.g. "STA r"). Knuth's model has many other instructions as well.
Notable accumulator-based computers
The 1945 configuration of ENIAC had 20 accumulators, which could operate in parallel. Each one could store an eight decimal digit number and add to it (or subtract from it) a number it received. Most of IBM's early binary "scientific" computers, beginning with the vacuum tube IBM 701 in 1952, used a single 36-bit accumulator, along with a separate multiplier/quotient register to handle operations with longer results. The IBM 650, a decimal machine, had one 10 digit distributor and two ten-digit accumulators; the IBM 7070, a later, transistorized decimal machine had three accumulators. The IBM System/360, and Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-6, had 16 general-purpose registers, although the PDP-6 and its successor, the PDP-10, call them accumulators.
The 12-bit PDP-8 was one of the first minicomputers to use accumulators, and inspired many later machines. The PDP-8 had but one accumulator. The HP 2100 and Data General Nova had 2 and 4 accumulators. The Nova was created when this follow-on to the PDP-8 was rejected in favor of what would become the PDP-11. The Nova provided four accumulators, AC0-AC3, although AC2 and AC3 could also be used to provide offset addresses, tending towards more generality of usage for the registers. The PDP-11 had 8 general-purpose registers, along the lines of the System/360 and PDP-10; most later CISC and RISC machines provided multiple general-purpose registers.
Early 4-bit and 8-bit microprocessors such as the 4004, 8008 and numerous others, typically had single accumulators. The 8051 microcontroller has two, a primary accumulator and a secondary accumulator, where the second is used by instructions only when multiplying (MUL AB) or dividing (DIV AB); the former splits the 16-bit result between the two 8-bit accumulators, whereas the latter stores the quotient on the primary accumulator A and the remainder in the secondary accumulator B. As a direct descendant of the 8008, the 8080, and the 8086, the modern ubiquitous Intel x86 processors still uses the primary accumulator EAX and the secondary accumulator EDX for multiplication and division of large numbers. For instance, MUL ECX will multiply the 32-bit registers ECX and EAX and split the 64-bit result between EAX and EDX. However, MUL and DIV are special cases; other arithmetic-logical instructions (ADD, SUB, CMP, AND, OR, XOR, TEST) may specify any of the eight registers EAX, ECX, EDX, EBX, ESP, EBP, ESI, EDI as the accumulator (i.e. left operand and destination). This is also supported for multiply if the upper half of the result is not required. x86 is thus a fairly general register architecture, despite being based on an accumulator model. The 64-bit extension of x86, x86-64, has been further generalized to 16 instead of 8 general registers.
References
Goldstine, Herman H., and von Neumann, John, "Planning and Coding of the Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument", Rep. 1947, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Reprinted on pp. 92–119 in Bell, C. Gordon and Newell, Allen (1971), Computer Structures: Readings and Examples, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. }. A veritable treasure-trove of detailed descriptions of ancient machines including photos.
Central processing unit
Digital registers
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Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today.
History
The prehistory of arithmetic is limited to a small number of artifacts that may indicate the conception of addition and subtraction; the best-known is the Ishango bone from central Africa, dating from somewhere between 20,000 and 18,000 BC, although its interpretation is disputed.
The earliest written records indicate the Egyptians and Babylonians used all the elementary arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as early as 2000 BC. These artifacts do not always reveal the specific process used for solving problems, but the characteristics of the particular numeral system strongly influence the complexity of the methods. The hieroglyphic system for Egyptian numerals, like the later Roman numerals, descended from tally marks used for counting. In both cases, this origin resulted in values that used a decimal base but did not include positional notation. Complex calculations with Roman numerals required the assistance of a counting board (or the Roman abacus) to obtain the results.
Early number systems that included positional notation were not decimal; these include the sexagesimal (base 60) system for Babylonian numerals and the vigesimal (base 20) system that defined Maya numerals. Because of the place-value concept, the ability to reuse the same digits for different values contributed to simpler and more efficient methods of calculation.
The continuous historical development of modern arithmetic starts with the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece; it originated much later than the Babylonian and Egyptian examples. Prior to the works of Euclid around 300 BC, Greek studies in mathematics overlapped with philosophical and mystical beliefs. Nicomachus is an example of this viewpoint, using the earlier Pythagorean approach to numbers and their relationships to each other in his work, Introduction to Arithmetic.
Greek numerals were used by Archimedes, Diophantus, and others in a positional notation not very different from modern notation. The ancient Greeks lacked a symbol for zero until the Hellenistic period, and they used three separate sets of symbols as digits: one set for the units place, one for the tens place, and one for the hundreds. For the thousands place, they would reuse the symbols for the units place, and so on. Their addition algorithm was identical to the modern method, and their multiplication algorithm was only slightly different. Their long division algorithm was the same, and the digit-by-digit square root algorithm, popularly used as recently as the 20th century, was known to Archimedes (who may have invented it). He preferred it to Hero's method of successive approximation because, once computed, a digit does not change, and the square roots of perfect squares, such as 7485696, terminate immediately as 2736. For numbers with a fractional part, such as 546.934, they used negative powers of 60 instead of negative powers of 10 for the fractional part 0.934.
The ancient Chinese had advanced arithmetic studies dating from the Shang Dynasty and continuing through the Tang Dynasty, from basic numbers to advanced algebra. The ancient Chinese used a positional notation similar to that of the Greeks. Since they also lacked a symbol for zero, they had one set of symbols for the units place and a second set for the tens place. For the hundreds place, they then reused the symbols for the units place, and so on. Their symbols were based on ancient counting rods. The exact time when the Chinese started calculating with positional representation is unknown, though it is known that the adoption started before 400 BC. The ancient Chinese were the first to meaningfully discover, understand, and apply negative numbers. This is explained in the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (Jiuzhang Suanshu), which was written by Liu Hui and dates back to the 2nd century BC.
The gradual development of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system independently devised the place-value concept and positional notation, which combined the simpler methods for computations with a decimal base and the use of a digit representing 0. This allowed the system to consistently represent both large and small integers—an approach that eventually replaced all other systems. In the early the Indian mathematician Aryabhata incorporated an existing version of this system into his work and experimented with different notations. In the 7th century, Brahmagupta established the use of 0 as a separate number and determined the results for multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction of zero and all other numbers—except for the result of division by zero. His contemporary, the Syriac bishop Severus Sebokht (650 AD) said, "Indians possess a method of calculation that no word can praise enough. Their rational system of mathematics, or of their method of calculation. I mean the system using nine symbols." The Arabs also learned this new method and called it hesab.
Although the Codex Vigilanus described an early form of Arabic numerals (omitting 0) by 976 AD, Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) was primarily responsible for spreading their use throughout Europe after the publication of his book in 1202. He wrote, "The method of the Indians (Latin Modus Indorum) surpasses any known method to compute. It's a marvelous method. They do their computations using nine figures and symbol zero".
In the Middle Ages, arithmetic was one of the seven liberal arts taught in universities.
The flourishing of algebra in the medieval Islamic world, and also in Renaissance Europe, was an outgrowth of the enormous simplification of computation through decimal notation.
Various types of tools have been invented and widely used to assist in numeric calculations. Before Renaissance, they were various types of abaci. More recent examples include slide rules, nomograms and mechanical calculators, such as Pascal's calculator. At present, they have been supplanted by electronic calculators and computers.
Arithmetic operations
The basic arithmetic operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, although arithmetic also includes more advanced operations, such as manipulations of percentages, square roots, exponentiation, logarithmic functions, and even trigonometric functions, in the same vein as logarithms (prosthaphaeresis). Arithmetic expressions must be evaluated according to the intended sequence of operations. There are several methods to specify this, either—most common, together with infix notation—explicitly using parentheses and relying on precedence rules, or using a prefix or postfix notation, which uniquely fix the order of execution by themselves. Any set of objects upon which all four arithmetic operations (except division by zero) can be performed, and where these four operations obey the usual laws (including distributivity), is called a field.
Addition
Addition, denoted by the symbol , is the most basic operation of arithmetic. In its simple form, addition combines two numbers, the addends or terms, into a single number, the sum of the numbers (such as or ).
Adding finitely many numbers can be viewed as repeated simple addition; this procedure is known as summation, a term also used to denote the definition for "adding infinitely many numbers" in an infinite series. Repeated addition of the number 1 is the most basic form of counting; the result of adding is usually called the successor of the original number.
Addition is commutative and associative, so the order in which finitely many terms are added does not matter.
The number has the property that, when added to any number, it yields that same number; so, it is the identity element of addition, or the additive identity.
For every number , there is a number denoted , called the opposite of , such that and . So, the opposite of is the inverse of with respect to addition, or the additive inverse of . For example, the opposite of is , since .
Addition can also be interpreted geometrically, as in the following example.
If we have two sticks of lengths 2 and 5, then, if the sticks are aligned one after the other, the length of the combined stick becomes 7, since .
Subtraction
Subtraction, denoted by the symbol , is the inverse operation to addition. Subtraction finds the difference between two numbers, the minuend minus the subtrahend: Resorting to the previously established addition, this is to say that the difference is the number that, when added to the subtrahend, results in the minuend:
For positive arguments and holds:
If the minuend is larger than the subtrahend, the difference is positive.
If the minuend is smaller than the subtrahend, the difference is negative.
In any case, if minuend and subtrahend are equal, the difference
Subtraction is neither commutative nor associative. For that reason, the construction of this inverse operation in modern algebra is often discarded in favor of introducing the concept of inverse elements (as sketched under ), where subtraction is regarded as adding the additive inverse of the subtrahend to the minuend, that is, . The immediate price of discarding the binary operation of subtraction is the introduction of the (trivial) unary operation, delivering the additive inverse for any given number, and losing the immediate access to the notion of difference, which is potentially misleading when negative arguments are involved.
For any representation of numbers, there are methods for calculating results, some of which are particularly advantageous in exploiting procedures, existing for one operation, by small alterations also for others. For example, digital computers can reuse existing adding-circuitry and save additional circuits for implementing a subtraction, by employing the method of two's complement for representing the additive inverses, which is extremely easy to implement in hardware (negation). The trade-off is the halving of the number range for a fixed word length.
A formerly widespread method to achieve a correct change amount, knowing the due and given amounts, is the counting up method, which does not explicitly generate the value of the difference. Suppose an amount P is given in order to pay the required amount Q, with P greater than Q. Rather than explicitly performing the subtraction P − Q = C and counting out that amount C in change, money is counted out starting with the successor of Q, and continuing in the steps of the currency, until P is reached. Although the amount counted out must equal the result of the subtraction P − Q, the subtraction was never really done and the value of P − Q is not supplied by this method.
Multiplication
Multiplication, denoted by the symbols or , is the second basic operation of arithmetic. Multiplication also combines two numbers into a single number, the product. The two original numbers are called the multiplier and the multiplicand, mostly both are called factors.
Multiplication may be viewed as a scaling operation. If the numbers are imagined as lying in a line, multiplication by a number greater than 1, say x, is the same as stretching everything away from 0 uniformly, in such a way that the number 1 itself is stretched to where x was. Similarly, multiplying by a number less than 1 can be imagined as squeezing towards 0, in such a way that 1 goes to the multiplicand.
Another view on multiplication of integer numbers (extendable to rationals but not very accessible for real numbers) is by considering it as repeated addition. For example. corresponds to either adding times a , or times a , giving the same result. There are different opinions on the advantageousness of these paradigmata in math education.
Multiplication is commutative and associative; further, it is distributive over addition and subtraction. The multiplicative identity is 1, since multiplying any number by 1 yields that same number. The multiplicative inverse for any number except is the reciprocal of this number, because multiplying the reciprocal of any number by the number itself yields the multiplicative identity . is the only number without a multiplicative inverse, and the result of multiplying any number and is again One says that is not contained in the multiplicative group of the numbers.
The product of a and b is written as or . It can also written by simple juxtaposition: ab. In computer programming languages and software packages (in which one can only use characters normally found on a keyboard), it is often written with an asterisk: a * b.
Algorithms implementing the operation of multiplication for various representations of numbers are by far more costly and laborious than those for addition. Those accessible for manual computation either rely on breaking down the factors to single place values and applying repeated addition, or on employing tables or slide rules, thereby mapping multiplication to addition and vice versa. These methods are outdated and are gradually replaced by mobile devices. Computers use diverse sophisticated and highly optimized algorithms, to implement multiplication and division for the various number formats supported in their system.
Division
Division, denoted by the symbols or , is essentially the inverse operation to multiplication. Division finds the quotient of two numbers, the dividend divided by the divisor. Under common rules, dividend divided by zero is undefined. For distinct positive numbers, if the dividend is larger than the divisor, the quotient is greater than 1, otherwise it is less than or equal to 1 (a similar rule applies for negative numbers). The quotient multiplied by the divisor always yields the dividend.
Division is neither commutative nor associative. So as explained in , the construction of the division in modern algebra is discarded in favor of constructing the inverse elements with respect to multiplication, as introduced in . Hence division is the multiplication of the dividend with the reciprocal of the divisor as factors, that is,
Within the natural numbers, there is also a different but related notion called Euclidean division, which outputs two numbers after "dividing" a natural (numerator) by a natural (denominator): first a natural (quotient), and second a natural (remainder) such that and
In some contexts, including computer programming and advanced arithmetic, division is extended with another output for the remainder. This is often treated as a separate operation, the Modulo operation, denoted by the symbol or the word , though sometimes a second output for one "divmod" operation. In either case, Modular arithmetic has a variety of use cases. Different implementations of division (floored, truncated, Euclidean, etc.) correspond with different implementations of modulus.
Fundamental theorem of arithmetic
The fundamental theorem of arithmetic states that any integer greater than 1 has a unique prime factorization (a representation of a number as the product of prime factors), excluding the order of the factors. For example, 252 only has one prime factorization:
252 = 2 × 3 × 7
Euclid's Elements first introduced this theorem, and gave a partial proof (which is called Euclid's lemma). The fundamental theorem of arithmetic was first proven by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
The fundamental theorem of arithmetic is one of the reasons why 1 is not considered a prime number. Other reasons include the sieve of Eratosthenes, and the definition of a prime number itself (a natural number greater than 1 that cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers.).
Decimal arithmetic
refers exclusively, in common use, to the written numeral system employing arabic numerals as the digits for a radix 10 ("decimal") positional notation; however, any numeral system based on powers of 10, e.g., Greek, Cyrillic, Roman, or Chinese numerals may conceptually be described as "decimal notation" or "decimal representation".
Modern methods for four fundamental operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) were first devised by Brahmagupta of India. This was known during medieval Europe as "Modus Indorum" or Method of the Indians. Positional notation (also known as "place-value notation") refers to the representation or encoding of numbers using the same symbol for the different orders of magnitude (e.g., the "ones place", "tens place", "hundreds place") and, with a radix point, using those same symbols to represent fractions (e.g., the "tenths place", "hundredths place"). For example, 507.36 denotes 5 hundreds (102), plus 0 tens (101), plus 7 units (100), plus 3 tenths (10−1) plus 6 hundredths (10−2).
The concept of 0 as a number comparable to the other basic digits is essential to this notation, as is the concept of 0's use as a placeholder, and as is the definition of multiplication and addition with 0. The use of 0 as a placeholder and, therefore, the use of a positional notation is first attested to in the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhâga, dated 458 AD and it was only in the early 13th century that these concepts, transmitted via the scholarship of the Arabic world, were introduced into Europe by Fibonacci using the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.
Algorism comprises all of the rules for performing arithmetic computations using this type of written numeral. For example, addition produces the sum of two arbitrary numbers. The result is calculated by the repeated addition of single digits from each number that occupies the same position, proceeding from right to left. An addition table with ten rows and ten columns displays all possible values for each sum. If an individual sum exceeds the value 9, the result is represented with two digits. The rightmost digit is the value for the current position, and the result for the subsequent addition of the digits to the left increases by the value of the second (leftmost) digit, which is always one (if not zero). This adjustment is termed a carry of the value 1.
The process for multiplying two arbitrary numbers is similar to the process for addition. A multiplication table with ten rows and ten columns lists the results for each pair of digits. If an individual product of a pair of digits exceeds 9, the carry adjustment increases the result of any subsequent multiplication from digits to the left by a value equal to the second (leftmost) digit, which is any value from (). Additional steps define the final result.
Similar techniques exist for subtraction and division.
The creation of a correct process for multiplication relies on the relationship between values of adjacent digits. The value for any single digit in a numeral depends on its position. Also, each position to the left represents a value ten times larger than the position to the right. In mathematical terms, the exponent for the radix (base) of 10 increases by 1 (to the left) or decreases by 1 (to the right). Therefore, the value for any arbitrary digit is multiplied by a value of the form 10n with integer n. The list of values corresponding to all possible positions for a single digit is written
Repeated multiplication of any value in this list by 10 produces another value in the list. In mathematical terminology, this characteristic is defined as closure, and the previous list is described as . It is the basis for correctly finding the results of multiplication using the previous technique. This outcome is one example of the uses of number theory.
Compound unit arithmetic
Compound unit arithmetic is the application of arithmetic operations to mixed radix quantities such as feet and inches; gallons and pints; pounds, shillings and pence; and so on. Before decimal-based systems of money and units of measure, compound unit arithmetic was widely used in commerce and industry.
Basic arithmetic operations
The techniques used in compound unit arithmetic were developed over many centuries and are well documented in many textbooks in many different languages. In addition to the basic arithmetic functions encountered in decimal arithmetic, compound unit arithmetic employs three more functions:
, in which a compound quantity is reduced to a single quantity—for example, conversion of a distance expressed in yards, feet and inches to one expressed in inches.
, the inverse function to reduction, is the conversion of a quantity that is expressed as a single unit of measure to a compound unit, such as expanding 24 oz to .
is the conversion of a set of compound units to a standard form—for example, rewriting "" as "".
Knowledge of the relationship between the various units of measure, their multiples and their submultiples forms an essential part of compound unit arithmetic.
Principles of compound unit arithmetic
There are two basic approaches to compound unit arithmetic:
where all the compound unit variables are reduced to single unit variables, the calculation performed and the result expanded back to compound units. This approach is suited for automated calculations. A typical example is the handling of time by Microsoft Excel where all time intervals are processed internally as days and decimal fractions of a day.
in which each unit is treated separately and the problem is continuously normalized as the solution develops. This approach, which is widely described in classical texts, is best suited for manual calculations. An example of the ongoing normalization method as applied to addition is shown below.
The addition operation is carried out from right to left; in this case, pence are processed first, then shillings followed by pounds. The numbers below the "answer line" are intermediate results.
The total in the pence column is 25. Since there are 12 pennies in a shilling, 25 is divided by 12 to give 2 with a remainder of 1. The value "1" is then written to the answer row and the value "2" carried forward to the shillings column. This operation is repeated using the values in the shillings column, with the additional step of adding the value that was carried forward from the pennies column. The intermediate total is divided by 20 as there are 20 shillings in a pound. The pound column is then processed, but as pounds are the largest unit that is being considered, no values are carried forward from the pounds column.
For the sake of simplicity, the example chosen did not have farthings.
Operations in practice
During the 19th and 20th centuries various aids were developed to aid the manipulation of compound units, particularly in commercial applications. The most common aids were mechanical tills which were adapted in countries such as the United Kingdom to accommodate pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, and ready reckoners, which are books aimed at traders that catalogued the results of various routine calculations such as the percentages or multiples of various sums of money. One typical booklet that ran to 150 pages tabulated multiples "from one to ten thousand at the various prices from one farthing to one pound".
The cumbersome nature of compound unit arithmetic has been recognized for many years—in 1586, the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin published a small pamphlet called De Thiende ("the tenth") in which he declared the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures, and weights to be merely a question of time. In the modern era, many conversion programs, such as that included in the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system calculator, display compound units in a reduced decimal format rather than using an expanded format (e.g., "2.5 ft" is displayed rather than ).
Number theory
Until the 19th century, number theory was a synonym of "arithmetic". The addressed problems were directly related to the basic operations and concerned primality, divisibility, and the solution of equations in integers, such as Fermat's Last Theorem. It appeared that most of these problems, although very elementary to state, are very difficult and may not be solved without very deep mathematics involving concepts and methods from many other branches of mathematics. This led to new branches of number theory such as analytic number theory, algebraic number theory, Diophantine geometry and arithmetic algebraic geometry. Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a typical example of the necessity of sophisticated methods, which go far beyond the classical methods of arithmetic, for solving problems that can be stated in elementary arithmetic.
Arithmetic in education
Primary education in mathematics often places a strong focus on algorithms for the arithmetic of natural numbers, integers, fractions, and decimals (using the decimal place-value system). This study is sometimes known as algorism.
The difficulty and unmotivated appearance of these algorithms has long led educators to question this curriculum, advocating the early teaching of more central and intuitive mathematical ideas. One notable movement in this direction was the New Math of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to teach arithmetic in the spirit of axiomatic development from set theory, an echo of the prevailing trend in higher mathematics.
Also, arithmetic was used by Islamic Scholars in order to teach application of the rulings related to Zakat and Irth. This was done in a book entitled The Best of Arithmetic by Abd-al-Fattah-al-Dumyati. The book begins with the foundations of mathematics and proceeds to its application in the later chapters.
See also
Lists of mathematics topics
Outline of arithmetic
Slide rule
Related topics
Addition of natural numbers
Additive inverse
Arithmetic coding
Arithmetic mean
Arithmetic number
Arithmetic progression
Arithmetic properties
Associativity
Commutativity
Distributivity
Elementary arithmetic
Finite field arithmetic
Geometric progression
Integer
List of important publications in mathematics
Lunar arithmetic
Mental calculation
Number line
Plant arithmetic
Notes
References
Cunnington, Susan, The Story of Arithmetic: A Short History of Its Origin and Development, Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1904
Dickson, Leonard Eugene, History of the Theory of Numbers (3 volumes), reprints: Carnegie Institute of Washington, Washington, 1932; Chelsea, New York, 1952, 1966
Euler, Leonhard, Elements of Algebra, Tarquin Press, 2007
Fine, Henry Burchard (1858–1928), The Number System of Algebra Treated Theoretically and Historically, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, Boston, 1891
Karpinski, Louis Charles (1878–1956), The History of Arithmetic, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1925; reprint: Russell & Russell, New York, 1965
Ore, Øystein, Number Theory and Its History, McGraw–Hill, New York, 1948
Weil, André, Number Theory: An Approach through History, Birkhauser, Boston, 1984; reviewed: Mathematical Reviews 85c:01004
External links
MathWorld article about arithmetic
The New Student's Reference Work/Arithmetic (historical)
The Great Calculation According to the Indians, of Maximus Planudes – an early Western work on arithmetic at Convergence
Mathematics education
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Advanced power management (APM) is a technical standard for power management developed by Intel and Microsoft and released in 1992 which enables an operating system running an IBM-compatible personal computer to work with the BIOS (part of the computer's firmware) to achieve power management.
Revision 1.2 was the last version of the APM specification, released in 1996. ACPI is the successor to APM. Microsoft dropped support for APM in Windows Vista. The Linux kernel still mostly supports APM, though support for APM CPU idle was dropped in version 3.0.
Overview
APM uses a layered approach to manage devices. APM-aware applications (which include device drivers) talk to an OS-specific APM driver. This driver communicates to the APM-aware BIOS, which controls the hardware. There is the ability to opt out of APM control on a device-by-device basis, which can be used if a driver wants to communicate directly with a hardware device.
Communication occurs both ways; power management events are sent from the BIOS to the APM driver, and the APM driver sends information and requests to the BIOS via function calls. In this way the APM driver is an intermediary between the BIOS and the operating system.
Power management happens in two ways; through the above-mentioned function calls from the APM driver to the BIOS requesting power state changes, and automatically based on device activity.
In APM 1.0 and APM 1.1, power management is almost fully controlled by the BIOS. In APM 1.2, the operating system can control PM time (e.g. suspend timeout).
Power management events
There are 12 power events (such as standby, suspend and resume requests, and low battery notifications), plus OEM-defined events, that can be sent from the APM BIOS to the operating system. The APM driver regularly polls for event change notifications.
Power Management Events:
APM functions
There are 21 APM function calls defined that the APM driver can use to query power management statuses, or request power state transitions. Example function calls include letting the BIOS know about current CPU usage (the BIOS may respond to such a call by placing the CPU in a low-power state, or returning it to its full-power state), retrieving the current power state of a device, or requesting a power state change.
Power states
The APM specification defines system power states and device power states.
System power states
APM defines five power states for the computer system:
Full On: The computer is powered on, and no devices are in a power saving mode.
APM Enabled: The computer is powered on, and APM is controlling device power management as needed.
APM Standby: Most devices are in their low-power state, the CPU is slowed or stopped, and the system state is saved. The computer can be returned to its former state quickly (in response to activity such as the user pressing a key on the keyboard).
APM Suspend: Most devices are powered off, but the system state is saved. The computer can be returned to its former state, but takes a relatively long time. (Hibernation is a special form of the APM Suspend state).
Off: The computer is turned off.
Device power states
APM also defines power states that APM-aware hardware can implement. There is no requirement that an APM-aware device implement all states.
The four states are:
Device On: The device is in full power mode.
Device Power Managed: The device is still powered on, but some functions may not be available, or may have reduced performance.
Device Low Power: The device is not working. Power is maintained so that the device may be 'woken up'.
Device Off: The device is powered off.
Hardware components
CPU
The CPU core (defined in APM as the CPU clock, cache, system bus and system timers) is treated specially in APM, as it is the last device to be powered down, and the first device to be powered back up. The CPU core is always controlled through the APM BIOS (there is no option to control it through a driver). Drivers can use APM function calls to notify the BIOS about CPU usage, but it is up to the BIOS to act on this information; a driver cannot directly tell the CPU to go into a power saving state.
ATA drives
The ATA specification and SATA specification defines APM provisions for hard drives, which specifies a trade-off between spin-down frequency and always-on performance. Unlike the BIOS-side APM, the ATA APM and SATA APM has never been deprecated.
Aggressive spin-down frequencies may reduce drive lifespan by unnecessarily accumulating load cycles; most modern drives are specified to sustain 300,000 cycles and usually last at least 600,000. On the other hand, not spinning down the drive will cause extra power draw and heat generation; high temperatures also reduce the lifespan of hard drives.
See also
Active State Power Management - hardware power management protocol for PCI Express
Green computing
BatteryMAX
References
External links
BIOS
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Atlanta ( , or ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, although a portion of the city extends into neighboring DeKalb County. With a population of 498,715 living within the city limits, Atlanta is the eighth most populous city in the Southeast and 38th most populous city in the United States according to the 2020 U.S. census. It is the core of the much larger Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to more than 6.2 million people (2022 estimate), making it the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan area. Situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at an elevation of just over above sea level, Atlanta features unique topography that includes rolling hills, lush greenery, and the densest urban tree coverage of any major city in the United States.
Atlanta was originally founded as the terminus of a major state-sponsored railroad, but it soon became the convergence point among several railroads, spurring its rapid growth. The largest was the Western and Atlantic Railroad, from which the name "Atlanta" is derived, signifying the city's growing reputation as a major hub of transportation. During the American Civil War, it served a strategically important role for the Confederacy until it was captured in 1864. The city was almost entirely burned to the ground during General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea. However, the city rebounded dramatically in the post-war period and quickly became a national industrial center and the unofficial capital of the "New South". After World War II, it also became a manufacturing and technology hub. During the 1950s and 1960s, it became a major organizing center of the American Civil Rights Movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and many other locals becoming prominent figures in the movement's leadership. In the modern era, Atlanta has remained a major center of transportation, with Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport becoming the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic in 1998 (a position it has held every year since, except for 2020), with an estimated 93.7 million passengers in 2022.
With a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $473 billion in 2021, Atlanta has the eleventh largest economy of cities in the U.S. and the 22nd largest in the world. Its economy is considered diverse, with dominant sectors in industries including transportation, aerospace, logistics, healthcare, news and media operations, film and television production, information technology, finance, and biomedical research and public policy. The gentrification of some of its neighborhoods, initially spurred by the 1996 Summer Olympics, has intensified in the 21st century with the growth of the Atlanta Beltline. This has altered its demographics, politics, aesthetics, and culture.
History
Native American settlements
For thousands of years prior to the arrival of European settlers in North Georgia, the indigenous Creek people and their ancestors inhabited the area. Standing Peachtree, a Creek village where Peachtree Creek flows into the Chattahoochee River, was the closest Native American settlement to what is now Atlanta. Through the early 19th century, European Americans systematically encroached on the Creek of northern Georgia, forcing them out of the area from 1802 to 1825. The Creek were forced to leave the area in 1821, under Indian Removal by the federal government, and European American settlers arrived the following year.
Western and Atlantic Railroad
In 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad in order to provide a link between the port of Savannah and the Midwest. The initial route was to run southward from Chattanooga to a terminus east of the Chattahoochee River, which would be linked to Savannah. After engineers surveyed various possible locations for the terminus, the "zero milepost" was driven into the ground in what is now Foundry Street, Five Points. When asked in 1837 about the future of the little village, Stephen Harriman Long, the railroad's chief engineer said the place would be good "for one tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, and nothing else". A year later, the area around the milepost had developed into a settlement, first known as Terminus, and later Thrasherville, after a local merchant who built homes and a general store in the area. By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents and was renamed Marthasville to honor Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter Martha. Later, John Edgar Thomson, Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested the town be renamed Atlanta. The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847.
Civil War
By 1860, Atlanta's population had grown to 9,554. During the American Civil War, the nexus of multiple railroads in Atlanta made the city a strategic hub for the distribution of military supplies.
In 1864, the Union Army moved southward following the capture of Chattanooga and began its invasion of north Georgia. The region surrounding Atlanta was the location of several major army battles, culminating with the Battle of Atlanta and a four-month-long siege of the city by the Union Army under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood decided to retreat from Atlanta, and he ordered the destruction of all public buildings and possible assets that could be of use to the Union Army. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union Army, and on September 7, Sherman ordered the city's civilian population to evacuate. On November 11, 1864, Sherman prepared for the Union Army's March to the Sea by ordering the destruction of Atlanta's remaining military assets.
Reconstruction and late 19th century
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Atlanta was gradually rebuilt during the Reconstruction era. The work attracted many new residents. Due to the city's superior rail transportation network, the state capital was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868. In the 1880 Census, Atlanta had surpassed Savannah as Georgia's largest city.
Beginning in the 1880s, Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, promoted Atlanta to potential investors as a city of the "New South" that would be based upon a modern economy and less reliant on agriculture. By 1885, the founding of the Georgia School of Technology (now Georgia Tech) and the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of historically Black colleges made up of units for men and women, had established Atlanta as a center for higher education. In 1895, Atlanta hosted the Cotton States and International Exposition, which attracted nearly 800,000 attendees and successfully promoted the New South's development to the world.
20th century
During the first decades of the 20th century, Atlanta enjoyed a period of unprecedented growth. In three decades' time, Atlanta's population tripled as the city limits expanded to include nearby streetcar suburbs. The city's skyline grew taller with the construction of the Equitable, Flatiron, Empire, and Candler buildings. Sweet Auburn emerged as a center of Black commerce. The period was also marked by strife and tragedy. Increased racial tensions led to the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906, when Whites attacked Blacks, leaving at least 27 people dead and over 70 injured, with extensive damage in Black neighborhoods. In 1913, Leo Frank, a Jewish-American factory superintendent, was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in a highly publicized trial. He was sentenced to death but the governor commuted his sentence to life. An enraged and organized lynch mob took him from jail in 1915 and hanged him in Marietta. The Jewish community in Atlanta and across the country were horrified. On May 21, 1917, the Great Atlanta Fire destroyed 1,938 buildings in what is now the Old Fourth Ward, resulting in one fatality and the displacement of 10,000 people.
On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind, the epic film based on the best-selling novel by Atlanta's Margaret Mitchell. The gala event at Loew's Grand Theatre was attended by the film's legendary producer, David O. Selznick, and the film's stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland, but Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel, an African-American actress, was barred from the event due to racial segregation laws.
Metropolitan area's growth
Atlanta played a vital role in the Allied effort during World War II due to the city's war-related manufacturing companies, railroad network and military bases. The defense industries attracted thousands of new residents and generated revenues, resulting in rapid population and economic growth. In the 1950s, the city's newly constructed highway system, supported by federal subsidies, allowed middle class Atlantans the ability to relocate to the suburbs. As a result, the city began to make up an ever-smaller proportion of the metropolitan area's population. Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer played an important role with a goal of making Atlanta the home of the "MIT of the South." In 1946 Georgia Tech secured about $240,000 () annually in sponsored research and purchased an electron microscope for $13,000 (), the first such instrument in the Southeastern United States and one of few in the United States at the time. The Research Building was expanded, and a $300,000 () Westinghouse A-C network calculator was given to Georgia Tech by Georgia Power in 1947. In 1953, Van Leer assisted with helping Lockheed establish a research and development and production line in Marietta. Later in 1955 he helped set up a committee to assist with establishing a nuclear research facility, which would later become the Neely Nuclear Research Center. Van Leer also co-founded Southern Polytechnic State University now absorbed by and made part of Kennesaw State University to help meet the need for technicians after the war. Van Leer was instrumental in making the school and Atlanta the first major research center in the American South. The building that houses Tech's school of Electrical and Computer Engineering bears his name.
Civil Rights movement
African-American veterans returned from World War II seeking full rights in their country and began heightened activism. In exchange for support by that portion of the Black community that could vote, in 1948 the mayor ordered the hiring of the first eight African-American police officers in the city. Much controversy preceded the 1956 Sugar Bowl, when the Pitt Panthers, with African-American fullback Bobby Grier on the roster, met the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. There had been controversy over whether Grier should be allowed to play due to his race, and whether Georgia Tech should even play at all due to Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin's opposition to racial integration. After Griffin publicly sent a telegram to the state's Board of Regents requesting Georgia Tech not to engage in racially integrated events, Georgia Tech's president Blake R. Van Leer rejected the request and threatened to resign. The game went on as planned.
In the 1960s, Atlanta became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and students from Atlanta's historically Black colleges and universities playing major roles in the movement's leadership. While Atlanta in the postwar years had relatively minimal racial strife compared to other cities, Blacks were limited by discrimination, segregation, and continued disenfranchisement of most voters. In 1961, the city attempted to thwart blockbusting by realtors by erecting road barriers in Cascade Heights, countering the efforts of civic and business leaders to foster Atlanta as the "city too busy to hate."
Desegregation of the public sphere came in stages, with public transportation desegregated by 1959, the restaurant at Rich's department store by 1961, movie theaters by 1963, and public schools by 1973 (nearly 20 years after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional).
In 1960, Whites comprised 61.7% of the city's population. During the 1950s–70s, suburbanization and White flight from urban areas led to a significant demographic shift. By 1970, African Americans were the majority of the city's population and exercised their recently enforced voting rights and political influence by electing Atlanta's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. Under Mayor Jackson's tenure, Atlanta's airport was modernized, strengthening the city's role as a transportation center. The opening of the Georgia World Congress Center in 1976 heralded Atlanta's rise as a convention city. Construction of the city's subway system began in 1975, with rail service commencing in 1979. Despite these improvements, Atlanta lost more than 100,000 residents between 1970 and 1990, over 20% of its population. At the same time, it developed new office space after attracting numerous corporations, with an increasing portion of workers from northern areas.
1996 Summer Olympic games
Atlanta was selected as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Following the announcement, the city government undertook several major construction projects to improve Atlanta's parks, sporting venues, and transportation infrastructure; however, for the first time, none of the $1.7 billion cost of the games was governmentally funded. While the games experienced transportation and accommodation problems and, despite extra security precautions, there was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, the spectacle was a watershed event in Atlanta's history. For the first time in Olympic history, every one of the record 197 national Olympic committees invited to compete sent athletes, sending more than 10,000 contestants participating in a record 271 events. The related projects such as Atlanta's Olympic Legacy Program and civic effort initiated a fundamental transformation of the city in the following decade.
Since the 21st century
During the 2000s, the city of Atlanta underwent a profound physical, cultural, and demographic change. As some of the African American middle and upper classes also began to move to the suburbs, a booming economy drew numerous new migrants from other cities in the United States, who contributed to changes in the city's demographics. African Americans made up a decreasing portion of the population, from a high of 67% in 1990 to 54% in 2010. From 2000 to 2010, Atlanta gained 22,763 white residents, 5,142 Asian residents, and 3,095 Hispanic residents, while the city's Black population decreased by 31,678. Much of the city's demographic change during the decade was driven by young, college-educated professionals: from 2000 to 2009, the three-mile radius surrounding Downtown Atlanta gained 9,722 residents aged 25 to 34 and holding at least a four-year degree, an increase of 61%. This was similar to the tendency in other cities for young, college educated, single or married couples to live in downtown areas.
Between the mid-1990s and 2010, stimulated by funding from the HOPE VI program and under leadership of CEO Renee Lewis Glover (1994–2013), the Atlanta Housing Authority demolished nearly all of its public housing, a total of 17,000 units and about 10% of all housing units in the city. After reserving 2,000 units mostly for elderly, the AHA allowed redevelopment of the sites for mixed-use and mixed-income, higher density developments, with 40% of the units to be reserved for affordable housing. Two-fifths of previous public housing residents attained new housing in such units; the remainder received vouchers to be used at other units, including in suburbs. At the same time, in an effort to change the culture of those receiving subsidized housing, the AHA imposed a requirement for such residents to work (or be enrolled in a genuine, limited-time training program). It is virtually the only housing authority to have created this requirement. To prevent problems, the AHA also gave authority to management of the mixed-income or voucher units to evict tenants who did not comply with the work requirement or who caused behavior problems.
In 2005, the city approved the $2.8 billion BeltLine project. It was intended to convert a disused 22-mile freight railroad loop that surrounds the central city into an art-filled multi-use trail and light rail transit line, which would increase the city's park space by 40%. The project stimulated retail and residential development along the loop, but has been criticized for its adverse effects on some Black communities. In 2013, the project received a federal grant of $18 million to develop the southwest corridor. In September 2019 the James M. Cox Foundation gave $6 Million to the PATH Foundation which will connect the Silver Comet Trail to The Atlanta BeltLine which is expected to be completed by 2022. Upon completion, the total combined interconnected trail distance around Atlanta for The Atlanta BeltLine and Silver Comet Trail will be the longest paved trail surface in the U.S. totaling about .
Atlanta's cultural offerings expanded during the 2000s: the High Museum of Art doubled in size; the Alliance Theatre won a Tony Award; and art galleries were established on the once-industrial Westside. The College Football Hall of Fame relocated to Atlanta and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights museum was constructed. The city of Atlanta was the subject of a massive cyberattack which began in March 2018. In December 2019, Atlanta hosted the Miss Universe 2019 pageant competition. On June 16, 2022, Atlanta was selected as a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Geography
Atlanta encompasses , of which is land and is water. The city is situated in the Deep South of the southeastern United States among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. At above mean sea level, Atlanta has the highest elevation among major cities east of the Mississippi River. Atlanta straddles the Eastern Continental Divide. Rainwater that falls on the south and east side of the divide flows into the Atlantic Ocean, while rainwater on the north and west side of the divide flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Atlanta developed on a ridge south of the Chattahoochee River, which is part of the ACF River Basin. The river borders the far northwestern edge of the city, and much of its natural habitat has been preserved, in part by the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.
Atlanta is 21 miles (33 km) southeast of Marietta, 27 miles (43 km) southwest of Alpharetta, 146 miles (234 km) southwest of Greenville, South Carolina, 147 miles (236 km) east of Birmingham, Alabama, and 245 miles (394 km) southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Atlanta is sometimes called "City of Trees" or "city in a forest", despite having lost approximately of trees between 1973 and 1999.
Cityscape
Most of Atlanta was burned during the American Civil War, depleting the city of a large stock of its historic architecture. Yet architecturally, the city had never been traditionally "southern" because Atlanta originated as a railroad town, rather than a southern seaport dominated by the planter class, such as Savannah or Charleston. Because of its later development, many of the city's landmarks share architectural characteristics with buildings in the Northeast or Midwest, as they were designed at a time of shared national architectural styles.
During the late 20th century, Atlanta embraced the global trend of modern architecture, especially for commercial and institutional structures. Examples include the State of Georgia Building built in 1966, and the Georgia-Pacific Tower in 1982. Many of the most notable examples from this period were designed by world renowned Atlanta architect John Portman. Most of the buildings that define the downtown skyline were designed by Portman during this period, including the Westin Peachtree Plaza and the Atlanta Marriott Marquis. In the latter half of the 1980s, Atlanta became one of the early homes of postmodern buildings that reintroduced classical elements to their designs. Many of Atlanta's tallest skyscrapers were built in this period and style, displaying tapering spires or otherwise ornamented crowns, such as One Atlantic Center (1987), 191 Peachtree Tower (1991), and the Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta (1992). Also completed during the era is the Portman-designed Bank of America Plaza built in 1992. At , it is the tallest building in the city and the 14th-tallest in the United States.
The city's embrace of modern architecture has often translated into an ambivalent approach toward historic preservation, leading to the destruction of many notable architectural landmarks. These include the Equitable Building (1892–1971), Terminal Station (1905–1972), and the Carnegie Library (1902–1977). In the mid-1970s, the Fox Theatre, now a cultural icon of the city, would have met the same fate if not for a grassroots effort to save it. More recently, preservationists may have made some inroads. For example, in 2016 activists convinced the Atlanta City Council not to demolish the Atlanta-Fulton Central Library, the last building designed by noted architect Marcel Breuer.
Atlanta is divided into 242 officially defined neighborhoods. The city contains three major high-rise districts, which form a north–south axis along Peachtree: Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead. Surrounding these high-density districts are leafy, low-density neighborhoods, most of which are dominated by single-family homes.
Downtown Atlanta contains the most office space in the metro area, much of it occupied by government entities. Downtown is home to the city's sporting venues and many of its tourist attractions. Midtown Atlanta is the city's second-largest business district, containing the offices of many of the region's law firms. Midtown is known for its art institutions, cultural attractions, institutions of higher education, and dense form. Buckhead, the city's uptown district, is north of Downtown and the city's third-largest business district. The district is marked by an urbanized core along Peachtree Road, surrounded by suburban single-family neighborhoods situated among woods and rolling hills.
Surrounding Atlanta's three high-rise districts are the city's low- and medium-density neighborhoods, where the craftsman bungalow single-family home is dominant. The eastside is marked by historic streetcar suburbs, built from the 1890s–1930s as havens for the upper middle class. These neighborhoods, many of which contain their own villages encircled by shaded, architecturally distinct residential streets, include the Victorian Inman Park, Bohemian East Atlanta, and eclectic Old Fourth Ward. On the westside and along the BeltLine on the eastside, former warehouses and factories have been converted into housing, retail space, and art galleries, transforming the once-industrial areas such as West Midtown into model neighborhoods for smart growth, historic rehabilitation, and infill construction.
In southwest Atlanta, neighborhoods closer to downtown originated as streetcar suburbs, including the historic West End, while those farther from downtown retain a postwar suburban layout. These include Collier Heights and Cascade Heights, home to much of the city's affluent African-American population. Northwest Atlanta contains the areas of the city to west of Marietta Boulevard and to the north of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, including those neighborhoods remote to downtown, such as Riverside, Bolton and Whittier Mill. The latter is one of Atlanta's designated Landmark Historical Neighborhoods. Vine City, though technically Northwest, adjoins the city's Downtown area and has recently been the target of community outreach programs and economic development initiatives.
Gentrification of the city's neighborhoods is one of the more controversial and transformative forces shaping contemporary Atlanta. The gentrification of Atlanta has its origins in the 1970s, after many of Atlanta's neighborhoods had declined and suffered the urban decay that affected other major American cities in the mid-20th century. When neighborhood opposition successfully prevented two freeways from being built through the city's east side in 1975, the area became the starting point for Atlanta's gentrification. After Atlanta was awarded the Olympic games in 1990, gentrification expanded into other parts of the city, stimulated by infrastructure improvements undertaken in preparation for the games. New development post-2000 has been aided by the Atlanta Housing Authority's eradication of the city's public housing. As noted above, it allowed development of these sites for mixed-income housing, requiring developers to reserve a considerable portion for affordable housing units. It has also provided for other former residents to be given vouchers to gain housing in other areas. Construction of the Beltline has stimulated new and related development along its path.
Climate
Under the Köppen classification, Atlanta has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) with four distinct seasons and generous precipitation year-round, typical for the Upland South; the city is situated in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 8a, with the northern and western suburbs, as well as part of Midtown transitioning to 7b. Summers are hot and humid, with temperatures somewhat moderated by the city's elevation. Winters are overall mild but variable, occasionally susceptible to snowstorms even if in small quantities on several occasions, unlike the central and southern portions of the state. Warm air from the Gulf of Mexico can bring spring-like highs while strong Arctic air masses can push lows into the teens °F (−7 to −12 °C).
July averages , with high temperatures reaching on an average of 47 days per year, though readings are not seen most years. January averages , with temperatures in the suburbs slightly cooler due largely to the urban heat island effect. Lows at or below freezing can be expected 36 nights annually, but the last occurrences of temperatures below were December 24, 2022, and January 2014, eight years apart. Extremes range from on February 13, 1899 to on June 30, 2012. Average dewpoints in the summer range from in June to in July.
Typical of the southeastern U.S., Atlanta receives abundant rainfall that is evenly distributed throughout the year, though late spring and early fall are somewhat drier. The average annual precipitation is , while snowfall is typically light and rare with a normal of per winter. The heaviest single snowfall occurred on January 23, 1940, with around of snow. However, ice storms usually cause more problems than snowfall does, the most severe occurring on January 7, 1973. Tornadoes are rare in the city itself, but the March 14, 2008 EF2 tornado damaged prominent structures in downtown Atlanta.
Demographics
Population
The 2020 United States census reported that Atlanta had a population of 498,715. The population density was 3,685.45 persons per square mile (1,422.95/km2). The racial makeup of Atlanta (including Hispanics) was 51.0% Black or African American, 40.9% White, 4.2% Asian and 0.3% Native American, and 1.0% from other races. 2.4% of the population reported two or more races. Hispanics of any race made up 6.0% of the city's population. The median income for a household in the city was $66,657. The per capita income for the city was $54,414. 20.2% percent of the population was living below the poverty line.
In the 1920s, the Black population began to grow in Southern metropolitan cities like Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, and Memphis. The New Great Migration brought an insurgence of African Americans from California and the North to the Atlanta area. It has long been known as a center of African-American political power, education, economic prosperity, and culture, often called a Black mecca. In the 1990s, Atlanta started to experience Black flight to its suburbs. A massive influx of African Americans were moving to the suburbs primarily seeking a lower cost of living or better public schools. The African American share of Atlanta's population is the fastest declining of any racial group. From 2000 to 2020, the city's African American population shrank from 61% of the city's population in 2000 to 47% in 2020, as the city's overall population increased. Blacks made up nine percent of new Atlanta residents between 2010 and 2020. Atlanta is also home to a sizable foreign-born Black population.
With many notable investments occurring in Atlanta initiated by the 1996 Olympics, the White population of Atlanta began to rebound after several decades of white flight to Atlanta's suburbs. Between 2000 and 2020, the proportion of Whites in the city had strong growth. In two decades, Atlanta's White population grew from 33% to 39% of the city's population. Whites made up the majority of new Atlanta residents between 2010 and 2020.
The Hispanic and Latino populations in Atlanta and metro Atlanta are growing strong. The largest Hispanic ancestries in Atlanta are Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban. There is a growing presence of Mexicans throughout the 10-county region. Mexicans are also concentrated along the Buford Highway and I-85 corridor, first noted in the 1990 census, have expanded and now extend well into Gwinnett County. Metro Atlanta has the 19th largest Hispanic population in the country. The Atlanta area also has a fast growing Asian American population. Most Asians in Atlanta are of Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Pakistani and Japanese descent.
Early immigrants in the Atlanta area were mostly Jews and Greeks. Since 1970, the Hispanic immigrant population, especially Mexicans, has experienced the most rapid growth, particularly in Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties. Since 2010, the Atlanta area has seen very notable growth with immigrants from India, China, South Korea, and Jamaica. Other notable countries immigrants come from are Vietnam, Eritrea, Nigeria, the Arabian gulf, Ukraine and Poland. Within a few decades, and in keeping with national trends, immigrants from England, Ireland, and German-speaking central Europe were no longer the majority of Atlanta's foreign-born population. The city's Italians included immigrants from northern Italy, many of whom had been in Atlanta since the 1890s; more recent arrivals from southern Italy; and Sephardic Jews from the Isle of Rhodes, which Italy had seized from Turkey in 1912.
Of the total population five years and older, 83.3% spoke only English at home, while 8.8% spoke Spanish, 3.9% another Indo-European language, and 2.8% an Asian language. 7.3% of Atlantans were born abroad (86th in the US). Atlanta's dialect has traditionally been a variation of Southern American English. The Chattahoochee River long formed a border between the Coastal Southern and Southern Appalachian dialects. Because of the development of corporate headquarters in the region, attracting migrants from other areas of the country, by 2003, Atlanta magazine concluded that Atlanta had become significantly "de-Southernized". A Southern accent was considered a handicap in some circumstances. In general, Southern accents are less prevalent among residents of the city and inner suburbs and among younger people; they are more common in the outer suburbs and among older people. At the same time, some residents of the city speak in Southern variations of African-American English.
Sexual orientation and gender identity
Atlanta has a thriving and diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. According to a survey by the Williams Institute, Atlanta ranked third among major American cities, behind San Francisco and slightly behind Seattle, with 12.8% of the city's total population identifying as LGB. The Midtown and Cheshire Bridge areas have historically been the epicenters of LGBT culture in Atlanta. Atlanta formed a reputation for being a place of tolerance after former mayor Ivan Allen Jr. dubbed it "the city too busy to hate" in the 1960s (referring to racial relations). Atlanta has consistently scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index that measures how inclusive a city's laws, policies and services are for LGBT people who live and work there.
Religion
Religion in Atlanta, while historically centered on Protestant Christianity, now encompasses many faiths, as a result of the city and metro area's increasingly international population. Some 63% of residents identified as some type of Protestant according to the Pew Research Center in 2014, but in recent decades the Catholic Church has increased in numbers and influence because of new migrants to the region. Metro Atlanta also has numerous ethnic or national Christian congregations, including Korean and Indian churches. Per the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020, overall, 73% of the population identify with some tradition or denomination of Christianity; despite continuing religious diversification, historically African American Protestant churches continue prevalence in the whole metropolitan area alongside historic Black Catholic churches. The larger non-Christian faiths according to both studies are Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. Overall, there are over 1,000 places of worship within Atlanta.
Economy
With a GDP of $385 billion, the Atlanta metropolitan area's economy is the 11th-largest in the country and the 22nd-largest in the world. Corporate operations play a major role in Atlanta's economy, as the city claims the nation's third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies (tied for third with Chicago). It also hosts the global headquarters of several corporations such as The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, Arby's, AT&T Mobility, Georgia-Pacific, Chick-fil-A, Church's Chicken, Dunkin Donuts, Norfolk Southern Railway, Mercedes-Benz USA, NAPA Auto Parts, Papa Johns, Porsche AG, Newell Brands, Marble Slab Creamery, and UPS. Over 75% of Fortune 1000 companies conduct business operations in the city's metro area, and the region hosts offices of over 1,250 multinational corporations. Many corporations are drawn to the city by its educated workforce; , 45% of adults aged 25 or older residing in the city have at least four-year college degrees, compared to the national average of 28%.
Atlanta started as a railroad town, and logistics has been a major component of the city's economy to this day. Atlanta serves as an important rail junction and contains major classification yards for Norfolk Southern and CSX. Since its construction in the 1950s, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) has served as a key engine of the city's economic growth. Delta Air Lines, the city's largest employer and the metro area's third-largest, operates the world's largest airline hub at Hartsfield-Jackson, and it has helped make it the world's busiest airport, in terms of both passenger traffic and aircraft operations. Partly due to the airport, Atlanta has been also a hub for diplomatic missions; , the city contains 26 consulates general, the seventh-highest concentration of diplomatic missions in the US.
Broadcasting is also an important aspect of Atlanta's economy. In the 1980s, media mogul Ted Turner founded the Cable News Network (CNN), Turner Network Television (TNT), HLN (HLN), Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Cartoon Network (CN), TruTV (truTV) and the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) in the city. Around the same time, Cox Enterprises, now the nation's third-largest cable television service and the publisher of over a dozen American newspapers, moved its headquarters to the city. Notable sports networks headquartered in Atlanta include Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, NBA TV, Bally Sports South, and Bally Sports Southeast. The Weather Channel is also based just outside of the city in suburban Cobb County.
Information technology (IT) has become an increasingly important part of Atlanta's economic output, earning the city the nickname the "Silicon peach". , Atlanta contains the fourth-largest concentration of IT jobs in the US, numbering 85,000+. The city is also ranked as the sixth fastest-growing for IT jobs, with an employment growth of 4.8% in 2012 and a three-year growth near 9%, or 16,000 jobs. Companies are drawn to Atlanta's lower costs and educated workforce.
Recently, Atlanta has been the center for film and television production, largely because of the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act, which awards qualified productions a transferable income tax credit of 20% of all in-state costs for film and television investments of $500,000 or more. Film and television production facilities based in Atlanta include Turner Studios, Pinewood Atlanta Studios, Tyler Perry Studios, Williams Street Productions, and the EUE/Screen Gems soundstages. Film and television production injected $9.5 billion into Georgia's economy in 2017, with Atlanta garnering most of the projects. Atlanta has emerged as the all-time most popular destination for film production in the United States and one of the 10 most popular destinations globally.
Compared to other American cities, Atlanta's economy in the past had been disproportionately affected by the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession, with the city's economy being ranked 68th among 100 American cities in a September 2014 report due to an elevated unemployment rate, declining real income levels, and a depressed housing market. From 2010 to 2011, Atlanta saw a 0.9% contraction in employment and plateauing income growth at 0.4%. Although unemployment had decreased to 7% by late 2014, this was still higher than the national unemployment rate of 5.8% Atlanta's housing market has also struggled, with home prices dropping by 2.1% in January 2012, reaching levels not seen since 1996. Compared with a year earlier, the average home price in Atlanta plummeted to 17.3% in February 2012, thus becoming the largest annual drop in the history of the index for any American or global city. The decline in home prices prompted some economists to deem Atlanta the worst housing market in the nation at the height of the depression. Nevertheless, the city's real estate market has resurged since 2012, so much median home value and rent growth significantly outpaced the national average by 2018, thanks to a rapidly-growing regional economy.
Arts and culture
Atlanta is noted for its lack of Southern culture. This is due to a large population of migrants from other parts of the U.S., in addition to many recent immigrants to the U.S. who have made the metropolitan area their home, establishing Atlanta as the cultural and economic hub of an increasingly multi-cultural metropolitan area. This unique cultural combination reveals itself in the arts district of Midtown, the quirky neighborhoods on the city's eastside, and the multi-ethnic enclaves found along Buford Highway.
Arts and theater
Atlanta is one of few United States cities with permanent, professional, and resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Atlanta Opera), ballet (Atlanta Ballet), orchestral music (Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), and theater (the Alliance Theatre). Atlanta attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions catering to a variety of interests. Atlanta's performing arts district is concentrated in Midtown Atlanta at the Woodruff Arts Center, which is home to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Alliance Theatre. The city frequently hosts touring Broadway acts, especially at The Fox Theatre, a historic landmark among the highest-grossing theaters of its size.
As a national center for the arts, Atlanta is home to significant art museums and institutions. The renowned High Museum of Art is arguably the South's leading art museum. The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) and the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film are the only such museums in the Southeast. Contemporary art museums include the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. Institutions of higher education contribute to Atlanta's art scene, with the Savannah College of Art and Design's Atlanta campus providing the city's arts community with a steady stream of curators, and Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum containing the largest collection of ancient art in the Southeast. In nearby Athens is the Georgia Museum of Art that is associated with the University of Georgia and is both an academic museum and the official art museum of the state of Georgia.
Atlanta has become one of the U.S.'s best cities for street art in recent years. It is home to Living Walls, an annual street art conference and the Outerspace Project, an annual event series that merges public art, live music, design, action sports, and culture. Examples of street art in Atlanta can be found on the Atlanta Street Art Map.
Music
Atlanta has played a major or contributing role in the development of various genres of American music at different points in the city's history. Beginning as early as the 1920s, Atlanta emerged as a center for country music, which was brought to the city by migrants from Appalachia. During the countercultural 1960s, Atlanta hosted the Atlanta International Pop Festival, with the 1969 festival taking place more than a month before Woodstock and featuring many of the same bands. The city was also a center for Southern rock during its 1970s heyday: the Allman Brothers Band's hit instrumental "Hot 'Lanta" is an ode to the city, while Lynyrd Skynyrd's famous live rendition of "Free Bird" was recorded at the Fox Theatre in 1976, with lead singer Ronnie Van Zant directing the band to "play it pretty for Atlanta". During the 1980s, Atlanta had an active punk rock scene centered on two of the city's music venues, 688 Club and the Metroplex, and Atlanta famously played host to the Sex Pistols' first U.S. show, which was performed at the Great Southeastern Music Hall.
The 1990s saw the city produce major mainstream acts across many different musical genres. Country music artist Travis Tritt, and R&B sensations Xscape, TLC, Usher and Toni Braxton, were just some of the musicians who call Atlanta home. The city also gave birth to Atlanta hip hop, a sub-genre that gained relevance and success with the introduction of the home-grown Atlantans known as Outkast, along with other Dungeon Family artists such as Organized Noize and Goodie Mob; however, it was not until the 2000s that Atlanta moved "from the margins to becoming hip-hop's center of gravity with another sub-genre called Crunk, part of a larger shift in hip-hop innovation to the South and East". Trap music is another sub-genre of hip-hop that started in the Atlanta area. In the 2000s, Atlanta was recognized by the Brooklyn-based Vice magazine for its indie rock scene, which revolves around the various live music venues found on the city's alternative eastside. To facilitate further local development, the state government provides qualified businesses and productions a 15% transferable income tax credit for in-state costs of music investments.
Film and television
As the national leader for motion picture and television production, and a top ten global leader, Atlanta plays a significant role in the entertainment industry. Atlanta is also considered a hub for filmmakers of color and houses Tyler Perry Studios (first African-American owned major studio) and Areu Bros. Studios (first Latino-American owned major studio). Atlanta doubles for other parts of the world and fictional settlements in blockbuster productions, among them the newer titles from The Fast and the Furious franchise and Marvel features such as Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War (both 2018). On the other hand, Gone With the Wind (1939), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Sharky's Machine (1981), The Slugger's Wife (1985), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), ATL (2006), Ride Along (2014) and Baby Driver (2017) are among several notable examples of films actually set in Atlanta. It was announced in 2022 a film about the 1956 Sugar Bowl and Atlanta riots would be produced here.
The city also provides the backdrop for shows such as Ozark, Watchmen, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Love is Blind, Star, Dolly Parton's Heartstrings, The Outsider, The Vampire Diaries, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and Atlanta, in addition to a myriad of animated and reality television programming.
Festivals
Atlanta's festival season stretches from January through November.
Atlanta has more festivals than any city in the southeastern United States.
Some notable festivals in Atlanta include Shaky Knees Music Festival, Dragon Con, the Peachtree Road Race, Music Midtown, the Atlanta Film Festival, National Black Arts Festival, Honda Battle of the Bands, Festival Peachtree Latino, Atlanta Pride, the neighborhood festivals in Inman Park, Atkins Park, Virginia-Highland (Summerfest), and the Little Five Points Halloween festival.
Tourism
, Atlanta is the seventh-most visited city in the United States, with over 35 million visitors per year. Although the most popular attraction among visitors to Atlanta is the Georgia Aquarium, and until 2012, the world's largest indoor aquarium, Atlanta's tourism industry is mostly driven by the city's history museums and outdoor attractions. Atlanta contains a notable number of historical museums and sites, including the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, which includes the preserved childhood home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his final resting place; the Atlanta Cyclorama & Civil War Museum, which houses a massive painting and diorama in-the-round, with a rotating central audience platform, depicting the Battle of Atlanta in the Civil War; the World of Coca-Cola, featuring the history of the world-famous soft drink brand and its well-known advertising; the College Football Hall of Fame, which honors college football and its athletes; the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, which explores the civil rights movement and its connection to contemporary human rights movements throughout the world; the Carter Center and Presidential Library, housing U.S. President Jimmy Carter's papers and other material relating to the Carter administration and the Carter family's life; and the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum, where Mitchell wrote the best-selling novel Gone with the Wind.
Atlanta contains several outdoor attractions. The Atlanta Botanical Garden, adjacent to Piedmont Park, is home to the Kendeda Canopy Walk, a skywalk that allows visitors to tour one of the city's last remaining urban forests from above the ground. The Canopy Walk is the only canopy-level pathway of its kind in the United States. Zoo Atlanta, in Grant Park, accommodates over 1,300 animals representing more than 220 species. Home to the nation's largest collections of gorillas and orangutans, the zoo is one of only four zoos in the U.S. to house giant pandas. Festivals showcasing arts and crafts, film, and music, including the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival, and Music Midtown, respectively, are also popular with tourists.
Tourists are drawn to the city's culinary scene, which comprises a mix of urban establishments garnering national attention, ethnic restaurants serving cuisine from every corner of the world, and traditional eateries specializing in Southern dining. Since the turn of the 21st century, Atlanta has emerged as a sophisticated restaurant town. Many restaurants opened in the city's gentrifying neighborhoods have received praise at the national level, including Bocado, Bacchanalia, and Miller Union in West Midtown, Empire State South in Midtown, and Two Urban Licks and Rathbun's on the east side. In 2011, The New York Times characterized Empire State South and Miller Union as reflecting "a new kind of sophisticated Southern sensibility centered on the farm but experienced in the city". Visitors seeking to sample international Atlanta are directed to Buford Highway, the city's international corridor, and suburban Gwinnett County. There, the nearly-million immigrants that make Atlanta home have established various authentic ethnic restaurants representing virtually every nationality on the globe. For traditional Southern fare, one of the city's most famous establishments is The Varsity, a long-lived fast food chain and the world's largest drive-in restaurant. Mary Mac's Tea Room and Paschal's are more formal destinations for Southern food.
Cuisine
Atlanta is best known for its barbecue, hamburgers, Southern fried chicken, and lemon pepper wings. Buford Highway is home to many ethnic cuisines such as Mexican and Asian foods.
Sports
Sports are an important part of the culture of Atlanta. The city is home to professional franchises for four major team sports: the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball, the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association, the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League, and Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer. In addition, many of the city's universities participate in collegiate sports. The city also regularly hosts international, professional, and collegiate sporting events.
The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. Originally established as the Boston Red Stockings in 1871, they are the oldest continually operating professional sports franchise in the United States. The Braves franchise overall has won eighteen National League pennants and four World Series championships in three different cities, with their first in 1914 as the Boston Braves, in 1957 as the Milwaukee Braves, and in 1995 and 2021 as the Atlanta Braves. The 1995 title occurred during an unprecedented run of 14 straight divisional championships from 1991 to 2005. The team plays at Truist Park, having moved from Turner Field for the 2017 season. The new stadium is outside the city limits, located northwest of downtown in the Cumberland/Galleria area of Cobb County.
The Atlanta Falcons have played in Atlanta since their inception in 1966. The team plays its home games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, having moved from the Georgia Dome in 2017. The Falcons have won the division title six times (1980, 1998, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2016) and the NFC championship in 1998 and 2016. They have been unsuccessful in both of their Super Bowl trips, losing to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999 and to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI in 2017, the largest comeback in Super Bowl history. In 2019, Atlanta also briefly hosted an Alliance of American Football team, the Atlanta Legends, but the league was suspended during its first season and the team folded.
The Atlanta Hawks were founded in 1946 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, playing in Moline, Illinois. They moved to Atlanta from St. Louis in 1968 and play their games in State Farm Arena. The Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association shared an arena with the Hawks for most of their existence; however the WNBA team moved to a smaller arena in the southern Atlanta suburb of College Park in 2021.
Professional soccer has been played in some form in Atlanta since 1967. Atlanta's first professional soccer team was the Atlanta Chiefs of the original North American Soccer League which won the 1968 NASL Championship and defeated English first division club Manchester City F.C. twice in international friendlies. In 1998 the Atlanta Silverbacks were formed, playing the new North American Soccer League. They now play as an amateur club in the National Premier Soccer League. In 2017, Atlanta United FC began play as Atlanta's first premier-division professional soccer club since the Chiefs. They won MLS Cup 2018, defeating the Portland Timbers 2–0. Fan reception has been very positive; the team has broken several single-game and season attendance records for both MLS and the U.S. Open Cup. The club is estimated by Forbes to be the most valuable club in Major League Soccer.
In ice hockey, Atlanta has had two National Hockey League franchises, both of which relocated to a city in Canada after playing in Atlanta for fewer than 15 years. The Atlanta Flames (now the Calgary Flames) played from 1972 to 1980, and the Atlanta Thrashers (now the Winnipeg Jets) played from 1999 to 2011. The Atlanta Gladiators, a minor league hockey team in the ECHL, have played in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth since 2003.
The ASUN Conference moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 2019.
Several other, less popular sports also have professional franchises in Atlanta. The Georgia Swarm compete in the National Lacrosse League. In Rugby union, on September 21, 2018, Major League Rugby announced that Atlanta was one of the expansion teams joining the league for the 2020 season named Rugby ATL. while in Rugby league, on March 31, 2021, Atlanta Rhinos left the USA Rugby League and turned fully professional for the first time, joining the new North American Rugby League.
Atlanta has long been known as the "capital" of college football in America. It is home to four-time national champion Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football and the Georgia State Panthers. Also, Atlanta is within a few hours driving distance of many of the universities that make up the Southeastern Conference, college football's most profitable and popular conference, and annually hosts the SEC Championship Game. Other annual college football events include the Aflac Kickoff Game, the Celebration Bowl, the MEAC/SWAC Challenge, and the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl which is one of College Football's major New Year's Six Bowl games and a College Football Playoff bowl. Atlanta additionally hosted the 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship and will be the host city again in 2025.
Atlanta regularly hosts a variety of sporting events. Most famous was the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics. The city has hosted the Super Bowl three times: Super Bowl XXVIII in 1994, Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000, and Super Bowl LIII in 2019. In professional golf, The Tour Championship, the final PGA Tour event of the season, is played annually at East Lake Golf Club. In 2001 and 2011, Atlanta hosted the PGA Championship, one of the four major championships in men's professional golf, at the Atlanta Athletic Club. In 2011, Atlanta hosted professional wrestling's annual WrestleMania. In soccer, Atlanta has hosted numerous international friendlies and CONCACAF Gold Cup matches. The city has hosted the NCAA Final Four Men's Basketball Championship five times, most recently in 2020. Atlanta will serve as one of the eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Every summer, Atlanta hosts the Atlanta Open, a men's professional tennis tournament.
Running is a popular local sport, and the city declares itself to be "Running City USA". The city hosts the Peachtree Road Race, the world's largest race, annually on Independence Day. Atlanta also hosts the nation's largest Thanksgiving day half marathon, which starts and ends at Center Parc Stadium. The Atlanta Marathon, which starts and ends at Centennial Olympic Park, routes through many of the city's historic landmarks, and its 2020 running will coincide with the U.S. Olympic marathon trials for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Parks and recreation
Atlanta's 343 parks, nature preserves, and gardens cover , which amounts to only 5.6% of the city's total acreage, compared to the national average of just over 10%. However, 64% of Atlantans live within a 10-minute walk of a park, a percentage equal to the national average. In its 2013 ParkScore ranking, The Trust for Public Land reported that among the park systems of the 50 most populous U.S. cities, Atlanta's park system received a ranking of 31. Piedmont Park, in Midtown, is Atlanta's most iconic green space. The park, which underwent a major renovation and expansion in recent years, attracts visitors from across the region and hosts cultural events throughout the year. Other notable city parks include Centennial Olympic Park, a legacy of the 1996 Summer Olympics that forms the centerpiece of the city's tourist district; Woodruff Park, which anchors the campus of Georgia State University; Grant Park, home to Zoo Atlanta; Chastain Park, which houses an amphitheater used for live music concerts; and the under construction Westside Park at Bellwood Quarry, the 280-acre green space and reservoir project slated to become the city's largest park when fully complete in the 2020s. The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, in the northwestern corner of the city, preserves a stretch of the river for public recreation opportunities.
The Atlanta Botanical Garden, adjacent to Piedmont Park, contains formal gardens, including a Japanese garden and a rose garden, woodland areas, and a conservatory that includes indoor exhibits of plants from tropical rainforests and deserts. The BeltLine, a former rail corridor that forms a loop around Atlanta's core, has been transformed into a series of parks, connected by a multi-use trail, increasing Atlanta's park space by 40%.
Atlanta offers resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. Golf and tennis are popular in Atlanta, and the city contains six public golf courses and 182 tennis courts. Facilities along the Chattahoochee River cater to watersports enthusiasts, providing the opportunity for kayaking, canoeing, fishing, boating, or tubing. The city's only skate park, a facility that offers bowls, curbs, and smooth-rolling concrete mounds, is at Historic Fourth Ward Park.
Government
Atlanta is governed by a mayor and the 15-member Atlanta City Council. The city council consists of one member from each of the city's 12 districts and three at-large members. The mayor may veto a bill passed by the council, but the council can override the veto with a two-thirds majority. The mayor of Atlanta is Andre Dickens, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot whose first term in office began on January 3, 2022. Every mayor elected since 1973 has been Black. In 2001, Shirley Franklin became the first woman to be elected mayor of Atlanta, and the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of a major Southern city. Atlanta city politics suffered from a notorious reputation for corruption during the 1990s administration of Mayor Bill Campbell, who was convicted by a federal jury in 2006 on three counts of tax evasion in connection with gambling winnings during trips he took with city contractors.
As the state capital, Atlanta is the site of most of Georgia's state government. The Georgia State Capitol building, located downtown, houses the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state, as well as the General Assembly. The Governor's Mansion is in a residential section of Buckhead. Atlanta serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The City of Atlanta annexed the CDC into its territory effective January 1, 2018. Atlanta also plays an important role in the federal judiciary system, containing the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Historically, Atlanta has been a stronghold for the Democratic Party. Although municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, nearly all of the city's elected officials are registered Democrats. The city is split among 14 state house districts and four state senate districts, all held by Democrats. At the federal level, Atlanta is split between three congressional districts. Most of the city is in the 5th district, represented by Democrat Nikema Williams. Much of southern Atlanta is in the 13th district, represented by Democrat David Scott. A small portion in the north is in the 11th district, represented by Republican Barry Loudermilk.
Atlanta Police Department is responsible for security in the city. Georgia National Guard is also based here.
Education
Tertiary education
Due to more than 15 colleges and universities in Atlanta, it is considered one of the nation's largest hubs for higher education.
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a prominent public research university in Midtown. It offers highly ranked degree programs in engineering, analytics, design, industrial management, the sciences, business, and architecture.
Georgia State University is a major public research university in Downtown Atlanta; it is the largest in student population of the 29 public colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia and is a significant contributor to the revitalization of the city's central business district.
Atlanta is home to nationally renowned private colleges and universities, most notably Emory University, a leading liberal arts and research institution that operates Emory Healthcare, the largest health care system in Georgia. The City of Atlanta annexed Emory into its territory effective January 1, 2018.
The Atlanta University Center is also in the city; it is the oldest and largest contiguous consortium of historically Black colleges in the nation, comprising Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Atlanta contains a campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design, a private art and design university that has proven to be a major factor in the recent growth of Atlanta's visual art community. Atlanta also boasts American Bar Association accredited law schools: Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, Emory University School of Law, and Georgia State University College of Law.
The University of Georgia's Terry College of Business operates a satellite campus in Atlanta's Buckhead district, a major financial center in the city. This location facilitates Executive and Professional MBA programs plus executive education offerings. The Buckhead campus also serves as a hub where Terry students, alumni, faculty, and staff can engage with the business community.
The Atlanta Regional Council of Higher Education (ARCHE) is dedicated to strengthening synergy among 19 public and private colleges and universities in the Atlanta region. Participating Atlanta region colleges and universities partner on joint-degree programs, cross-registration, library services, and cultural events.
Primary and secondary education
Approximately 49,000 students are enrolled in 106 schools in Atlanta Public Schools (APS), some of which are operated as charter schools. Atlanta is served by many private schools including, without limitation, Atlanta Jewish Academy, Atlanta International School, The Westminster Schools, Pace Academy, The Lovett School, The Paideia School, Holy Innocents' Episcopal School and Roman Catholic parochial schools operated by the Archdiocese of Atlanta.
In 2018 the City of Atlanta annexed a portion of DeKalb County containing the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University; this portion will be zoned to the DeKalb County School District until 2024, when it will transition into APS. In 2017 the number of children living in the annexed territory who attended public schools was nine.
Media
The primary network-affiliated television stations in Atlanta are WXIA-TV 11 (NBC), WANF 46 (CBS), WSB-TV 2 (ABC), and WAGA-TV 5 (Fox). Other major commercial stations include WPXA-TV 14 (Ion), WPCH-TV 17, (CW), WUVG-TV 34 (Univision/UniMás), WUPA 69 (Ind.), and WATL 36 (MyNetworkTV). WPXA-TV, WUVG-TV and WAGA-TV are network O&O's. The Atlanta metropolitan area is served by two public television stations (both PBS member stations), and two public radio stations. WGTV 8 is the flagship station of the statewide Georgia Public Television network, while WABE-TV is owned by Atlanta Public Schools. Georgia Public Radio is listener-funded and comprises one NPR member station, WABE, a classical music station also operated by Atlanta Public Schools. The second public radio, listener-funded NPR member station is WCLK, a jazz music station owned and operated by Clark Atlanta University.
Atlanta is served by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of a 1950 merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, with staff consolidation occurring in 1982 and separate publication of the morning Constitution and afternoon Journal ceasing in 2001. Alternative weekly newspapers include Creative Loafing, which has a weekly print circulation of 80,000. Atlanta Daily World is the oldest Black newspaper in Atlanta and one of the earliest and most influential Black newspapers in American history. Atlanta magazine is a monthly general-interest magazine based in and covering Atlanta.
Infrastructure
Transportation
Atlanta's transportation infrastructure comprises a complex network that includes a heavy rail rapid transit system, a light rail streetcar loop, a multi-county bus system, Amtrak service via the Crescent, multiple freight train lines, an Interstate Highway System, several airports, including the world's busiest, and over of bike paths.
Atlanta has a network of freeways that radiate out from the city, and automobiles are the dominant means of transportation in the region. Three major interstate highways converge in Atlanta: I-20 (east-west), I-75 (northwest-southeast), and I-85 (northeast-southwest). The latter two combine in the middle of the city to form the Downtown Connector (I-75/85), which carries more than 340,000 vehicles per day and is one of the most congested segments of interstate highway in the United States. Atlanta is mostly encircled by Interstate 285, a beltway locally known as "the Perimeter" that has come to mark the boundary between "Inside the Perimeter" (ITP), the city and close-in suburbs, and "Outside the Perimeter" (OTP), the outer suburbs and exurbs. The heavy reliance on automobiles for transportation in Atlanta has resulted in traffic, commute, and air pollution rates that rank among the worst in the country. The City of Atlanta has a higher than average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, 15.2 percent of Atlanta households lacked a car, and increased slightly to 16.4 percent in 2016. The national average is 8.7 percent in 2016. Atlanta averaged 1.31 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) provides public transportation in the form of buses, heavy rail, and a downtown light rail loop. Notwithstanding heavy automotive usage in Atlanta, the city's subway system is the eighth busiest in the country. MARTA rail lines connect key destinations, such as the airport, Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, and Perimeter Center. However, significant destinations, such as Emory University and Cumberland, remain unserved. As a result, a 2011 Brookings Institution study placed Atlanta 91st of 100 metro areas for transit accessibility. Emory University operates its Cliff shuttle buses with 200,000 boardings per month, while private minibuses supply Buford Highway. Amtrak, the national rail passenger system, provides service to Atlanta via the Crescent train (New York–New Orleans), which stops at Peachtree Station. In 2014, the Atlanta Streetcar opened to the public. The streetcar's line, which is also known as the Downtown Loop, runs around the downtown tourist areas of Peachtree Center, Centennial Olympic Park, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, and Sweet Auburn. The Atlanta Streetcar line is also being expanded on in the coming years to include a wider range of Atlanta's neighborhoods and important places of interest, with a total of over of track in the plan.
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world's busiest airport as measured by passenger traffic and aircraft traffic. The facility offers air service to over 150 U.S. destinations and more than 75 international destinations in 50 countries, with over 2,500 arrivals and departures daily. Delta Air Lines maintains its largest hub at the airport. Situated () south of downtown, the airport covers most of the land inside a wedge formed by Interstate 75, Interstate 85, and Interstate 285.
Cycling is a growing mode of transportation in Atlanta, more than doubling since 2009, when it comprised 1.1% of all commutes (up from 0.3% in 2000). Although Atlanta's lack of bike lanes and hilly topography may deter many residents from cycling, the city's transportation plan calls for the construction of of bike lanes by 2020, with the BeltLine helping to achieve this goal. In 2012, Atlanta's first "bike track" was constructed on 10th Street in Midtown. The two lane bike track runs from Monroe Drive west to Charles Allen Drive, with connections to the Beltline and Piedmont Park. Starting in June 2016, Atlanta received a bike sharing program, known as Relay Bike Share, with 100 bikes in Downtown and Midtown, which expanded to 500 bikes at 65 stations as of April 2017.
According to the 2016 American Community Survey (five-year average), 68.6% of working city of Atlanta residents commuted by driving alone, 7% carpooled, 10% used public transportation, and 4.6% walked. About 2.1% used all other forms of transportation, including taxi, bicycle, and motorcycle. About 7.6% worked at home.
The city has also become one of a handful of "scooter capitals", where companies like Lime and Bird have gained a major foothold by placing electric scooters on street corners and byways.
Emergency services
The city is served by the Atlanta Police Department (APD) , which numbers 2,000 officers and oversaw a 40% decrease in the city's crime rate between 2001 and 2009. In 2012, Forbes ranked Atlanta as the 6th most dangerous American city but by 2023 the city dropped out of its top 10.Despite some improvement in crime, street gangs have continued to plague the city since the 1980s. In 2022, there was a 200% increase in gang-related charges in the city. In 2023, it was estimated that about 1,000 gangs in the Atlanta area were responsible for at least 70% of all crime including identity theft, credit card fraud, and human trafficking. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Gang Task Force in partnership with the APD is leading efforts in dismantling gang activity and arresting culprits.
The Atlanta Fire Rescue Department provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the city from its 35 fire stations. In 2017, AFRD responded to over 100,000 calls for service over a coverage area of . The department also protects Hartsfield–Jackson with five fire stations on the property, serving over 1 million passengers from over 100 countries. The department protects over 3000 high-rise buildings, of the rapid rail system, and of interstate highway.
Emergency ambulance services are provided to city residents by hospital-based Grady EMS (Fulton County), and American Medical Response (DeKalb County).
Atlanta in January 2017 declared the city was a "welcoming city" and "will remain open and welcoming to all". Nonetheless, Atlanta does not consider itself to be a "sanctuary city". Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said: "Our city does not support ICE. We don't have a relationship with the U.S. Marshal[s] Service. We closed our detention center to ICE detainees, and we would not pick up people on an immigration violation."
Notable people
Tree canopy
Atlanta has a reputation as a "city in a forest" due to an abundance of trees that is rare among major cities. The city's main street is named after a tree, and beyond the Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead business districts, the skyline gives way to a dense canopy of woods that spreads into the suburbs. The city is home to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, an annual arts and crafts festival held one weekend during early April, when the native dogwoods are in bloom. The nickname is factually accurate, as vegetation covers 47.9% of the city as of 2017, the highest among all major American cities, and well above the national average of 27%. Atlanta's tree coverage does not go unnoticed—it was the main reason cited by National Geographic in naming Atlanta a "Place of a Lifetime".
The city's lush tree canopy, which filters out pollutants and cools sidewalks and buildings, has increasingly been under assault from man and nature due to heavy rains, drought, aged forests, new pests, and urban construction. A 2001 study found Atlanta's heavy tree cover declined from 48% in 1974 to 38% in 1996. Community organizations and the city government are addressing the problem. Trees Atlanta, a non-profit organization founded in 1985, has planted and distributed over 113,000 shade trees in the city, and Atlanta's government has awarded $130,000 in grants to neighborhood groups to plant trees. Fees are additionally imposed on developers that remove trees on their property per a citywide ordinance, active since 1993.
Sister cities
Atlanta's sister cities are:
Montego Bay, Jamaica (1972)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1972)
Lagos, Nigeria (1974)
Toulouse, France (1974)
Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK (1977)
Taipei, Taiwan (1979)
Daegu, South Korea (1981)
Brussels, Belgium (1983)
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (1987)
Tbilisi, Georgia (1988)
Olympia, Greece (1994)
Bucharest, Romania (1994)
Cotonou, Benin (1995)
Salcedo, Dominican Republic (1996)
Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain (1996)
Nuremberg, Germany (1998)
Ra'anana, Israel (2000)
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2004)
Fukuoka, Japan (2005)
Sassari, Italy (2020)
See also
Cities and metropolitan areas of the United States
USS Atlanta, 5 ships
Notes
References
Further reading
Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events: Years of Change and Challenge, 1940–1976 by Franklin M. Garrett, Harold H. Martin
Darlene R. Roth and Andy Ambrose. Metropolitan Frontiers: A Short History of Atlanta. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996. An overview of the city's history with an emphasis on its growth.
Sjoquist, Dave (ed.) The Atlanta Paradox. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2000.
Stone, Clarence. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. University Press of Kansas. 1989.
Elise Reid Boylston. Atlanta: Its Lore, Legends and Laughter. Doraville: privately printed, 1968. Many anecdotes about the history of the city.
Frederick Allen. Atlanta Rising. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996. A detailed history of Atlanta from 1946 to 1996, with much about City Councilman, later Mayor, William B. Hartsfield's work in making Atlanta a major air transport hub, and about the civil rights movement as it affected (and was affected by) Atlanta.
External links
Official city website
Atlanta Department of Watershed Management
Atlanta Police Department
Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau
Atlanta entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive from the Digital Library of Georgia
Atlanta History Photograph Collection from the Atlanta History Center
Atlanta, Georgia, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
Scientific American, "The Atlanta Exposition", October 22, 1881, pp. 257
Cities in Georgia (U.S. state)
Cities in DeKalb County, Georgia
Cities in Fulton County, Georgia
1837 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Cities in the Atlanta metropolitan area
County seats in Georgia (U.S. state)
Municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state)
Populated places established in 1837
Georgia populated places on the Chattahoochee River
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The AIM-7 Sparrow (Air Intercept Missile) is an American medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile operated by the United States Air Force, United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and various other air forces and navies. Sparrow and its derivatives were the West's principal beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile from the late 1950s until the 1990s. It remains in service, although it is being phased out in aviation applications in favor of the more advanced AIM-120 AMRAAM.
The early Sparrow was intended primarily for use against larger targets, especially bombers, and had numerous operational limitations in other uses. Against smaller targets, the need to receive a strong reflected radar signal made it difficult to achieve lock-on at the missile's effective range. As the launching aircraft's own radar needed to be pointed at the target throughout the engagement, this meant that in fighter-vs-fighter combat the enemy fighter would often approach within the range of shorter-range infrared homing missiles while the launching aircraft had to continue flying towards its target. Additionally, early models were only effective against targets at roughly the same or higher altitudes, below which reflections from the ground became a problem.
A number of upgraded Sparrow designs were developed to address these issues. In the early 1970s, the RAF developed the Skyflash version with an inverse monopulse seeker and improved motor, while the Italian Air Force introduced the similar Aspide. Both could be fired at targets below the launching fighter ("look-down, shoot down"), were more resistant to countermeasures, and were much more accurate in the terminal phase. This basic concept then became part of the US Sparrows in the M model (for monopulse) and some of these were later updated as the P model, the last to be produced in the US. Aspides sold to China resulted in the locally produced PL-11. The Japan Self-Defense Forces also employ the Sparrow missile, though it is being phased out and replaced by the Mitsubishi AAM-4.
The Sparrow was also used as the basis for a surface-to-air missile, the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, used by a number of navies for air defense. Fired at low altitude and flying directly at its target, though, the range of the missile in this role is greatly reduced because of the higher air density of the lower atmosphere. With the retirement of the Sparrow in the air-to-air role, a new version of the Sea Sparrow was produced to address this concern, producing the larger and more capable RIM-162 ESSM.
Development
Sparrow I
The Sparrow emerged from a late-1940s United States Navy program to develop a guided rocket weapon for air-to-air use. In 1947 the Navy contracted Sperry to build a beam-riding version of a standard HVAR, the standard unguided aerial rocket, under Project Hotshot. The weapon was initially dubbed KAS-1, then AAM-2, and — from 1948 on — AAM-N-2. The airframe was developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. The diameter of the HVAR proved to be inadequate for the electronics, leading Douglas to expand the missile's airframe to diameter. The prototype weapon began unpowered flight tests in 1947, and made its first aerial interception in 1952.
After a protracted development cycle the initial AAM-N-2 Sparrow entered limited operational service in 1954 with specially modified Douglas F3D Skyknight all-weather carrier night fighters. In 1956, they were joined by the McDonnell F3H-2M Demon and Vought F7U Cutlass fighter aircraft. Compared to the modern versions, the Sparrow I was more streamlined and featured a bullet-shaped airframe with a long pointed nose.
Sparrow I was a limited and rather primitive weapon. The limitations of beam-riding guidance (which was slaved to an optical sight on single-seater fighters and to radar on night fighters) restricted the missile to attacks against targets flying a straight course and made it essentially useless against a maneuvering target. Only about 2,000 rounds were produced to this standard.
Sparrow II
As early as 1950 Douglas examined equipping the Sparrow with an active radar seeker, initially known as XAAM-N-2a Sparrow II, the original retroactively becoming Sparrow I. In 1952 it was given the new code AAM-N-3. The active radar made the Sparrow II a "fire and forget" weapon, allowing several to be fired at separate targets at the same time.
By 1955 Douglas proposed going ahead with development, intending it to be the primary weapon for the F5D Skylancer interceptor. It was later selected, with some controversy, to be the primary weapon for the Canadian Avro Arrow supersonic interceptor, along with the new Astra fire-control system. For Canadian use and as a second source for US missiles, Canadair was selected to build the missiles in Quebec.
The small size of the missile forebody and the K-band AN/APQ-64-radar limited performance, and it was never able to work in testing. After considerable development and test firings in the U.S. and Canada, Douglas abandoned development in 1956. Canadair continued development until the Arrow was cancelled in 1959.
Sparrow X
A subvariant of the Sparrow I armed with the same nuclear warhead as the MB-1 Genie was proposed in 1958 but was cancelled shortly thereafter.
Sparrow III
Concurrently with the development of the Sparrow I, in 1951 Raytheon began work on a semi-active radar-homing version, the AAM-N-6 Sparrow III. The first of these weapons entered United States Navy service in 1958.
The AAM-N-6a was similar to the -6, but used a new Thiokol liquid-fuel rocket engine for improved performance. It also included changes to the guidance electronics to make it effective at higher closing speeds. The -6a was also selected to arm the Air Force's F-110A Spectre (F-4 Phantom) fighters in 1962, known to them as the AIM-101. It entered production in 1959, with 7500 being built.
With a reversion to a Rocketdyne solid-fuel motor, the AAM-N-6b started production in 1963. The new motor significantly increased the maximum range to for head-on attacks.
During this year the Air Force and Navy agreed on standardized naming conventions for their missiles. The Sparrows became the AIM-7 series. The original Sparrow I and aborted Sparrow II became the AIM-7A and AIM-7B, despite both being out of service. The -6, -6a, and -6b became the AIM-7C, AIM-7D, and AIM-7E respectively.
25,000 AIM-7Es were produced and saw extensive use during the Vietnam War, where its performance was considered disappointing. The mixed results were a combination of reliability problems (exacerbated by the tropical climate), limited pilot training in fighter-to-fighter combat, and restrictive rules of engagement that generally prohibited BVR (beyond visual range) engagements. The Pk (kill probability) of the AIM-7E was less than 10%; US fighter pilots shot down 59 aircraft out of the 612 Sparrows fired. Of the 612 AIM-7D/E/E-2 missiles fired, 97 (or 15.8%) hit their targets, resulting in 56 (or 9.2%) kills. Two kills were obtained beyond visual range.
In 1969 an improved version, the E-2, was introduced with clipped wings and various changes to the fuzing. Considered a "dogfight Sparrow", the AIM-7E-2 was intended to be used at shorter ranges where the missile was still travelling at high speeds, and in the head-on aspect, making it much more useful in the visual limitations imposed on the engagements. Even so, its kill rate was only 13% in combat, leading to a practice of ripple-firing all four at once in hopes of increasing kill probability. Its worst tendency was to detonate prematurely about 1,000 feet ahead of the launching aircraft, but it also had many motor failures, erratic flights, and fuzing problems. An E-3 version included additional changes to the fuzing, and the E-4 featured a modified seeker for use with the F-14 Tomcat.
Vietnam War (1965–1973) records
Post Vietnam
Improved versions of the AIM-7 were developed in the 1970s in an attempt to address the weapon's limitations. The AIM-7F, which entered service in 1976, had a dual-stage rocket motor for longer range, solid-state electronics for greatly improved reliability, and a larger warhead. Even this version had room for improvement, leading British Aerospace and the Italian firm Alenia to develop advanced versions of Sparrow with better performance and improved electronics as the BAe Skyflash and Alenia Aspide, respectively.
The most common version of the Sparrow today, the AIM-7M, entered service in 1982 and featured a new inverse monopulse seeker (matching the capabilities of Skyflash), active radar proximity fuse, digital controls, improved ECM resistance, and better low-altitude performance. It was used to good advantage in the 1991 Gulf War, where it scored many USAF air-to-air kills. Of 44 missiles fired, 30 (68.2%) hit their intended targets resulting in 24/26 (54.5%/59.1%) kills. 19 kills were obtained beyond visual range.
The AIM-7P is similar in most ways to the M versions, and was primarily an upgrade for existing M-series missiles. Changes were mainly to the software, improving low-level performance. A follow-on Block II upgrade added a new rear receiver allowing the missile to receive mid-course correction from the launching aircraft. Plans initially called for all M versions to be upgraded, but currently P's are being issued as required to replace M's lost or removed from the inventory.
The final version of the missile was to have been the AIM-7R, which added an infrared homing seeker to an otherwise unchanged AIM-7P Block II. A general wind-down of the budget led to it being cancelled in 1997.
The Sparrow is now being phased out with the availability of the active-radar AIM-120 AMRAAM, but is likely to remain in service for several years.
Variants
Foreign versions
Canada
As part of the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow program, Canadair (now Bombardier) partnered with Douglas Aircraft Company in the development of the Sparrow II (AAM-N-3/AIM-7B). After Douglas dropped out of this program, Canadair continued on with it until the termination of the Arrow project.
The AAM-N-3 Sparrow II was unique in that it had a fully active radar guidance system. This combined both a radar transmitter and receiver in the missile, making it unnecessary for the pilot to keep the aircraft aimed at the target after firing the missile, unlike Semi-active radar homing (SARH) missiles which require continuous radar-assisted guidance throughout flight. This allowed the aircraft that fired the AAM-N-3 to turn away, prosecute other targets, and/or escape from potential retaliatory missiles fired by the enemy aircraft during the time it took for the Sparrow to reach its target. Despite the significant advantages of this design over SARH guidance, all subsequent models of the Sparrow use semi-active radar homing.
To accommodate the active radar guidance system, the AAM-N-3 Sparrow II had a much greater volume than its predecessor. Its size would subsequently set the precedent for all future Sparrow variants.
In 1959, Canadair had completed five missiles based on airframes from Douglas, and built two models from scratch, when the program was cancelled with the cancellation of the Arrow.
Italy
The Italian company Finmeccanica (now Leonardo S.p.A.), Alenia Difesa licensed the AIM-7E Sparrow technology from the US, and produced its own version.
Later in the 1980s, Alenia started to produce an improved version of the AIM-7 called the Aspide. Compared to the AIM-7E, it received an improved new monopulse guidance system that allowed for a better hit ratio and easier targeting of enemies at low altitude with ground-clutter confusion.
It also received a new and more powerful engine and new control surfaces. These control surfaces were each independent of the others, giving the missile greatly improved maneuverability over the AIM-7E and the English Skyflash that still used dependent control surfaces.
People's Republic of China
The PL-11 and HQ-6 is a family of Chinese missiles developed by the Shanghai Academy of Science and Technology, largely based on the Italian Aspide version of the Sparrow missile.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union acquired an AIM-7 in 1968 and a Vympel team started copying it as the K-25. The missile did not enter production as the R-23 was thought to have better versatility, range, signal processing logic, and immunity to interference. K-25 work ended in 1971, but analysis of the Sparrow was later used to inform the design of the Vympel R-27, particularly the servomechanisms and movable wings.
UK
British Aerospace (BAe) licensed the AIM-7E2 technology in the 1970s, producing the Skyflash missile. Skyflash used a Marconi XJ521 monopulse seeker together with improvements to the electronics. It was powered by the Aerojet Mk52 mod 2 rocket engine (later by the Rocketdyne Mk38 mod 4). Skyflash entered service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) on their Phantom FG.1/FGR.2 in 1978, and later on the Tornado F3. Skyflash was also exported to Sweden for use on their Viggen fighters.
An upgraded version with active radar seeker, called Active Sky Flash, was proposed by BAe and Thomson-CSF, but did not receive funding because the RAF opted for other missiles.
Design
The Sparrow has four major sections: guidance section, warhead, control, and rocket motor (currently the Hercules MK-58 solid-propellant rocket motor). It has a cylindrical body with four wings at mid-body and four tail fins. Although the external dimensions of the Sparrow remained relatively unchanged from model to model, the internal components of newer missiles represent major improvements, with vastly increased capabilities. The warhead is of the continuous-rod type.
As with other semi-active radar guided missiles, the missile does not generate radar signals, but instead homes in on reflected continuous-wave signals from the launch platform's radar. The receiver also senses the guidance radar to enable comparisons that enhance the missile's resistance to passive jamming.
Principle of guidance
The launching aircraft illuminates the target with its radar. In 1950s radars, these were single-target tracking devices using a nutating horn as part of the antenna, thereby sweeping the beam in a small cone. Signal processing is applied to determine the direction of maximum illumination, thereby developing a signal to steer the antenna toward the target. The missile detects the reflected signal from the target with a high-gain antenna in a similar fashion and steers the entire missile toward closure with the target. The missile guidance also samples a portion of the illuminating signal via rearward-pointing waveguides. The comparison of these two signals enabled logic circuits to determine the true target reflection signal, even if the target were to eject radar-reflecting chaff.
Operators
See also
List of missiles
1963 United States Tri-Service rocket and guided missile designation system
Comparable Missiles
AIM-54 Phoenix
R-27
Super 530
Notes
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
McCarthy Jr., Donald J. MiG Killers, A Chronology of U.S. Air Victories in Vietnam 1965-1973. 2009; Specialty Press, USA. .
External links
Aero Arrow Recovery Canada
Designation-Systems.Net
AIM-7
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s
Raytheon Company products
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The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) (pronounced /æmɹæm/), is an American beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile capable of all-weather day-and-night operations. It uses active transmit-receive radar guidance instead of semi-active receive-only radar guidance. It is a fire-and-forget weapon, unlike the previous generation Sparrow missiles which required full guidance from the firing aircraft. When an AMRAAM missile is launched, NATO pilots use the brevity code "Fox Three".
more than 14,000 had been produced for the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, and 33 international customers. The AMRAAM has been used in several engagements, achieving 16 air-to-air kills in conflicts over Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, India, and Syria.
Origins
AIM-7 Sparrow MRM
The AIM-7 Sparrow medium range missile (MRM) was purchased by the US Navy from original developer Hughes Aircraft in the 1950s as its first operational air-to-air missile with "beyond visual range" (BVR) capability. With an effective range of about , it was introduced as a radar beam-riding missile and then it was improved to a semi-active radar guided missile which would home in on reflections from a target illuminated by the radar of the launching aircraft. It was effective at visual to beyond visual range. The early beam riding versions of the Sparrow missiles were integrated onto the McDonnell F3H Demon and Vought F7U Cutlass, but the definitive AIM-7 Sparrow was the primary weapon for the all-weather McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter/interceptor, which lacked an internal gun in its U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and early U.S. Air Force versions. The F-4 carried up to four AIM-7s in built-in recesses under its belly.
Designed for use against non-maneuvering targets such as bombers, the missiles initially performed poorly against fighters over North Vietnam, and were progressively improved until they proved highly effective in dogfights. Together with the short-range, infrared-guided AIM-9 Sidewinder, they replaced the AIM-4 Falcon IR and radar guided series for use in air combat by the USAF as well. A disadvantage to semi-active homing was that only one target could be illuminated by the launching fighter plane at a time. Also, the launching aircraft had to remain pointed in the direction of the target (within the azimuth and elevation of its own radar set) which could be difficult or dangerous in air-to-air combat.
An active-radar variant called the Sparrow II was developed to address these drawbacks, but the U.S. Navy pulled out of the project in 1956. The Royal Canadian Air Force, which took over development in the hopes of using the missile to arm their prospective Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow interceptor, soon followed in 1958. The electronics of the time simply could not be miniaturized enough to make Sparrow II a viable working weapon. It would take decades, and a new generation of digital electronics, to produce an effective active-radar air-to-air missile as compact as the Sparrow.
AIM-54 Phoenix LRM
The US Navy later developed the AIM-54 Phoenix long-range missile (LRM) for the fleet air defense mission. It was a large , Mach 5 missile designed to counter cruise missiles and the bombers that launched them. Originally intended for the straight-wing Douglas F6D Missileer and then the navalized General Dynamics–Grumman F-111B, it finally saw service with the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, the only fighter capable of carrying such a heavy missile. The Phoenix was the first US fire-and-forget, multiple-launch, radar-guided missile: one which used its own active guidance system to guide itself without help from the launch aircraft when it closed on its target. This, in theory, gave a Tomcat with a six-Phoenix load the unprecedented capability of tracking and destroying up to six targets beyond visual range, as far as away—the only US fighter with such capability.
A full load of six Phoenix missiles and its dedicated launcher exceeded a typical Vietnam-era bomb load. Its service in the US Navy was primarily as a deterrent, as its use was hampered by restrictive rules of engagement in conflicts such as 1991 Gulf War, Southern Watch (enforcing no-fly zones), and Iraq War. The US Navy retired the Phoenix in 2004 in light of availability of the AIM-120 AMRAAM on the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet and the pending retirement of the F-14 Tomcat from active service in late 2006.
ACEVAL/AIMVAL
The Department of Defense conducted an extensive evaluation of air combat tactics and missile technology from 1974 to 1978 at Nellis AFB using the F-14 Tomcat and F-15 Eagle equipped with Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles as the blue force and aggressor F-5E aircraft equipped with AIM-9L all-aspect Sidewinders as the red force. This joint test and evaluation (JT&E) was designated Air Combat Evaluation/Air Intercept Missile Evaluation (ACEVAL/AIMVAL). A principal finding was that the necessity to produce illumination for the Sparrow until impact resulted in the red force's being able to launch their all-aspect Sidewinders before impact, resulting in mutual kills. What was needed was Phoenix-type multiple-launch and terminal active capability in a Sparrow-size airframe. This led to a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with European allies (principally the UK and Germany for development) for the US to develop an advanced, medium-range, air-to-air missile with the USAF as lead service. The MOA also assigned responsibility for development of an advanced, short-range, air-to-air missile to the European team; this would become the British ASRAAM.
Requirements
By the 1990s, the reliability of the Sparrow had improved so much from the dismal days of Vietnam that it accounted for the largest number of aerial targets destroyed in the Desert Storm part of the Gulf War. But while the USAF had passed on the Phoenix and its own similar AIM-47 Falcon/Lockheed YF-12 to optimize dogfight performance, it still needed a multiple-launch fire-and-forget capability for the F-15 and F-16. The AMRAAM would need to be fitted on fighters as small as the F-16, and fit in the same spaces that were designed to fit the Sparrow on the F-4 Phantom. The European partners needed AMRAAM to be integrated on aircraft as small as the BAe Sea Harrier. The US Navy needed the AMRAAM to be carried on the F/A-18 Hornet and wanted capability for two to be carried on a launcher that normally carried one Sparrow to allow for more air-to-ground weapons. Finally, the AMRAAM became one of the primary air-to-air weapons of the new Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter, which needed to place all of its weapons into internal weapons bays in order to help achieve an extremely low radar cross-section.
Development
AMRAAM was developed as the result of an agreement (the Family of Weapons MOA, no longer in effect by 1990), among the United States and several other NATO nations to develop air-to-air missiles and to share production technology. Under this agreement, the U.S. was to develop the next generation medium range missile (AMRAAM) and Europe would develop the next generation short range missile (ASRAAM). Although Europe initially adopted the AMRAAM, an effort to develop the MDBA Meteor, a competitor to AMRAAM, was begun in UK. Eventually, the ASRAAM was developed solely by the British, but using another source for its infrared seeker. After protracted development, the deployment of AMRAAM (AIM-120A) began in September 1991 in US Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle fighter squadrons. The US Navy soon followed (in 1993) in its McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet squadrons.
The Russian Air Force counterpart of AMRAAM is the somewhat similar R-77 (NATO codename AA-12 Adder), sometimes referred to in the West as the "AMRAAMski". Likewise, France began its own air-to-air missile development with the MICA concept that used a common airframe for separate radar-guided and infrared-guided versions.
Operational history
United States
The AMRAAM was used for the first time on December 27, 1992, when a USAF General Dynamics F-16D Fighting Falcon shot down an Iraqi MiG-25 that violated the southern no-fly-zone. This missile had been returned from the flight line as defective a day earlier. The AMRAAM gained a second victory in January 1993 when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down by a USAF F-16C.
On 28 February 1994, a Republika Srpska Air Force J-21 Jastreb aircraft was shot down by a USAF F-16C that was patrolling the UN-imposed no-fly zone over Bosnia. In that engagement, at least three other Serbian aircraft were shot down by USAF F-16Cs using AIM-9 missiles (Banja Luka incident). At that point, three launches in combat had resulted in three kills, resulting in the AMRAAM's being informally named "slammer" in the second half of the 1990s.
In 1994, two USAF F-15 fighters patrolling Iraq's Northern No-Fly Zone mistook a pair of US Army Black Hawk helicopters for Iraqi helicopters, and shot them down. One was downed with an AIM-120, and one with an AIM-9 Sidewinder.
In 1998 and 1999 AMRAAMs were again fired by USAF F-15 fighters at Iraqi aircraft violating the No-Fly-Zone, but this time they failed to hit their targets. During spring 1999, AMRAAMs saw their main combat action during Operation Allied Force, the Kosovo bombing campaign. Six Serbian MiG-29s were shot down by NATO (four USAF F-15Cs, one USAF F-16C, and one Dutch F-16A MLU), all of them using AIM-120 missiles (the supposed kill by the F-16C may have actually been friendly fire, a man-portable SA-7 fired by Serbian infantry).
On 18 June 2017, a US Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet engaged and shot down a Sukhoi Su-22 of the Syrian Air Force over northern Syria, using an AIM-120. An AIM-9X Sidewinder had failed to bring down the Syrian jet. Some sources have claimed the AIM-9X was decoyed by flares, although the F/A-18E pilot, Lieutenant Commander Michael “MOB” Tremel stated it was unclear why the AIM-9X failed, mentioning no use of flares by the Su-22, saying "I [lost] the smoke trail, and I have no idea what happened to the missile at that point".
Turkey
On 23 March 2014 a Turkish Air Force F-16 from 182 Squadron shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force MiG-23BN with an AIM-120C-7.
On 24 November 2015 a Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24M strike aircraft with an AIM-120 missile over northern Syria after it allegedly crossed into Turkish airspace.
On 1 March 2020, Turkish Air Force F-16s downed two Su-24s belonging to the Syrian Air Force using two AIM-120C-7s.
On 3 March 2020, a Syrian Air Force L-39 was shot down over Idlib by Turkish Air Force F-16s from inside Turkish airspace with AIM-120C-7 at a distance of about . As of 2020, this has been the longest range AIM-120 kill.
Pakistan
On 27 February 2019, India stated that Pakistan Air Force (PAF) used AMRAAMs during Operation Swift Retort. Indian officials displayed fragments of an alleged AIM-120C-5 missile as a proof of its usage during the engagement. The only confirmed loss of the engagement was an Indian Air Force MiG-21, while Pakistan said it also shot down an Su-30MKI Flanker-H. IAF officials denied any loss of Su-30 MKI and also told Indian media that an IAF Sukhoi Su-30MKI had dodged and jammed 3-4 AMRAAMs during the dogfight.
Saudi Arabia
During the Yemeni War, Saudi Arabia extensively used F-15 and Typhoon aircraft together with Patriot batteries to intercept and down Yemeni drones and missiles. In November 2021, a possible Foreign Military Sales contract was notified to the US Congress regarding the provision to Saudi Arabia for a mix of 280 AIM-120C-7 and C-8 missiles and related support equipment and service that would be used on Saudi F-15 and Typhoon aircraft. The deal was required to replenish Saudi missiles stock, running low due to extensive use of AMRAAMs and Patriots against Yemeni missiles and drones.
Spain
On 7 August 2018, a Spanish Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon accidentally launched a missile in Estonia. There were no human casualties, but a ten-day search operation for the missile was unsuccessful.
Effectiveness
The kill probability (Pk) is determined by several factors, including aspect (head-on interception, side-on or tail-chase), altitude, the speed of the missile and the target, and how hard the target can turn. Typically, if the missile has sufficient energy during the terminal phase, which comes from being launched at close range to the target from an aircraft with an altitude and speed advantage, it will have a good chance of success. This chance drops as the missile is fired at longer ranges as it runs out of overtake speed at long ranges, and if the target can force the missile to turn it might bleed off enough speed that it can no longer chase the target. Operationally, the missile, which was designed for beyond visual range combat, has a Pk of 0.59. The targets included six MiG-29s, a MiG-25, a MiG-23, two Su-22s, a Galeb, and a US Army Blackhawk that was targeted by mistake.
Operational features summary
AMRAAM has an all-weather, beyond-visual-range (BVR) capability. It improves the aerial combat capabilities of US and allied aircraft to meet the threat of enemy air-to-air weapons as they existed in 1991. AMRAAM serves as a follow-on to the AIM-7 Sparrow missile series. The new missile is faster, smaller, and lighter, and has improved capabilities against low-altitude targets. It also incorporates a datalink to guide the missile to a point where its active radar turns on and makes terminal intercept of the target. An inertial reference unit and micro-computer system makes the missile less dependent upon the fire-control system of the aircraft.
Once the missile closes in on the target, its active radar guides it to intercept. This feature, known as "fire-and-forget", frees the aircrew from the need to further provide guidance, enabling the aircrew to aim and fire several missiles simultaneously at multiple targets and break a radar lock after the missile seeker goes active and guide themselves to the targets.
The missile also features the ability to "Home on Jamming," giving it the ability to switch over from active radar homing to passive homing – homing on jamming signals from the target aircraft. Software on board the missile allows it to detect if it is being jammed, and guide on its target using the proper guidance system.
Guidance system overview
Interception course stage
AMRAAM uses two-stage guidance when fired at long range.
The aircraft passes data to the missile just before launch, giving it information about the location of the target aircraft from the launch point, including its direction and speed. This information is generally obtained using the launching aircraft's radar, although it could come from an infrared search and track system, from another fighter aircraft via a data link, or from an AWACS aircraft. Using its built-in inertial navigation system (INS), the missile uses the information provided pre-launch to fly on an interception course toward the target.
After launch, if the firing aircraft or surrogate continues to track the target, periodic updates, e.g. changes in the target's direction and speed, are sent from the launch aircraft to the missile, allowing the missile to adjust its course, via actuation of the rear fins, so that it is able to close to a self-homing distance where it will be close enough to "catch" the target aircraft in the basket (the missile's radar field of view in which it will be able to lock onto the target aircraft, unassisted by the launch aircraft).
Not all armed services using the AMRAAM have elected to purchase the mid-course update option, which limits AMRAAM's effectiveness in some scenarios. The RAF initially opted not to use mid-course update for its Tornado F3 force, only to discover that without it, testing proved the AMRAAM was less effective in beyond visual range (BVR) engagements than the older semi-active radar homing BAE Skyflash (a development of the Sparrow), since the AIM-120's own radar is necessarily of lesser range and power as compared to that of the launch aircraft.
Terminal stage and impact
Once the missile closes to self-homing distance, it turns on its active radar seeker and searches for the target aircraft. If the target is in or near the expected location, the missile will find it and guide itself to the target from this point. If the missile is fired at short range, within visual range (WVR) or the near BVR, it can use its active seeker just after launch to guide it to intercept.
Boresight Visual mode
Apart from the radar-slaved mode, there is a free guidance mode, called "Visual". This mode is host-aircraft radar guidance-free—the missile just fires and locks onto the first thing it sees. This mode can be used for defensive shots, i.e. when the enemy has numerical superiority.
Variants and upgrades
Air-to-air missile versions
There are currently four main variants of AMRAAM, all in service with the United States Air Force, United States Navy, and the United States Marine Corps. The AIM-120A is no longer in production and shares the enlarged wings and fins with the successor AIM-120B. The AIM-120C has smaller "clipped" aerosurfaces to enable internal carriage on the USAF F-22 Raptor. AIM-120B deliveries began in 1994.
The AIM-120C deliveries began in 1996. The C-variant has been steadily upgraded since it was introduced. The AIM-120C-6 contained an improved fuze (Target Detection Device) compared to its predecessor. The AIM-120C-7 development began in 1998 and included improvements in homing and greater range (actual amount of improvement unspecified). It was successfully tested in 2003 and is currently being produced for both domestic and foreign customers. It helped the U.S. Navy replace the F-14 Tomcats with F/A-18E/F Super Hornets – the loss of the F-14's long-range AIM-54 Phoenix missiles (already retired) is offset with a longer-range AMRAAM-D. The lighter weight of the enhanced AMRAAM enables an F/A-18E/F pilot greater bring-back weight upon carrier landings.
The AIM-120D is an upgraded version of the AMRAAM with improvements in almost all areas, including 50% greater range (than the already-extended range AIM-120C-7) and better guidance over its entire flight envelope yielding an improved kill probability (Pk). Initial production began in 2006 under the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase of program testing and ceased in September of 2009. Raytheon began testing the D model on August 5, 2008, the company reported that an AIM-120D launched from an F/A-18F Super Hornet passed within lethal distance of a QF-4 target drone at the White Sands Missile Range. The range of the AIM-120D is classified, but is thought to extend to about .
The AIM-120D (P3I Phase 4) is a development of the AIM-120C with a two-way data link, more accurate navigation using a GPS-enhanced IMU, an expanded no-escape envelope, improved HOBS (high off-boresight) capability, and a max speed of Mach 4. The AIM-120D is a joint USAF/USN project for which Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation (FOT&E) was completed in 2014. The USN was scheduled to field it from 2014, and AIM-120D will be carried by all Pacific carrier groups by 2020, although the 2013 sequestration cuts could push back this later date to 2022. The Royal Australian Air Force requested 450 AIM-120D missiles, which would make it the first foreign operator of the missile. The procurement, approved by the US Government in April 2016, will cost $1.1 billion and will be integrated for use on the F/A-18F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler and the F-35 Lightning II aircraft.
There were also plans for Raytheon to develop a ramjet-powered derivative of the AMRAAM, the Future Medium Range Air-Air Missile (FMRAAM). The FMRAAM was not produced since the target market, the British Ministry of Defence, chose the Meteor missile over the FMRAAM for a BVR missile for the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft.
Raytheon is also working with the Missile Defense Agency to develop the Network Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE), an anti-ballistic missile derived from the AIM-120. This weapon will be equipped with a ramjet engine and an infrared homing seeker derived from the Sidewinder missile. In place of a proximity-fuzed warhead, the NCADE will use a kinetic energy hit-to-kill vehicle based on the one used in the Navy's RIM-161 Standard Missile 3.
The -120A and -120B models are currently nearing the end of their service life while the -120D variant achieved initial operational capability in 2015. AMRAAM was due to be replaced by the USAF, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Marine Corps after 2020 by the Joint Dual Role Air Dominance Missile (Next Generation Missile), but it was terminated in the 2013 budget plan. Exploratory work was started in 2017 on a replacement called Long-Range Engagement Weapon.
In 2017, work on the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM) began to create a longer-ranged replacement for the AMRAAM to contend with foreign weapons like the Chinese PL-15. Flight tests are planned to begin in 2021 and initial operational capability is slated for 2022, facilitating the end of AMRAAM production by 2026. In July 2022, Raytheon announced the AIM-120D-3 became the longest-range variant in testing, as well as an air-launched adaptation of the NASAMS-based AMRAAM-ER called the AMRAAM-AXE (air-launched extended envelope). The development of AIM-120D-3 and AMRAAM-AXE is likely driven by the PL-15 performance. The AIM-120D-3 and the AIM-120C-8 variant for international customers were developed under the Form, Fit, Function Refresh (F3R) program and feature 15 upgraded circuit cards in the missile guidance section and the capability to continuously upgrade future software enhancements. All AMRAAMs planned for production are either the AIM-120D-3 or the AIM-120C-8 incorporating F3R functionality as of April 2023.
Ground-launched systems
The Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), developed by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and fielded in 1994-1995, consists of a number of towed batteries (containing six AMRAAM launching canisters with integrated launching rails) along with separate radar trucks and control station vehicles.
The US Marine Corps and the US Army tested launching AMRAAM missiles from a six-rail carrier on HMMWV as part of their CLAWS (Complementary Low-Attitude Weapon System) and SLAMRAAM (Surface Launched AMRAAM) programs, which were canceled due to budgetary cuts. A more recent version is the High Mobility Launcher for the NASAMS, made in cooperation with Raytheon (Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace was already a subcontractor on the SLAMRAAM system), where the launch-vehicle is a Humvee (M1152A1 HMMWV), containing four AMRAAMs and two optional AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles.
AMRAAM-ER
As part of the SLAMRAAM project, Raytheon offered the Extended Range upgrade to surface-launched AMRAAM, called AMRAAM-ER. The missile is an Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile using AMRAAM head with two-stage guidance system. It was first shown at the Paris Air Show 2007 and was test-fired in 2008.
Following the cancellation of SLAMRAAM funding in 2011, development of the NASAMS version restarted in 2014. in February 2015 Raytheon announced the AMRAAM-ER missile option for NASAMS, with expected production in 2019, and the first flight test took place in August 2016. Engagement envelope was expanded with a 50 percent increase in maximum range and 70 percent increase in maximum altitude.
In 2019 Qatar placed an order for AMRAAM-ER missiles as part of a NASAMS purchase.
The missile was testfired at Andøya Space Center in May 2021.
Raytheon has proposed an air-launched adaptation of the missile called AMRAAM-AXE, from "Air-launched Extended Envelope".
Foreign sales
Canadair, now Bombardier, had largely helped with the development of the AIM-7 Sparrow and Sparrow II, and assisted to a lesser extent in the AIM-120 development. In 2003, the RCAF placed an order for 97 Aim-120C-5 and later C-7 missiles. These missiles have been in service on the CF-18 Hornet since 2004, and fully replaced the AIM-7 Sparrow in the 2010s. In 2020, the Canadian Government was approved by the U.S DoD for 32 advanced AIM-120D missiles to supplement the AIM-120C stockpile. The package included the 32 active AIM-120D-3 missiles, as well as 18 Captive Training Missiles, and a variety of training equipment and spare parts for $140M. Canada is one of a few countries currently authorized to purchase the longer range AIM-120D missile.
In early 1995 South Korea ordered 88 AIM-120A missiles for its KF-16 fleet. In 1997 South Korea ordered 737 additional AIM-120B missiles.
In 2006 Poland received AIM-120C-5 missiles to arm its new F-16C/D Block 52+ fighters. In 2017 Poland ordered AIM-120C-7 missiles.
In early 2006, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) ordered 500 AIM-120C-5 AMRAAM missiles as part of a $650 million F-16 ammunition deal to equip its F-16C/D Block 50/52+ and F-16A/B Block 15 MLU fighters. The PAF got the first three F-16C/D Block 50/52+ aircraft on July 3, 2010 and first batch of AMRAAMs on July 26, 2010.
In 2007, the United States government agreed to sell 218 AIM-120C-7 missiles to Taiwan as part of a large arms sales package that also included 235 AGM-65G-2 Maverick missiles. Total value of the package, including launchers, maintenance, spare parts, support and training rounds, was estimated at around US$421 million. This supplemented an earlier Taiwanese purchase of 120 AIM-120C-5 missiles a few years ago.
In 2008 there were announcements of new or additional sales to Singapore, Finland, Morocco and South Korea; in December 2010 the Swiss government requested 150 AIM-120C-7 missiles. Sales to Finland have stalled, because the manufacturer has not been able to fix a mysterious bug that causes the rocket motors of the missile to fail in cold tests. On May 5, 2015, the State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Royal Malaysian Air Force for AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM missiles and associated equipment, parts and logistical support for an estimated cost of $21 million.
In March 2016, the US government approved the sales of 36 units of AIM-120C-7 missiles to the Indonesian Air Force to equip their fleet of F-16 C/D Block 25. The AIM-120C-7 is also equipped for the upgraded F-16 A/B Block 15 OCU through Falcon Star-eMLU upgrade project.
In March 2019, the US Department of State and Defense Security Cooperation Agency formally signed off on a US$240.5 million foreign military sale to support Australia’s introduction of the NASAMS and LAND 19 Phase 7B program. As part of the deal, the Australian government requested up to 108 Raytheon AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM, six AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM Air Vehicles Instrumented; and six spare AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM guidance sections.
In December 2019, the United States Congress approved the sale of AIM-120C-7/C-8 to the Republic of Korea. According to the Federal Register document, the AIM-120C-8 is a refurbished version of AIM-120C-7, which replaced some discontinued parts with equivalent commercial parts and its capabilities are identical to AIM-120C-7. This was the first time the C-8 version of AMRAAM has appeared in the US arms sales contract. Later, Japan, the Netherlands, the UAE, Spain and Norway received approval to purchase AIM-120C-8s. In November 2021, Saudi Arabia received approval to purchase 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8s.
Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Norway have been approved to purchase the AIM-120D. Norway ordered 205 AIM-120D and 60 AIM-120D3 in November 2022.
Operators
Current operators
Royal Australian Air Force
Belgian Air Component
Royal Bahraini Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Chilean Air Force
Czech Air Force
Royal Danish Air Force
Finnish Air Force
German Air Force
Hellenic Air Force
Hungarian Air Force
Indonesian Air Force
Israeli Air Force
Italian Air Force
Italian Navy
Japan Air Self-Defense Force
Royal Jordanian Air Force
Kuwait Air Force
Lithuanian Air Force
Royal Malaysian Air Force
Royal Moroccan Air Force
Royal Netherlands Air Force
Royal Norwegian Air Force
Royal Air Force of Oman
Pakistani Air Force
Polish Air Force
Portuguese Air Force
Qatar Air Force
Romanian Air Force
Royal Saudi Air Force
Republic of Singapore Air Force
Republic of Korea Air Force
Swiss Air Force
Spanish Air Force
Spanish Army
Spanish Navy
Swedish Air Force
Republic of China Air Force
Royal Thai Air Force
Turkish Air Force
Ukrainian Air Force
United Arab Emirates Air Force
Royal Air Force
Fleet Air Arm
United States Air Force
United States Navy
United States Marine Corps
Future operators
Bulgarian Air Force
See also
List of missiles
Similar weapons
AAM-4
AIM-260 JATM
Astra (missile)
MICA
Meteor
PL-12
PL-15
Derby
R-27EA
R-77
Sky Sword II
Notes
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
AIM-120 at Designation-Systems.
AIM-120
AIM120
Raytheon Company products
Military equipment introduced in the 1990s
Fire-and-forget weapons
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The AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) is a tactical, air-to-surface anti-radiation missile designed to home in on electronic transmissions coming from surface-to-air radar systems. It was originally developed by Texas Instruments as a replacement for the AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard ARM system. Production was later taken over by Raytheon Corporation when it purchased the defense production business of Texas Instruments.
Description
The AGM-88 can detect, attack and destroy a radar antenna or transmitter with minimal aircrew input. The proportional guidance system that homes in on enemy radar emissions has a fixed antenna and seeker head in the missile's nose. A smokeless, solid-propellant, booster-sustainer rocket motor propels the missile at speeds over Mach 2.0. The HARM was a missile program led by the U.S. Navy, and it was first carried by the A-6E, A-7, and F/A-18A/B aircraft, and then it equipped the EA-6B and EA-18G dedicated electronic attack aircraft. RDT&E for use on the F-14 aircraft was begun, but not completed. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) put the HARM onto the F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft, and later on specialized F-16s equipped with the HARM Targeting System (HTS). The missile has three operational modes: Pre-Briefed (PB), Target Of Opportunity (TOO) and Self-Protect (SP). The HTS pod, used by the USAF only, allows F-16s to detect and automatically target radar systems with HARMs instead of relying on the missile's sensors alone.
History
Deployment
United States
The HARM missile was approved for full production in March 1983, obtained initial operating capability (IOC) on the A-7E Corsair II in late 1983 and then deployed in late 1985 with VA-46 aboard the aircraft carrier USS America. In 1986, the first successful firing of the HARM from an EA-6B was performed by VAQ-131. It was soon used in combat—in March 1986 against a Libyan S-200 surface to air missiles site in the Gulf of Sidra, and then during Operation Eldorado Canyon in April.
HARM was used extensively by the Navy, Marine Corps, and the Air Force in Operation Desert Storm during the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
During the Gulf War, the HARM was involved in a friendly fire incident when the pilot of an F-4G Wild Weasel escorting a B-52G bomber mistook the latter's tail gun radar for an Iraqi AAA site — this was after the tail gunner of the B-52 had targeted the F-4G, mistaking it for an Iraqi MiG. The F-4 pilot launched the missile and then saw that the target was the B-52, which was hit. It survived with shrapnel damage to the tail and no casualties. The B-52 (serial number 58-0248) was subsequently renamed In HARM's Way.
"Magnum" is spoken over the radio to announce the launch of an AGM-88. During the Gulf War, if an aircraft was illuminated by enemy radar a bogus "Magnum" call on the radio was often enough to convince the operators to power down. This technique would also be employed in Yugoslavia during air operations in 1999. On 28 April 1999, during this campaign, an early variant of the AGM-88, after being fired in self defense mode by a NATO jet, lost its radio frequency track as the Serbian air defense radar was turned off, hitting a house in the Gorna Banya district of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, causing damages, but no casualties.
During the 1990s and early 2000s and during the initial weeks of the operation Iraqi Freedom, the HARM was used to enforce the Iraqi No-Fly-Zones, degrading the Iraqi air defenses trying to engage US and allied patrolling aircraft.
During the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, deconflicting US Army Patriot batteries and allied aircraft routes turned out being more difficult than expected, resulting in three major friendly fire incidents: in one of them, on March 24, 2003, a USAF F-16CJ Fighting Falcon fired an AGM-88 HARM at a Patriot missile battery after the Patriot's radar had locked onto and prepared to fire at the aircraft, causing the pilot to mistake it for an Iraqi surface-to-air missile system because the aircraft was in air combat operations and was on its way to a mission near Baghdad. The HARM damaged the Patriot's radar system with no casualties.
Starting in March 2011, during Operation Unified Protector against Libya, US Navy EA-18Gs had their combat debut using HARMs against Libyan air defenses together with USAF F-16CJs and Italian Tornadoes.
Israel
In 2013, US President Obama offered the AGM-88 to Israel for the first time.
Italy
Starting in March 2011, during Operation Unified Protector, Italian Tornadoes employed AGM-88 HARMs against Libyan air defenses.
Ukraine
In mid-2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US supplied AGM-88 HARM missiles to Ukraine. It was only disclosed after Russian forces showed footage of a tail fin from one of these missiles in early August 2022. U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said in recent aid packages they had included a number of anti-radiation missiles that can be fired by Ukrainian aircraft. As built, Soviet-era aircraft do not have the computer architecture to accept NATO standard weapons. Indeed, none of the former Warsaw Pact countries, even those that have had their Soviet-era aircraft updated, were enabled to fire a HARM before. The interface seemed difficult unless using a "crude modification", such as integrating it with an added e-tablet into the cockpit, building a nearly totally independent subsystem within the carrying aircraft. As suggested by Domenic Nicholis, defense correspondent for the Telegraph in the UK, the HARM missile is possibly operating in one of its three modes that enables it to find its target once flying after being released towards a possible enemy air defense and electronic emission area. Pre mission or during flight, NATO signals intelligence aircraft or different intelligence would be providing the overall electromagnetic emissions battlefield to locate the Russian radars where the Ukrainian jets, armed with HARMs would be directed to fire them. This allows the missile to achieve a very long range attack profile, even if it's possible that the missile does not find a target while flying, going wasted. A second possible use of the HARM is operating it in a mode called “HARM as sensor”. Similar to the described mode before, the missile acts as both sensor and weapon, not requiring a sensor pod. A simple interface would show that the missile has a target and the pilot can launch it. In this way the range is shorter, and the jet could be under threat already, but would maximize the possibility to hit the emitter.
In August 2022, a senior U.S. defense official confirmed that the Ukrainians have successfully integrated the AGM-88 HARM missile onto their "MiG aircraft", hinting the MiG-29 was the chosen fighter jet with video evidence of AGM-88 missiles fired by upgraded Ukrainian MiG-29s released by the Ukrainian Air Force a few days later.
Speaking on 19 September, US Air Force General James B. Hecker said the effort to integrate AGM-88 HARM missiles into the Ukrainian Su-27s and MiG-29s took "some months" to achieve. This does not give the Ukrainian air force the same "capabilities that it would on an F-16.” However he said: “Even though you don't get a kinetic kill ... you can get local air superiority for a period of time where you can do what you need to do.”
During early September 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27S was spotted with an AGM-88 HARM fitted on the wing pylons. This is the first case of an Su-27 being spotted with an AGM-88 fitted. The missile has been directly fitted to the APU-470 missile launchers, the same launcher used by MiG-29 and Su-27 to fire missiles like the R-27 (air-to-air missile). This suggests that mounting the missile on Soviet aircraft is much easier than experts initially believed. Being as simple as "requiring just an interface for the different wirings and the hanging points of the missile". The earlier footage of a Ukrainian MiG-29 using an AGM-88 indicated that the display recognized the missile as a R-27EP, which is designed to lock onto airborne radars. This suggests that the aircraft are using their own avionics to fire the missile, without the need for additional modifications.
In December, Ukrainian Air Force released a video showing a MiG-29 firing two HARM missiles in a volley. Russia has made the first claim of the war that they have shot down four HARM missiles.
Variants
AGM-88E AARGM
A newer upgrade, the AGM-88E Advanced Antiradiation Guided Missile (AARGM), features the latest software, enhanced capabilities intended to counter enemy radar shutdown, and passive radar using an additional active millimeter-wave seeker. It was released in November 2010, and it is a joint venture by the US Department of Defense and the Italian Ministry of Defense, produced by Orbital ATK.
In November 2005, the Italian Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense signed a Memorandum of Agreement on the joint development of the AGM-88E AARGM missile. Italy was providing $20 million of developmental funding as well as several million dollars worth of material, equipment, and related services. The Italian Air Force was expected to buy up to 250 missiles for its Tornado ECR aircraft. A flight test program was set to integrate the AARGM onto Tornado ECR's weapon system.
The U.S. Navy demonstrated the AARGM's capability during Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) in spring 2012 with live firing of 12 missiles. Aircrew and maintenance training with live missiles was completed in June.
The Navy authorized Full-Rate Production (FRP) of the AARGM in August 2012, with 72 missiles for the Navy and nine for the Italian Air Force to be delivered in 2013. A U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet squadron will be the first forward-deployed unit with the AGM-88E.
In September 2013, ATK delivered the 100th AARGM to the U.S. Navy. The AGM-88E program is on schedule and on budget, with Full Operational Capability (FOC) planned for September 2014. The AGM-88E was designed to improve the effectiveness of legacy HARM variants against fixed and relocatable radar and communications sites, particularly those that would shut down to throw off anti-radiation missiles, by attaching a new seeker to the existing Mach 2-capable rocket motor and warhead section, adding a passive anti-radiation homing receiver, satellite and inertial navigation system, a millimeter-wave radar for terminal guidance, and the ability to beam up images of the target via a satellite link just seconds before impact.
This model of the HARM will be integrated onto the F/A-18C/D/E/F, EA-18G, Tornado ECR aircraft, and later on the F-35 (externally).
In September 2015, the AGM-88E successfully hit a mobile ship target in a live-fire test, demonstrating the missile's ability to use antiradiation homing and millimeter-wave radar to detect, identify, locate, and engage moving targets.
In December 2019, the German Air Force ordered the AARGM. On August 4, 2020, Northrop Grumman's Alliant Techsystems Operations division, based in Northridge, California, was awarded a $12,190,753 IDIQ contract for AARGM depot sustainment support, guidance section and control section repair, and equipment box test and inspection. On August 31, 2020, the same Northrop Grumman division was allocated roughly $80.9 million to develop new technology for the AARGM.
AGM-88F HCSM
Although the US Navy/Marine Corps chose the Orbital ATK-produced AGM-88E AARGM, Raytheon developed its own update of the HARM called the AGM-88F HARM Control Section Modification (HCSM), tested in conjunction with and ultimately for the US Air Force. It incorporates similar upgrade features as the AARGM. The Republic of China (Taiwan), Bahrain, and Qatar have purchased AGM-88Bs which were then retrofitted with the HCSM upgrade.
AGM-88G AARGM-ER
The Navy's FY 2016 budget included funding for an extended range AARGM-ER that uses the existing guidance system and warhead of the AGM-88E with a solid integrated rocket-ramjet to double the range. In September 2016, Orbital ATK unveiled its extended-range AARGM-ER, which incorporates a redesigned control section and rocket motor for twice the range and internal carriage on the Lockheed Martin F-35A and F-35C Lightning II with integration on P-8 Poseidon, F-16 Fighting Falcon and Eurofighter Typhoon planned afterwards; internal carriage on the F-35B is not possible due to internal space limitations. The new missile utilizes the AARGM's warhead and guidance systems in a new airframe that replaces the mid-body wings with aerodynamic strakes along the sides with control surfaces relocated to low-drag tail surfaces and a more powerful propulsion system for greater speed and double the range of its predecessor.
The U.S. Navy awarded Orbital ATK a contract for AARGM-ER development in January 2018. The USAF later joined the AARGM-ER program, involved in internal F-35A/C integration work. The AARGM-ER received Milestone-C approval in August 2021, and the first low-rate initial production contract was awarded the next month; initial operational capability is planned for 2023. The AARGM-ER completed its first, second, third, fourth and fifth flight tests at the Point Mugu Sea Range in July 2021, January 2022, July 2022, December 2022 and May 2023 respectively.
In February 2023, the U.S. Navy began exploring the feasibility of launching the AARGM-ER from ground-based launchers and the P-8 Poseidon.
On February 27, 2023, Australia has requested to purchase up to 63 AGM-88G AARGM-ERs.
On June 5, 2023, The Netherlands announced the acquisition of the AARGM-ER for the use on their F-35A fleet.
On October 23, 2023, Finland has been given permission by U.S. State Department to proceed with purchase of up to 150 AGM-88G AARGM-ERs.
Stand-in Attack Weapon
In May 2022, the USAF awarded contracts to L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman to begin the first phase of development for the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), which will be the successor to the AARGM-ER. While previous HARMs were meant to attack air defense radars, the SiAW will have a broader target set including theater ballistic missile launchers, cruise and anti-ship missile launchers, GPS jamming platforms, and anti-satellite systems. It will have a shorter range than standoff weapons, being fired by an aircraft after penetrating enemy airspace. The SiAW will fit inside the F-35's internal weapon bays. The Air Force plans to have an operational weapon by 2026. Northrop Grumman was chosen to continue development of the SiAW in September 2023.
Criticism
During Operation Allied Force, NATO reportedly fired 743 HARMs during the course of the 78-day campaign, but could confirm the destruction of only 3 of the original 25 SA-6 batteries. Over half of the HARMs expended were preemptive targeting shots (PETs), fired at suspected SAM sites, but without a radar to target. During the campaign, Serbian SAM sites fired more than 800 SAMs with only 2 NATO aircraft downed, the majority from fixed sites were fired without radar guidance. Radars were also forced to operate for only 20 seconds or less to avoid destruction by HARMs. According to Benjamin Lambeth, the F-117 that was downed did not have SEAD support from HARM-carrying F-16CJ aircraft.
Operators
Current operators
Royal Australian Air Force: AGM-88E variant ordered; to be used on EA-18G Growlers. On 28 April 2017, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency stated that Australia intended to purchase 70 AGM-88B and 40 AGM-88E missiles.
Royal Bahraini Air Force: 50 AGM-88B missiles refurbished to the AGM-88F variant were ordered in May 2019 to be integrated on newly upgraded F-16 Block 70 fighters.
Egyptian Air Force:
German Air Force:
Hellenic Air Force: AGM-88B Block IIIA and AGM-88E variants. AGM-88E AARGM on order.
Israeli Air Force
Italian Air Force: AGM-88E variant.
Kuwait Air Force
Royal Moroccan Air Force: AGM-88B variant.
Qatar Emiri Air Force: 100 AGM-88F
Royal Saudi Air Force
Republic of Korea Air Force
Spanish Air and Space Force
Republic of China Air Force: 50 AGM-88B refurbished to AGM-88F standard ordered in June 2017, with delivery by 2027 for the ROCAF's F-16 Block 70 fleet. Another 100 AGM-88Bs were ordered in March 2023. Upon the contract being announced, these will likely also be refurbished to the AGM-88F standard.
Turkish Air Force
Ukrainian Air Force
United Arab Emirates Air Force
:
United States Air Force
United States Marine Corps
United States Navy
Future operators
Finnish Air Force: up to 150 AGM-88G missiles will be bought.
Royal Netherlands Air Force: AGM-88G variant
See also
AGM-122 Sidearm
AGM-78 Standard ARM
AGM-45 Shrike
ALARM
ARMAT
Kh-28
Kh-31
Kh-58
LD-10
MAR-1
Martel
Rudram-1
YJ-91
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
AGM-88 data sheet (PDF format) from Raytheon
Information on AGM-88 HARM from FAS
AGM-88 at Designation-Systems
AGM-88 HARM by Carlo Kopp
AGM-088
Alliant Techsystems
Anti-radiation missiles of the Cold War
AGM-088
Raytheon Company products
Texas Instruments
Military equipment introduced in the 1980s
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The AGM-65 Maverick is an air-to-ground missile (AGM) designed for close air support. It is the most widely produced precision-guided missile in the Western world, and is effective against a wide range of tactical targets, including armor, air defenses, ships, ground transportation and fuel storage facilities.
Development began in 1966 at Hughes Aircraft Company as the first missile to use an electronic contrast seeker. It entered service with the United States Air Force in August 1972. Since then, it has been exported to more than 30 countries and is certified on 25 aircraft. The Maverick served during the Vietnam, Yom Kippur, Iran–Iraq, and Persian Gulf Wars, along with other smaller conflicts, destroying enemy forces and installations with varying degrees of success.
Since its introduction into service, numerous Maverick versions had been designed and produced using electro-optical, laser, and imaging infrared guidance systems. The AGM-65 has two types of warhead: one has a contact fuze in the nose, the other has a heavyweight warhead fitted with a delayed-action fuze, which penetrates the target with its kinetic energy before detonating. The missile is currently produced by Raytheon Missiles & Defense.
The Maverick shares the same configuration as Hughes' AIM-4 Falcon and AIM-54 Phoenix, and measures more than in length and in diameter.
Development
The Maverick's development history began in 1965, when the United States Air Force (USAF) began a program to develop a replacement to the AGM-12 Bullpup. With a range of , the radio-guided Bullpup was introduced in 1959 and was considered a "silver bullet" by operators. However, the launch aircraft was required to fly straight towards the target during the missile's flight instead of performing evasive maneuvers, thus endangering itself. Even when it hit, the small warhead was only useful against small targets like bunkers; when used against larger targets like the Thanh Hóa Bridge it did little more than char the structure. The USAF began a series of projects to replace Bullpup, both larger versions of Bullpup, models C and D, as well as a series of Bullpup adaptations offering fire-and-forget guidance. Among the latter were the AGM-83 Bulldog, AGM-79 Blue Eye and AGM-80 Viper.
From 1966 to 1968, Hughes Missile Systems Division and Rockwell competed for the contract to build an entirely new fire-and-forget missile with far greater range performance than any of the Bullpup versions. Each were allocated $3 million for preliminary design and engineering work of the Maverick in 1966. In 1968, Hughes emerged with the $95 million contract for further development and testing of the missile; at the same time, contract options called for 17,000 missiles to be procured. Hughes conducted a smooth development of the AGM-65 Maverick, with the first unguided test launch from an F-4 on 18 September 1969, with the first guided test on 18 December successfully performing a direct hit on a M41 tank target at the Air Force Missile Development Center at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.
In July 1971, the USAF and Hughes signed a $69.9 million contract for 2,000 missiles, the first of which was delivered in 1972. Although early operational results were favorable, military planners predicted that the Maverick would fare less successfully in the hazy conditions of Central Europe, where it would have been used against Warsaw Pact forces. As such, development of the AGM-65B "Scene Magnified" version began in 1975 before it was delivered during the late 1970s. When production of the AGM-65A/B was ended in 1978, more than 35,000 missiles had been built.
More versions of the Maverick appeared, among which was the laser-guided AGM-65C/E. Development of the AGM-65C started in 1978 by Rockwell, who built a number of development missiles for the USAF. Due to high cost, the version was not procured by the USAF, and instead entered service with the United States Marine Corps (USMC) as the AGM-65E.
Another major development was the AGM-65D, which employed an imaging infrared (IIR) seeker. By imaging on radiated heat, the IIR is all-weather operable as well as showing improved performance in acquiring and tracking the hot engines, such as in tanks and trucks, that were to be one of its major missions. The seekerhead mechanically scanned the scene over a nitrogen-cooled 4-by-4 pixel array using a series of mirrored facets machined into the inner surface of the ring-shaped main gyroscope. The five-year development period of the AGM-65D started in 1977 and ended with the first delivery to the USAF in October 1983. The version received initial operating capability in February 1986.
The AGM-65F is a hybrid Maverick combining the AGM-65D's IIR seeker with the warhead and propulsion components of the AGM-65E. Deployed by the United States Navy (USN), the AGM-65F is optimized for maritime strike roles. The first AGM-65F launch from the P-3C took place in 1989, and in 1994, the USN awarded Unisys a contract to integrate the version with the P-3C. Meanwhile, Hughes produced the AGM-65G, which essentially has the same guidance system as the D, with some software modifications that track larger targets.
In the mid-1990s to early 2000s, there were several ideas of enhancing the Maverick's potential. Among them was the stillborn plan to incorporate the Maverick millimeter wave active radar homing, which can determine the exact shape of a target. Another study called "Longhorn Project" was conducted by Hughes, and later Raytheon following the absorption of Hughes into Raytheon, looked into a Maverick version equipped with turbojet engines instead of rocket motors. The "Maverick ER", as it was dubbed, would have a "significant increase in range" compared to the Maverick's current range of . The proposal was abandoned, but if the Maverick ER had entered production, it would have replaced the AGM-119B Penguin carried on the MH-60R.
The most modern versions of the Maverick are the AGM-65H/K, which were in production . The AGM-65H was developed by coupling the AGM-65B with a charge-coupled device (CCD) seeker optimized for desert operations and which has three times the range of the original TV-sensor; a parallel USN program aimed at rebuilding AGM-65Fs with newer CCD seekers resulted in the AGM-65J. The AGM-65K, meanwhile, was developed by replacing the AGM-65G's IR guidance system with an electro-optical television guidance system.
Design
The Maverick has a modular design, allowing for different combinations of the guidance package and warhead to be attached to the rocket motor to produce a different weapon. It has long-chord delta wings and a cylindrical body, reminiscent of the AIM-4 Falcon and the AIM-54 Phoenix.
Different models of the AGM-65 have used electro-optical, laser, and imaging infrared guidance systems. The AGM-65 has two types of warhead: one has a contact fuze in the nose, the other has a heavyweight warhead fitted with a delayed-action fuze, which penetrates the target with its kinetic energy before detonating. The latter is most effective against large, hard targets. The propulsion system for both types is a solid-fuel rocket motor behind the warhead.
The Maverick missile is unable to lock onto targets on its own; it has to be given input by the pilot or weapon systems officer after which it follows the path to the target autonomously. In an A-10 Thunderbolt II, for example, the video feed from the seeker head is relayed to a screen in the cockpit, where the pilot can check the locked target of the missile before launch. A crosshair on the heads-up display is shifted by the pilot to set the approximate target, where the missile will then automatically recognize and lock on to the target. Once the missile is launched, it requires no further assistance from the launch vehicle and tracks its target automatically. This fire-and-forget property is not shared by the E version that uses semi-active laser homing.
Variants
Maverick A is the basic model and uses an electro-optical television guidance system. No longer in U.S. service.
Maverick B is similar to the A model, although the B model added optical zooming to lock onto small or distant targets.
Maverick C was to be a laser-guided variant for the United States Marine Corps (USMC). It was canceled before production, however its requirement was later met by the Maverick E.
Maverick D replaced the electro-optical guidance with an imaging infrared system which doubled the practical firing distance and allowed for its use at night and during bad weather. A reduced smoke rocket engine was also introduced in this model. It achieved its initial operation capability in 1983.
Maverick E uses a laser designator guidance system optimized for fortified installations using a delayed fuse combined with a heavier penetrating blast-fragmentation warhead ( vs. in older models) that perforates a target with its kinetic energy before detonation. It achieved initial operating capability in 1985 and was used mainly by USMC aviation.
Maverick F, designed specially for United States Navy, it uses a modified Maverick D infrared guidance system optimized for tracking ships fitted onto a Maverick-E body and warhead.
Maverick G model essentially has the same guidance system as the D with some software modification that enables the pilot to track larger targets. The G model's major difference is its heavier penetrator warhead taken from the Maverick E, compared to the D model's shaped-charge warhead. It completed tests in 1988.
Maverick H model is an AGM-65B/D missile upgraded with a new charge-coupled device (CCD) seeker better suited for the desert environment.
Maverick J model is a Navy AGM-65F missile upgraded with the new CCD seeker. However, this conversion is not confirmed.
Maverick K model is an AGM-65G upgraded with the CCD seeker; at least 1,200, but possibly up to 2,500 AGM-65G rounds are planned for conversion to AGM-65K standard.
Maverick E2/L model incorporates a laser-guided seeker that allows for designation by the launch aircraft, another aircraft, or a ground source and can engage small, fast moving, and maneuvering targets on land and at sea.
Deployment
The Maverick was declared operational on 30 August 1972 with the F-4D/Es and A-7s initially cleared for the type; the missile made its combat debut four months later with the USAF in Operation Linebacker II, the last major USAF operation of the Vietnam War. During the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, the Israelis used Mavericks to destroy and disable enemy vehicles. Deployment of early versions of the Mavericks in these two wars were successful due to the favorable atmospheric conditions that suited the electro-optical TV seeker. Ninety-nine missiles were fired during the two wars, eighty-four of which were successful..
The Maverick was used for trials with the BGM-34A unmanned aerial vehicle in 1972–1973. Targeting could be carried out with a TV camera in the nose of the UAV or using the seeker of an AGM-45 Shrike anti-radar missile also carried by the UAV to locate the target for the Maverick's camera to lock on to.
In June 1975, during a border confrontation, a formation of Iranian F-4E Phantoms destroyed a group of Iraqi tanks by firing 12 Mavericks at them. Five years later, during Operation Morvarid as part of the Iran–Iraq War, Iranian F-4s used Mavericks to sink three Osa II missile boats and four P-6 combat ships.
Due to weapons embargoes, Iran had to equip its AH-1J SeaCobra helicopters with AGM-65 Maverick missiles and used them with some success in various operations such as Operation Fath ol-Mobin wherein Iranian AH-1Js fired 11 Mavericks.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In early 1991, the US-led Coalition executed Operation Desert Storm during which Mavericks played a crucial role in the ousting of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Employed by F-15E Strike Eagles, F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, but used mainly by the last two, more than 5,000 Mavericks were used to attack armored targets. The most-used variant by the USAF was the IIR-guided AGM-65D. The reported hit rate by USAF Mavericks was 80–90%, while for the USMC it was 60%. The Maverick was used again in Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War, during which 918 were fired.
The first time the Maverick was fired from a Lockheed P-3 Orion at a hostile vessel was when the USN and coalition units came to the aid of Libyan rebels to engage the Libyan Coast Guard vessel Vittoria in the port of Misrata, Libya, during the late evening of 28 March 2011. Vittoria was engaged and fired upon by a USN P-3C Maritime Patrol aircraft with AGM-65 Maverick missiles.
Launch platforms
United States
LAU-117 Maverick launchers have been used on US Army, USN, USAF, and USMC aircraft (some platforms may load LAU-88 triple-rail launchers when configured and authorized):
Bell AH-1W SuperCobra
Boeing AH-64 Apache
Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
McDonnell Douglas A-4M Skyhawk
Grumman A-6E SWIP Intruder
Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II
General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark
General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon
Kaman SH-2G Super Seasprite
Lockheed P-3 Orion
LTV A-7 Corsair II
McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet
Export
The Maverick has been exported to at least 35 countries:
Royal Australian Air Force: F/A-18
Belgian Air Component: F-16
Royal Canadian Air Force: CF-18
Chilean Air Force: F-16 AM/BM MLU, F-16 C/D Block 50+
Czech Air Force: L-159
Royal Danish Air Force: F-16 (AGM-65G)
Egyptian Air Force: F-4 and F-16 (AGM-65A/B/E)
Hellenic Air Force: F-4 and F-16 Blocks 30, 50, and 52+
Hungarian Air Force: JAS 39
Indonesian Air Force: F-16A/B Block 15 OCU, F-16C/D Block 52ID, Hawk 209, T-50I (AGM-65B/D/G/K)
Iraqi Air Force: F-16C/D Block 52 (AGM-65D/G/H/K)
Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force: F-4E and SH-3D; Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation: AH-1J
Israeli Air Force: F-4E and F-16
Italian Navy: AV-8B
JMSDF: P-1
Royal Jordanian Air Force: F-16 MLU and F-5E/F
Kuwait Air Force
Royal Malaysian Air Force: F/A-18D, and Hawk 208
Royal Moroccan Air Force: F-5E/F (AGM-65B), F-16 Block 52+ (AGM-65D/G/H)
Royal Netherlands Air Force: F-16 (AGM-65D, AGM-65G)
Royal Air Force of Oman: F-16
Pakistan Air Force: F-16
Peruvian Navy: SH-2G
Philippine Air Force: FA-50PH (AGM-65G2)
Polish Air Force: F-16 Block 50/52+
Portuguese Air Force: F-16, A-7P. Capable of being launched by the Portuguese P-3C Cup+.
Romanian Air Force: F-16A/B Block 15 MLU
Royal Saudi Air Force: F-5E F-15S
Serbian Air Force and Air Defence: J-22 and G-4
Republic of Singapore Air Force: A-4SU, F-5S, F-16C/D Block 52, F-15SG and Hunter
Republic of Korea Air Force: FA-50, TA-50, F-16, F-15K, F-4
Spanish Air Force: F/A-18; and Spanish Navy: AV-8B
Swiss Air Force: F-5F and Hunter
Republic of China Air Force (Taiwan): F-16, AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo (AGM-65B), and F-5E/F (AGM-65B)
Royal Thai Air Force: F-16A/B Block 15 OCU/ADF and JAS 39
Turkish Air Force: F-4 and F-16
Tunisian Air Force: F-5
Royal Air Force: Harrier GR7
Former users
German Air Force: F-4F after being upgraded in the early 1980s under Project Peace Rhine, retired in 2013.
Royal New Zealand Navy: SH-2G; and Royal New Zealand Air Force: A-4K (after being upgraded in the late 1980s under Project Kahu, retired 2001).
Swedish Air Force: Designated RB 75; used on the AJ37 Viggen and Saab JAS 39 Gripen.
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Video clip of a T50 trainer firing a Maverick
Video clip detailing the Maverick's operation
Cold War air-to-surface missiles of the United States
AGM-065
Raytheon Company products
Anti-tank guided missiles of the United States
Anti-tank guided missiles of the Cold War
Military equipment introduced in the 1970s
Fire-and-forget weapons
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The AIM-54 Phoenix is an American radar-guided, long-range air-to-air missile (AAM), carried in clusters of up to six missiles on the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, its only operational launch platform.
The Phoenix was the United States' only long-range air-to-air missile. The combination of Phoenix missile and the Tomcat's AN/AWG-9 guidance radar meant that it was the first aerial weapons system that could simultaneously engage multiple targets. Due to its active radar tracking, the brevity code "Fox Three" was used when firing the AIM-54.
Both the missile and the aircraft were used by Iran and the United States Navy. In US service both are now retired, the AIM-54 Phoenix in 2004 and the F-14 in 2006. They were replaced by the shorter-range AIM-120 AMRAAM, employed on the F/A-18 Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet—in its AIM-120D version, the latest version of the AMRAAM just matches the Phoenix's maximum range.
The AIM-54 has been used in 62 air-to-air strikes, all by Iran during the eight-year Iran–Iraq War. Following the retirement of the F-14 by the U.S. Navy, the weapon's only current operator is the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force.
Development
Background
Since 1951, the Navy faced the initial threat from the Tupolev Tu-4K 'Bull' carrying anti-ship missiles or nuclear bombs.
Eventually, during the height of the Cold War, the threat would have expanded into regimental-size raids of Tu-16 Badger and Tu-22M Backfire bombers equipped with low-flying, long-range, high-speed, nuclear-armed cruise missiles and considerable electronic countermeasures (ECM) of various types. This combination was considered capable of saturating fleet defenses and threatening carrier groups.
The Navy would require a long-range, long-endurance interceptor aircraft to defend carrier battle groups against this threat. The proposed Douglas F6D Missileer was intended to fulfill this mission and oppose the attack as far as possible from the fleet it was defending. The weapon needed for interceptor aircraft, the Bendix AAM-N-10 Eagle, was to be an air-to-air missile of unprecedented range when compared to contemporary AIM-7 Sparrow missiles. It would work together with Westinghouse AN/APQ-81 radar. The Missileer project was cancelled in December 1960.
AIM-54
In the early 1960s, the U.S. Navy made the next interceptor attempt with the F-111B, and they needed a new missile design. At the same time, the USAF canceled the projects for their land-based high-speed interceptor aircraft, the North American XF-108 Rapier and the Lockheed YF-12, and left the capable AIM-47 Falcon missile at a quite advanced stage of development, but with no effective launch platform.
The AIM-54 Phoenix, developed for the F-111B fleet air defense fighter, had an airframe with four cruciform fins that was a scaled-up version of the AIM-47. One characteristic of the Missileer ancestry was that the radar sent it mid-course corrections, which allowed the fire control system to "loft" the missile up over the target into thinner air where it had better range.
The F-111B was canceled in 1968. Its weapons system, the AIM-54 working with the AWG-9 radar, migrated to the new U.S. Navy fighter project, the VFX, which would later become the F-14 Tomcat.
The AIM-54 Phoenix was also considered by the Royal Air Force to be used on Avro Vulcan bomber planes as part of an air defence aircraft. This missileer conversion would have used 12 missiles onboard and an extensive modification to the Vulcan's radar.
In 1977, development of a significantly improved Phoenix version, the AIM-54C, was developed to better counter projected threats from tactical anti-naval aircraft and cruise missiles, and its final upgrade included a re-programmable memory capability to keep pace with emerging ECM.
Usage in comparison to other weapon systems
The AIM-54/AWG-9 combination had multiple track (up to 24 targets) and multiple launch (up to six Phoenixes can be launched nearly simultaneously) capability; the large missile is equipped with a conventional warhead.
On the F-14, four missiles can be carried under the fuselage tunnel attached to special aerodynamic pallets, plus two under glove stations. A full load of six Phoenix missiles and the unique launch rails weighs in at over , about twice the weight of Sparrows, putting it above the allowable bringback load (which also would include enough fuel for go-around attempts). As such, carrying six Phoenix missiles would necessitate the jettison of at least some of the Phoenix missiles if they were not used. The most common air superiority payload was a mix of two Phoenix, three Sparrow, and two Sidewinder missiles.
Most other US aircraft relied on the smaller, semi-active medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow. Semi-active guidance meant the aircraft no longer had a search capability while supporting the launched Sparrow, reducing situational awareness.
The Tomcat's radar could track up to 24 targets in track-while-scan mode, with the AWG-9 selecting up to six potential targets for the missiles. The pilot or radar intercept officer (RIO) could then launch the Phoenix missiles once parameters were met. The large tactical information display (TID) in the RIO's cockpit gave information to the aircrew (the pilot had the ability to monitor the RIO's display) and the radar could continually search and track multiple targets after Phoenix missiles were launched, thereby maintaining situational awareness of the battlespace.
The Link 4 datalink allowed US Navy Tomcats to share information with the E-2C Hawkeye AEW aircraft. During Desert Shield in 1990, the Link 4A was introduced; this allowed the Tomcats to have a fighter-to-fighter datalink capability, further enhancing overall situational awareness. The F-14D entered service with JTIDS that brought the even better Link 16 datalink "picture" to the cockpit.
Active guidance
The Phoenix has several guidance modes and achieves its longest range by using mid-course updates from the F-14A/B AWG-9 radar (APG-71 radar in the F-14D) as it climbs to cruise between and at close to Mach 5. The Phoenix uses this high altitude to maximize its range by reducing atmospheric drag. At around from the target, the missile activates its own radar to provide terminal guidance. Minimum engagement range for the Phoenix is around ; at this range active homing would initiate upon launch.
Service history
U.S. combat experience
On January 5, 1999, a pair of US F-14s fired two Phoenixes at Iraqi MiG-25s southeast of Baghdad. Both AIM-54s' rocket motors failed and neither missile hit its target.
On September 9, 1999, another US F-14 launched an AIM-54 at an Iraqi MiG-23 that was heading south into the no-fly zone from Al Taqaddum air base west of Baghdad. The missile missed, eventually going into the ground after the Iraqi fighter reversed course and fled north.
The AIM-54 Phoenix was retired from USN service on September 30, 2004. F-14 Tomcats were retired on September 22, 2006. They were replaced by shorter-range AIM-120 AMRAAMs, employed on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
Despite the much-vaunted capabilities, the Phoenix was rarely used in combat, with only two confirmed launches and no confirmed targets destroyed in US Navy service. The USAF F-15 Eagle had responsibility for overland combat air patrol duties in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, primarily because of the onboard F-15 IFF capabilities. The Tomcat did not have the requisite IFF capability mandated by the JFACC to satisfy the rules of engagement to utilize the Phoenix capability at beyond visual range. The AIM-54 was not adopted by any foreign nation besides Iran, or any other US armed service, and was not used on any aircraft other than the F-14.
Iranian combat experience
On January 7, 1974 as part of Project Persian King, the Imperial Iranian Air Force placed an order for 424 AIM-54As, later increasing it by 290 missiles that June. Of the initial order, 274 missiles and 10 training rounds were delivered for US$150 million, until the 1979 Revolution ended deliveries and left the remaining 150 missiles embargoed and the additional order of 290 cancelled.
According to Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop, during the Iran–Iraq War AIM-54s fired by IRIAF Tomcats achieved 78 victories against Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-25s, Tu-22s, Su-20/22s, Mirage F 1s, Super Étendards, and even two AM-39 Exocets and a C-601. This includes two occasions where one AIM-54 was responsible for the downing of two Iraqi aircraft, as well as an incident on January 7, 1981 where a Phoenix fired at a four-ship of MiG-23s downed three and damaged the fourth.
The US refused to supply spare parts and maintenance after the 1979 Revolution, except for a brief period during the Iran–Contra affair. According to Cooper, the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force kept its F-14 fighters and AIM-54 missiles in regular use during the entire Iran–Iraq War, though periodic lack of spares grounded large parts of the fleet at times. During late 1987, the stock of AIM-54 missiles was at its lowest, with fewer than 50 operational missiles available. The missiles needed fresh thermal batteries that could only be purchased from the US. Iran found a clandestine buyer that supplied it with batteries, which cost up to US$10,000 each. Iran received spares and parts for both the F-14s and AIM-54s from various sources during the Iran–Iraq War, and has received more spares after the conflict. Iran started a program to build spares for the planes and missiles, and although there are claims that it no longer relies on outside sources to keep its F-14s and AIM-54s operational, there is evidence that Iran continues to procure parts clandestinely.
Both the F-14 Tomcat and the AIM-54 Phoenix missile continue in the service of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. Iran claimed to be working on building an equivalent missile and in 2013 unveiled the Fakour-90, an upgraded and reverse-engineered version of the Phoenix.
Variants
Original model that became operational with the U.S. Navy in about 1974, and it was also exported to Iran before the Iran hostage crisis beginning in 1979.
Also known as the 'Dry' missile. A version with simplified construction and no coolant conditioning. Did not enter series production. Developmental work started in January 1972. 7 X-AIM-54B missiles were created for testing, 6 of them by modifying pilot production IVE/PIP rounds. After two successful test firings, the 'Dry' missile effort was cancelled for being "not cost effective".
The only improved model that was ever produced. It used digital electronics in the place of the analog electronics of the AIM-54A. This model had better abilities to shoot down low and high-altitude antiship missiles. This model took over from the AIM-54A beginning in 1986.
/sealed round More capabilities in electronic counter-countermeasures. It did not require coolant during flight. The Missile was deployed from 1988 onwards. Because the AIM-54 ECCM/Sealed received no coolant, F-14s carrying this version of the missile could not exceed a specified airspeed.
There were also test, evaluation, ground training, and captive air training versions of the missile; designated ATM-54, AEM-54, DATM-54A, and CATM-54. The flight versions had A and C versions. The DATM-54 was not made in a C version as there was no change in the ground handling characteristics.
A 1970s proposal for a ship launched version of the Phoenix as an alternative/replacement for the Sea Sparrow point defense system. It would also have provided a medium-range SAM capability for smaller and/or non-Aegis equipped vessels (such as the CVV). The Sea Phoenix system would have included a modified shipborne version of the AN/AWG-9 radar. Hughes Aircraft touted the fact that 27 out of 29 major elements of the standard (airborne) AN/AWG-9 could be used in the shipborne version with little modification. Each system would have consisted of one AWG-9 radar, with associated controls and displays, and a fixed 12-cell launcher for the Phoenix missiles. In the case of an aircraft carrier, for example, at least three systems would have been fitted in order to give overlapping coverage throughout the full 360°. Both land and ship based tests of modified Phoenix (AIM-54A) missiles and a containerised AWG-9 (originally the 14th example off the AN/AWG-9 production line) were successfully carried out from 1974 onwards.
AIM-54B A land based version for the USMC was also proposed. It has been suggested that the AIM-54B would have been used in operational Sea Phoenix systems, although that version had been cancelled by the second half of the 1970s. Ultimately, a mix of budgetary and political issues meant that, despite being technically and operationally attractive, further development of the Sea Phoenix did not proceed.
In February 2013 Iran reportedly tested an indigenous long-range air-to-air missile. In September 2013 it displayed the Fakour-90 on a military parade. It looked almost identical to the AIM-54 Phoenix. In July 2018 as reported by Jane's, Iran started mass production of the Fakour-90.
Operators
Current operators
– Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force
Former operators
- Imperial Iranian Air Force
– United States Navy: Retired in 2004
Characteristics
The following is a list of AIM-54 Phoenix specifications:
Primary function: long-range, air-launched, air-intercept missile
Contractor: Hughes Aircraft Company and Raytheon Corporation
Unit cost: about $477,000, but this varied greatly
Power plant: solid propellant rocket motor built by Hercules Incorporated
Length:
Weight:
Diameter:
Wing span:
Range: over (actual range is classified)
Speed: 3,000+ mph (4,680+ km/h)
Guidance system: semi-active and active radar homing
Warheads: proximity fuze, high explosive
Warhead weight:
Users: US (U.S. Navy), Iran (IRIAF)
Date deployed: 1974
Date retired (U.S.): September 30, 2004
See also
References
External links
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center – Phoenix Missile Hypersonic Testbed
Cold War air-to-air missiles of the United States
Raytheon Company products
Military equipment introduced in the 1970s
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The Lockheed AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed, long-endurance, ground-attack variant of the C-130 Hercules transport, fixed-wing aircraft. It carries a wide array of ground-attack weapons that are integrated with sophisticated sensors, navigation, and fire-control systems. Unlike other modern military fixed-wing aircraft, the AC-130 relies on visual targeting. Because its large profile and low operating altitudes around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) make it an easy target, its close air support missions are usually flown at night.
The airframe is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, while Boeing is responsible for the conversion into a gunship and for aircraft support. Developed during the Vietnam War as "Project Gunship II", the AC-130 replaced the Douglas AC-47 Spooky, or "Gunship I". The sole operator is the United States Air Force, which uses the AC-130U Spooky and AC-130W Stinger II variants for close air support, air interdiction, and force protection, with the upgraded AC-130J Ghostrider entering service. Close air support roles include supporting ground troops, escorting convoys, and urban operations. Air-interdiction missions are conducted against planned targets and targets of opportunity. Force-protection missions include defending air bases and other facilities. AC-130Us are based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, while AC-130Ws are based at Cannon AFB, New Mexico; gunships can be deployed worldwide. The squadrons are part of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), a component of the United States Special Operations Command.
The AC-130 has an unpressurized cabin, with the weaponry mounted to fire from the port side of the fuselage. During an attack, the gunship performs a pylon turn, flying in a large circle around the target, so is able to fire at it for far longer than in a conventional strafing attack. The AC-130H Spectre was armed with two M61 Vulcan cannons, one L/60 Bofors 40 mm cannon, and M137 cannon and M37 recoil mechanism from the M102 howitzer; after 1994, the cannons were removed. The upgraded AC-130U Spooky has a GAU-12 Equalizer cannon in place of the Spectre's two cannons, an improved fire-control system, and increased ammunition capacity. The new AC-130J was based on the MC-130J Commando II special-operations tanker. The AC-130W Stinger II is a modified C-130H with upgrades including a precision strike package.
Development
Origins
During the Vietnam War, the C-130 Hercules was selected to replace the Douglas AC-47 Spooky gunship (Project Gunship I) to improve mission endurance and increase capacity to carry munitions. Capable of flying faster than helicopters and at high altitudes with excellent loiter time, the use of the pylon turn allowed the AC-47 to deliver continuous, accurate fire to a single point on the ground.
In 1967, JC-130A 54-1626 was selected for conversion into the prototype AC-130A gunship (Project Gunship II). The modifications were done at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base by the Aeronautical Systems Division. A direct-view night-vision telescope was installed in the forward door, an early forward-looking infrared device was placed in the forward part of the left wheel well, with miniguns and rotary cannons fixed facing down and aft along the left side. The analog fire-control computer prototype was handcrafted by RAF Wing Commander Tom Pinkerton at the USAF Avionics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB. Flight testing of the prototype was performed primarily at Eglin Air Force Base, followed by further testing and modifications. By September 1967, the aircraft was certified ready for combat testing and was flown to Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam, for a 90-day test program. The AC-130 was later supplemented by the AC-119 Shadow (Project Gunship III), which later proved to be underpowered.
Seven more warplanes were converted to the "Plain Jane" configuration like the AC-130 prototype in 1968, and one aircraft received the "Surprise Package" refit in 1969. The Surprise Package upgrade included the latest 20 mm rotary autocannons and 40 mm Bofors cannon, but no 7.62 mm close-support armament. The Surprise Package configuration served as a test bed for the avionic systems and armament for the AC-130E. In 1970, 10 more AC-130As were acquired under the "Pave Pronto" project. In the summer of 1971, Surprise Package AC-130s were converted to the Pave Pronto configuration and assumed the new nickname of "Thor". Conversion of C-130Es into AC-130Es for the "PAVE Spectre" project followed. Regardless of their project names, the aircraft were more commonly referred to by the squadron's call sign, Spectre.
Recent and planned upgrades
In 2007, AFSOC initiated a program to upgrade the armament of AC-130s. The test program planned for the 25 mm GAU-12/U and 40 mm Bofors cannon on the AC-130U gunships to be replaced with two 30 mm Mk 44 Bushmaster II cannons. In 2007, the Air Force modified four AC-130U gunships as test platforms for the Bushmasters. These were referred to as AC-130U Plus 4 or AC-130U+4. AFSOC, however, canceled its plans to install the new cannons on its fleet of AC-130Us. It has since removed the guns and reinstalled the original 40 mm and 25 mm cannons and returned the planes to combat duty. Brigadier General Bradley A. Heithold, AFSOC's director of plans, programs, requirements, and assessments, said on 11 August 2008 that the effort was canceled because of problems with the Bushmaster's accuracy in tests "at the altitude we were employing it". Also, schedule considerations drove the decision, he said.
Plans were made for possible replacement of the 105 mm cannon with a breech-loading 120 mm M120 mortar, and to give the AC-130 a standoff capability using either the AGM-114 Hellfire missile, the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (based on the Hydra 70 rocket), or the Viper Strike glide bomb.
In 2010, the Air Force awarded L-3 Communications a $61 million (~$ in ) contract to add precision strike packages to eight MC-130W Combat Spear special-mission aircraft to give them a gunship-like attack capability; such-equipped MC-130Ws are known as Dragon Spears. AFSOC is arming these aircraft to relieve the high operational demands on AC-130 gunships until new AC-130Js enter service. The MC-130W Dragon Spear was renamed AC-130W Stinger II in 2011. The precision strike packages consist of a 30 mm gun and several precision guided munitions. Rails are mounted on the outboard pylon of the wing for four Hellfire missiles, SDBs, or SDB IIs under each. Ten common launch tubes (CLTs) are mounted on the rear ramp to fire Griffin A missiles; additional missiles are stored in the aircraft that can be reloaded in flight. CLTs are able to fire other small munitions able to fit inside the -diameter, -long tubes.
The AC-130J Ghostrider came from a 2011 initiative that sought to acquire 16 new gunships based on newly built MC-130J Combat Shadow II special-operations tankers outfitted with a "precision strike package" to give them an attack capability, requesting $1.6 billion from fiscal years 2011 through 2015. This was to increase the size of the gunship fleet to 33 aircraft, a net increase of eight after the planned retirement of eight aging AC-130Hs. The first aircraft would be bought in fiscal 2012, followed by two in fiscal 2013, five in fiscal 2014, and the final eight in fiscal 2015. The decision to retain the C-130 came after funding for 16 C-27Js was removed from the fiscal 2010 budget.
The AC-130J was to follow the path of the Dragon Spear program. On 9 January 2013, the Air Force began converting the first MC-130J Combat Shadow II into an AC-130J. The first AC-130J was delivered to AFSOC on 29 July 2015. The first AC-130J gunships achieved initial operational capability (IOC) on 30 September 2017. The AC-130J has two planned increments: the Block 10 configuration includes an internal 30 mm gun, small diameter bombs, and laser-guided missiles launched from the rear cargo door; and Block 20 configuration adds a 105 mm cannon, large aircraft infrared countermeasures, wing-mounted Hellfire missiles, and radio-frequency countermeasures.
The Air Force decided to add a 105 mm cannon to the AC-130J in addition to the 30 mm cannon and smart bombs, the shells being more accurate and cheaper than dropping SDBs. AFSOC is actively pursuing a directed-energy weapon on board the AC-130J in place of the 30 mm gun by 2022, similar to the previous Advanced Tactical Laser program. It is to produce a beam of up to 120 kW, or potentially even 180–200 kW, weigh about , defensively destroy antiaircraft missiles, and offensively engage communications towers, boats, cars, and aircraft. However, laser armament may only be installed on a few aircraft rather than the entire AC-130J fleet; the laser will be mounted on the side in place of the 30 mm cannon. Other potential additions include an active denial system to perform airborne crowd control, and small unmanned aerial vehicles from the CLTs to provide remote video feed and coordinates to weapons operators through cloud cover. Called the Tactical Off-board Sensor (TOBS), the drones would be expendable and fly along a programmed orbit to verify targets the aircraft cannot see itself because of bad weather or standing off from air defenses. AFSOC was to initially use the Raytheon Coyote small UAV for the TOBS mission, as it is an off-the-shelf design with a one-hour endurance, but plans to fulfill the role with a new drone capable of a four-hour endurance by 2019.
The Air Force was also interested in acquiring a glide bomb that can be launched from the CLTs, capable of hitting ground vehicles traveling as fast as 120 km/h (70 mph) while above . In June 2016, Dynetics was awarded a contract by SOCOM to integrate its tactical munition onto the AC-130. Designated the GBU-69/B Small Glide Munition, the weapon weighs and is armed with a blast-fragmentation warhead that can detonate by direct impact or at a selected height; despite being smaller, being unpowered allows for its warhead to be heavier than those on the Hellfire and Griffin A missiles, and , respectively. Guidance is provided by a GPS receiver with antispoofing software and four distributed-aperture semiactive laser seeker apertures adapted from the WGU-59/B APKWS for terminal guidance. Approval for fielding occurred in early 2017. Dynetics was awarded a contract to deliver an initial batch of 70 SGMs in June 2017, with plans to buy up to 1,000. The SGM can travel .
Future
, AC-130 gunships have been providing close air support for special operators for 56 years. Although the aircraft have been kept relevant through constant upgrades to their weaponry, sensor packages, and countermeasures, they are not expected to be survivable in future nonpermissive environments due to their high signatures and low airspeeds. Military analysts, such as the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, have suggested that AFSOC invest in more advanced technologies to fill the role to operate in future contested combat zones, including a mix of low-cost disposable unmanned and stealthy strike aircraft.
Design
Overview
The AC-130 is a heavily armed, long-endurance aircraft carrying an array of weapons against ground targets that are integrated with sophisticated sensors, navigation, and fire-control systems. It is capable of delivering precision firepower or area-saturation fire over a target area over a long period of time, at night, or in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of an electro-optical image sensor, infrared sensor, and radar. These sensors allow the gunship to visually or electronically identify friendly ground forces and targets in most weather conditions.
The AC-130U is equipped with the AN/APQ-180, a synthetic aperture radar, for long-range target detection and identification. The gunship's navigational devices include inertial navigation systems and a global positioning system. The AC-130U employs technologies developed in the 1990s, which allow it to attack two targets simultaneously. It has twice the munitions capacity of the AC-130H. Although the AC-130U conducts some operations in daylight, most of its combat missions are conducted at night. The AC-130H's unit cost is US$132.4 million, and the AC-130U's cost is $190 million (fiscal 2001 dollars).
Upgrades
During the Vietnam War era, the various AC-130 versions following the Pave Pronto modifications were equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector system called Black Crow (designated AN/ASD-5), a highly sensitive passive device with a phased-array antenna located in the left-front nose radome that could pick up localized deviations in the Earth's magnetic field normally used to detect submerged submarines. The Black Crow system was slaved into the targeting computers of the AC-130A/E/H, enabling the detection of the unshielded ignition coils of North Vietnamese trucks hidden under dense jungle foliage along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It could also detect hand-held transmitter signals of air controllers on the ground to identify and locate targets.
The PGM-38/U enhanced 25 mm high-explosive incendiary round was created to expand the AC-130U gunships' mission in standoff range and survivability for its 25 mm GAU-12/U gun. This round is a combination of the existing PGU-25 HEI and a M758 fuze designated as FMU-151/B to meet the MIL-STD-1316. The FMU-151 has an improved arming delay with multisensitive range.
Operational history
Vietnam War
The AC-130 gunship first arrived in South Vietnam on 21 September 1967 under the Gunship II program and began combat operations over Laos and South Vietnam that same year. In June 1968, AC-130s were deployed to Tan Son Nhut AB near Saigon for support against the Tet Offensive. By 30 October 1968, enough AC-130 Gunship IIs arrived to form a squadron, the 16th Special Operations Squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand. At this time, the C-130A gunship was designated the AC-130A.
On 18 August 1968, an AC-130 gunship flying an armed reconnaissance mission in Vietnam's III Corps was diverted to support the Katum Special Forces Camp. The ground commander quickly assessed the accurate fire and capabilities of this weapons system and called for fire on his own perimeter when the Viet Cong attempted to bridge the wire on the west side of his position.
By December 1968, most AC-130s flew under F-4 Phantom II escort (to protect the gunship against heavy and concentrated antiaircraft fire) from the 497th Tactical Fighter Squadron, normally three Phantoms per gunship. On 24 May 1969, the first Spectre gunship was lost to enemy fire.
In late 1969, under code name "Surprise Package", 56-0490 arrived with solid-state, laser-illuminated, low light-level TV with a companion YAG laser designator, an improved forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor, video recording for TV and FLIR, an inertial navigation system, and a prototype digital fire-control computer. The remaining AC-130s were refitted with upgraded similar equipment in the summer of 1970, and then redeployed to Ubon RTAFB. On 25 October 1971, the first "Cadillac" gunship, the AC-130E, arrived in Vietnam. On 17 February 1972, the first 105 mm cannon arrived for service with Spectre and was installed on Gunship 570. It was used from mid-February until the aircraft received battle damage to its right flap. The cannon was switched to Gunship 571 and was used until 30 March when the aircraft was shot down.
On 28 January 1973, the Vietnam peace accord went into effect, marking the end of Spectre operations in Vietnam. Spectre was still needed and active in the region, supporting operations in Laos and Cambodia. On 22 February 1973, American offensive operations in Laos ended and the gunships became totally committed to operations in the Cambodian conflict.
On 12 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge was threatening the capital of Phnom Penh and AC-130s were called on to help in Operation Eagle Pull, the final evacuation of American and allied officials from Phnom Penh before it was conquered by the communists. The AC-130 was also over Saigon on 30 April 1975 to protect the final evacuation in Operation Frequent Wind. Spectres were also called in when the USS Mayaguez was seized, on the open sea, by Khmer Rouge soldiers and sailors on 15 May 1975.
Six AC-130s and 52 air crew members were lost during the war. AC-130s reportedly destroyed more than 10,000 trucks and participated in many crucial close-air-support missions in Vietnam.
Cold War and later action
With the conclusion of hostilities in Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s, the AC-130H became the sole gunship in the regular Air Force, home based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, while the AC-130A fleet was transferred to the Air Force Reserve's 919th Tactical Airlift Group (919 TAG) at Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field #3/Duke Field, Florida. With the transition to the AC-130A, the 919 TAG was then redesignated as the 919th Special Operations Group.
In the late 1970s, when the AC-130H fleet was first being modified for in-flight refueling capability, a demonstration mission was planned and flown from Hurlburt Field, Florida, nonstop, to conduct a 2-hour live-fire mission over Empire Firing Range in the Republic of Panama, then return home. This 13-hour mission with two in-flight refuelings from KC-135 tankers proved the validity of flying long-range missions outside the contiguous United States to attack targets then return to home base without intermediate stops.
AC-130s from both the 4th and 16th Special Operations Squadrons have been deployed in nearly every conflict in which the United States has been involved, officially and unofficially, since the end of the Vietnam War.
In July 1979, AC-130H crews deployed to Howard Air Force Base, Panama, as a precaution against possible hostile actions against American personnel during the Nicaraguan Revolution. New time aloft and nonstop distance records were subsequently set by a 16th SOS two-ship AC-130H formation flight that departed Hurlburt Field on 13 November 1979 and landed on 15 November at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, a distance of and 29 hours 43 minutes nonstop, refueling four times in-flight. Refueling support for the Guam deployment was provided by KC-135 crews from the 305th Air Refueling Wing from Grissom AFB, Indiana.
In November 1979, four AC-130H gunships flew nonstop from Hurlburt Field to Anderson AFB, Guam, because of the hostage situation at the US Embassy in Iran. On Guam, AC-130H crews developed communications-out/lights-out refueling procedures for later employment by trial-and-error. This deployment with the 1 SOW/CC as task force commander was directed from the office of the CJCS for fear that Iranian militants could begin executing American Embassy personnel who had been taken hostage on 4 November. One early option considered AC-130H retaliatory punitive strikes deep within Iran. Later gunship flights exceeded the 1979 Hurlburt-to-Guam flight. Upon return in March 1980, the four planes soon found themselves in Egypt to support the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt.
During Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983, AC-130s suppressed enemy air-defense systems and attacked ground forces enabling the assault of the Point Salines Airfield via airdrop and air-land of friendly forces. The AC-130 aircrew earned the Lieutenant General William H. Tunner Award for the mission.
The AC-130Hs of the 16th Special Operations Squadron unit maintained an ongoing rotation to Howard AB, Panama, monitoring activities in El Salvador and other Central American points of interest, with rules of engagement eventually permitting attacks on FMLN targets. This commitment of maintainers and crews started in 1983 and lasted until 1990. The AC-130 is considered to have hastened the end of the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. Crews flew undercover missions from Honduras and attacked guerrilla camps and concentrations.
AC-130s also had a primary role during the United States invasion of Panama (named Operation Just Cause) in 1989, when they destroyed Panama Defense Force headquarters and numerous command-and-control facilities, and provided close air support for US ground troops. Aircrews earned the Mackay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of the year, and the Tunner Award.
Gulf War and the 1990s
During the Gulf War of 1990–1991 (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), Regular Air Force and Air Force Reserve AC-130s provided close air support and force protection (air base defense) for ground forces, and battlefield interdiction. The primary interdiction targets were early-warning/ground-control intercept sites along the southern border of Iraq. At its standard altitude of , the aircraft had a proven ability to engage moving ground targets. The first gunship to enter the Battle of Khafji helped stop a southbound Iraqi armored column on 29 January 1991. One day later, three more gunships provided further aid to Marines participating in the operation. The gunships attacked Iraqi positions and columns moving south to reinforce their positions north of the city.
Despite the threat of SAMs and increasing visibility during the early morning hours of 31 January 1991, one AC-130H, AF Serial No. 69-6567, call-sign Spirit 03, opted to stay to continue to protect the Marines. A lone Iraqi with a Strela-2 MANPADS shot Spirit 03 down, and all 14 crew members were killed. The loss of Spirit 03 did however result in the US DoD joining the development of the AN/AAQ-24 Directed Infrared Countermeasures System which, in its updated laser-based form, is now a common fit across large US military aircraft.
The military has used AC-130 gunships during the humanitarian operations in Somalia (Operation Restore Hope and Operation United Shield) in 1992–93 and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994. AC-130s took part in Operation Assured Response in Liberia in 1996 and in Operation Silver Wake in 1997, the evacuation of American non-combatants from Albania.
AC-130s took part in the NATO missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo during the 1990s.
The AC-130U gunship set a new record for the longest sustained flight by any C-130 on 22 and 23 October 1997, when two AC-130U gunships flew 36 hours nonstop from Hurlburt Field to Taegu Air Base (Daegu), South Korea, being refueled seven times in the air by KC-135 tankers. The two gunships took on 410,000 lb (186,000 kg) of fuel. Gunships also were part of the buildup of US forces in 1998 to compel Iraq to allow UNSCOM weapons inspections.
War on Terror
The US has used gunships with deployments to the War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Freedom's Sentinel) (2001–2021), and Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom) (2003–2011). AC-130 strikes were directed by special forces on known Taliban locations during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. US Special Operations Forces used the AC-130 to support its operations. The day after arriving in Afghanistan, the AC-130s attacked Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces near the city of Konduz and were directly responsible for the city's surrender the next day. On 26 November 2001, Spectres were called in to put down a rebellion at the prison fort of Qala-I-Janghi. The 16 SOS flew missions over Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Kandahar, Shkin, Asadabad, Bagram, Baghran, Tora Bora, and virtually every other part of Afghanistan. The Spectre participated in countless operations within Afghanistan, performing on-call close air support and armed reconnaissance. In March 2002, three AC-130 Spectres provided 39 crucial combat missions in support of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. During the intense fighting, the planes fired more than 1,300 40 mm and 1,200 105 mm rounds.
Close air support was the main mission of the AC-130 in Iraq. Night after night, at least one AC-130 was in the air to fulfill one or more air-support requests (ASRs). A typical mission had the AC–130 supporting a single brigade's ASRs followed by aerial refueling and another two hours with another brigade or SOF team. The use of AC-130s in places like Fallujah, urban settings where insurgents were among crowded populations of non-combatants, was criticized by human rights groups. AC-130s were also used for intelligence gathering with their sophisticated long-range video, infrared and radar sensors. In 2007, US Special Operations forces also used the AC-130 in attacks on suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Somalia.
Eight AC-130H and 17 AC-130U aircraft were in active-duty service as of July 2010. In March 2011, the Air Force deployed two AC-130U gunships to take part in Operation Odyssey Dawn, the US military intervention in Libya, which eventually came under NATO as Operation Unified Protector.
By September 2013, 14 MC-130W Dragon Spear aircraft have been converted to AC-130W Stinger II gunships. The Stinger gunships have been deployed to Afghanistan to replace the aging AC-130H aircraft and provide an example for the new AC-130J Ghostrider. Modifications began by cutting holes in the plane to make room for weapons and adding kits and bomb bases for laser-guided munitions. Crews added a 105 mm cannon, 20-inch infrared and electro-optical sensors, and the ability to carry 250-lb bombs on the wings.
The final AC-130H Spectre gunship, tail number 69-6569 "Excalibur" was retired on 26 May 2015 at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico.
On 15 November 2015, two days after the attacks in Paris by ISIL, AC-130s and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft destroyed a convoy of over 100 ISIL-operated oil tanker trucks in Syria. The attacks were part of an intensification of the US-led military intervention against ISIL called Operation Tidal Wave II (named after the original Operation Tidal Wave during World War II, a failed attempt to raid German oil fields that resulted in heavy aircraft and aircrew loss) in an attempt to cut off oil smuggling as a source of funding for the group.
On 3 October 2015, an AC-130 mistakenly attacked the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people and injuring over 30. In five separate runs, the gunship struck the hospital, that was erroneously identified as the source of attacks on coalition members. Subsequent inquiries led to punishment of 16 military personnel and cited "human error" as the root cause.
On 30 September 2017, the Air Force declared the AC-130J Ghostrider had achieved initial operational capability, with six gunships having been delivered; the aircraft is planned to reach full operational capability by 2023 with 37 gunships delivered. The J-variant is lighter and more fuel efficient than previous versions, able to fly at with a range of and service ceiling of . The AC-130U returned from its final combat deployment on 8 July 2019; the final AC-130U was retired in June 2020. AFSOC started taking delivery of the AC-130J in spring 2019, and the aircraft began deploying to Afghanistan by the summer.
Variants
In service
AC-130J Ghostrider
Based on MC-130J; 32 aircraft were procured as of 2014 to replace the AC-130H. As of 2018, the first AC-130J Ghostrider squadron, the 73rd Special Operations Squadron, is operating from Hurlburt Field, Florida.
Retired
AC-130A Spectre (Project Gunship II, Surprise Package, Pave Pronto)
Conversions of C-130As; 19 completed; transferred to Air Force Reserve in 1975, retired in 1995.
AC-130E Spectre (Pave Spectre, Pave Aegis)
Conversions of C-130Es; 11 completed; 10 upgraded to AC-130H configuration.
AC-130H Spectre
Upgraded AC-130E aircraft; 8 completed; last aircraft retired in 2015.
AC-130U Spooky
The 3rd generation AC-130 gunship. The variant was retired in June 2020.
AC-130W Stinger II (formerly known as the MC-130W Dragon Spear)
Conversions of 14 MC-130W Combat Spears. The variant was retired in July 2022.
Operators
United States Air Force
Detachment 2, 14th Air Commando Wing – Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam 1967–1968
8th Tactical Fighter Wing – Ubon/Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand 1968–1975
16th Special Operations Squadron
1st Special Operations Wing – Hurlburt Field, Florida 1975–1993, 2006–present
4th Special Operations Squadron 2006–present
8th Special Operations Squadron 1975
16th Special Operations Squadron 1975–1993, 2006–2007
18th Flight Test Squadron 1991–1993, 2006–2017
19th Special Operations Squadron 2006–2017
73rd Special Operations Squadron 2018–present
16th Special Operations Wing – Hurlburt Field, Florida 1993–2006
4th Special Operations Squadron 1995–2006
73rd Special Operations Squadron 2007–2015
18th Flight Test Squadron
19th Special Operations Squadron 1996–2006
27th Special Operations Wing – Cannon AFB, New Mexico 2007–
16th Special Operations Squadron
17th Special Operations Squadron
551st Special Operations Squadron
46th Test Wing – Eglin AFB, Florida 2014–present
413th Flight Test Squadron
412th Test Wing – Edwards AFB, California 1990–1995
418th Flight Test Squadron
492d Special Operations Wing – Hurlburt Field, Florida 2017–present
18th Flight Test Squadron
19th Special Operations Squadron
919th Special Operations Wing – Duke Field, Florida 1975–1995
711th Special Operations Squadron
Aircraft on display
One of the first seven AC-130A aircraft deployed to Vietnam was AF serial no. 53–3129, named First Lady in November 1970. This aircraft was a conversion of the first production C-130. On 25 March 1971, it took an anti-aircraft artillery hit in the belly just aft of the nose gear wheel well over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The 37 mm shell destroyed everything below the crew deck and barely missed striking two crew members. The pilot was able to crash land the aircraft safely. In 1975, after the conclusion of US involvement in the Vietnam war, it was transferred to the Air Force Reserve, where it served with the 711th Special Operations Squadron of the 919th Special Operations Wing. In 1980, the aircraft was upgraded from the original three-bladed propellers to the quieter four-bladed propellers and was eventually retired in late 1995. The retirement also marked an end to the Air Force Reserve Command flying the AC-130A. The aircraft now sits on display in the final Air Force Reserve Command configuration with grey paint, black markings, and the four-bladed Hamilton Sunstrand 54H60-91 props at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, USA.
A second aircraft, AF serial no. 56–0509, named the Ultimate End, was originally accepted as a C-130A by the Air Force on 28 February 1957, and modified to the AC-130A configuration on 27 July 1970. The aircraft participated in the Vietnam War and the rescue of the SS Mayaguez. Ultimate End demonstrated the durability of the C-130 after surviving hits in five places by 37 mm anti-aircraft artillery on 12 December 1970, extensive left wing leading edge damage on 12 April 1971 and a 57 mm round damaging the belly and injuring one crewman on 4 March 1972. "Ultimate End" was reassigned to the Air Force Reserve's 919th Special Operations Wing at Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field No.3 / Duke Field on 17 June 1975, where it continued in service until retired in the fall 1994 and transferred to Air Force Special Operations Command's Heritage Air Park at Hurlburt Field, Florida. While assigned to the 711th Special Operations Squadron, Ultimate End served in Operations JUST CAUSE in Panama, DESERT STORM in Kuwait and Iraq, and UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti. After 36 years and seven months of service, 24 years as a gunship, Ultimate End retired from service on 1 October 1994. It made its last flight from Duke Field to Hurlburt Field on 20 October 1994. The Spectre Association dedicated "Ultimate End" (which served with the 16 SOS in Vietnam) on 4 May 1995. Lt Col Michael Byers, then 16 SOS commander, represented the active-duty gunship force and Clyde Gowdy of the Spectre Association represented all Spectre personnel past and present for the unveiling of a monument at the aircraft and the dedication as a whole.
A third AC-130A, AF serial no. 54–1630, is on display in the Cold War Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Named Azrael for the angel of death in Islam who severs the soul from the body, this aircraft figured prominently in the closing hours of Operation Desert Storm. On 26 February 1991, Coalition ground forces were driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. With an Air Force Reserve crew called to active duty, Azrael was sent to the Al Jahra highway (Highway 80) between Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, to intercept the convoys of tanks, trucks, buses, and cars fleeing the battle. Facing SA-6 and SA-8 surface-to-air missiles and 37 mm and 57 mm radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery the crew attacked and destroyed or disabled most of the convoys. Azrael was also assigned to the 919th Special Operations Wing and retired to the museum in October 1995.
Another AC-130A, AF serial no. 54–1626, the original prototype AC-130 named "Gunship II" is on display at the outdoor Air Park at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. This aircraft served in Southeast Asia from 1967 to 1972, then served in JC-130A test configuration. It was transferred to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in 1976, and converted back to AC-130A configuration in the late 1990s.
AC-130A serial no. 54–1623, c/n 3010, named "Ghost Rider" served in Southeast Asia and later conflicts until being retired in 1997 to Dobbins AFB, Georgia. Ghost Rider eventually was transferred and displayed at the Aviation Wing Museum at Marietta, Georgia.
AC-130H serial no. 69-6575, named "Wicked Wanda" is on display at the Hurlburt Field, FL airpark. Hurlburt Field adds AC-130H, MC-130 to air park
AC-130U serial no. 87-0128, named "Big Daddy" is on display at the Hurlburt Field, FL airpark. Hurlburt Field Airpark Adventure: The AC-130U Spooky Gunship
Specifications (AC-130)
Notable appearances in media
See also
References
Further reading
(AC-130 refs loaded throughout book)
External links
"Gunship History", Spectre Association.
"Powerful Gunships Prowl Iraq, and Limits Show" on NPR from All Things Considered.
.
(1977) T.O. 1C-130(A)A-1 Flight Manual USAF Series AC-130A Airplane (Part 1), (Part 2)
C-130, A
C-130, A
1960s United States attack aircraft
Four-engined tractor aircraft
High-wing aircraft
Four-engined turboprop aircraft
Aircraft artillery
Gunships
AC-130
Aircraft first flown in 1966
Military equipment of the Vietnam War
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In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price.
In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage, it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of a currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets (relative value or convergence trades), as in merger arbitrage.
The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities, and currencies. People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs ().
Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices of the same or very similar assets in different markets to converge.
Etymology
"Arbitrage" is a French word and denotes a decision by an arbitrator or arbitration tribunal (in modern French, "" usually means referee or umpire). In the sense used here, it was first defined in 1704 by Mathieu de la Porte in his treatise "" as a consideration of different exchange rates to recognise the most profitable places of issuance and settlement for a bill of exchange (" [, in modern spelling] ".)
Arbitrage-free
If the market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, the prices are said to constitute an arbitrage equilibrium, or an arbitrage-free market. An arbitrage equilibrium is a precondition for a general economic equilibrium. The "no arbitrage" assumption is used in quantitative finance to calculate a unique risk neutral price for derivatives.
Arbitrage-free pricing approach for bonds
Arbitrage-free pricing for bonds is the method of valuing a coupon-bearing financial instrument by discounting its future cash flows by multiple discount rates. By doing so, a more accurate price can be obtained than if the price is calculated with a present-value pricing approach. Arbitrage-free pricing is used for bond valuation and to detect arbitrage opportunities for investors.
For the purpose of valuing the price of a bond, its cash flows can each be thought of as packets of incremental cash flows with a large packet upon maturity, being the principal. Since the cash flows are dispersed throughout future periods, they must be discounted back to the present. In the present-value approach, the cash flows are discounted with one discount rate to find the price of the bond. In arbitrage-free pricing, multiple discount rates are used.
The present-value approach assumes that the bond yield will stay the same until maturity. This is a simplified model because interest rates may fluctuate in the future, which in turn affects the yield on the bond. For this reason, the discount rate may differ for each cash flow. Each cash flow can be considered a zero-coupon instrument that pays one payment upon maturity. The discount rates used should be the rates of multiple zero-coupon bonds with maturity dates the same as each cash flow and similar risk as the instrument being valued. By using multiple discount rates, the arbitrage-free price is the sum of the discounted cash flows. Arbitrage-free price refers to the price at which no price arbitrage is possible.
The idea of using multiple discount rates obtained from zero-coupon bonds and discounting a similar bond's cash flow to find its price is derived from the yield curve, which is a curve of the yields of the same bond with different maturities. This curve can be used to view trends in market expectations of how interest rates will move in the future. In arbitrage-free pricing of a bond, a yield curve of similar zero-coupon bonds with different maturities is created. If the curve were to be created with Treasury securities of different maturities, they would be stripped of their coupon payments through bootstrapping. This is to transform the bonds into zero-coupon bonds. The yield of these zero-coupon bonds would then be plotted on a diagram with time on the x-axis and yield on the y-axis.
Since the yield curve displays market expectations on how yields and interest rates may move, the arbitrage-free pricing approach is more realistic than using only one discount rate. Investors can use this approach to value bonds and find price mismatches, resulting in an arbitrage opportunity. If a bond valued with the arbitrage-free pricing approach turns out to be priced higher in the market, an investor could have such an opportunity:
Investor shorts the bond at price at time t1.
Investor longs the zero-coupon bonds making up the related yield curve and strips and sells any coupon payments at t1.
As t>t1, the price spread between the prices will decrease.
At maturity, the prices will converge and be equal. Investor exits both the long and short positions, realising a profit.
If the outcome from the valuation were the reverse case, the opposite positions would be taken in the bonds. This arbitrage opportunity comes from the assumption that the prices of bonds with the same properties will converge upon maturity. This can be explained through market efficiency, which states that arbitrage opportunities will eventually be discovered and corrected. The prices of the bonds in t1 move closer together to finally become the same at tT.
Conditions for arbitrage
Arbitrage may take place when:
the same asset does not trade at the same price on all markets ("the law of one price").
two assets with identical cash flows do not trade at the same price.
an asset with a known price in the future does not today trade at its future price discounted at the risk-free interest rate (or the asset has significant costs of storage; so this condition holds true for something like grain but not for securities).
Arbitrage is not simply the act of buying a product in one market and selling it in another for a higher price at some later time. The transactions must occur simultaneously to avoid exposure to market risk, or the risk that prices may change in one market before both transactions are complete. In practical terms, this is generally possible only with securities and financial products that can be traded electronically, and even then, when each leg of the trade is executed, the prices in the market may have moved. Missing one of the legs of the trade (and subsequently having to trade it soon after at a worse price) is called 'execution risk' or more specifically 'leg risk'.
In the simplest example, any good sold in one market should sell for the same price in another. Traders may, for example, find that the price of wheat is lower in agricultural regions than in cities, purchase the good, and transport it to another region to sell at a higher price. This type of price arbitrage is the most common, but this simple example ignores the cost of transport, storage, risk, and other factors. "True" arbitrage requires that there is no market risk involved. Where securities are traded on more than one exchange, arbitrage occurs by simultaneously buying in one and selling on the other.
See rational pricing, particularly § arbitrage mechanics, for further discussion.
Mathematically it is defined as follows:
where , denotes the portfolio value at time t and T is the time the portfolio ceases to be available on the market. This means that the value of the portfolio is never negative, and guaranteed to be positive at least once over its lifetime.
Negative, or anti-, arbitrage is similarly defined as
and occurs naturally in arbitrage relations as the seller view as opposed to the buyer view.
Price convergence
Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates, the price of commodities, and the price of securities in different markets tend to converge. The speed at which they do so is a measure of market efficiency. Arbitrage tends to reduce price discrimination by encouraging people to buy an item where the price is low and resell it where the price is high (as long as the buyers are not prohibited from reselling and the transaction costs of buying, holding, and reselling are small, relative to the difference in prices in the different markets).
Arbitrage moves different currencies toward purchasing power parity. Assume that a car purchased in the United States is cheaper than the same car in Canada. Canadians would buy their cars across the border to exploit the arbitrage condition. At the same time, Americans would buy US cars, transport them across the border, then sell them in Canada. Canadians would have to buy American dollars to buy the cars and Americans would have to sell the Canadian dollars they received in exchange. Both actions would increase demand for US dollars and supply of Canadian dollars. As a result, there would be an appreciation of the US currency. This would make US cars more expensive and Canadian cars less so until their prices were similar. On a larger scale, international arbitrage opportunities in commodities, goods, securities, and currencies tend to change exchange rates until the purchasing power is equal.
In reality, most assets exhibit some difference between countries. These, transaction costs, taxes, and other costs provide an impediment to this kind of arbitrage. Similarly, arbitrage affects the difference in interest rates paid on government bonds issued by the various countries, given the expected depreciation in the currencies relative to each other (see interest rate parity).
Risks
Arbitrage transactions in modern securities markets involve fairly low day-to-day risks, but can face extremely high risk in rare situations, particularly financial crises, and can lead to bankruptcy. Formally, arbitrage transactions have negative skew – prices can get a small amount closer (but often no closer than 0), while they can get very far apart. The day-to-day risks are generally small because the transactions involve small differences in price, so an execution failure will generally cause a small loss (unless the trade is very big or the price moves rapidly). The rare case risks are extremely high because these small price differences are converted to large profits via leverage (borrowed money), and in the rare event of a large price move, this may yield a large loss.
The principal risk, which is typically encountered on a routine basis, is classified as execution risk. This transpires when an aspect of the financial transaction does not materialize as anticipated. Infrequent, albeit critical, risks encompass counterparty and liquidity risks. The former, counterparty risk, is characterized by the failure of the other participant in a substantial transaction, or a series of transactions, to fulfill their financial obligations. Liquidity risk, conversely, emerges when an entity is necessitated to allocate additional monetary resources as margin, but encounters a deficit in the required capital.
In the academic literature, the idea that seemingly very low-risk arbitrage trades might not be fully exploited because of these risk factors and other considerations is often referred to as limits to arbitrage.
Execution risk
Generally, it is impossible to close two or three transactions at the same instant; therefore, there is the possibility that when one part of the deal is closed, a quick shift in prices makes it impossible to close the other at a profitable price. However, this is not necessarily the case. Many exchanges and inter-dealer brokers allow multi legged trades (e.g. basis block trades on LIFFE).
Competition in the marketplace can also create risks during arbitrage transactions. As an example, if one was trying to profit from a price discrepancy between IBM on the NYSE and IBM on the London Stock Exchange, they may purchase a large number of shares on the NYSE and find that they cannot simultaneously sell on the LSE. This leaves the arbitrageur in an unhedged risk position.
In the 1980s, risk arbitrage was common. In this form of speculation, one trades a security that is clearly undervalued or overvalued, when it is seen that the wrong valuation is about to be corrected. The standard example is the stock of a company, undervalued in the stock market, which is about to be the object of a takeover bid; the price of the takeover will more truly reflect the value of the company, giving a large profit to those who bought at the current price, if the merger goes through as predicted. Traditionally, arbitrage transactions in the securities markets involve high speed, high volume, and low risk. At some moment a price difference exists, and the problem is to execute two or three balancing transactions while the difference persists (that is, before the other arbitrageurs act). When the transaction involves a delay of weeks or months, as above, it may entail considerable risk if borrowed money is used to magnify the reward through leverage. One way of reducing this risk is through the illegal use of inside information, and risk arbitrage in leveraged buyouts was associated with some of the famous financial scandals of the 1980s, such as those involving Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.
Mismatch
Another risk occurs if the items being bought and sold are not identical and the arbitrage is conducted under the assumption that the prices of the items are correlated or predictable; this is more narrowly referred to as a convergence trade. In the extreme case this is merger arbitrage, described below. In comparison to the classical quick arbitrage transaction, such an operation can produce disastrous losses.
Counterparty risk
As arbitrages generally involve future movements of cash, they are subject to counterparty risk: the risk that a counterparty fails to fulfill their side of a transaction. This is a serious problem if one has either a single trade or many related trades with a single counterparty, whose failure thus poses a threat, or in the event of a financial crisis when many counterparties fail. This hazard is serious because of the large quantities one must trade in order to make a profit on small price differences.
For example, if one purchases many risky bonds, then hedges them with CDSes, profiting from the difference between the bond spread and the CDS premium, in a financial crisis, the bonds may default and the CDS writer/seller may fail, due to the stress of the crisis, causing the arbitrageur to face steep losses.
Liquidity risk
Arbitrage trades are necessarily synthetic, leveraged trades, as they involve a short position. If the assets used are not identical (so a price divergence makes the trade temporarily lose money), or the margin treatment is not identical, and the trader is accordingly required to post margin (faces a margin call), the trader may run out of capital (if they run out of cash and cannot borrow more) and be forced to sell these assets at a loss even though the trades may be expected to ultimately make money. In effect, arbitrage traders synthesise a put option on their ability to finance themselves.
Prices may diverge during a financial crisis, often termed a "flight to quality"; these are precisely the times when it is hardest for leveraged investors to raise capital (due to overall capital constraints), and thus they will lack capital precisely when they need it most.
Gray market
Grey market arbitrage is the sale of goods purchased through informal channels to earn the difference in price. Excessive gray market arbitrage will lead to arbitrage behaviors in formal channels, which will reduce returns due to factors such as price confusion, and may even cause prices to plummet in severe cases.
Types
Spatial arbitrage
Also known as geographical arbitrage, this is the simplest form of arbitrage. In spatial arbitrage, an arbitrageur looks for price differences between geographically separate markets. For example, there may be a bond dealer in Virginia offering a bond at 100-12/23 and a dealer in Washington bidding 100-15/23 for the same bond. For whatever reason, the two dealers have not spotted the difference in the prices, but the arbitrageur does. The arbitrageur immediately buys the bond from the Virginia dealer and sells it to the Washington dealer.
Latency arbitrage
For very short amounts of time, the prices of two assets that are either fungible or related by a strict pricing relationship may temporarily go out of sync as the market makers are slow to update the prices. This momentary mispricing creates the opportunity for an arbitrageur to capture the difference between the two prices. For example, the price of calls and puts on an underlying should be related by put-call parity. If these prices are misquoted relative to the put-call parity relationship, it provides an arbitrageur the opportunity to profit from the mispricing.
Latency arbitrage is often mentioned especially in an electronic trading environment, where the use of fast server hardware allows an arbitrageur to capture realize opportunities that may exist for as little as nanoseconds. A study by the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom found that this practice generates as much as $5 billion per year in profit.
Merger arbitrage
Also called risk arbitrage, merger arbitrage generally consists of buying/holding the stock of a company that is the target of a takeover while shorting the stock of the acquiring company.
Usually, the market price of the target company is less than the price offered by the acquiring company.
The spread between these two prices depends mainly on the probability and the timing of the takeover being completed as well as the prevailing level of interest rates.
The bet in a merger arbitrage is that such a spread will eventually be zero, if and when the takeover is completed. The risk is that the deal "breaks" and the spread massively widens.
Municipal bond arbitrage
Also called municipal bond relative value arbitrage, municipal arbitrage, or just muni arb, this hedge fund strategy involves one of two approaches. The term "arbitrage" is also used in the context of the Income Tax Regulations governing the investment of proceeds of municipal bonds; these regulations, aimed at the issuers or beneficiaries of tax-exempt municipal bonds, are different and, instead, attempt to remove the issuer's ability to arbitrage between the low tax-exempt rate and a taxable investment rate.
Generally, managers seek relative value opportunities by being both long and short municipal bonds with a duration-neutral book. The relative value trades may be between different issuers, different bonds issued by the same entity, or capital structure trades referencing the same asset (in the case of revenue bonds). Managers aim to capture the inefficiencies arising from the heavy participation of non-economic investors (i.e., high income "buy and hold" investors seeking tax-exempt income) as well as the "crossover buying" arising from corporations' or individuals' changing income tax situations (i.e., insurers switching their munis for corporates after a large loss as they can capture a higher after-tax yield by offsetting the taxable corporate income with underwriting losses). There are additional inefficiencies arising from the highly fragmented nature of the municipal bond market which has two million outstanding issues and 50,000 issuers, in contrast to the Treasury market which has 400 issues and a single issuer.
Second, managers construct leveraged portfolios of AAA- or AA-rated tax-exempt municipal bonds with the duration risk hedged by shorting the appropriate ratio of taxable corporate bonds. These corporate equivalents are typically interest rate swaps referencing Libor or SIFMA. The arbitrage manifests itself in the form of a relatively cheap longer maturity municipal bond, which is a municipal bond that yields significantly more than 65% of a corresponding taxable corporate bond. The steeper slope of the municipal yield curve allows participants to collect more after-tax income from the municipal bond portfolio than is spent on the interest rate swap; the carry is greater than the hedge expense. Positive, tax-free carry from muni arb can reach into the double digits. The bet in this municipal bond arbitrage is that, over a longer period of time, two similar instruments—municipal bonds and interest rate swaps—will correlate with each other; they are both very high quality credits, have the same maturity and are denominated in the same currency. Credit risk and duration risk are largely eliminated in this strategy. However, basis risk arises from use of an imperfect hedge, which results in significant, but range-bound principal volatility. The end goal is to limit this principal volatility, eliminating its relevance over time as the high, consistent, tax-free cash flow accumulates. Since the inefficiency is related to government tax policy, and hence is structural in nature, it has not been arbitraged away.
However, many municipal bonds are callable, and this adds substantial risks to the strategy.
Convertible bond arbitrage
A convertible bond is a bond that an investor can return to the issuing company in exchange for a predetermined number of shares in the company.
A convertible bond can be thought of as a corporate bond with a stock call option attached to it.
The price of a convertible bond is sensitive to three major factors:
interest rate. When rates move higher, the bond part of a convertible bond tends to move lower, but the call option part of a convertible bond moves higher (and the aggregate tends to move lower).
stock price. When the price of the stock the bond is convertible into moves higher, the price of the bond tends to rise.
credit spread. If the creditworthiness of the issuer deteriorates (e.g. rating downgrade) and its credit spread widens, the bond price tends to move lower, but, in many cases, the call option part of the convertible bond moves higher (since credit spread correlates with volatility).
Given the complexity of the calculations involved and the convoluted structure that a convertible bond can have, an arbitrageur often relies on sophisticated quantitative models in order to identify bonds that are trading cheap versus their theoretical value.
Convertible arbitrage consists of buying a convertible bond and hedging two of the three factors in order to gain exposure to the third factor at a very attractive price.
For instance an arbitrageur would first buy a convertible bond, then sell fixed income securities or interest rate futures (to hedge the interest rate exposure) and buy some credit protection (to hedge the risk of credit deterioration).
Eventually what he or she would be left with is something similar to a call option on the underlying stock, acquired at a very low price.
He or she could then make money either selling some of the more expensive options that are openly traded in the market or delta hedging his or her exposure to the underlying shares.
Depository receipts
A depositary receipt is a security that is offered as a "tracking stock" on another foreign market. For instance, a Chinese company wishing to raise more money may issue a depository receipt on the New York Stock Exchange, as the amount of capital on the local exchanges is limited. These securities, known as ADRs (American depositary receipt) or GDRs (global depository receipt) depending on where they are issued, are typically considered "foreign" and therefore trade at a lower value when first released. Many ADR's are exchangeable into the original security (known as fungibility) and actually have the same value. In this case, there is a spread between the perceived value and real value, which can be extracted. Other ADR's that are not exchangeable often have much larger spreads. Since the ADR is trading at a value lower than what it is worth, one can purchase the ADR and expect to make money as its value converges on the original. However, there is a chance that the original stock will fall in value too, so by shorting it one can hedge that risk.
Cross-border arbitrage
Cross-border arbitrage exploits different prices of the same stock in different countries:
Example: Apple is trading on NASDAQ at US$108.84. The stock is also traded on the German electronic exchange, XETRA. If 1 euro costs US$1.11, a cross-border trader could enter a buy order on the XETRA at €98.03 per Apple share and a sell order at €98.07 per share.
Some brokers in Germany do not offer access to the U.S. exchanges. Hence if a German retail investor wants to buy Apple stock, he needs to buy it on the XETRA. The cross-border trader would sell the Apple shares on XETRA to the investor and buy the shares in the same second on NASDAQ. Afterwards, the cross-border trader would need to transfer the shares bought on NASDAQ to the German XETRA exchange, where he is obliged to deliver the stock.
In most cases, the quotation on the local exchanges is done electronically by high-frequency traders, taking into consideration the home price of the stock and the exchange rate. This kind of high-frequency trading benefits the public, as it reduces the cost to the German investor and enables them to buy U.S. shares.
Dual-listed companies
A dual-listed company (DLC) structure involves two companies incorporated in different countries contractually agreeing to operate their businesses as if they were a single enterprise, while retaining their separate legal identity and existing stock exchange listings. In integrated and efficient financial markets, stock prices of the twin pair should move in lockstep. In practice, DLC share prices exhibit large deviations from theoretical parity. Arbitrage positions in DLCs can be set up by obtaining a long position in the relatively underpriced part of the DLC and a short position in the relatively overpriced part. Such arbitrage strategies start paying off as soon as the relative prices of the two DLC stocks converge toward theoretical parity. However, since there is no identifiable date at which DLC prices will converge, arbitrage positions sometimes have to be kept open for considerable periods of time. In the meantime, the price gap might widen. In these situations, arbitrageurs may receive margin calls, after which they would most likely be forced to liquidate part of the position at a highly unfavorable moment and suffer a loss. Arbitrage in DLCs may be profitable, but is also very risky.
A good illustration of the risk of DLC arbitrage is the position in Royal Dutch Shell—which had a DLC structure until 2005—by the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM, see also the discussion below). Lowenstein (2000) describes that LTCM established an arbitrage position in Royal Dutch Shell in the summer of 1997, when Royal Dutch traded at an 8 to 10 percent premium. In total, $2.3 billion was invested, half of which was long in Shell and the other half was short in Royal Dutch (Lowenstein, p. 99). In the autumn of 1998, large defaults on Russian debt created significant losses for the hedge fund and LTCM had to unwind several positions. Lowenstein reports that the premium of Royal Dutch had increased to about 22 percent and LTCM had to close the position and incur a loss. According to Lowenstein (p. 234), LTCM lost $286 million in equity pairs trading and more than half of this loss is accounted for by the Royal Dutch Shell trade. (See further under Limits to arbitrage.)
Private to public equities
The market prices for privately held companies are typically viewed from a return on investment perspective (such as 25%), whilst publicly held and or exchange listed companies trade on a price to earnings ratio (P/E) (such as a P/E of 10, which equates to a 10% ROI). Thus, if a publicly traded company specialises in the acquisition of privately held companies, from a per-share perspective there is a gain with every acquisition that falls within these guidelines. E.g., Berkshire Hathaway. Private to public equities arbitrage is a term that can arguably be applied to investment banking in general. Private markets to public markets differences may also help explain the overnight windfall gains enjoyed by principals of companies that just did an initial public offering (IPO).
Regulatory arbitrage
Regulatory arbitrage "is an avoidance strategy of regulation that is exercised as a result of a regulatory inconsistency". In other words, where a regulated institution takes advantage of the difference between its real (or economic) risk and the regulatory position. For example, if a bank, operating under the Basel I accord, has to hold 8% capital against default risk, but the real risk of default is lower, it is profitable to securitise the loan, removing the low-risk loan from its portfolio. On the other hand, if the real risk is higher than the regulatory risk then it is profitable to make that loan and hold on to it, provided it is priced appropriately. Regulatory arbitrage can result in parts of entire businesses being unregulated as a result of the arbitrage.
This process can increase the overall riskiness of institutions under a risk insensitive regulatory regime, as described by Alan Greenspan in his October 1998 speech on The Role of Capital in Optimal Banking Supervision and Regulation.
The term "Regulatory Arbitrage" was used for the first time in 2005 when it was applied by Scott V. Simpson, a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, to refer to a new defence tactic in hostile mergers and acquisitions where differing takeover regimes in deals involving multi-jurisdictions are exploited to the advantage of a target company under threat.
In economics, regulatory arbitrage (sometimes, tax arbitrage) may refer to situations when a company can choose a nominal place of business with a regulatory, legal or tax regime with lower costs. This can occur particularly where the business transaction has no obvious physical location. In the case of many financial products, it may be unclear "where" the transaction occurs.
Regulatory arbitrage can include restructuring a bank by outsourcing services such as IT. The outsourcing company takes over the installations, buying out the bank's assets and charges a periodic service fee back to the bank. This frees up cashflow usable for new lending by the bank. The bank will have higher IT costs, but counts on the multiplier effect of money creation and the interest rate spread to make it a profitable exercise.
Example:
Suppose the bank sells its IT installations for US$40 million. With a reserve ratio of 10%, the bank can create US$400 million in additional loans (there is a time lag, and the bank has to expect to recover the loaned money back into its books). The bank can often lend (and securitize the loan) to the IT services company to cover the acquisition cost of the IT installations. This can be at preferential rates, as the sole client using the IT installation is the bank. If the bank can generate 5% interest margin on the 400 million of new loans, the bank will increase interest revenues by 20 million. The IT services company is free to leverage their balance sheet as aggressively as they and their banker agree to. This is the reason behind the trend towards outsourcing in the financial sector. Without this money creation benefit, it is actually more expensive to outsource the IT operations as the outsourcing adds a layer of management and increases overhead.
According to PBS Frontline's 2012 four-part documentary, "Money, Power, and Wall Street", regulatory arbitrage, along with asymmetric bank lobbying in Washington and abroad, allowed investment banks in the pre- and post-2008 period to continue to skirt laws and engage in the risky proprietary trading of opaque derivatives, swaps, and other credit-based instruments invented to circumvent legal restrictions at the expense of clients, government, and publics.
Due to the Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid coverage, one form of Regulatory Arbitrage can now be found when businesses engage in "Medicaid Migration", a maneuver by which qualifying employees who would typically be enrolled in company health plans elect to enroll in Medicaid instead. These programs that have similar characteristics as insurance products to the employee, but have radically different cost structures, resulting in significant expense reductions for employers.
Telecom arbitrage
Telecom arbitrage companies allow phone users to make international calls for free through certain access numbers. Such services are offered in the United Kingdom; the telecommunication arbitrage companies get paid an interconnect charge by the UK mobile networks and then buy international routes at a lower cost. The calls are seen as free by the UK contract mobile phone customers since they are using up their allocated monthly minutes rather than paying for additional calls.
Such services were previously offered in the United States by companies such as FuturePhone.com. These services would operate in rural telephone exchanges, primarily in small towns in the state of Iowa. In these areas, the local telephone carriers are allowed to charge a high "termination fee" to the caller's carrier in order to fund the cost of providing service to the small and sparsely populated areas that they serve. However, FuturePhone (as well as other similar services) ceased operations upon legal challenges from AT&T and other service providers.
Statistical arbitrage
Statistical arbitrage is an imbalance in expected nominal values. A casino has a statistical arbitrage in every game of chance that it offers, referred to as the house advantage, house edge, vigorish, or house vigorish.
Gray market
To accomplish arbitrage, the grey market buys items through marketing channels that sell them without the permission of the product trademark owner and sells them in the legitimate market.
A Swiss watch sold by an approved dealer for £42,600 is an excellent example of a grey market product; customers can buy the identical watch for £27,227 on the Chrono24 website, which is an unlicensed 'grey market.'
The fall of Long-Term Capital Management
Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) lost 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in fixed income arbitrage in September 1998. LTCM had attempted to make money on the price difference between different bonds. For example, it would sell U.S. Treasury securities and buy Italian bond futures. The concept was that because Italian bond futures had a less liquid market, in the short term Italian bond futures would have a higher return than U.S. bonds, but in the long term, the prices would converge. Because the difference was small, a large amount of money had to be borrowed to make the buying and selling profitable.
The downfall in this system began on August 17, 1998, when Russia defaulted on its ruble debt and domestic dollar debt. Because global markets were already nervous due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, investors began selling non-U.S. treasury debt and buying U.S. treasuries, which were considered a safe investment. As a result, the price on US treasuries began to increase and the return began decreasing because there were many buyers, and the return (yield) on other bonds began to increase because there were many sellers (i.e. the price of those bonds fell). This caused the difference between the prices of U.S. treasuries and other bonds to increase, rather than to decrease as LTCM was expecting. Eventually this caused LTCM to fold, and their creditors had to arrange a bail-out. More controversially, officials of the Federal Reserve assisted in the negotiations that led to this bail-out, on the grounds that so many companies and deals were intertwined with LTCM that if LTCM actually failed, they would as well, causing a collapse in confidence in the economic system. Thus LTCM failed as a fixed income arbitrage fund, although it is unclear what sort of profit was realised by the banks that bailed LTCM out.
See also
Types of financial arbitrage
Arbitrage betting
Covered interest arbitrage
Fixed income arbitrage
Political arbitrage
Options arbitrage
Risk arbitrage
Statistical arbitrage
Triangular arbitrage
Uncovered interest arbitrage
Volatility arbitrage
Related concepts
Airline booking ploys
Algorithmic trading
Arbitrage pricing theory
Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy), analogous concept in Bayesian probability
Cointelation
Drop shipping
Efficient-market hypothesis
Immunization (finance)
Interest rate parity
Intermediation
No free lunch with vanishing risk
TANSTAAFL
Value investing
Notes
References
Greider, William (1997). One World, Ready or Not. Penguin Press. .
Special Situation Investing: Hedging, Arbitrage, and Liquidation, Brian J. Stark, Dow-Jones Publishers. New York, NY 1983. ;
External links
What is Regulatory Arbitrage. Regulatory Arbitrage after the Basel ii framework and the 8th Company Law Directive of the European Union.
What is Online Arbitrage?
Financial markets
Thought experiments
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ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Historically, the names referred specifically to the original and best-supported version of the standard (known as C89 or C90). Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so helps portability between compilers.
History and outlook
The first standard for C was published by ANSI. Although this document was subsequently adopted by ISO/IEC and subsequent revisions published by ISO/IEC have been adopted by ANSI, "ANSI C" is still used to refer to the standard. While some software developers use the term ISO C, others are standards-body neutral and use Standard C.
Informal specification: K&R C (C78)
Informal specification in 1978 (Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie book The C Programming Language).
Standardizing C
In 1983, the American National Standards Institute formed a committee, X3J11, to establish a standard specification of C. In 1985, the first Standard Draft was released, sometimes referred to as C85. In 1986, another Draft Standard was released, sometimes referred to as C86. The prerelease Standard C was published in 1988, and sometimes referred to as C88.
C89
The ANSI standard was completed in 1989 and ratified as ANSI X3.159-1989 "Programming Language C." This version of the language is often referred to as "ANSI C". Later on sometimes the label "C89" is used to distinguish it from C90 but using the same labeling method.
C90
The same standard as C89 was ratified by ISO/IEC as ISO/IEC 9899:1990, with only formatting changes, which is sometimes referred to as C90. Therefore, the terms "C89" and "C90" refer to essentially the same language.
This standard has been withdrawn by both ANSI/INCITS and ISO/IEC.
C95
In 1995, the ISO/IEC published an extension, called Amendment 1, for the ANSI-C standard. Its full name finally was ISO/IEC 9899:1990/AMD1:1995 or nicknamed C95. Aside from error correction there were further changes to the language capabilities, such as:
Improved multi-byte and wide character support in the standard library, introducing <wchar.h> and <wctype.h> as well as multi-byte I/O
Addition of digraphs to the language
Specification of standard macros for the alternative specification of operators, e.g. and for &&
Specification of the standard macro __STDC_VERSION__
In addition to the amendment, two technical corrigenda were published by ISO for C90:
ISO/IEC 9899:1990/Cor 1:1994 TCOR1 in 1994
ISO/IEC 9899:1990/Cor 2:1996 in 1996
Preprocessor test for C95 compatibility
#if defined(__STDC_VERSION__) && __STDC_VERSION__ >= 199409L
/* C95 compatible source code. */
#elif defined()
/* C89 compatible source code. */
#endif
C99
In March 2000, ANSI adopted the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standard. This standard is commonly referred to as C99. Some notable additions to the previous standard include:
New built-in data types: long long, _Bool, _Complex, and _Imaginary
Several new core language features, including static array indices, designated initializers, compound literals, variable-length arrays, flexible array members, variadic macros, and restrict keyword
Several new library headers, including stdint.h, <tgmath.h>, fenv.h, <complex.h>
Improved compatibility with several C++ features, including inline functions, single-line comments with //, mixing declarations and code, and universal character names in identifiers
Removed several dangerous C89 language features such as implicit function declarations and implicit int
Three technical corrigenda were published by ISO for C99:
ISO/IEC 9899:1999/Cor 1:2001(E)
ISO/IEC 9899:1999/Cor 2:2004(E)
ISO/IEC 9899:1999/Cor 3:2007(E), notable for deprecating the standard library function gets
This standard has been withdrawn by both ANSI/INCITS and ISO/IEC in favour of C11.
C11
C11 was officially ratified and published on December 8, 2011. Notable features include improved Unicode support, type-generic expressions using the new _Generic keyword, a cross-platform multi-threading API (threads.h), and atomic types support in both core language and the library (stdatomic.h).
One technical corrigendum has been published by ISO for C11:
ISO/IEC 9899:2011/Cor 1:2012
C17
, "C17" is the current standard for the C programming language.
C17 addresses defects in C11 without introducing new language features.
C23
C23 is the informal name for the next major C language standard revision.
Other related ISO publications
As part of the standardization process, ISO/IEC also publishes technical reports and specifications related to the C language:
ISO/IEC TR 19769:2004, on library extensions to support Unicode transformation formats, integrated into C11
ISO/IEC TR 24731-1:2007, on library extensions to support bounds-checked interfaces, integrated into C11
ISO/IEC TR 18037:2008, on embedded C extensions
ISO/IEC TR 24732:2009, on decimal floating point arithmetic, superseded by ISO/IEC TS 18661-2:2015
ISO/IEC TR 24747:2009, on special mathematical functions,
ISO/IEC TR 24731-2:2010, on library extensions to support dynamic allocation functions
ISO/IEC TS 17961:2013, on secure coding in C
ISO/IEC TS 18661-1:2014, on IEC 60559:2011-compatible binary floating-point arithmetic
ISO/IEC TS 18661-2:2015, on IEC 60559:2011-compatible decimal floating point arithmetic
ISO/IEC TS 18661-3:2015, on IEC 60559:2011-compatible interchange and extended floating-point types
ISO/IEC TS 18661-4:2015, on IEC 60559:2011-compatible supplementary functions
More technical specifications are in development and pending approval, including the fifth and final part of TS 18661, a software transactional memory specification, and parallel library extensions.
Support from major compilers
ANSI C is now supported by almost all the widely used compilers. GCC and Clang are two major C compilers popular today, both are based on the C11 with updates including changes from later specifications such as C17 and C18. Any source code written only in standard C and without any hardware dependent assumptions is virtually guaranteed to compile correctly on any platform with a conforming C implementation. Without such precautions, most programs may compile only on a certain platform or with a particular compiler, due, for example, to the use of non-standard libraries, such as GUI libraries, or to the reliance on compiler- or platform-specific attributes such as the exact size of certain data types and byte endianness.
Compliance detectability
To mitigate the differences between K&R C and the ANSI C standard, the ("standard c") macro can be used to split code into ANSI and K&R sections.
#if defined() &&
extern int getopt(int, char * const *, const char *);
#else
extern int getopt();
#endif
In the above example, a prototype is used in a function declaration for ANSI compliant implementations, while an obsolescent non-prototype declaration is used otherwise. Those are still ANSI-compliant as of C99. Note how this code checks both definition and evaluation: this is because some implementations may set to zero to indicate non-ANSI compliance.
Compiler support
List of compilers supporting ANSI C:
Acornsoft ANSI C (first version in 1988, revised in 1989)
Amsterdam Compiler Kit (C K&R and C89/90)
ARM RealView
Clang, using LLVM backend
GCC (full C89/90, C99 and C11)
HP C/ANSI C compiler (C89 and C99)
IBM XL C/C++ (C11, starting with version 12.1)
Intel's ICC
LabWindows/CVI
LCC
Oracle Developer Studio
OpenWatcom (C89/90 and some C99)
Microsoft Visual C++ (C89/90 and some C99)
Pelles C (C99 and C11. Windows only.)
vbcc (C89/90 and C99)
Tiny C Compiler (C89/90 and some C99)
See also
Behavioral Description Language
Compatibility of C and C++
C++23, C++20, C++17, C++14, C++11, C++03, C++98, versions of the C++ programming language standard
C++ Technical Report 1
References
Further reading
External links
ISO C working group
Draft ANSI C Standard (ANSI X3J11/88-090) (May 13, 1988), Third Public Review
Draft ANSI C Rationale (ANSI X3J11/88-151) (Nov 18, 1988)
C Information Bulletin #1 (ANSI X3J11/93-007) (May 27, 1992)
ANSI C Yacc grammar
ANSI C grammar, Lex specification
American National Standards Institute standards
C (programming language)
Programming language standards
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Efforts to scientifically ascertain and attribute mechanisms responsible for recent global warming and related climate changes on Earth have found that the main driver is elevated levels of greenhouse gases produced by human activities, with natural forces adding variability. The likely range of human-induced surface-level air warming by 2010–2019 compared to levels in 1850–1900 is 0.8 °C to 1.3 °C, with a best estimate of 1.07 °C. This is close to the observed overall warming during that time of 0.9 °C to 1.2 °C, while temperature changes during that time were likely only ±0.1 °C due to natural forcings and ±0.2 °C due to variability in the climate.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2021, it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times." Studies on attribution have focused on changes observed during the period of instrumental temperature record, particularly in the last 50 years. This is the period when human activity has grown fastest and observations of the atmosphere above the surface have become available.
Some of the main human activities that contribute to global warming are:
increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, for a warming effect
global changes to land surface, such as deforestation, for a warming effect
increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols, mainly for a cooling effect
In addition to human activities, some natural mechanisms can also cause climate change, including for example, climate oscillations, changes in solar activity, and volcanic activity.
Multiple lines of evidence support attribution of recent climate change to human activities:
A physical understanding of the climate system: greenhouse gas concentrations have increased and their warming properties are well-established.
Historical estimates of past climate changes suggest that the recent changes in global surface temperature are unusual.
Computer-based climate models are unable to replicate the observed warming unless human greenhouse gas emissions are included.
Natural forces alone (such as solar and volcanic activity) cannot explain the observed warming.
The IPCC's attribution of recent global warming to human activities reflects the view of the scientific community, and is also supported by 196 other scientific organizations worldwide. ()
Background
Factors affecting Earth's climate can be broken down into forcings, feedbacks and internal variations. A forcing is something that is imposed externally on the climate system. External forcings include natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun's output. Human activities can also impose forcings, for example, through changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere.
Radiative forcing is a measure of how various factors alter the energy balance of planet Earth. A positive radiative forcing will lead towards a warming of the surface and, over time, the climate system. Between the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, and the year 2005, the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (chemical formula: ) led to a positive radiative forcing, averaged over the Earth's surface area, of about 1.66 watts per square metre (abbreviated W m−2).
Climate feedbacks can either amplify or dampen the response of the climate to a given forcing.
There are many feedback mechanisms in the climate system that can either amplify (a positive feedback) or diminish (a negative feedback) the effects of a change in climate forcing.
The climate system will vary in response to changes in forcings.
The climate system will show internal variability both in the presence and absence of forcings imposed on it, (see images opposite). This internal variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean (see also the later section on Internal climate variability and global warming). An example of internal variability is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation.
Detection vs. attribution
Detection and attribution of climate signals, as well as its common-sense meaning, has a more precise definition within the climate change literature, as expressed by the IPCC. Detection of a climate signal does not always imply significant attribution. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report says "it is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750," where "extremely likely" indicates a probability greater than 95%. Detection of a signal requires demonstrating that an observed change is statistically significantly different from that which can be explained by natural internal variability.
Attribution requires demonstrating that a signal is:
unlikely to be due entirely to internal variability;
consistent with the estimated responses to the given combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing
not consistent with alternative, physically plausible explanations of recent climate change that exclude important elements of the given combination of forcings.
Key attributions
Greenhouse gases
is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through animal and plant respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use (see below), release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, causing concentrations in the atmosphere to rise.
The high-accuracy measurements of atmospheric concentration, initiated by Charles David Keeling in 1958, constitute the master time series documenting the changing composition of the atmosphere. These data, known as the Keeling Curve, have iconic status in climate change science as evidence of the effect of human activities on the chemical composition of the global atmosphere.
Keeling's initial 1958 measurements showed 313 parts per million by volume (ppm). In May 2019, the concentration of in the atmosphere reached 415 ppm. The last time when it reached this level was 2.6–5.3 million years ago. Without human intervention, it would be 280 ppm.
Along with , methane and to a lesser extent nitrous oxide are also major forcing contributors to the greenhouse effect. The Kyoto Protocol lists these together with hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are entirely artificial gases, as contributors to radiative forcing. The chart at right attributes anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions to eight main economic sectors, of which the largest contributors are power stations (many of which burn coal or other fossil fuels), industrial processes, transportation fuels (generally fossil fuels), and agricultural by-products (mainly methane from enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide from fertilizer use).
Water vapor
Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas and is the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, despite having a short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days). Some human activities can influence local water vapor levels. However, on a global scale, the concentration of water vapor is controlled by temperature, which influences overall rates of evaporation and precipitation. Therefore, the global concentration of water vapor is not substantially affected by direct human emissions.
Land use
Climate change is attributed to land use for two main reasons. Between 1750 and 2007, about two-thirds of anthropogenic emissions were produced from burning fossil fuels, and about one-third of emissions from changes in land use, primarily deforestation. Deforestation both reduces the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by deforested regions and releases greenhouse gases directly, together with aerosols, through biomass burning that frequently accompanies it.
Land use drivers of climate change are sometimes indirect effects of human activity. For example, elephants in Africa are generally protective of slow-growing trees that are good for carbon dioxide sequestration. The sharply declining elephant population, due to human predation, indirectly leads to a tree population which absorbs less carbon dioxide.
A second reason that climate change has been attributed to land use is that the terrestrial albedo is often altered by use, which leads to radiative forcing. This effect is more significant locally than globally.
Livestock and land use
Worldwide, livestock production occupies 70% of all land used for agriculture, or 30% of the ice-free land surface of the Earth.
More than 18% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to livestock and livestock-related activities such as deforestation and increasingly fuel-intensive farming practices. Specific attributions to the livestock sector include:
9% of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions
35–40% of global anthropogenic methane emissions (chiefly due to enteric fermentation and manure)
64% of global anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions, chiefly due to fertilizer use.
Aerosols
With virtual certainty, scientific consensus has attributed various forms of climate change, chiefly cooling effects, to aerosols, which are small particles or droplets suspended in the atmosphere.
Key sources to which anthropogenic aerosols are attributed include:
biomass burning such as slash-and-burn deforestation. Aerosols produced are primarily black carbon.
industrial air pollution, which produces soot and airborne sulfates, nitrates, and ammonium
dust produced by land use effects such as desertification
Attribution of 20th-century climate change
Over the past 150 years human activities have released increasing quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This has led to increases in mean global temperature, or global warming. Other human effects are relevant—for example, sulphate aerosols are believed to have a cooling effect. Natural factors also contribute. According to the historical temperature record of the last century, the Earth's near-surface air temperature has risen around 0.74 ± 0.18 °Celsius (1.3 ± 0.32 °Fahrenheit).
A historically important question in climate change research has regarded the relative importance of human activity and non-anthropogenic causes during the period of instrumental record. In the 1995 Second Assessment Report (SAR), the IPCC made the widely quoted statement that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". The phrase "balance of evidence" suggested the (English) common-law standard of proof required in civil as opposed to criminal courts: not as high as "beyond reasonable doubt". In 2001 the Third Assessment Report (TAR) refined this, saying "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". The 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) strengthened this finding:
"Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is widespread and can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the free atmosphere and in the oceans. Evidence of the effect of external influences, both anthropogenic and natural, on the climate system has continued to accumulate since the TAR."
Other findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report include:
"It is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing (i.e., it is inconsistent with being the result of internal variability), and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling."
"From new estimates of the combined anthropogenic forcing due to greenhouse gases, aerosols, and land surface changes, it is extremely likely (>95%) that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750."
"It is virtually certain that anthropogenic aerosols produce a net negative radiative forcing (cooling influence) with a greater magnitude in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere."
Over the past five decades there has been a global warming of approximately 0.65 °C (1.17 °F) at the Earth's surface (see historical temperature record). Among the possible factors that could produce changes in global mean temperature are internal variability of the climate system, external forcing, an increase in concentration of greenhouse gases, or any combination of these. Current studies indicate that the increase in greenhouse gases, most notably , is mostly responsible for the observed warming. Evidence for this conclusion includes:
Estimates of internal variability from climate models, and reconstructions of past temperatures, indicate that the warming is unlikely to be entirely natural.
Climate models forced by natural factors and increased greenhouse gases and aerosols reproduce the observed global temperature changes; those forced by natural factors alone do not.
"Fingerprint" methods (see below) indicate that the pattern of change is closer to that expected from greenhouse gas-forced change than from natural change.
The plateau in warming from the 1940s to 1960s can be attributed largely to sulphate aerosol cooling.
Details on attribution
Recent scientific assessments find that most of the warming of the Earth's surface over the past 50 years has been caused by human activities (see also the section on scientific literature and opinion). This conclusion rests on multiple lines of evidence. Like the warming "signal" that has gradually emerged from the "noise" of natural climate variability, the scientific evidence for a human influence on global climate has accumulated over the past several decades, from many hundreds of studies. No single study is a "smoking gun." Nor has any single study or combination of studies undermined the large body of evidence supporting the conclusion that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming.
The first line of evidence is based on a physical understanding of how greenhouse gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in greenhouse gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate. The second line of evidence is from indirect estimates of climate changes over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years. These records are obtained from living things and their remains (like tree rings and corals) and from physical quantities (like the ratio between lighter and heavier isotopes of oxygen in ice cores), which change in measurable ways as climate changes. The lesson from these data is that global surface temperatures over the last several decades are clearly unusual, in that they were higher than at any time during at least the past 400 years. For the Northern Hemisphere, the recent temperature rise is clearly unusual in at least the last 1,000 years (see graph opposite).
The third line of evidence is based on the broad, qualitative consistency between observed changes in climate and the computer model simulations of how climate would be expected to change in response to human activities. For example, when climate models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases, they show gradual warming of the Earth and ocean surface, increases in ocean heat content and the temperature of the lower atmosphere, a rise in global sea level, retreat of sea ice and snow cover, cooling of the stratosphere, an increase in the amount of atmospheric water vapor, and changes in large-scale precipitation and pressure patterns. These and other aspects of modelled climate change are in agreement with observations.
"Fingerprint" studies
Finally, there is extensive statistical evidence from so-called "fingerprint" studies. Each factor that affects climate produces a unique pattern of climate response, much as each person has a unique fingerprint. Fingerprint studies exploit these unique signatures, and allow detailed comparisons of modelled and observed climate change patterns. Scientists rely on such studies to attribute observed changes in climate to a particular cause or set of causes. In the real world, the climate changes that have occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution are due to a complex mixture of human and natural causes. The importance of each individual influence in this mixture changes over time. Of course, there are not multiple Earths, which would allow an experimenter to change one factor at a time on each Earth, thus helping to isolate different fingerprints. Therefore, climate models are used to study how individual factors affect climate. For example, a single factor (like greenhouse gases) or a set of factors can be varied, and the response of the modelled climate system to these individual or combined changes can thus be studied.
These projections have been confirmed by observations (shown above).
For example, when climate model simulations of the last century include all of the major influences on climate, both human-induced and natural, they can reproduce many important features of observed climate change patterns. When human influences are removed from the model experiments, results suggest that the surface of the Earth would actually have cooled slightly over the last 50 years. The clear message from fingerprint studies is that the observed warming over the last half-century cannot be explained by natural factors, and is instead caused primarily by human factors.
Another fingerprint of human effects on climate has been identified by looking at a slice through the layers of the atmosphere, and studying the pattern of temperature changes from the surface up through the stratosphere (see the section on solar activity). The earliest fingerprint work focused on changes in surface and atmospheric temperature. Scientists then applied fingerprint methods to a whole range of climate variables, identifying human-caused climate signals in the heat content of the oceans, the height of the tropopause (the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere, which has shifted upward by hundreds of feet in recent decades), the geographical patterns of precipitation, drought, surface pressure, and the runoff from major river basins.
Studies published after the appearance of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 have also found human fingerprints in the increased levels of atmospheric moisture (both close to the surface and over the full extent of the atmosphere), in the decline of Arctic sea ice extent, and in the patterns of changes in Arctic and Antarctic surface temperatures.
The message from this entire body of work is that the climate system is telling a consistent story of increasingly dominant human influence – the changes in temperature, ice extent, moisture, and circulation patterns fit together in a physically consistent way, like pieces in a complex puzzle.
Increasingly, this type of fingerprint work is shifting its emphasis. As noted, clear and compelling scientific evidence supports the case for a pronounced human influence on global climate. Much of the recent attention is now on climate changes at continental and regional scales, and on variables that can have large impacts on societies. For example, scientists have established causal links between human activities and the changes in snowpack, maximum and minimum (diurnal) temperature, and the seasonal timing of runoff over mountainous regions of the western United States. Human activity is likely to have made a substantial contribution to ocean surface temperature changes in hurricane formation regions. Researchers are also looking beyond the physical climate system, and are beginning to tie changes in the distribution and seasonal behaviour of plant and animal species to human-caused changes in temperature and precipitation.
For over a decade, one aspect of the climate change story seemed to show a significant difference between models and observations. In the tropics, all models predicted that with a rise in greenhouse gases, the troposphere would be expected to warm more rapidly than the surface. Observations from weather balloons, satellites, and surface thermometers seemed to show the opposite behaviour (more rapid warming of the surface than the troposphere). This issue was a stumbling block in understanding the causes of climate change. It is now largely resolved. Research showed that there were large uncertainties in the satellite and weather balloon data. When uncertainties in models and observations are properly accounted for, newer observational data sets (with better treatment of known problems) are in agreement with climate model results.
This does not mean, however, that all remaining differences between models and observations have been resolved. The observed changes in some climate variables, such as Arctic sea ice, some aspects of precipitation, and patterns of surface pressure, appear to be proceeding much more rapidly than models have projected. The reasons for these differences are not well understood. Nevertheless, the bottom-line conclusion from climate fingerprinting is that most of the observed changes studied to date are consistent with each other, and are also consistent with our scientific understanding of how the climate system would be expected to respond to the increase in heat-trapping gases resulting from human activities.
Extreme weather events
Scientific literature and opinion
There are a number of examples of published and informal support for the consensus view. As mentioned earlier, the IPCC has concluded that most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is "very likely" due to human activities. The IPCC's conclusions are consistent with those of several reports produced by the US National Research Council.
A report published in 2009 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program concluded that "[global] warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced."
A number of scientific organizations have issued statements that support the consensus view:
A 2004 essay in Science surveyed 928 abstracts related to climate change, and concluded that most journal reports accepted the consensus.
a joint statement made in 2005 by the national science academies of the G8, and Brazil, China and India;
a joint statement made in 2008 by the Network of African Science Academies.
A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that among a pool of roughly 1,000 researchers who work directly on climate issues and publish the most frequently on the subject, 97% agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening.
A 2011 paper from George Mason University published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, "The Structure of Scientific Opinion on Climate Change," collected the opinions of scientists in the earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic or hydrological sciences. The 489 survey respondents—representing nearly half of all those eligible according to the survey's specific standards – work in academia, government, and industry, and are members of prominent professional organizations. The study found that 97% of the 489 scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring." Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.
Detection and attribution studies
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), concluded that attribution was possible for a number of observed changes in the climate (see effects of global warming). However, attribution was found to be more difficult when assessing changes over smaller regions (less than continental scale) and over short time periods (less than 50 years).
Over larger regions, averaging reduces natural variability of the climate, making detection and attribution easier.
In 1996, in a paper in Nature titled "A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere", Benjamin D. Santer et al. wrote: "The observed spatial patterns of temperature change in the free atmosphere from 1963 to 1987 are similar to those predicted by state-of-the-art climate models incorporating various combinations of changes in carbon dioxide, anthropogenic sulphate aerosol and stratospheric ozone concentrations. The degree of pattern similarity between models and observations increases through this period. It is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities, although many uncertainties remain, particularly relating to estimates of natural variability."
A 2002 paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research says "Our analysis suggests that the early twentieth century warming can best be explained by a combination of warming due to increases in greenhouse gases and natural forcing, some cooling due to other anthropogenic forcings, and a substantial, but not implausible, contribution from internal variability. In the second half of the century we find that the warming is largely caused by changes in greenhouse gases, with changes in sulphates and, perhaps, volcanic aerosol offsetting approximately one third of the warming."
A 2005 review of detection and attribution studies by the International Ad hoc Detection and Attribution Group found that "natural drivers such as solar variability and volcanic activity are at most partially responsible for the large-scale temperature changes observed over the past century, and that a large fraction of the warming over the last 50 yr can be attributed to greenhouse gas increases. Thus, the recent research supports and strengthens the IPCC Third Assessment Report conclusion that 'most of the global warming over the past 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases.'"
Barnett and colleagues (2005) say that the observed warming of the oceans "cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models," concluding that "it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences".
Two papers in the journal Science in August 2005 resolve the problem, evident at the time of the TAR, of tropospheric temperature trends (see also the section on "fingerprint" studies) . The UAH version of the record contained errors, and there is evidence of spurious cooling trends in the radiosonde record, particularly in the tropics. See satellite temperature measurements for details; and the 2006 US CCSP report.
Multiple independent reconstructions of the temperature record of the past 1000 years confirm that the late 20th century is probably the warmest period in that time (see the preceding section -details on attribution).
Solar activity
Solar sunspot maximum occurs when the magnetic field of the Sun collapses and reverse as part of its average 11-year solar cycle (22 years for complete North to North restoration).
The role of the Sun in recent climate change has been looked at by climate scientists. Since 1978, output from the Sun has been measured by satellites significantly more accurately than was previously possible from the surface. These measurements indicate that the Sun's total solar irradiance has not increased since 1978, so the warming during the past 30 years cannot be directly attributed to an increase in total solar energy reaching the Earth (see graph above, left). In the three decades since 1978, the combination of solar and volcanic activity probably had a slight cooling influence on the climate.
Climate models have been used to examine the role of the Sun in recent climate change.
Models are unable to reproduce the rapid warming observed in recent decades when they only take into account variations in total solar irradiance and volcanic activity. Models are, however, able to simulate the observed 20th century changes in temperature when they include all of the most important external forcings, including human influences and natural forcings. As has already been stated, Hegerl et al. (2007) concluded that greenhouse gas forcing had "very likely" caused most of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. In making this conclusion, Hegerl et al. (2007) allowed for the possibility that climate models had been underestimated the effect of solar forcing.
The role of solar activity in climate change has also been calculated over longer time periods using "proxy" datasets, such as tree rings.
Models indicate that solar and volcanic forcings can explain periods of relative warmth and cold between AD 1000 and 1900, but human-induced forcings are needed to reproduce the late-20th century warming.
Another line of evidence against the sun having caused recent climate change comes from looking at how temperatures at different levels in the Earth's atmosphere have changed.
Models and observations (see figure above, middle) show that greenhouse gas results in warming of the lower atmosphere at the surface (called the troposphere) but cooling of the upper atmosphere (called the stratosphere). Depletion of the ozone layer by chemical refrigerants has also resulted in a cooling effect in the stratosphere. If the Sun was responsible for observed warming, warming of the troposphere at the surface and warming at the top of the stratosphere would be expected as increase solar activity would replenish ozone and oxides of nitrogen. The stratosphere has a reverse temperature gradient than the troposphere so as the temperature of the troposphere cools with altitude, the stratosphere rises with altitude. Hadley cells are the mechanism by which equatorial generated ozone in the tropics (highest area of UV irradiance in the stratosphere) is moved poleward. Global climate models suggest that climate change may widen the Hadley cells and push the jetstream northward thereby expanding the tropics region and resulting in warmer, dryer conditions in those areas overall.
Non-consensus views
Habibullo Abdussamatov (2004), head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, has argued that the Sun is responsible for recently observed climate change. Journalists for news sources canada.com (Solomon, 2007b), National Geographic News (Ravilious, 2007), and LiveScience (Than, 2007) reported on the story of warming on Mars. In these articles, Abdussamatov was quoted. He stated that warming on Mars was evidence that global warming on Earth was being caused by changes in the Sun.
Ravilious (2007) quoted two scientists who disagreed with Abdussamatov: Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the US, and Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at Oxford University in the UK. According to Wilson, "Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era" (see also orbital forcing). Than (2007) quoted Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in the US, who disagreed with Abdussamatov.
Than (2007) pointed to the view of Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. In his newsletter, Peiser had cited a blog that had commented on warming observed on several planetary bodies in the Solar System. These included Neptune's moon Triton, Jupiter, Pluto and Mars. In an e-mail interview with Than (2007), Peiser stated that:"I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system, (...) Perhaps this is just a fluke."Than (2007) provided alternative explanations of why warming had occurred on Triton, Pluto, Jupiter and Mars.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA, 2009) responded to public comments on climate change attribution. A number of commenters had argued that recent climate change could be attributed to changes in solar irradiance. According to the US EPA (2009), this attribution was not supported by the bulk of the scientific literature. Citing the work of the IPCC (2007), the US EPA pointed to the low contribution of solar irradiance to radiative forcing since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. Over this time period (1750 to 2005), the estimated contribution of solar irradiance to radiative forcing was 5% the value of the combined radiative forcing due to increases in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (see graph opposite).
Effect of cosmic rays
Henrik Svensmark has suggested that the magnetic activity of the sun deflects cosmic rays, and that this may influence the generation of cloud condensation nuclei, and thereby have an effect on the climate. The website ScienceDaily reported on a 2009 study that looked at how past changes in climate have been affected by the Earth's magnetic field. Geophysicist Mads Faurschou Knudsen, who co-authored the study, stated that the study's results supported Svensmark's theory. The authors of the study also acknowledged that plays an important role in climate change.
Consensus view on cosmic rays
The view that cosmic rays could provide the mechanism by which changes in solar activity affect climate is not supported by the literature. Solomon et al. (2007) state:[..] the cosmic ray time series does not appear to correspond to global total cloud cover after 1991 or to global low-level cloud cover after 1994. Together with the lack of a proven physical mechanism and the plausibility of other causal factors affecting changes in cloud cover, this makes the association between galactic cosmic ray-induced changes in aerosol and cloud formation controversial
Studies by Lockwood and Fröhlich (2007) and Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found no relation between warming in recent decades and cosmic rays. Pierce and Adams (2009) used a model to simulate the effect of cosmic rays on cloud properties. They concluded that the hypothesized effect of cosmic rays was too small to explain recent climate change. Pierce and Adams (2009) noted that their findings did not rule out a possible connection between cosmic rays and climate change, and recommended further research.
Erlykin et al. (2009) found that the evidence showed that connections between solar variation and climate were more likely to be mediated by direct variation of insolation rather than cosmic rays, and concluded: "Hence within our assumptions, the effect of varying solar activity, either by direct solar irradiance or by varying cosmic ray rates, must be less than 0.07 °C since 1956, i.e. less than 14% of the observed global warming." Carslaw (2009) and Pittock (2009) review the recent and historical literature in this field and continue to find that the link between cosmic rays and climate is tenuous, though they encourage continued research. US EPA (2009) commented on research by Duplissy et al. (2009):The CLOUD experiments at CERN are interesting research but do not provide conclusive evidence that cosmic rays can serve as a major source of cloud seeding. Preliminary results from the experiment (Duplissy et al., 2009) suggest that though there was some evidence of ion mediated nucleation, for most of the nucleation events observed the contribution of ion processes appeared to be minor. These experiments also showed the difficulty in maintaining sufficiently clean conditions and stable temperatures to prevent spurious aerosol bursts. There is no indication that the earlier Svensmark experiments could even have matched the controlled conditions of the CERN experiment. We find that the Svensmark results on cloud seeding have not yet been shown to be robust or sufficient to materially alter the conclusions of the assessment literature, especially given the abundance of recent literature that is skeptical of the cosmic ray-climate linkage
See also
Climate change adaptation
Climate change denial
Climate change mitigation
Climate resilience
Environmental effects of aviation
Footnotes
Citations
References
, pp. 332–333. Referred to by :
. Open-access article.
, pp. 18235–18270. Referred to by :
, pp. 955–958. Referred to by :
(pb: ).
(pb: ).
. Summary for Policymakers available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish.
. Climate Change 2013 Working Group 1 website.
. Archived page: The source appears to incorrectly list the Society of Biology (UK) twice.
. L09820.
, pp. 483–487. Referred to by :
Public-domain sources
External links
How much of the recent increase is due to human activities? (RealClimate, 2005)
Climate change and global warming (U.S. EPA)
Climate change assessment and attribution
Environmental impact of the energy industry
Climatology
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The atom probe was introduced at the 14th Field Emission Symposium in 1967 by Erwin Wilhelm Müller and J. A. Panitz. It combined a field ion microscope with a mass spectrometer having a single particle detection capability and, for the first time, an instrument could “... determine the nature of one single atom seen on a metal surface and selected from neighboring atoms at the discretion of the observer”.
Atom probes are unlike conventional optical or electron microscopes, in that the magnification effect comes from the magnification provided by a highly curved electric field, rather than by the manipulation of radiation paths. The method is destructive in nature removing ions from a sample surface in order to image and identify them, generating magnifications sufficient to observe individual atoms as they are removed from the sample surface. Through coupling of this magnification method with time of flight mass spectrometry, ions evaporated by application of electric pulses can have their mass-to-charge ratio computed.
Through successive evaporation of material, layers of atoms are removed from a specimen, allowing for probing not only of the surface, but also through the material itself. Computer methods are used to rebuild a three-dimensional view of the sample, prior to it being evaporated, providing atomic scale information on the structure of a sample, as well as providing the type atomic species information. The instrument allows the three-dimensional reconstruction of up to billions of atoms from a sharp tip (corresponding to specimen volumes of 10,000-10,000,000 nm3).
Overview
Atom probe samples are shaped to implicitly provide a highly curved electric potential to induce the resultant magnification, as opposed to direct use of lensing, such as via magnetic lenses. Furthermore, in normal operation (as opposed to a field ionization modes) the atom probe does not utilize a secondary source to probe the sample. Rather, the sample is evaporated in a controlled manner (field evaporation) and the evaporated ions are impacted onto a detector, which is typically 10 to 100 cm away.
The samples are required to have a needle geometry and are produced by similar techniques as TEM sample preparation electropolishing, or focused ion beam methods. Since 2006, commercial systems with laser pulsing have become available and this has expanded applications from metallic only specimens into semiconducting, insulating such as ceramics, and even geological materials.
Preparation is done, often by hand, to manufacture a tip radius sufficient to induce a high electric field, with radii on the order of 100 nm.
To conduct an atom probe experiment a very sharp needle shaped specimen is placed in an ultra high vacuum chamber. After introduction into the vacuum system, the sample is reduced to cryogenic temperatures (typically 20-100 K) and manipulated such that the needle's point is aimed towards an ion detector. A high voltage is applied to the specimen, and either a laser pulse is applied to the specimen or a voltage pulse (typically 1-2 kV) with pulse repetition rates in the hundreds of kilohertz range is applied to a counter electrode. The application of the pulse to the sample allows for individual atoms at the sample surface to be ejected as an ion from the sample surface at a known time. Typically the pulse amplitude and the high voltage on the specimen are computer controlled to encourage only one atom to ionize at a time, but multiple ionizations are possible. The delay between application of the pulse and detection of the ion(s) at the detector allow for the computation of a mass-to-charge ratio.
Whilst the uncertainty in the atomic mass computed by time-of-flight methods in atom probe is sufficiently small to allow for detection of individual isotopes within a material this uncertainty may still, in some cases, confound definitive identification of atomic species. Effects such as superposition of differing ions with multiple electrons removed, or through the presence of complex species formation during evaporation may cause two or more species to have sufficiently close time-of-flights to make definitive identification impossible.
History
Field ion microscopy
Field ion microscopy is a modification of field emission microscopy where a stream of tunneling electrons is emitted from the apex of a sharp needle-like tip cathode when subjected to a sufficiently high electric field (~3-6 V/nm). The needle is oriented towards a phosphor screen to create a projected image of the work function at the tip apex. The image resolution is limited to (2-2.5 nm), due to quantum mechanical effects and lateral variations in the electron velocity.
In field ion microscopy the tip is cooled by a cryogen and its polarity is reversed. When an imaging gas (usually hydrogen or helium) is introduced at low pressures (< 0.1 Pascal) gas ions in the high electric field at the tip apex are field ionized and produce a projected image of protruding atoms at the tip apex. The image resolution is determined primarily by the temperature of the tip but even at 78 Kelvin atomic resolution is achieved.
10-cm Atom Probe
The 10-cm Atom Probe, invented in 1973 by J. A. Panitz was a “new and simple atom probe which permits rapid, in depth species identification or the more usual atom-by atom analysis provided by its predecessors ... in an instrument having a volume of less than two liters in which tip movement is unnecessary and the problems of evaporation pulse stability and alignment common to previous designs have been eliminated.” This was accomplished by combining a time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometer with a proximity focussed, dual channel plate detector, an 11.8 cm drift region and a 38° field of view. An FIM image or a desorption image of the atoms removed from the apex of a field emitter tip could be obtained. The 10-cm Atom Probe has been called the progenitor of later atom probes including the commercial instruments.
Imaging Atom Probe
The Imaging Atom-Probe (IAP) was introduced in 1974 by J. A. Panitz. It incorporated the features of the 10-cm Atom-Probe yet “... departs completely from [previous] atom probe philosophy. Rather than attempt to determine the identity of a surface species producing a preselected ion-image spot, we wish to determine the complete crystallographic distribution of a surface species of preselected mass-to-charge ratio. Now suppose that instead of operating the [detector] continuously, it is turned on for a short time coincidentally with the arrival of a preselected species of interest by applying a gate pulse a time T after the evaporation pulse has reached the specimen. If the duration of the gate pulse is shorter than the travel time between adjacent species, only that surface species having the unique travel time T will be detected and its complete crystallographic distribution displayed.” It was patented in 1975 as the Field Desorption Spectrometer. The Imaging Atom-Probe moniker was coined by A. J. Waugh in 1978 and the instrument was described in detail by J. A. Panitz in the same year.
Atom Probe Tomography (APT)
Modern day atom probe tomography uses a position sensitive detector aka a FIM in a box to deduce the lateral location of atoms. The idea of the APT, inspired by J. A. Panitz's Field Desorption Spectrometer patent, was developed by Mike Miller starting in 1983 and culminated with the first prototype in 1986. Various refinements were made to the instrument, including the use of a so-called position-sensitive (PoS) detector by Alfred Cerezo, Terence Godfrey, and George D. W. Smith at Oxford University in 1988. The Tomographic Atom Probe (TAP), developed by researchers at the University of Rouen in France in 1993, introduced a multichannel timing system and multianode array. Both instruments (PoSAP and TAP) were commercialized by Oxford Nanoscience and CAMECA respectively. Since then, there have been many refinements to increase the field of view, mass and position resolution, and data acquisition rate of the instrument. The Local Electrode Atom Probe was first introduced in 2003 by Imago Scientific Instruments. In 2005, the commercialization of the pulsed laser atom probe (PLAP) expanded the avenues of research from highly conductive materials (metals) to poor conductors (semiconductors like silicon) and even insulating materials. AMETEK acquired CAMECA in 2007 and Imago Scientific Instruments (Madison, WI) in 2010, making the company the sole commercial developer of APTs with more than 110 instruments installed around the world in 2019.
The first few decades of work with APT focused on metals. However, with the introduction of the laser pulsed atom probe systems applications have expanded to semiconductors, ceramic and geologic materials, with some work on biomaterials. The most advanced study of biological material to date using APT involved analyzing the chemical structure of teeth of the radula of chiton Chaetopleura apiculata. In this study, the use of APT showed chemical maps of organic fibers in the surrounding nano-crystalline magnetite in the chiton teeth, fibers which were often co-located with sodium or magnesium. This has been furthered to study elephant tusks, dentin and human enamel.
Theory
Field evaporation
Field evaporation is an effect that can occur when an atom bonded at the surface of a material is in the presence of a sufficiently high and appropriately directed electric field, where the electric field is the differential of electric potential (voltage) with respect to distance. Once this condition is met, it is sufficient that local bonding at the specimen surface is capable of being overcome by the field, allowing for evaporation of an atom from the surface to which it is otherwise bonded.
Ion flight
Whether evaporated from the material itself, or ionised from the gas, the ions that are evaporated are accelerated by electrostatic force, acquiring most of their energy within a few tip-radii of the sample.
Subsequently, the accelerative force on any given ion is controlled by the electrostatic equation, where n is the ionisation state of the ion, and e is the fundamental electric charge.
This can be equated with the mass of the ion, m, via Newton's law (F=ma):
Relativistic effects in the ion flight are usually ignored, as realisable ion speeds are only a very small fraction of the speed of light.
Assuming that the ion is accelerated during a very short interval, the ion can be assumed to be travelling at constant velocity. As the ion will travel from the tip at voltage V1 to some nominal ground potential, the speed at which the ion is travelling can be estimated by the energy transferred into the ion during (or near) ionisation. Therefore, the ion speed can be computed with the following equation, which relates kinetic energy to energy gain due to the electric field, the negative arising from the loss of electrons forming a net positive charge.
Where U is the ion velocity. Solving for U, the following relation is found:
Let's say that for at a certain ionization voltage, a singly charged hydrogen ion acquires a resulting velocity of 1.4x10^6 ms−1 at 10~kV. A singly charged deuterium ion under the sample conditions would have acquired roughly 1.4x10^6/1.41 ms−1. If a detector was placed at a distance of 1 m, the ion flight times would be 1/1.4x10^6 and 1.41/1.4x10^6 s. Thus, the time of the ion arrival can be used to infer the ion type itself, if the evaporation time is known.
From the above equation, it can be re-arranged to show that
given a known flight distance. F, for the ion, and a known flight time, t,
and thus one can substitute these values to obtain the mass-to-charge for the ion.
Thus for an ion which traverses a 1 m flight path, across a time of 2000 ns, given an initial accelerating voltage of 5000 V (V in Si units is kg.m^2.s^-3.A^-1) and noting that one amu is 1×10−27 kg, the mass-to-charge ratio (more correctly the mass-to-ionisation value ratio) becomes ~3.86 amu/charge. The number of electrons removed, and thus net positive charge on the ion is not known directly, but can be inferred from the histogram (spectrum) of observed ions.
Magnification
The magnification in an atom is due to the projection of ions radially away from the small, sharp tip. Subsequently, in the far-field, the ions will be greatly magnified. This magnification is sufficient to observe field variations due to individual atoms, thus allowing in field ion and field evaporation modes for the imaging of single atoms.
The standard projection model for the atom probe is an emitter geometry that is based upon a revolution of a conic section, such as a sphere, hyperboloid or paraboloid. For these tip models, solutions to the field may be approximated or obtained analytically. The magnification for a spherical emitter is inversely proportional to the radius of the tip, given a projection directly onto a spherical screen, the following equation can be obtained geometrically.
Where rscreen is the radius of the detection screen from the tip centre, and rtip the tip radius. A practical tip to screen distances may range from several centimeters to several meters, with increased detector area required at larger to subtend the same field of view.
Practically speaking, the usable magnification will be limited by several effects, such as lateral vibration of the atoms prior to evaporation.
Whilst the magnification of both the field ion and atom probe microscopes is extremely high, the exact magnification is dependent upon conditions specific to the examined specimen, so unlike for conventional electron microscopes, there is often little direct control on magnification, and furthermore, obtained images may have strongly variable magnifications due to fluctuations in the shape of the electric field at the surface.
Reconstruction
The computational conversion of the ion sequence data, as obtained from a position-sensitive detector to a three-dimensional visualisation of atomic types, is termed "reconstruction". Reconstruction algorithms are typically geometrically based and have several literature formulations. Most models for reconstruction assume that the tip is a spherical object, and use empirical corrections to stereographic projection to convert detector positions back to a 2D surface embedded in 3D space, R3. By sweeping this surface through R3 as a function of the ion sequence input data, such as via ion-ordering, a volume is generated onto which positions the 2D detector positions can be computed and placed three-dimensional space.
Typically the sweep takes the simple form of advancement of the surface, such that the surface is expanded in a symmetric manner about its advancement axis, with the advancement rate set by a volume attributed to each ion detected and identified. This causes the final reconstructed volume to assume a rounded-conical shape, similar to a badminton shuttlecock. The detected events thus become a point cloud data with attributed experimentally measured values, such as ion time of flight or experimentally derived quantities, e.g. time of flight or detector data.
This form of data manipulation allows for rapid computer visualisation and analysis, with data presented as point cloud data with additional information, such as each ion's mass to charge (as computed from the velocity equation above), voltage or other auxiliary measured quantity or computation therefrom.
Data features
The canonical feature of atom probe data, is its high spatial resolution in the direction through the material, which has been attributed to an ordered evaporation sequence. This data can therefore image near atomically sharp buried interfaces with the associated chemical information.
The data obtained from the evaporative process is however not without artefacts that form the physical evaporation or ionisation process. A key feature of the evaporation or field ion images is that the data density is highly inhomogeneous, due to the corrugation of the specimen surface at the atomic scale. This corrugation gives rise to strong electric field gradients in the near-tip zone (on the order of an atomic radii or less from the tip), which during ionisation deflects ions away from the electric field normal.
The resultant deflection means that in these regions of high curvature, atomic terraces are belied by a strong anisotropy in the detection density. Where this occurs due to a few atoms on a surface is usually referred to as a "pole", as these are coincident with the crystallographic axes of the specimen (FCC, BCC, HCP) etc. Where the edges of an atomic terrace causes deflection, a low density line is formed and is termed a "zone line".
These poles and zone-lines, whilst inducing fluctuations in data density in the reconstructed datasets, which can prove problematic during post-analysis, are critical for determining information such as angular magnification, as the crystallographic relationships between features are typically well known.
When reconstructing the data, owing to the evaporation of successive layers of material from the sample, the lateral and in-depth reconstruction values are highly anisotropic. Determination of the exact resolution of the instrument is of limited use, as the resolution of the device is set by the physical properties of the material under analysis.
Systems
Many designs have been constructed since the method's inception. Initial field ion microscopes, precursors to modern atom probes, were usually glass blown devices developed by individual research laboratories.
System layout
At a minimum, an atom probe will consist of several key pieces of equipment.
A vacuum system for maintaining the low pressures (~10−8 to 10−10 Pa) required, typically a classic 3 chambered UHV design.
A system for the manipulation of samples inside the vacuum, including sample viewing systems.
A cooling system to reduce atomic motion, such as a helium refrigeration circuit - providing sample temperatures as low as 15K.
A high voltage system to raise the sample standing voltage near the threshold for field evaporation.
A high voltage pulsing system, use to create timed field evaporation events
A counter electrode that can be a simple disk shape (like the EIKOS™, or earlier generation atom probes), or a cone-shaped Local Electrode, like on a LEAP® system. The voltage pulse (negative) is typically applied to the counter electrode.
A detection system for single energetic ions that includes XY position and TOF information.
Optionally, an atom probe may also include laser-optical systems for laser beam targeting and pulsing, if using laser-evaporation methods. In-situ reaction systems, heaters, or plasma treatment may also be employed for some studies as well as a pure noble gas introduction for FIM.
Performance
Collectable ion volumes were previously limited to several thousand, or tens of thousands of ionic events. Subsequent electronics and instrumentation development has increased the rate of data accumulation, with datasets of hundreds of million atoms (dataset volumes of 107 nm3). Data collection times vary considerably depending upon the experimental conditions and the number of ions collected. Experiments take from a few minutes, to many hours to complete.
Applications
Metallurgy
Atom probe has typically been employed in the chemical analysis of alloy systems at the atomic level. This has arisen as a result of voltage pulsed atom probes providing good chemical and sufficient spatial information in these materials. Metal samples from large grained alloys may be simple to fabricate, particularly from wire samples, with hand-electropolishing techniques giving good results.
Subsequently, atom probe has been used in the analysis of the chemical composition of a wide range of alloys.
Such data is critical in determining the effect of alloy constituents in a bulk material, identification of solid-state reaction features, such as solid phase precipitates. Such information may not be amenable to analysis by other means (e.g. TEM) owing to the difficulty in generating a three-dimensional dataset with composition.
Semiconductors
Semi-conductor materials are often analysable in atom probe, however sample preparation may be more difficult, and interpretation of results may be more complex, particularly if the semi-conductor contains phases which evaporate at differing electric field strengths.
Applications such as ion implantation may be used to identify the distribution of dopants inside a semi-conducting material, which is increasingly critical in the correct design of modern nanometre scale electronics.
Limitations
Materials implicitly control achievable spatial resolution.
Specimen geometry during the analysis is uncontrolled, yet controls projection behaviour, hence there is little control over the magnification. This induces distortions into the computer generated 3D dataset. Features of interest might evaporate in a physically different manner to the bulk sample, altering projection geometry and the magnification of the reconstructed volume. This yields strong spatial distortions in the final image.
Volume selectability can be limited. Site specific preparation methods, e.g. using Focussed ion beam preparation, although more time-consuming, may be used to bypass such limitations.
Ion overlap in some samples (e.g. between oxygen and sulfur) resulted in ambiguous analysed species. This may be mitigated by selection of experiment temperature or laser input energy to influence the ionisation number (+, ++, 3+ etc.) of the ionised groups. Data analysis can be used in some cases to statistically recover overlaps.
Low molecular weight gases (Hydrogen & Helium) may be difficult to be removed from the analysis chamber, and may be adsorbed and emitted from the specimen, even though not present in the original specimen. This may also limit identification of Hydrogen in some samples. For this reason, deuterated samples have been used to overcome limitations.
Results may be contingent on the parameters used to convert the 2D detected data into 3D. In more problematic materials, correct reconstruction may not be done, due to limited knowledge of the true magnification; particularly if zone or pole regions cannot be observed.
References
Further reading
Michael K. Miller, George D.W. Smith, Alfred Cerezo, Mark G. Hetherington (1996) Atom Probe Field Ion Microscopy Monographs on the Physics and Chemistry of Materials, Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
Michael K. Miller (2000) Atom Probe Tomography: Analysis at the Atomic Level. New York: Kluwer Academic.
Baptiste Gault, Michael P. Moody, Julie M. Cairney, SImon P. Ringer (2012) Atom Probe Microscopy, Springer Series in Materials Science, Vol. 160, New York: Springer.
David J. Larson, Ty J. Prosa, Robert M. Ulfig, Brian P. Geiser, Thomas F. Kelly (2013) Local Electrode Atom Probe Tomography - A User's Guide, Springer Characterization & Evaluation of Materials, New York: Springer.
External links
Video demonstrating Field Ion images, and pulsed ion evaporation
www.atomprobe.com - A CAMECA provided community resource with contact information and an interactive FAQ
MyScope Atom Probe Tomography - An online learning environment for those who want to learn about atom probe provided by Microscopy Australia
Scientific techniques
Microscopes
Nanotechnology
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Alphonse Gabriel Capone (; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, Capone moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with Mayor William Hale Thompson and the Chicago Police Department meant he seemed safe from law enforcement.
Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at baseball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as a "modern-day Robin Hood". However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged the public image of Chicago and Capone, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone "Public Enemy No. 1".
Federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone and charged him with twenty-two counts of tax evasion. He was convicted of five counts in 1931. During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes, made during prior (and ultimately abortive) negotiations to pay the government taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison. After conviction, he replaced his defense team with experts in tax law, and his grounds for appeal were strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal ultimately failed. Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became increasingly debilitated before being released after almost eight years of incarceration. In 1947, he died of cardiac arrest after a stroke.
Early life
Al Capone was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York, New York, on January 17, 1899. His parents were Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone (1865–1920) and Teresa Capone (née Raiola; 1867–1952). His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a small comune outside of Naples in the Province of Salerno. Capone's family had immigrated to the United States in 1893 by ship, first going through Fiume (modern-day Rijeka, Croatia), a port city in what was then Austria-Hungary. The family settled at 95 Navy Street, in the Navy Yard section of Brooklyn. When Al was aged 11, he and his family moved to 38 Garfield Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Capone's parents had eight other children: James Vincenzo Capone, who later changed his name to Richard Hart and became a Prohibition agent in Homer, Nebraska; Raffaele James Capone, also known as Ralph Capone or "Bottles", who took charge of his brother's beverage industry; Salvatore "Frank" Capone; Ermina Capone, who died at the age of one; Ermino "John" Capone; Albert Capone; Matthew Capone and Mafalda Capone. Ralph and Frank worked with Al Capone in his criminal empire. Frank did so until his death on April 1, 1924. Ralph ran Capone's bottling companies (both legal and illegal) early on and was also the front man for the Chicago Outfit until he was imprisoned for tax evasion in 1932.
Al Capone showed promise as a student but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school. His schooling ended at the age of 14 after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face. Capone worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. From 1916 to 1918 he played semi-professional baseball. Following this, Capone was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio, whom he came to regard as a mentor.
Capone married Mae Josephine Coughlin at age 19, on December 30, 1918. She was Irish Catholic and earlier that month had given birth to their son Albert Francis "Sonny" Capone (1918–2004). Albert lost most of his hearing in his left ear as a child. Capone was under the age of 21, and his parents had to consent in writing to the marriage. By all accounts, the two had a happy marriage despite his criminal lifestyle.
Career
New York City
Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan. During this time he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called the Harvard Inn. Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door, and he was slashed with a knife three times on the left side of his face by her brother, Frank Galluccio; the wounds led to the nickname "Scarface", which Capone loathed. The date when this occurred has been reported with inconsistencies. When Capone was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds. He was called "Snorky" by his closest friends, a term for a sharp dresser.
Move to Chicago
In 1919, Capone left New York City for Chicago at the invitation of Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer. Capone began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where is thought the most likely way for him to have contracted syphilis. Capone was aware of being infected at an early stage and timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment. In 1923, Capone purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood in Chicago's South Side for .
According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, hijacker Joe Howard was killed on May 7, 1923, after he tried to interfere with the Capone-Torrio bootlegging business. In the early years of the decade, Capone's name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's criminal empire after the latter's murder on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being involved.
Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in Chicago, with Capone as his right-hand man. Torrio was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups. The smaller North Side Gang, led by Dean O'Banion, came under pressure from the Genna brothers who were allied with Torrio. O'Banion found that Torrio was unhelpful with the Gennas' encroachment, despite his pretensions to be a settler of disputes. In a fateful step, Torrio arranged the murder of O'Banion at his flower shop on November 10, 1924. This placed Hymie Weiss at the head of the gang, backed by Vincent Drucci and Bugs Moran. Weiss had been a close friend of O'Banion, and the North Siders made it a priority to get revenge on his killers.
During Prohibition, Capone was involved with Canadian bootleggers who helped him smuggle liquor into the U.S. When Capone was asked if he knew Rocco Perri, billed as Canada's "King of the Bootleggers", he replied: "Why, I don't even know which street Canada is on." Other sources, however, claim that Capone had certainly visited Canada, where he maintained some hideaways, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police states that there is no "evidence that he ever set foot on Canadian soil."
Boss
An ambush in January 1925 left Capone shaken but unhurt. Twelve days later, Torrio was returning from a shopping trip when he was shot several times. After recovering, he effectively resigned and handed control to Capone, aged 26, who became the new boss of an organization that took in illegal breweries and a transportation network that reached to Canada, with political and law-enforcement protection. In turn, he was able to use more violence to increase revenue. Any establishment that refused to purchase liquor from Capone often got blown up, and as many as 100 people were killed in such bombings during the 1920s. Rivals saw Capone as responsible for the proliferation of brothels in the city.
Capone often enlisted the help of local members of the black community into his operations; jazz musicians Milt Hinton and Lionel Hampton had uncles who worked for Capone on Chicago's South Side. A fan of jazz as well, Capone once asked clarinetist Johnny Dodds to play a number that Dodds did not know; Capone split a $100 bill in half and told Dodds that he would get the other half when he learned it. Capone also sent two bodyguards to accompany jazz pianist Earl Hines on a road trip.
Capone indulged in custom suits, cigars, gourmet food and drink, and female companionship. He was particularly known for his flamboyant and costly jewelry. His favorite responses to questions about his activities were: "I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want"; and, "All I do is satisfy a public demand." Capone had become a national celebrity and talking point.
Capone based himself in Cicero, Illinois, after using bribery and widespread intimidation to take over town council elections, making it difficult for the North Siders to target him. Capone's driver was found tortured and murdered, and there was an attempt on Weiss' life in the Chicago Loop. On September 20, 1926, the North Siders used a ploy outside Capone's headquarters at the Hawthorne Inn aimed at drawing him to the windows. Gunmen in several cars then opened fire with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns at the windows of the first-floor restaurant. Capone was unhurt and called for a truce, but the negotiations fell through. Three weeks later, on October 11, Weiss was killed outside the North Siders' headquarters at O'Banion's former flower shop. The owner of Hawthorne's restaurant was a friend of Capone's, and he was kidnapped and killed by Moran and Drucci in January 1927.
Capone became increasingly security-minded and desirous of getting away from Chicago. As a precaution, he and his entourage would often show up suddenly at one of Chicago's train depots and buy up an entire Pullman sleeper car on a night train to Cleveland, Omaha, Kansas City, Little Rock or Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they would spend a week in luxury hotel suites under assumed names. In 1928, Capone paid $40,000 to Clarence Busch of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family for a home at 93 Palm Avenue on Palm Island, Florida, between Miami and Miami Beach.
Feud with Aiello
In November 1925, Capone's consigliere, Antonio Lombardo, was named head of the Unione Siciliana, a Sicilian-American benevolent society that had been corrupted by gangsters. An infuriated Joe Aiello, who had wanted the position himself, believed Capone was responsible for Lombardo's ascension and resented the non-Sicilian's attempts to manipulate affairs within the Unione. Aiello severed all personal and business ties with Lombardo and entered into a feud with Capone.
Aiello allied himself with several other Capone enemies, including Jack Zuta, who ran vice and gambling houses together. Aiello plotted to eliminate both Lombardo and Capone, and starting in the spring of 1927 made several attempts to assassinate Capone. On one occasion, Aiello offered money to the chef of Joseph "Diamond Joe" Esposito's Bella Napoli Café, Capone's favorite restaurant, to put prussic acid in Capone's and Lombardo's soup; reports indicated he offered between $10,000 and $35,000. Instead, the chef exposed the plot to Capone, who responded by dispatching men to destroy Aiello's bakery on West Division Street with machine-gun fire. More than 200 bullets were fired into the bakery on May 28, 1927, wounding Joe's brother Antonio.
During the summer and autumn of 1927, a number of hitmen Aiello hired to kill Capone were themselves slain. Among them were Anthony Russo and Vincent Spicuzza, each of whom had been offered $25,000 by Aiello to kill Capone and Lombardo. Aiello eventually offered a $50,000 bounty to anyone who eliminated Capone. At least ten gunmen tried to collect on the bounty but ended up dead. Capone's ally Ralph Sheldon attempted to kill both Capone and Lombardo for Aiello's reward, but Capone henchman Frank Nitti's intelligence network learned of the transaction and had Sheldon shot in front of a West Side hotel, although he survived the incident.
In November 1927, Aiello organized machine-gun ambushes across from Lombardo's home and a cigar store frequented by Capone, but those plans were foiled after an anonymous tip led police to raid several addresses and arrest Milwaukee gunman Angelo La Mantio and four other Aiello gunmen. After the police discovered receipts for the apartments in La Mantio's pockets, he confessed that Aiello had hired him to kill Capone and Lombardo, leading the police to arrest Aiello himself and bring him to the South Clark Street police station. Upon learning of the arrest, Capone dispatched nearly two dozen gunmen to stand guard outside the station and await Aiello's release. The men made no attempt to conceal their purpose there, and reporters and photographers rushed to the scene to observe Aiello's expected murder. When released, Aiello was given a police escort out of the station to safety. He later failed to make a court appearance after his attorney claimed he suffered a nervous breakdown. Aiello disappeared with some family members to Trenton, NJ, from whence he continued his campaign against Capone and Lombardo.
Political alliances
Chicago politicians had long been associated with questionable methods, and even newspaper circulation "wars", but the need for bootleggers to have protection in city hall introduced a far more serious level of violence and graft. Capone is generally seen as having an appreciable effect in bringing about the victory of Republican mayoral candidate William Hale Thompson, who had campaigned on a platform of not enforcing Prohibition and at one time hinted that he'd reopen illegal saloons. Thompson allegedly accepted a contribution of $250,000 from Capone. Thompson beat Democratic candidate William Emmett Dever in the 1927 mayoral race by a relatively slim margin.
On the day of the so-called Pineapple Primary on April 10, 1928, voting booths were targeted by Capone's bomber, James Belcastro, in wards where Thompson's opponents were thought to have support, causing the deaths of at least fifteen people. Belcastro was accused of the murder of lawyer Octavius Granady, an African-American who challenged Thompson's candidate for the Black vote, and was chased through the streets on polling day by cars of gunmen before being shot dead. Four policemen were among those charged along with Belcastro, but all charges were dropped after key witnesses recanted their statements. An indication of the attitude of local law enforcement toward Capone's organization came in 1931 when Belcastro was wounded in a shooting; police suggested to skeptical journalists that Belcastro was an independent operator.
A 1929 report by The New York Times connected Capone to the 1926 murder of Assistant State Attorney William H. McSwiggin, the 1928 murders of chief investigator Ben Newmark and former mentor Frankie Yale.
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
Capone was widely assumed to have been responsible for ordering the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, despite being at his Florida home at the time of the massacre. The massacre was an attempt to eliminate Bugs Moran, head of the North Side Gang, and the motivation for the plan may have been the fact that some expensive whisky illegally imported from Canada via the Detroit River had been hijacked while it was being transported to Cook County, Illinois.
Moran was the last survivor of the North Side gunmen; his succession had come about because his similarly aggressive predecessors, Weiss and Vincent Drucci, had been killed in the violence that followed the murder of original leader Dean O'Banion.
To monitor their targets' habits and movements, Capone's men rented an apartment across from the trucking warehouse and garage at 2122 North Clark Street, which served as Moran's headquarters. On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, Capone's lookouts signaled four gunmen disguised as police officers to initiate a "police raid". The faux police lined the seven victims along a wall and signaled for accomplices armed with machine guns and shotguns. Moran was not among the victims. Photos of the slain victims shocked the public and damaged Capone's image. Within days, Capone received a summons to testify before a Chicago grand jury on charges of federal Prohibition violations, but he claimed to be too unwell to attend. In an effort to clean up his image, Capone donated to charities and sponsored a soup kitchen in Chicago during the Depression.
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre led to public disquiet about Thompson's alliance with Capone and was a factor in Anton J. Cermak winning the mayoral election on April 6, 1931.
Feud with Aiello ends
Capone was primarily known for ordering other men to do his dirty work for him. In May 1929, one of Capone's bodyguards, Frank Rio, uncovered a plot by three of his men, Albert Anselmi, John Scalise and Joseph Giunta, who had been persuaded by Aiello to depose Capone and take over the Chicago Outfit. Capone later beat the men with a baseball bat and then ordered his bodyguards to shoot them, a scene that was included in the 1987 film The Untouchables. Deirdre Bair, along with writers and historians such as William Elliot Hazelgrove, have questioned the veracity of the claim. Bair questioned why "three trained killers could sit quietly and let this happen", while Hazelgrove stated that Capone would have been "hard pressed to beat three men to death with a baseball bat" and that he would have instead let an enforcer perform the murders. However, despite claims that the story was first reported by author Walter Noble Burns in his 1931 book The One-way Ride: The red trail of Chicago gangland from prohibition to Jake Lingle, Capone biographers Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz have found versions of the story in press coverage shortly after the crime. Collins and Schwartz suggest that similarities among reported versions of the story indicate a basis in truth and that the Outfit deliberately spread the tale to enhance Capone's fearsome reputation. George Meyer, an associate of Capone's, also claimed to have witnessed both the planning of the murders and the event itself.
In 1930, upon learning of Aiello's continued plotting against him, Capone resolved to finally eliminate him. In the weeks before Aiello's death, Capone's men tracked him to Rochester, New York, where he had connections through Buffalo crime family boss Stefano Magaddino, and plotted to kill him there, but Aiello returned to Chicago before the plot could be executed. Aiello, angst-ridden from the constant need to hide out and the killings of several of his men, set up residence in the Chicago apartment of Unione Siciliana treasurer Pasquale "Patsy Presto" Prestogiacomo at 205 N. Kolmar Ave. On October 23, upon exiting Prestogiacomo's building to enter a taxicab, a gunman in a second-floor window across the street started firing at Aiello with a submachine gun. Aiello was said to have been shot at least 13 times before he toppled off the building steps and moved around the corner, attempting to move out of the line of fire. Instead, he moved directly into the range of a second submachine gun positioned on the third floor of another apartment block, and was subsequently gunned down.
Federal intervention
In the wake of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, Walter A. Strong, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, decided to ask his friend President Herbert Hoover for federal intervention to stem Chicago's lawlessness. He arranged a secret meeting at the White House, just two weeks after Hoover's inauguration. On March 19, 1929, Strong, joined by Frank Loesch of the Chicago Crime Commission, and Laird Bell, made their case to the President. In Hoover's 1952 Memoir, the former President reported that Strong argued "Chicago was in the hands of the gangsters, that the police and magistrates were completely under their control, …that the Federal government was the only force by which the city's ability to govern itself could be restored. At once I directed that all the Federal agencies concentrate upon Mr. Capone and his allies."
That meeting launched a multi-agency attack on Capone. Treasury and Justice Departments developed plans for income tax prosecutions against Chicago gangsters, and a small, elite squad of Prohibition Bureau agents (whose members included Eliot Ness) were deployed against bootleggers. In a city used to corruption, these lawmen were incorruptible. Charles Schwarz, a writer for the Chicago Daily News, dubbed them Untouchables. To support Federal efforts, Strong secretly used his newspaper's resources to gather and share intelligence on the Capone outfit.
Trials
On March 27, 1929, Capone was arrested by FBI agents as he left a Chicago courtroom after testifying to a grand jury that was investigating violations of federal prohibition laws. He was charged with contempt of court for feigning illness to avoid an earlier appearance. On May 16, 1929, Capone was arrested in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for carrying a concealed weapon. On May 17, 1929, Capone was indicted by a grand jury and a trial was held before Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge John E Walsh. Following the entering of a guilty plea by his attorney, Capone was sentenced to a prison term of one year. On August 8, 1929, Capone was transferred to Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary. A week after his release in March 1930, Capone was listed as the number one "Public Enemy" on the unofficial Chicago Crime Commission's widely publicized list.
In April 1930, Capone was arrested on vagrancy charges when visiting Miami Beach; the governor had ordered sheriffs to run him out of the state. Capone claimed that Miami police had refused him food and water and threatened to arrest his family. He was charged with perjury for making these statements, but was acquitted after a three-day trial in July. In September, a Chicago judge issued a warrant for Capone's arrest on charges of vagrancy and then used the publicity to run against Thompson in the Republican primary. In February 1931, Capone was tried on the contempt of court charge. In court, Judge James Herbert Wilkerson intervened to reinforce questioning of Capone's doctor by the prosecutor. Wilkerson sentenced Capone to six months, but he remained free while on appeal of the contempt conviction.
In February 1930, Capone's organization was linked to the murder of Julius Rosenheim, who served as a police informant in the Chicago Outfit for 20 years.
Tax evasion
Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt is said to have originated the tactic of charging obviously wealthy crime figures with federal tax evasion on the basis of their luxurious lifestyles. In 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sullivan that the approach was legally sound: illegally earned income was subject to income tax.
The key to Capone's conviction on tax charges was not his spending, but proving his income, and the most valuable evidence in that regard originated in his offer to pay tax. Ralph, his brother and a gangster in his own right, was tried for tax evasion in 1930. Ralph spent the next 18 months in prison after being convicted in a two-week trial over which Wilkerson presided. Seeking to avoid the same fate, Al Capone ordered his lawyer to regularize his tax position, and although it was not done, his lawyer made crucial admissions when stating the income that Capone was willing to pay tax on for various years, admitting income of $100,000 for 1928 and 1929, for instance. Hence, without any investigation, the government had been given a letter from a lawyer acting for Capone conceding his large taxable income for certain years he had paid no tax on. On March 13, 1931, Capone was charged with income tax evasion for 1924, in a secret grand jury. On June 5, 1931, Capone was indicted by a federal grand jury on 22 counts of income tax evasion from 1925 through 1929; he was released on $50,000 bail. Capone was then indicted on 5,000 violations of the Volstead Act (Prohibition laws).
On June 16, 1931, at the Chicago Federal Building in the courtroom of Wilkerson, Capone pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and the 5,000 Volstead Act violations as part of a -year prison sentence plea bargain. However, on July 30, 1931, Wilkerson refused to honor the plea bargain, and Capone's counsel rescinded the guilty pleas. On the second day of the trial, Wilkerson deemed that the 1930 letter to federal authorities could be admitted into evidence, overruling objections that a lawyer could not confess for his client. Wilkerson later tried Capone only on the income tax evasion charges as he determined they took precedence over the Volstead Act charges.
Much was later made of other evidence, such as witnesses and ledgers, but these strongly implied Capone's control rather than stating it. Capone's lawyers, who had relied on the plea bargain Wilkerson refused to honor and therefore had mere hours to prepare for the trial, ran a weak defense focused on claiming that essentially all his income was lost to gambling. This would have been irrelevant regardless, since gambling losses can only be subtracted from gambling winnings, but it was further undercut by Capone's expenses, which were well beyond what his claimed income could support; Wilkerson allowed Capone's spending to be presented at very great length. The government charged Capone with evasion of $215,000 in taxes on a total income of $1,038,654, during the five-year period. Capone was convicted on five counts of income tax evasion on October 17, 1931, and was sentenced a week later to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 plus $7,692 for court costs, and was held liable for $215,000 plus interest due on his back taxes. The contempt of court sentence was served concurrently. New lawyers hired to represent Capone were Washington-based tax experts. They filed a writ of habeas corpus based on a Supreme Court ruling that tax evasion was not fraud, which apparently meant that Capone had been convicted on charges relating to years that were actually outside the time limit for prosecution. However, a judge interpreted the law so that the time that Capone had spent in Miami was subtracted from the age of the offences, thereby denying the appeal of both Capone's conviction and sentence.
Imprisonment
Capone was sent to Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary in May 1932, aged 33. Upon his arrival at Atlanta, Capone was officially diagnosed with syphilis and gonorrhoea. He was also experiencing withdrawal symptoms from cocaine addiction, the use of which had perforated his nasal septum. Capone was competent at his prison job of stitching soles on shoes for eight hours a day, but his letters were barely coherent. He was seen as a weak personality, and so out of his depth dealing with bullying at the hands of fellow inmates that his cellmate, seasoned convict Red Rudensky, feared that Capone would have a breakdown. Rudensky was formerly a small-time criminal associated with the Capone gang and found himself becoming a protector for Capone. The conspicuous protection by Rudensky and other prisoners, drew accusations from less friendly inmates and fueled suspicion that Capone was receiving special treatment. No solid evidence ever emerged, but it formed part of the rationale for moving Capone to the recently opened Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary off the coast of San Francisco, in August 1934. On June 23, 1936, Capone was stabbed and superficially wounded by fellow Alcatraz inmate James C. Lucas.
Due to his good behavior, Capone was permitted to play banjo in the Alcatraz prison band, the Rock Islanders, which gave regular Sunday concerts for other inmates. Capone also transcribed the song "Madonna Mia" creating his own arrangement as a tribute to his wife Mae.
At Alcatraz, Capone's decline became increasingly evident, as neurosyphilis progressively eroded his mental faculties; his formal diagnosis of syphilis of the brain was made in February 1938. He spent the last year of his Alcatraz sentence in the hospital section, confused and disoriented. Capone completed his term in Alcatraz on January 6, 1939, and was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in California to serve out his sentence for contempt of court. He was paroled on November 16, 1939, after his wife Mae appealed to the court, based on his reduced mental capabilities.
Chicago aftermath
The main effect of Capone's conviction was that he ceased to be boss immediately on his imprisonment, but those involved in the jailing of Capone portrayed it as a considerable undermining of the city's organized crime syndicate. Capone's underboss, Frank Nitti, took over as boss of the Outfit after he was released from prison in March 1932, having also been convicted of tax evasion charges. Far from being smashed, the Outfit continued without being troubled by the Chicago police, but at a lower level and without the open violence that had marked Capone's rule. Organized crime in the city had a lower profile once Prohibition was repealed, already wary of attention after seeing Capone's notoriety bring him down, to the extent that there is a lack of consensus among writers about who was actually in control and who was a figurehead "front boss". Prostitution, labor union racketeering, and gambling became moneymakers for organized crime in the city without incurring serious investigation. In the late 1950s, FBI agents discovered an organization led by Capone's former lieutenants reigning supreme over the Chicago underworld.
Some historians have speculated that Capone ordered the 1939 murder of Edward J. O'Hare a week before his release, for helping federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion, though there are other theories for O'Hare's death.
Illness and death
Due to his failing health, Capone was released from prison on November 16, 1939, and referred to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for the treatment of syphilitic paresis. Because of his unsavory reputation, Johns Hopkins refused to treat him, but the city's Union Memorial Hospital was willing to take him as a patient. Capone was grateful for the compassionate care that he received and donated two Japanese weeping cherry trees to Union Memorial Hospital in 1939. After a few weeks of inpatient and outpatient care, on March 20, 1940, a very sickly Capone left Baltimore and travelled to his mansion in Palm Island, Florida. In 1942, after mass production of penicillin was started in the United States, Capone was one of the first American patients treated by the new drug. Though it was too late for him to reverse the damage to his brain, it did slow down the progression of the disease.
In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist examined him and concluded that Capone had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. He spent the last years of his life at his Palm Island mansion, spending time with his wife and grandchildren. On January 21, 1947, Capone had a stroke. He regained consciousness and started to improve, but contracted bronchopneumonia. He suffered a cardiac arrest on January 22, and on January 25, surrounded by his family in his home, died after his heart failed as a result of apoplexy. His body was transported back to Chicago a week later and a private funeral was held. He was originally buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago. In 1950, Capone's remains, along with those of his father, Gabriele, and brother, Frank, were moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
In popular culture
Capone is one of the most notorious American gangsters of the 20th century and has been the major subject of numerous articles, books, and films. Particularly, from 1925 to 1929, shortly after he moved to Chicago, he enjoyed his status as the most notorious mobster in the country. He cultivated a certain image of himself in the media that made him a subject of fascination.
See also
List of Depression-era outlaws
The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults
Timeline of organized crime
Al Capone bibliography
References
Citations
Cited sources
.
Further reading
Bair, Deirdre (2016). Al Capone: His Life, Legacy and Legend. New York: Nan A. Talese. .
Binder, John J. (2017). Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, .
Capeci, Dominic J. "Al Capone: Symbol of a Ballyhoo Society." Journal of Ethnic Studies 2.4 (1975): 33–46.
Capone, Deirdre Marie (2010). Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story from Inside His Family. Recap Publishing LLC. .
Collins, Max Allan, and A. Brad Schwartz (2018). Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago. New York: William Morrow. .
Helmer, William J. (2011). Al Capone and His American Boys: Memoirs of a Mobster's Wife. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, .
Hoffman Dennis E. (1993). Scarface Al and the Crime Crusaders: Chicago's Private War Against Capone. Southern Illinois University Press. .
Kobler, John (2003). Capone: The Life and Times of Al Capone. New York: Da Capo Press. .
MacDonald, Alan. Dead Famous: Al Capone and His Gang. Scholastic.
Michaels, Will (2016). "Al Capone in St. Petersburg, Florida" in Hidden History of St. Petersburg. Charleston, SC: The History Press. .
Pasley, Fred D. (2004). Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-Made Man. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co. .
Schoenberg, Robert J. (1992).Mr. Capone. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, .
External links
South Beach Magazine The Un-Welcomed Visitor: Al Capone in Miami. (with photos)
FBI files on Al Capone
Little Chicago: Capone in Johnson City, Tennessee
Al Capone at the Crime Library
Al Capone on IMDb
1899 births
1947 deaths
20th-century American criminals
American businesspeople convicted of crimes
American gangsters of Italian descent
American male criminals
American people convicted of tax crimes
American bootleggers
Catholics from Illinois
Catholics from New York (state)
Chicago Outfit bosses
Criminals from Brooklyn
Gangsters from New York City
Deaths from bleeding
Deaths from bronchopneumonia
Deaths from pneumonia in Florida
Deaths from cerebrovascular disease
Depression-era gangsters
Deaths from syphilis
Five Points Gang
Inmates of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
People from Cicero, Illinois
People from Park Slope
Prohibition-era gangsters
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In electronics, the figures of merit of an amplifier are numerical measures that characterize its properties and performance. Figures of merit can be given as a list of specifications that include properties such as gain, bandwidth, noise and linearity, among others listed in this article. Figures of merit are important for determining the suitability of a particular amplifier for an intended use.
Gain
The gain of an amplifier is the ratio of output to input power or amplitude, and is usually measured in decibels. When measured in decibels it is logarithmically related to the power ratio: G(dB)=10 log(Pout /Pin). RF amplifiers are often specified in terms of the maximum power gain obtainable, while the voltage gain of audio amplifiers and instrumentation amplifiers will be more often specified. For example, an audio amplifier with a gain given as 20 dB will have a voltage gain of ten.
The use of voltage gain figure is appropriate when the amplifier's input impedance is much higher than the source impedance, and the load impedance higher than the amplifier's output impedance.
If two equivalent amplifiers are being compared, the amplifier with higher gain settings would be more sensitive as it would take less input signal to produce a given amount of power.
Bandwidth
The bandwidth of an amplifier is the range of frequencies for which the amplifier gives "satisfactory performance". The definition of "satisfactory performance" may be different for different applications. However, a common and well-accepted metric is the half-power points (i.e. frequency where the power goes down by half its peak value) on the output vs. frequency curve. Therefore, bandwidth can be defined as the difference between the lower and upper half power points. This is therefore also known as the bandwidth. Bandwidths (otherwise called "frequency responses") for other response tolerances are sometimes quoted (, etc.) or "plus or minus 1dB" (roughly the sound level difference people usually can detect).
The gain of a good quality full-range audio amplifier will be essentially flat between 20 Hz to about 20 kHz (the range of normal human hearing). In ultra-high-fidelity amplifier design, the amplifier's frequency response should extend considerably beyond this (one or more octaves either side) and might have points < 10 Hz and > . Professional touring amplifiers often have input and/or output filtering to sharply limit frequency response beyond ; too much of the amplifier's potential output power would otherwise be wasted on infrasonic and ultrasonic frequencies, and the danger of AM radio interference would increase. Modern switching amplifiers need steep low pass filtering at the output to get rid of high-frequency switching noise and harmonics.
The range of frequency over which the gain is equal to or greater than 70.7% of its maximum gain is termed as bandwidth.
Efficiency
Efficiency is a measure of how much of the power source is usefully applied to the amplifier's output. Class A amplifiers are very inefficient, in the range of 10–20% with a max efficiency of 25% for direct coupling of the output. Inductive coupling of the output can raise their efficiency to a maximum of 50%.
Drain efficiency is the ratio of output RF power to input DC power when primary input DC power has been fed to the drain of a field-effect transistor. Based on this definition, the drain efficiency cannot exceed 25% for a class A amplifier that is supplied drain bias current through resistors (because RF signal has its zero level at about 50% of the input DC). Manufacturers specify much higher drain efficiencies, and designers are able to obtain higher efficiencies by providing current to the drain of the transistor through an inductor or a transformer winding. In this case the RF zero level is near the DC rail and will swing both above and below the rail during operation. While the voltage level is above the DC rail current is supplied by the inductor.
Class B amplifiers have a very high efficiency but are impractical for audio work because of high levels of distortion (See: Crossover distortion). In practical design, the result of a tradeoff is the class AB design. Modern Class AB amplifiers commonly have peak efficiencies between 30 and 55% in audio systems and 50-70% in radio frequency systems with a theoretical maximum of 78.5%.
Commercially available Class D switching amplifiers have reported efficiencies as high as 90%. Amplifiers of Class C-F are usually known to be very high-efficiency amplifiers. RCA manufactured an AM broadcast transmitter employing a single class-C low-mu triode with an RF efficiency in the 90% range.
More efficient amplifiers run cooler, and often do not need any cooling fans even in multi-kilowatt designs. The reason for this is that the loss of efficiency produces heat as a by-product of the energy lost during the conversion of power. In more efficient amplifiers there is less loss of energy so in turn less heat.
In RF linear Power Amplifiers, such as cellular base stations and broadcast transmitters, special design techniques can be used to improve efficiency. Doherty designs, which use a second output stage as a "peak" amplifier, can lift efficiency from the typical 15% up to 30-35% in a narrow bandwidth. Envelope Tracking designs are able to achieve efficiencies of up to 60%, by modulating the supply voltage to the amplifier in line with the envelope of the signal.
Linearity
An ideal amplifier would be a totally linear device, but real amplifiers are only linear within limits.
When the signal drive to the amplifier is increased, the output also increases until a point is reached where some part of the amplifier becomes saturated and cannot produce any more output; this is called clipping, and results in distortion.
In most amplifiers a reduction in gain takes place before hard clipping occurs; the result is a compression effect, which (if the amplifier is an audio amplifier) sounds much less unpleasant to the ear. For these amplifiers, the 1 dB compression point is defined as the input power (or output power) where the gain is 1 dB less than the small signal gain. Sometimes this non linearity is deliberately designed in to reduce the audible unpleasantness of hard clipping under overload.
Ill effects of non-linearity can be reduced with negative feedback.
Linearization is an emergent field, and there are many techniques, such as feed forward, predistortion, postdistortion, in order to avoid the undesired effects of the non-linearities.
Noise
This is a measure of how much noise is introduced in the amplification process. Noise is an undesirable but inevitable product of the electronic devices and components; also, much noise results from intentional economies of manufacture and design time. The metric for noise performance of a circuit is noise figure or noise factor. Noise figure is a comparison between the output signal to noise ratio and the thermal noise of the input signal.
Output dynamic range
Output dynamic range is the range, usually given in dB, between the smallest and largest useful output levels. The lowest useful level is limited by output noise, while the largest is limited most often by distortion. The ratio of these two is quoted as the amplifier dynamic range. More precisely, if S = maximal allowed signal power and N = noise power, the dynamic range DR is DR = (S + N ) /N.
In many switched mode amplifiers, dynamic range is limited by the minimum output step size.
Slew rate
Slew rate is the maximum rate of change of the output, usually quoted in volts per second (or microsecond). Many amplifiers are ultimately slew rate limited (typically by the impedance of a drive current having to overcome capacitive effects at some point in the circuit), which sometimes limits the full power bandwidth to frequencies well below the amplifier's small-signal frequency response.
Rise time
The rise time, tr, of an amplifier is the time taken for the output to change from 10% to 90% of its final level when driven by a step input.
For a Gaussian response system (or a simple RC roll off), the rise time is approximated by:
tr * BW = 0.35, where tr is rise time in seconds and BW is bandwidth in Hz.
Settling time and ringing
The time taken for the output to settle to within a certain percentage of the final value (for instance 0.1%) is called the settling time, and is usually specified for oscilloscope vertical amplifiers and high-accuracy measurement systems. Ringing refers to an output variation that cycles above and below an amplifier's final value and leads to a delay in reaching a stable output. Ringing is the result of overshoot caused by an underdamped circuit.
Overshoot
In response to a step input, the overshoot is the amount the output exceeds its final, steady-state value.
Stability
Stability is an issue in all amplifiers with feedback, whether that feedback is added intentionally or results unintentionally. It is especially an issue when applied over multiple amplifying stages.
Stability is a major concern in RF and microwave amplifiers. The degree of an amplifier's stability can be quantified by a so-called stability factor. There are several different stability factors, such as the Stern stability factor and the Linvil stability factor, which specify a condition that must be met for the absolute stability of an amplifier in terms of its two-port parameters.
See also
Audio system measurements
Low-noise amplifier
References
External links
Efficiency of Microwave Devices
RF Power Amplifier Testing
Electronic amplifiers
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The RUR-5 ASROC (for "Anti-Submarine Rocket") is an all-weather, all sea-conditions anti-submarine missile system. Developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s, it was deployed in the 1960s, updated in the 1990s, and eventually installed on over 200 USN surface ships, specifically cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. The ASROC has been deployed on scores of warships of many other navies, including Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of China, Greece, Pakistan and others.
History
ASROC started development as the Rocket Assisted Torpedo (RAT) program by Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the early 1950s to develop a surface warship ASW weapon to counter the new post-World War II submarines which ran quieter, at much higher speed and could attack from much longer range with high speed homing torpedoes. In addition, the goal was to take advantage of modern sonars with a much larger detection range. An extended range torpedo delivered by parachute from the air would allow warships the stand-off capability to attack hostile submarines with very little advance notice to the hostile submarine.
The RAT program came in three phases: RAT-A, RAT-B and RAT-C. RAT-A and its follow-on, RAT-B, were compact and economical stand-off weapons for smaller warships, but were determined to be either unreliable or had too short a range. RAT-C was developed as a stand-off ASW weapon that used a nuclear depth charge. This required a range of at least to escape potential damage from the underwater blast. The RAT-C was considerably larger than the previous RAT program rockets to accommodate the extended range needed and was for larger warships.
After the failure of both the RAT-A and RAT-B programs, RAT-C was redesigned to use not only a nuclear depth charge but also a homing ASW torpedo. To obtain the accuracy needed, the RAT-C rocket booster had to be redesigned with larger side fins. This program finally combined reliability and accuracy, along with the required stand-off range. Before RAT-C reached operational status in 1960, aboard the large US Navy destroyer leader , its name was changed to ASROC. ASROC was deployed in 1961 and eventually made the majority of USN surface combatants nuclear-capable.
Description
The first ASROC system using the MK-112 "Matchbox" launcher was developed in the 1950s and installed in the 1960s. This system was phased out in the 1990s and replaced with the RUM-139 Vertical Launch ASROC, or "VLA".
After a surface ship, patrol plane or anti-submarine helicopter detects an enemy submarine by using sonar or other sensors, it could relay the sub's position to an ASROC-equipped ship for attack. The attacking ship would then fire an ASROC missile carrying an acoustic homing torpedo or a W44 nuclear depth bomb onto an unguided ballistic trajectory toward the target. At a pre-determined point on the missile's trajectory, the payload separates from the missile and deploys a parachute to permit splashdown and water entry at a low speed and with minimum detectable noise. Water entry activates the torpedo, which is guided by its own sonar system, and homes in on the target using either active sonar or passive sonar.
W44 nuclear depth charge
The W44 nuclear depth charge entered service in 1961, but was never used beyond one or two tests before the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banning underwater nuclear tests went into effect. A total of 575 weapons were produced. The W44 weighed with a diameter of and length of . Following payload separation, the unguided W44 sank quickly to a predetermined depth where the 10-kiloton warhead detonated. The nuclear-armed ASROC was never used in combat. W44-armed ASROC missiles were retired by 1989, when all types of nuclear depth bombs were removed from deployment.
Specific installations
One of the first ASROC installations was on in 1960. The first large group of ships to receive ASROC were 78 s, modified under the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization Mark I program (FRAM I) in the early 1960s. A Mark 112 8-tube ASROC launcher was added along with other major modifications. ASROC reloads were stowed alongside the helicopter hangar and handled by a small crane.
The 31 U.S. Navy s were all built with the Mark 16 Mod 7 ASROC Launching Group and MK 4 ASROC Weapons Handling System (AWHS) reload system. These had one standard Mark 112 octuple ASROC launcher, located immediately above a reload system holding an additional 16 assembled rounds (two complete reloads of eight missiles apiece). Thus, each Spruance-class destroyer originally carried a maximum total of 24 ASROC.
Most other US Navy and allied navy destroyers, destroyer escorts, frigates, and several different classes of cruisers only carried the one ASROC "matchbox" MK 112 launcher with eight ASROC missiles (although later in service, some of those missiles could be replaced by the Harpoon anti-ship missile). The "matchbox" Mk 112 launchers were capable of carrying a mixture of the two types. Reloads were carried in many classes, either on first level of the superstructure immediately abaft the launcher, or in a separate deckhouse just forward or abaft the Mk 112.
The MK 16 Launching Group also had configurations that supported RGM-84 Harpoon (onboard destroyer escorts (frigates)) or a variation of the Tartar missile in limited distribution.
Ships with the Mk 26 GMLS, and late marks of the Mk 10 GMLS aboard the s, could accommodate ASROC in these power-loaded launchers (the Mk 13 GMLS was not able to fire the weapon, as the launcher rail was too short).
Most Spruance-class destroyers were later modified to include the Mk 41 VLS, these launchers are capable of carrying a mixture of the RUM-139 VL-ASROC, the Tomahawk TLAM, and other missiles. All of the Spruance destroyers carried two separate quad Harpoon launchers. Other US ships with the Mk 41 can also accommodate VL-ASROC.
Operators
Former operators
- only on s (after IRE/DELEX modification.)
- only on s
- only on using a Mk 10 GMLS launcher (depot for 40 missiles, between RIM-2 Terrier / RIM-67A SM-1ER and ASROC)
See also
Ikara
Hong Sang Eo
Malafon
MILAS
RUM-139 VL-ASROC
Sea Lance
SUBROC
Terasca
List of nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapon design
SUW-N-1
References
External links
https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/vla.htm
http://www.gyrodynehelicopters.com/asroc.htm
http://designation-systems.net/dusrm/r-5.html
DiGiulian, Tony Navweaps.com ASROC page
Allbombs.html list of all US nuclear warheads at nuclearweaponarchive.org
Anti-submarine missiles of the United States
Cold War nuclear missiles of the United States
Ballistic missiles of the United States
Cold War anti-submarine weapons of the United States
Mk016
RUR005
Honeywell
Military equipment introduced in the 1960s
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The Azores ( , , ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atlantic Ocean, about west of Lisbon, about northwest of Morocco, and about southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Its main industries are agriculture, dairy farming, livestock, fishing, and tourism, which has become a major service activity in the region. The government of the Azores employs a large percentage of the population directly or indirectly in the service and tertiary sectors. The largest city of the Azores is Ponta Delgada. The culture, dialect, cuisine, and traditions of the Azorean islands vary considerably, because these remote islands were settled sporadically over a span of two centuries.
There are nine major Azorean islands and an islet cluster, in three main groups. These are Flores and Corvo, to the west; Graciosa, Terceira, São Jorge, Pico, and Faial in the centre; and São Miguel, Santa Maria, and the Formigas islets to the east. They extend for more than and lie in a northwest–southeast direction. All of the islands have volcanic origins, although some, such as Santa Maria, have had no recorded activity in the time since the islands were settled several centuries ago. Mount Pico, on the island of Pico, is the highest point in Portugal, at . If measured from their base at the bottom of the ocean to their peaks, which thrust high above the surface of the Atlantic, the Azores are among the tallest mountains on the planet.
The climate of the Azores is very mild for such a northerly location, being influenced by its distance from the continents and by the passing Gulf Stream. Because of the marine influence, temperatures remain mild year-round. Daytime temperatures normally fluctuate between depending on season. Temperatures above or below are unknown in the major population centres. It is also generally wet and cloudy.
History
A small number of alleged hypogea (underground structures carved into rocks) have been identified on the islands of Corvo, Santa Maria, and Terceira by Portuguese archaeologist Nuno Ribeiro, who speculated that they might date back 2,000 years, implying a human presence on the island before the Portuguese. These structures have been used by settlers in the Azores to store grain and the suggestion by Ribeiro that they might be burial sites is unconfirmed. Detailed examination and dating to authenticate the validity of these speculations is lacking; thus it is unclear whether these structures are natural or human-made and whether they predate the 15th century Portuguese colonization of the Azores.
According to a 2015 paper published in Journal of Evolutionary Biology, research based on mouse mitochondrial DNA points to a Scandinavian rather than Portuguese origin of the local mouse population. A 2021 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, using data from lake sediment core sampling, suggests brush-clearing was undertaken and animal husbandry introduced between 700 and 850 C.E. These findings suggest a brief period of Norse settlement, and the 2021 paper further cites climate simulations that suggest the dominant winds in the North Atlantic Ocean in that period blew from the northeast, which would have taken Viking ships heading southwest from Scandinavia more or less directly to the Azores.
Discovery
The islands were known to Europeans in the 14th century; parts of them appear in the Catalan Atlas, created in 1375. In 1427, a captain sailing for Prince Henry the Navigator, possibly Gonçalo Velho, may have rediscovered the Azores, but this is not certain. In Thomas Ashe's 1813 work A History of the Azores, the author identified a Fleming, Joshua Vander Berg of Bruges, who made landfall in the archipelago during a storm on his way to Lisbon. According to Ashe, the Portuguese explored the area and claimed it for Portugal. Other writers note the discovery of the first islands (São Miguel, Santa Maria and Terceira) by sailors in the service of Henry the Navigator, although there are few documents to support such claims.
Although it is commonly said that the archipelago received its name from (Portuguese for goshawk, a common bird at the time of discovery) it is unlikely that the bird ever nested or hunted on the islands. There were no large animals on Santa Maria; after its discovery and before settlement began, sheep were let loose on the island to supply future settlers with food.
Early settlement
The archipelago was largely settled from mainland Portugal, but settlement did not take place right away. Gonçalo Velho Cabral gathered resources and settlers for the next three years (1433–1436) and sailed to establish colonies, first on Santa Maria and then on São Miguel. Settlers built houses, established villages and cleared bush and rocks to plant crops, grain, grapevines, sugar cane and other plants suitable for local use and for export. They brought domesticated animals, such as chickens, rabbits, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The settlement of the unoccupied islands started in 1439 with people mainly from the continental provinces of Algarve and Alentejo, in mainland Portugal. São Miguel was first settled in 1449, the settlers – mainly from the Estremadura, Alto Alentejo and Algarve areas of mainland Portugal – under the command of Gonçalo Velho Cabral, who landed at the site of modern-day Povoação.
Flemish settlers
The first reference to the island of São Jorge was made in 1439, but the date of discovery is unknown. In 1443, the island was already inhabited, but settlement only began after the arrival of the noble Flemish native Willem van der Haegen. Arriving at Topo, São Jorge, where he lived and died, he became known as Guilherme da Silveira to the islanders. João Vaz Corte-Real received the captaincy of the island in 1483. Velas became a town before the end of the 15th century. By 1490, there were 2,000 Flemings living on the islands of Terceira, Pico, Faial, São Jorge and Flores. Because there was such a large Flemish settlement, the Azores became known as the Flemish Islands or the Isles of Flanders.
Prince Henry the Navigator was responsible for this Flemish settlement. His sister, Isabel, was married to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, Flanders, at the time belonging to Burgundy. There was a revolt against Philip's rule, and disease and hunger became rampant. Isabel appealed to Henry to allow some of the unruly Flemings to settle in the Azores. He granted this and supplied them with means of transport and goods.
The 1522 earthquake and recovery
In 1522, Vila Franca do Campo, then the capital of São Miguel, was devastated by an earthquake and landslide that killed about 5,000 people, and the capital was moved to Ponta Delgada. The town of Vila Franca do Campo was rebuilt on the original site, and today is a thriving fishing and yachting port. Ponta Delgada received its city status in 1546. From the first settlement, the pioneers applied themselves to agriculture, and by the 15th century Graciosa was exporting wheat, barley, wine and brandy. The goods were sent to Terceira largely because of the proximity of that island.
Effects of the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580
Portugal fell into a dynastic crisis following the death of Cardinal-King Henry of Portugal in 1580. Of the various claimants to the crown, the most powerful was king Phillip II of Spain, who justified his rights to the Portuguese throne by the fact that his mother was a Portuguese royal princess, his maternal grandfather having been King Manuel I of Portugal. Following his proclamation in Santarém, António, Prior of Crato was acclaimed in the Azores in 1580 (through his envoy António da Costa) but was expelled from the continent by the Spaniards following the Battle of Alcântara. Yet, through the administration of Cipriano de Figueiredo, governor of Terceira (who continued to govern Terceira in the name of ill-fated, former King Sebastian of Portugal), the Azoreans resisted Spanish attempts to conquer the islands (including specifically at the Battle of Salga).
In 1583, Philip II of Spain, as King of Portugal, sent his fleet to clear the Azores of a combined multinational force of adventurers, mercenaries, volunteers, and soldiers who were attempting to establish the Azores as a staging post for a rival pretender to the Portuguese throne. Following the success of his fleet at the Battle of Ponta Delgada, captured enemies were hanged from yardarms, as they were considered pirates by Philip II. Opponents receiving the news variously portrayed Philip II as a despot or "Black Legend", the sort of insult widely made against contemporary monarchs engaged in aggressive empire building and the European wars of religion. Figueiredo and Violante do Canto helped organize a resistance on Terceira that influenced some of the response of the other islands, even as internal politics and support for Philip's faction increased on the other islands (including specifically on São Miguel, where the Gonçalvez da Câmara family supported the Spanish claimant).
English raids of 1589 and 1598
An English raid of the Azores in 1589 successfully plundered some islands and harbouring ships; eight years later, a second raid failed – the Islands Voyage.
Iberian Union
Spain held the Azores under the Iberian Union from 1580–1642 (called the "Babylonian captivity" in the Azores). The Azores were the last part of the Portuguese Empire to resist Philip's reign over Portugal (Macau resisted any official recognition), until the defeat of forces loyal to the Prior of Crato with the Conquest of the Azores in 1583. Portuguese control resumed with the end of the Iberian Union in 1640 and the beginning of the Portuguese Restoration War, not by the professional military, who were occupied with warfare on the Portuguese mainland, but by local people attacking a fortified Castilian garrison.
Overpopulation and emigration
In the late 16th century, the Azores and Madeira began to face problems of overpopulation. Responding to the consequent economic problems, some people of the Azores began to emigrate to Brazil.
Liberal Wars of 1828–1834
The Portuguese Civil War (1828–1834) had strong repercussions in the Azores. In 1829, in Praia da Vitória, the liberals won over the absolutists, making Terceira Island the main headquarters of the new Portuguese regime and also where the Council of Regency () of Maria II of Portugal was established. Beginning in 1868, Portugal issued its stamps overprinted with "" for use in the islands. Between 1892 and 1906, it also issued separate stamps for the three administrative districts of the time.
Arbitrary district divisions 1836–1976
From 1836 to 1976, the archipelago was divided into three districts, equivalent (except in area) to those in the Portuguese mainland. The division was arbitrary and did not follow the natural island groups, rather reflecting the location of each district capital on the three main cities (none of which were on the western group).
Angra do Heroísmo consisted of Terceira, São Jorge, and Graciosa, with the capital at Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira.
Horta consisted of Pico, Faial, Flores, and Corvo, with the capital at Horta on Faial.
Ponta Delgada consisted of São Miguel and Santa Maria, with the capital at Ponta Delgada on São Miguel.
Modern period
In 1931, the Azores (together with Madeira and Portuguese Guinea) revolted against the Ditadura Nacional and were held briefly by rebel military.
In 1943, during World War II, the Portuguese ruler António de Oliveira Salazar leased air and naval bases in the Azores to Great Britain. The occupation of these facilities in October 1943 was codenamed Operation Alacrity by the British. This was a key turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic, enabling the Royal Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, and the U.S. Navy to provide aerial coverage in the Mid-Atlantic gap. This helped them to protect convoys and to hunt hostile German U-boats.
In 1944, the U.S. constructed a small and short-lived air base on the island of Santa Maria. In 1945, a new base was constructed on the island of Terceira, named Lajes Field. This air base is in an area called Lajes, a broad, flat sea terrace that had been a large farm. Lajes Field is a plateau rising out of the sea on the northeast corner of the island. This air base is a joint American and Portuguese venture. Lajes Field continues to support the American and Portuguese Armed Forces.
During the Cold War, U.S. Navy P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare squadrons patrolled the North Atlantic Ocean for Soviet Navy submarines and surface warships. Since its opening, Lajes Field has been used for refuelling American cargo planes bound for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The U.S. Navy keeps a small squadron of its ships at the harbor of Praia da Vitória, southeast of Lajes Field. The airfield also has a small commercial terminal handling scheduled and chartered passenger flights from the other islands in the Azores, Europe, Africa, and North America.
Following the Carnation Revolution of 1974, which deposed the Estado Novo dictatorship in Lisbon, Portugal and its territories across the world entered into a period of great political uncertainty. The Azorean Liberation Front attempted to take advantage of this instability immediately after the revolution, hoping to establish an independent Azores, until operations ceased in 1975.
In 1976, the Azores became the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), one of the autonomous regions of Portugal, and the subdistricts of the Azores were eliminated. In 2003, the Azores saw international attention when United States President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, and Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso held a summit there days before the commencement of the Iraq War.
Geography
The archipelago of the Azores is located in the middle of the northern hemisphere of the Atlantic Ocean and extends along a west-northwest to east-southeast orientation (between 36.5°–40° North latitudes and 24.5°–31.5° West longitudes) in an area approximately wide. The islands of the Azores emerged from what is called the Azores Plateau, a 5.8 million km2 region that is morphologically accented by a depth of .
The nine islands that compose the archipelago occupy a surface area of , that includes both the main islands and many islets located in their vicinities. They range in surface area from the largest, São Miguel, at to the smallest, Corvo, at approximately .
Each of the islands has its own distinct geomorphological characteristics that make them unique:
Corvo (the smallest island) is a crater of a major Plinian eruption
Flores (its neighbor on the North American Plate) is a rugged island carved by many valleys and escarpments
Faial is characterized for its shield volcano and caldera (Caldeira Volcano)
Pico, is the highest point, at , in the Azores and continental Portugal
Graciosa is known for its active Furnas do Enxofre and mixture of volcanic cones and plains
São Jorge is a long slender island, formed from fissural eruptions over thousands of years
Terceira, almost circular, is the location of one of the largest craters in the region
São Miguel is the largest island and is pitted with many large craters and fields of spatter cones
Santa Maria – the oldest island – is heavily eroded, being one of the few places to encounter brown sandy beaches in the archipelago.
These islands can be divided into three recognizable groups located on the Azores Plateau:
The Eastern Group () of São Miguel, Santa Maria and Formigas Islets
The Central Group () of Terceira, Graciosa, São Jorge, Pico and Faial
The Western Group () of Flores and Corvo.
São Jorge, Pico and Faial are also collectively called (‘Islands of the Triangle’).
Several sub-surface reefs (particularly the Dollabarat on the fringe of the Formigas), banks (specifically the Princess Alice Bank and D. João de Castro Bank), as well as many hydrothermal vents and sea-mounts are monitored by the regional authorities, owing to the complex geotectonic and socioeconomic significance within the economic exclusion zone of the archipelago.
Geology
From a geostructural perspective, the Azores are located above an active triple junction between three of the world's major tectonic plates (the North American Plate, the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate), a condition that has translated into the existence of many faults and fractures in this region of the Atlantic. The westernmost islands of the archipelago (Corvo and Flores) are located on the North American Plate, while the remaining islands are located within the boundary that divides the Eurasian and African plates.
The principal tectonic structures that exist in the region of the Azores are the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Terceira Rift, the Azores Fracture Zone and the Glória Fault. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the main frontier between the North American Plate and the African-Eurasian Plates that crosses the Azores Plateau between the islands of Flores and Faial from north to south then to the southwest; it is an extensive form crossed by many transform faults running perpendicular to its north–south orientation, that is seismically active and susceptible to volcanism.
Rift and fault geology
The Terceira Rift is a system of fractures that extends from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to the Glória Fault that represents the main frontier between the Eurasian and African Plates. It is defined by a line of submarine volcanoes and island mounts that extend northwest to southeast for about , from the area west of Graciosa until the islets of the Formigas, that includes the islands of Graciosa, Terceira and São Miguel. Its northwest limit connects to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, while the southeast section intersects the Gloria Fault southeast of the island of Santa Maria.
The Azores Fracture Zone extends from the Glória Fault and encompasses a relatively inactive area to the south of the islands of the Central and Eastern groups north to the Terceira Rift, along a 45° angle. The Glória Fault, for its part, extends along a linear line from the Azores to the Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault.
Volcanoes
The islands' volcanism is associated with the rifting along the Azores Triple Junction; the spread of the crust along the existing faults and fractures has produced many of the active volcanic and seismic events, while supported by buoyant upwelling in the deeper mantle, some associate with an Azores hotspot. Most of the volcanic activity has centered, primarily, along the Terceira Rift.
From the beginning of the islands' settlement, around the 15th century, there have been 28 registered volcanic eruptions (15 terrestrial and 13 submarine). The last significant volcanic eruption, the Capelinhos volcano (), occurred off the coast of the island of Faial in 1957; the most recent volcanic activity occurred in the seamounts and submarine volcanoes off the coast of Serreta and in the Pico-São Jorge Channel.
The islands have many examples of volcano-built geomorphology including caves and lava tubes (such as the Gruta das Torres, Algar do Carvão, Gruta do Natal, Gruta das Cinco Ribeiras), the coastal lava fields (like the coast of Feteiras, Faial, the Mistério of Prainha or São João on Pico Island) in addition to the inactive cones in central São Miguel Island, the aforementioned Capelinhos on Faial, the volcanic complexes of Terceira or Plinian caldeira of Corvo Island.
The islands of the archipelago were formed through volcanic and seismic activity during the Neogene Period; the first embryonic surfaces started to appear in the waters of Santa Maria during the Miocene epoch (from circa 8 million years ago).
The sequence of the island formation has been generally characterized as: Santa Maria (8.12 Ma), São Miguel (4.1 Ma), Terceira (3.52 Ma), Graciosa (2.5 Ma), Flores (2.16 Ma), Faial (0.7 Ma), São Jorge (0.55 Ma), Corvo (0.7 Ma) and the youngest, Pico (0.27 Ma). Although all islands have experienced volcanism during their geological history, within recorded "human settlement" history the islands of Santa Maria, Graciosa, Flores, and Corvo have not experienced any volcanic eruptions; in addition to active fumaroles and hot-springs, the remaining islands have had sporadic eruptions since the 14th century. Apart from the Capelinhos volcano in 1957–1958, the last recorded instance of "island formation" occurred off the coast of São Miguel, when the island of Sabrina was briefly formed.
Earthquakes
Owing to its geodynamic environment, the region has been a center of intense seismic activity, particularly along its tectonic boundaries on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Terceira Rift. Seismic events although frequent, are usually tectonic or vulco-tectonic in nature, but in general are of low to medium intensities, occasionally punctuated by events of level 5 or greater on the Richter magnitude scale. The most severe earthquake was registered in 1757, near Calheta on the island of São Jorge, which exceeded 7 on the Richter magnitude scale.
In comparison, the 1522 earthquake that was mentioned by historian Gaspar Frutuoso measured 6.8, but its effects were judged to be X (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale, and was responsible for the destruction of Vila Franca do Campo and landslides that may have killed more than 5,000 of the inhabitants.
Biome
The archipelago lies in the Palearctic realm and has a unique biotic community that includes the Macaronesian subtropical laurissilva, with many endemic species of plants and animals. There are at least 6,112 terrestrial species, of which about 411 are endemic. The majority (75%) of these endemics are animals, mostly arthropods and mollusks. New species are found regularly in the Azores (e.g., 30 different new species of land snails were discovered circa 2013).
Even though the Azores look very green and sometimes wild, the vegetation has been extremely altered. A great part of it has been wiped out in the past 600 years for its valuable wood (for tools, buildings, boats, fire wood, and so on) and to clear land for agriculture. As a result, it is estimated that more than half of insects on the Graciosa island have disappeared or will become extinct.
Many cultivated places (which are traditionally dedicated to pasture or to growing taro, potatoes, maize and other crops) have now been abandoned, especially as a result of emigration. Consequently, some invasive plants have filled these deserted and disturbed lands. Hydrangeas are another potential pest, but their threat is less serious. Notwithstanding the fact that hydrangeas were introduced from America or Asia, some locals consider them a symbol of the archipelago and propagate them along roadsides. Cryptomeria, the Japanese cedar, is a conifer extensively grown for its timber. The two most common of these alien species are Pittosporum undulatum and Hedychium gardnerianum. Reforestation efforts with native laurissilva vegetation have been accomplished successfully in many parts of the Azores.
The Azores has at least two endemic living bird species. The Azores bullfinch, or Priolo, is restricted to remnant laurisilva forest in the mountains at the eastern end of São Miguel and is classified by BirdLife International as endangered. Monteiro's storm petrel, described to science as recently as 2008, is known to breed in just two locations in the islands but may occur more widely. An extinct species of owl, the São Miguel scops owl, has recently been described, which probably became extinct after human settlement because of habitat destruction and the introduction of alien species. Five species of flightless rail (Rallus spp.) once existed on the islands, as did a flightless quail (Coturnix sp.) and another species of bullfinch, the greater Azores bullfinch, but these also went extinct after human colonization. Eleven subspecies of bird are endemic to the islands. The Azores has an endemic bat, the Azores noctule, which has an unusually high frequency of diurnal flight.
The islets of the Formigas (the Portuguese word for "ants"), including the area known as the Dollabarat Reef, have a rich environment of maritime species, such as black coral and manta rays, different species of sharks, whales, and sea turtles. Seventeen new marine reserves (with special conservation status) were added to the Azorean Marine Park (which covers around ). On São Miguel there are notable micro-habitats formed by hot springs that host extremophile microorganisms.
Climate
The archipelago is spread out at roughly the same latitude as the southern half of mainland Portugal, but its location in the mid-Atlantic Ocean gives it a generally tepid, oceanic, mild to warm subtropical climate, with mild annual oscillations.
‘Azores High’ anticyclone
The Azores archipelago is located in a transition and confrontation zone between air masses of tropical origin and masses of cooler air of polar origin. The climate of the archipelago is largely determined by variations in the atmospheric pressure field over the North Atlantic. These variations conditioned by the mass of the American Continent and the Atlantic water mass are overlapped by a semi-permanent subtropical Atlantic anticyclone, commonly known as the Azores High. This anticyclone experiences seasonal variations which can affect the archipelago in many ways.
In winter, the Azores anticyclone is positioned further south, and allows for a descent of the Polar front, approaching it to the archipelago. In summer, on the other hand, the anticyclone's movement further north, leads to the departure of the polar front and its associated disturbances towards higher latitudes. Far enough away from the mainland coasts, the continental air masses that reach the archipelago are weakened by the maritime influence.
The same can not be said for the higher altitudes (e.g. Mount Pico), where upper air masses of a continental origin and with a more direct pathway can reach the surface and present those areas with drier air and more extreme temperatures. At the same time, this free atmosphere circulating air transports aerosols to the archipelago, namely volcanic ash or fine sands from the Sahara desert, which sporadically affect the radiation and air quality.
Daily maximum temperatures at low altitudes usually range between . The average annual rainfall generally increases from east to west, ranging from in Santa Maria to in Flores and reaching values above on the highlands of Pico.
Köppen classification
Under the Köppen climate classification, the eastern group (São Miguel and Santa Maria) is usually classified as Mediterranean while the central and western group (especially Flores and Corvo) is increasingly more humid subtropical and overall rainier because of the effects of the Gulf Stream. This stream has a large effect over the sea temperature which varies between in February and March, and in August and September, and increases earlier in the western group.
Salvador Rivas-Martínez data presents several different bioclimatic zones for the Azores. Seasonal lag is extreme in the low-sun half of the year, with December being milder than April in terms of mean temperatures. During summer the lag is somewhat lower, with August being the warmest month, though September is usually as warm or warmer than July.
Temperatures, humidity, and sunshine
Although temperatures as warm as have been recorded on Pico, neither Ponta Delgada nor Angra do Heroísmo, the two largest cities, have ever been warmer than . There has never been a frost, snowfall, freeze or even temperatures below recorded at sea level on any of the islands. The coldest weather in winter usually comes from northwesterly air masses originating from Labrador in Canada. However, since those air masses are warmed up as they pass across the warmer Atlantic Ocean, temperatures by day even then exceed .
The average relative humidity can range from 80% at the coast to over 90% above . However, higher elevations above the planetary boundary layer can experience extremely low values close to 10%. Summers are especially humid in August and may increase the perceived temperature by a few degrees. Winters are not only very mild but also very humid and contribute substantially to the annual precipitation.
Insolation is relatively low, with 35-40% of the total possible value for sunshine, and higher in topographically lower islands such as Graciosa or Santa Maria, inversely proportional to precipitation. This is directly caused by the orographic lift of humid air masses and is especially pronounced in islands marked by high orography.
Hurricanes
With a greater rarity, especially in late summer and autumn, despite the northern position that the archipelago occupies, the Azores can be affected by the passage of tropical cyclones, or tropical storms derived from them, some can result from anomalies of low latitude systems while others result from the return, back to the Atlantic, after a route close to or even over the American continent. Though often small and in the process of dissipation, these cyclones result in many of the worst storms the archipelago is subject to.
A total of 14 tropical or subtropical cyclones have affected the region in history. Most of them were either extratropical or tropical storms when they affected the region, although several Category 1 hurricanes have reached the Azores.
The following storms have impacted the region while at Category 1 strength:
Hurricane Fran in 1973
Hurricane Emmy in 1976
Hurricane Gordon in 2006
Hurricane Gordon in 2012
Hurricane Alex in 2016
Several tropical storms have hit the region, including
Tropical Storm Irma in 1978
Hurricane Bonnie in 1992
Hurricane Charley in 1992
Hurricane Erika in 1997
Hurricane Gaston in 2016
Tropical Storm Gaston in 2022
Storms that were extratropical when they impacted the region include
Hurricane Tanya in 1995
Tropical Storm Ana in 2003
Tropical Storm Grace in 2009
In addition, the 2005 Azores subtropical storm affected the region in October 2005.
Economy
In order of importance, the main sectors of employment of the Azores are services, agriculture, fishery, industry and tourism. Agricultural products include São Jorge cheese.
Demographics
The Azores are divided into 19 municipalities (); each municipality is further divided into freguesias (civil administrative parishes), of which there is a total of 156 in all of the Azores.
There are six cities () in the Azores: Ponta Delgada, Lagoa and Ribeira Grande on the island of São Miguel; Angra do Heroísmo and Praia da Vitória on the island of Terceira, and Horta on Faial. Three of these, Ponta Delgada, Angra and Horta are considered capital/administrative cities to the regional government: homes to the President (Ponta Delgada), the Judiciary (Angra) and the Regional Assembly (Horta). Angra also serves as the ecclesiastical centre of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Angra, the episcopal see of the Azores.
Population
According to the 2019 Census, population in the Azores was 242,796. The Azores were uninhabited when Portuguese navigators arrived in the early 15th century; settlement began in 1439 with migrants from mainland Portugal as well as Spanish, Sephardic Jews, Moors, Italians, Flemish, and Africans from Guinea, Cape Verde and São Tomé.
The first Sephardic Jews in the Azores were slaves after their expulsion from Portugal by D. Manuel I, in 1496. The islands sometimes served as a waypoint for ships carrying African slaves.
Emigration
Since the 17th century, many Azoreans have emigrated, mainly to Brazil, Uruguay, the United States and Canada. Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts are the primary destination for Azorean emigrants. From 1921 to 1977, about 250,000 Azoreans immigrated to Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Northern California was the final destination for many of the Massachusetts immigrants who then moved on to the San Joaquin Valley, especially the city of Turlock. In the late 19th century many Azoreans immigrated to the Hawaiian islands. The tuna fishing industry drew a significant number of Azoreans to the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego. During the Great Recession of the early 21st century, Portugal was in a recession from 2011 until 2013, which resulted in high levels of unemployment across the mainland as well as the Azores. The Great Recession led to an increase of emigration from the Azores.
Florianópolis and Porto Alegre in the Southern Region of Brazil were founded by Azoreans, who accounted for over half of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina's populations in the late 18th century. As late as 1960, mass immigration currents were registered to Brazil, and many were from the Azores.
Politics
Since 1976, the Azores has been an autonomous region integrated within the framework of the Portuguese Republic. It has its own government and autonomous legislature within its own political-administrative statute and organic law. Its governmental organs include: the legislative assembly, a unicameral parliament composed of 52 elected deputies, elected by universal suffrage for a four-year term; the regional government and presidency, with parliamentary legitimacy, composed of a president, a vice-president and seven regional secretaries responsible for day-to-day operations. It is represented in the Council of Ministers by a representative appointed by the president of the Republic, which was created during the revision of the constitution of 2004 (which, among other things, removed the older Portuguese representative that was appointed by the president of the Republic, beholden to the Council of State and coincident with the president). Since becoming a Portuguese autonomous region, the executive branch of the regional authority has been located in Ponta Delgada, the legislative branch in Horta, and the judicial branch in Angra do Heroísmo.
The islands of the archipelago do not have independent status in law, except in electoral law and are governed by 19 municipalities that subdivide the islands. In addition, until the administrative reform of the 19th century, the following civil parishes had municipal standing: Topo (today integrated into the municipality of Calheta, São Jorge); Praia (today integrated into municipality of Santa Cruz da Graciosa); São Sebastião (today an integral part of the municipality of Angra do Heroísmo); Capelas (now part of the municipality of Ponta Delgada); and Água de Pau (now a civil parish in the municipality of Lagoa). These civil parishes still retain their titles of "vila" in name only; the populations of Capelas and neighbouring parish still protest the change and promote the restoration of their status. The municipalities are further subdivided into several civil parishes, with the exception of Corvo (the only municipality by law without a civil parish, owing to its size).
Azorean politics is dominated by the two largest Portuguese political parties, the Socialist Party and Social Democratic Party, the former holding a majority in the Legislative Assembly. The Democratic and Social Center / People's Party, the Left Bloc, the Unitary Democratic Coalition and the People's Monarchist Party are also represented. , the President of the Azores is Social Democratic Party leader José Manuel Bolieiro. Although the Socialist Party dominates the regional politics, the Social Democratic Party is traditionally popular in city and town council elections.
Foreign relations and defence
As an autonomous but integral region of Portugal, foreign affairs and defence are the responsibility of the national government. As is all of Portugal, the Azores are in the European Union and Schengen Area. They are also in the European Union Customs Union and VAT area but levy a lower rate of VAT than applies on the mainland. The Azores, like Madeira and the Canary Islands, are among the European Union's state territories with special status, and are one of its designated "Outermost Regions".
The Azores Military Zone is the Portuguese Army's command for ground forces stationed in the archipelago. The Air Force, in turn, maintains a base at Lajes Field, which is also home to the United States Forces Azores, while the Navy tasks the offshore patrol vessel Figueira da Foz, as well as a range of other patrol vessels, to patrol Portugal's large economic zone around the islands.
Transport
Aviation
Each of the nine islands has an airport, although the majority are airfields rather than airports. The primary (and busiest) airport of the island group is João Paulo II Airport. The commercial terminals in Ponta Delgada, Horta, Vila do Porto and Santa Cruz das Flores are operated by ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, a public entity that oversees the operations of airports across Portugal. The remaining, except for Lajes Field, are operated by the Regional Government. Lajes is a military airbase, as well as a commercial airport, and is operated by the Portuguese Armed Forces in conjunction with the United States.
The airports are:
Santa Maria: Santa Maria Airport (LPAZ)
São Miguel: João Paulo II Airport (LPPD)
Terceira: Lajes Airport (LPLA)
São Jorge: São Jorge Airport (LPSJ)
Pico: Pico Airport (LPPI)
Faial: Horta Airport (LPHR)
Graciosa: Graciosa Airport (LPGR)
Flores: Flores Airport (LPFL)
Corvo: Corvo Airport (LPCR)
Marine transportation
The Azores has had a long history of marine transport to overcome distances and establish inter-community contacts and trade. Consequently, the shipbuilding industry developed in many islands, from small fishing boats to whaling sloops and larger passenger services. Passenger traffic to the main islands (São Miguel, Santa Maria, Terceira and Faial) began in the 17th century, and between the 18th–19th century, the Pico Yacht controlled the lucrative summer traffic season.
After 1871, the Insulana Shipping Company was the only entity responsible for regular traffic between the islands (except Corvo), Madeira and the United States. Finally, cargo and passenger transportation ceased in the 1970s, and the ships were sold or converted into tuna fishing boats. For the next 20 years, commercial maritime service between the islands ceased (except between Faial-Pico and Lajes das Flores-Vila do Corvo).
Transmaçor (Transportes Marítimos Açorianos, Lda.) was founded in 1987. The shipping company operates four to six daily connections between Horta and Madalena throughout the year, using its small fleet of ships, in addition to inter-island connections between Faial, Pico, São Jorge and Terceira during the summer months. New initiatives began in the late 1990s: the catamaran Iapetos began services, followed by Lady of Mann and Golfinho Azul (chartered by Açorline).
In 2005, Atlânticoline was established, providing transport services. In 2009, Atlanticoline was involved in a controversial rejection of a 750-passenger, 150-vehicle ship ordered from the Estaleiros de Viana do Castelo (ENVC). The Atlantida, a 50 million Euro cruiser (as part of a two-ship deal with the other named Anticiclone) was rejected in 2009 by Atlanticoline for the under-performance of the power-plant. Although it would only result in a five-minute delay between islands, the public company rejected the ship, and the contract was broken over the builder's inability to deliver the required ship on time. While the ship was being shopped to other interested parties (Hugo Chávez once considered purchasing the ferryboat in 2010), no interested buyers appeared, and ENVC decided to cede the Atlantida to Atlânticoline as part of the latter's open international competition to charter two ships in 2012.
In June 2011, the Regional Government announced that it would purchase 60% of Transmaçor, equivalent to 500,000 Euro of the company's capital. With this transaction the autonomous government of the Azores ceded control, of which it once had 88% of the capital. The signed memorandum of understanding concluded negotiations between the various parties involved, under which the liability of Transmaçor (worth a total of 8 million Euro) was divided equally between the government and businessman José E. Almeida, who is now the holder of a majority stake in the company. Similarly, the Regional Government approved the consolidation of the three individual port authorities (Administração dos Portos do Triângulo e Grupo Ocidental, Administração dos Portos da Terceira e Graciosa and the Administração dos Portos das Ilhas de São Miguel e Santa Maria) and regional Portos dos Açores into one entity that resulted in a 2.2 million Euro cost savings, in addition to a reduction from 11 to three administrators.
Culture
Religious societies and festivals
Religious festivals, patron saints, and traditional holidays mark the Azorean calendar. The most important religious events are tied with the festivals associated with the cult of the Holy Spirit, commonly referred to as the festivals of the Holy Spirit (or ), rooted in millenarian dogma and held on all islands from May to September. These festivals are very important to the Azorean people, who are primarily Roman Catholic, and combine religious rituals with processions celebrating the benevolence and egalitarianism of neighbours. These events are centred around or , small buildings that host the meals, adoration and charity of the participants, and used to store the artefacts associated with the events. On Terceira, for example, these impérios have grown into ornate buildings painted and cared for by the local brotherhoods in their respective parishes. The events focus on the members of local parishes, not tourists, but all are welcome, as sharing is one of the main principles of the festivals. Some limited events focus on tourists, including a public event that the city government of Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel holds, which attracts visitors and locals.
The Festival of the Lord Holy Christ of the Miracles () in Ponta Delgada is the largest individual religious event in the Azores and takes place on Rogation Sunday. Pilgrims from within the Portuguese diaspora normally travel to Ponta Delgada to participate in an afternoon procession behind the image of Christ along the flower-decorated streets of the city. Although the solemn procession is only held on one day, the events of the Festival of Senhor Santo Cristo occur over a period of a week and involve a ritual of moving the image between the main church and convent nightly, ultimately culminating in the procession, which is televised within the Azores and to the Portuguese diaspora.
The Sanjoaninas Festivities in Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira are held in June honoring Saint Anthony, Saint Peter and Saint John the Baptist, in a large religious celebration. The festival of Our Lady of Lourdes (), patron saint of whalers, begins in Lajes on Pico Island on the last Sunday of August and runs through the week—Whalers Week. It is marked by social and cultural events connected to the tradition of whale hunting. The Wine Harvest Festival (), takes place during the first week of September and is a century-old custom of the people of Pico.
On Corvo, the people celebrate their patron saint (Our Lady of Miracles) on 15 August every year in addition to the festivals of the Divine Holy Spirit. The (August Sea Festival), takes place every year beginning on 15 August in Praia Formosa on Santa Maria. Also, the (Sea Week), dedicated almost exclusively to water sports, takes place in August in the city of Horta, on Faial.
is celebrated in the Azores. Parades and pageants are the heart of the Carnaval festivities. There is lively music, colorful costumes, hand-made masks, and floats. The traditional bullfights in the bullring are ongoing as is the running of bulls in the streets.
International visitors
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Graciosa was host to many prominent figures, including
Chateaubriand, the French writer who passed through upon his escape to America during the French Revolution
Almeida Garrett, the Portuguese poet who visited an uncle and wrote some poetry while there
Prince Albert of Monaco, the 19th century oceanographer who led several expeditions in the waters of the Azores. He arrived on his yacht Hirondelle, and visited the furna da caldeira, the noted hot springs grotto.
author Mark Twain published The Innocents Abroad in 1869 – a travel book, where he described his time in the Azores.
Sports
Notable sports teams in the Azores include Santa Clara (Primeira Liga), Lusitânia (Liga Portuguesa de Basquetebol), Fonte do Bastardo (Portuguese Volleyball First Division) and Sporting Clube da Horta (Portuguese Handball Second Division).
The Rallye Açores is an international rally race held annually since 1965, which was part of the European Rally Championship and the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
The Azores Senior Open was a golf tournament held in 2008 as part of the European Seniors Tour.
See also
Macaronesia
Postage stamps and postal history of the Azores
List of islands of Portugal
Citations
General and cited sources
External links
Azores Regional Government
Autonomous Regions of Portugal
Geography of Europe
Islands of Macaronesia
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Outermost regions of the European Union
Provinces of Portugal (1936–1976)
NUTS 1 statistical regions of the European Union
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In engineering and its various subdisciplines, acceptance testing is a test conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification or contract are met. It may involve chemical tests, physical tests, or performance tests.
In systems engineering, it may involve black-box testing performed on a system (for example: a piece of software, lots of manufactured mechanical parts, or batches of chemical products) prior to its delivery.
In software testing, the ISTQB defines acceptance testing as: Acceptance testing is also known as user acceptance testing (UAT), end-user testing, operational acceptance testing (OAT), acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) or field (acceptance) testing. Acceptance criteria are the criteria that a system or component must satisfy in order to be accepted by a user, customer, or other authorized entity.
Overview
Testing is a set of activities conducted to facilitate discovery and/or evaluation of properties of one or more items under test. Each individual test, known as a test case, exercises a set of predefined test activities, developed to drive the execution of the test item to meet test objectives; including correct implementation, error identification, quality verification and other valued detail. The test environment is usually designed to be identical, or as close as possible, to the anticipated production environment. It includes all facilities, hardware, software, firmware, procedures and/or documentation intended for or used to perform the testing of software.
UAT and OAT test cases are ideally derived in collaboration with business customers, business analysts, testers, and developers. It is essential that these tests include both business logic tests as well as operational environment conditions. The business customers (product owners) are the primary stakeholders of these tests. As the test conditions successfully achieve their acceptance criteria, the stakeholders are reassured the development is progressing in the right direction.
User acceptance test (UAT) criteria (in agile software development) are usually created by business customers and expressed in a business domain language. These are high-level tests to verify the completeness of a user story or stories 'played' during any sprint/iteration.
Operational acceptance test (OAT) criteria (regardless if using agile, iterative or sequential development) are defined in terms of functional and non-functional requirements; covering key quality attributes of functional stability, portability and reliability.
Process
The acceptance test suite may need to be performed multiple times, as all of the test cases may not be executed within a single test iteration.
The acceptance test suite is run using predefined acceptance test procedures to direct the testers which data to use, the step-by-step processes to follow and the expected result following execution. The actual results are retained for comparison with the expected results. If the actual results match the expected results for each test case, the test case is said to pass. If the quantity of non-passing test cases does not breach the project's predetermined threshold, the test suite is said to pass. If it does, the system may either be rejected or accepted on conditions previously agreed between the sponsor and the manufacturer.
The anticipated result of a successful test execution:
test cases are executed, using predetermined data
actual results are recorded
actual and expected results are compared, and
test results are determined.
The objective is to provide confidence that the developed product meets both the functional and non-functional requirements. The purpose of conducting acceptance testing is that once completed, and provided the acceptance criteria are met, it is expected the sponsors will sign-off on the product development/enhancement as satisfying the defined requirements (previously agreed between business and product provider/developer).
User acceptance testing
User acceptance testing (UAT) consists of a process of verifying that a solution works for the user. It is not system testing (ensuring software does not crash and meets documented requirements) but rather ensures that the solution will work for the user (i.e. tests that the user accepts the solution); software vendors often refer to this as "Beta testing".
This testing should be undertaken by the intended end user, or a subject-matter expert (SME), preferably the owner or client of the solution under test, and provide a summary of the findings for confirmation to proceed after trial or review. In software development, UAT as one of the final stages of a project often occurs before a client or customer accepts the new system. Users of the system perform tests in line with what would occur in real-life scenarios.
It is important that the materials given to the tester be similar to the materials that the end user will have. Testers should be given real-life scenarios such as the three most common or difficult tasks that the users they represent will undertake.
The UAT acts as a final verification of the required business functionality and proper functioning of the system, emulating real-world conditions on behalf of the paying client or a specific large customer. If the software works as required and without issues during normal use, one can reasonably extrapolate the same level of stability in production.
User tests, usually performed by clients or by end-users, do not normally focus on identifying simple cosmetic problems such as spelling errors, nor on showstopper defects, such as software crashes; testers and developers identify and fix these issues during earlier unit testing, integration testing, and system testing phases.
UAT should be executed against test scenarios. Test scenarios usually differ from System or Functional test cases in that they represent a "player" or "user" journey. The broad nature of the test scenario ensures that the focus is on the journey and not on technical or system-specific details, staying away from "click-by-click" test steps to allow for a variance in users' behaviour. Test scenarios can be broken down into logical "days", which are usually where the actor (player/customer/operator) or system (backoffice, front end) changes.
In industry, a common UAT is a factory acceptance test (FAT). This test takes place before installation of the equipment. Most of the time testers not only check that the equipment meets the specification, but also that it is fully functional. A FAT usually includes a check of completeness, a verification against contractual requirements, a proof of functionality (either by simulation or a conventional function test) and a final inspection.
The results of these tests give clients confidence in how the system will perform in production. There may also be legal or contractual requirements for acceptance of the system.
Operational acceptance testing
Operational acceptance testing (OAT) is used to conduct operational readiness (pre-release) of a product, service or system as part of a quality management system. OAT is a common type of non-functional software testing, used mainly in software development and software maintenance projects. This type of testing focuses on the operational readiness of the system to be supported, and/or to become part of the production environment.
Acceptance testing in extreme programming
Acceptance testing is a term used in agile software development methodologies, particularly extreme programming, referring to the functional testing of a user story by the software development team during the implementation phase.
The customer specifies scenarios to test when a user story has been correctly implemented. A story can have one or many acceptance tests, whatever it takes to ensure the functionality works. Acceptance tests are black-box system tests. Each acceptance test represents some expected result from the system. Customers are responsible for verifying the correctness of the acceptance tests and reviewing test scores to decide which failed tests are of highest priority. Acceptance tests are also used as regression tests prior to a production release. A user story is not considered complete until it has passed its acceptance tests. This means that new acceptance tests must be created for each iteration or the development team will report zero progress.
Types of acceptance testing
Typical types of acceptance testing include the following
User acceptance testing
This may include factory acceptance testing (FAT), i.e. the testing done by a vendor before the product or system is moved to its destination site, after which site acceptance testing (SAT) may be performed by the users at the site.
Operational acceptance testingAlso known as operational readiness testing, this refers to the checking done to a system to ensure that processes and procedures are in place to allow the system to be used and maintained. This may include checks done to back-up facilities, procedures for disaster recovery, training for end users, maintenance procedures, and security procedures.
Contract and regulation acceptance testing
In contract acceptance testing, a system is tested against acceptance criteria as documented in a contract, before the system is accepted. In regulation acceptance testing, a system is tested to ensure it meets governmental, legal and safety standards.
Factory acceptance testing
Acceptance testing conducted at the site at which the product is developed and performed by employees of the supplier organization, to determine whether a component or system satisfies the requirements, normally including hardware as well as software.
Alpha and beta testing
Alpha testing takes place at developers' sites, and involves testing of the operational system by internal staff, before it is released to external customers. Beta testing takes place at customers' sites, and involves testing by a group of customers who use the system at their own locations and provide feedback, before the system is released to other customers. The latter is often called "field testing".
Acceptance criteria
According to the Project Management Institute, acceptance criteria is a "set of conditions that is required to be met before deliverables are accepted."
Requirements found in acceptance criteria for a given component of the system are usually very detailed.
List of acceptance-testing frameworks
Concordion, Specification by example (SbE) framework
Concordion.NET, acceptance testing in .NET
Cucumber, a behavior-driven development (BDD) acceptance test framework
Capybara, Acceptance test framework for Ruby web applications
Behat, BDD acceptance framework for PHP
Lettuce, BDD acceptance framework for Python
Cypress
Fabasoft app.test for automated acceptance tests
Framework for Integrated Test (Fit)
FitNesse, a fork of Fit
Gauge (software), Test Automation Framework from Thoughtworks
iMacros
ItsNat Java Ajax web framework with built-in, server based, functional web testing capabilities.
Maveryx Test Automation Framework for functional testing, regression testing, GUI testing, data-driven and codeless testing of Desktop and Web applications.
Mocha, a popular web acceptance test framework based on Javascript and Node.js
Ranorex
Robot Framework
Selenium
Specification by example (Specs2)
Watir
See also
Acceptance sampling
Conference room pilot
Development stage
Dynamic testing
Engineering validation test
Grey box testing
Test-driven development
White box testing
Functional testing (manufacturing)
References
Further reading
External links
Acceptance Test Engineering Guide by Microsoft patterns & practices
"Using Customer Tests to Drive Development" from Methods & Tools
Facilities engineering
Software testing
Hardware testing
Procurement
Agile software development
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Aveiro () is a city and a municipality in Portugal. In 2021, the population was 80,880, in an area of : it is the second most populous city in the Centro Region of Portugal (after Coimbra). Along with the neighbouring city of Ílhavo, Aveiro is part of an urban agglomeration that includes 120,000 inhabitants, making it one of the most important populated regions by density in the North Region, and primary centre of the Intermunicipal Community of Aveiro and Baixo Vouga. Administratively, the president of the municipal government is José Ribau Esteves, elected by coalition between the Social Democratic Party and the Democratic Social Centre, who governs the ten civil parishes ().
History
The presence of human settlement in the territory of Aveiro extends to the period associated with the great dolmens of pre-history, which exist in most of the region. The Latinised toponym ‘'Averius'’ derived from the Celtic word aber (river-mouth, etym.< Brythonic *aber < Proto-Celtic *adberos, compare Welsh Aberystwyth).
For a long period Aveiro was an important economic link in the production of salt and commercial shipping. It was a centre of salt exploration by the Romans and trade centre through the Middle Ages, registered since 26 January 959 (from the testament of Countess Mumadona Dias to the cenóbio of Guimarães). During this testament, Mumadona Dias also highlighted the ancient name for Aveiro, this time referring to the monastery's lands in Alauario et Salinas, literally, "a gathering place or preserve of birds and of great salt".
From 11th century onwards, Aveiro became popular with Portuguese royalty.
Kingdom of Portugal
Later, King João I, on the advice of his son Pedro, who was the donatary of Aveiro, requested the construction of fortification walls.
King D. Duarte conceded in 1435 the privilege of providing an annual duty-free fair, later referred to as the Feira de Março (March Fair), today still an annual tradition.
The Princess St. Joana, daughter of Afonso V lived in Aveiro, entering the convent of Jesus, and lived there until her death on 12 May 1490. During her life her presence brought attention to the town, and favoured it with an elevated level of development for the time.
The first charter (foral) was conceded by Manuel I of Portugal on 4 August 1515, as indicated in the Livro de Leituras Novas de Forais da Estremadura. Its geographic position along the Aveiro River had always helped it to subsist and grow, supported by salt market, fishing and maritime commercial development.
By the beginning of the 15th century, there already existed a great wall around the historical centre, intonating the significance of the community and growth of the population. This included the founding of many religious institutions and their supports, which assisted during the 17th and 18th century crises associated with silt in the waterway. In the winter of 1575, a terrible storm closed the entrance to its port, ending a thriving trade in metals and tiles, and creating a reef barrier at the Atlantic Ocean. The walls were subsequently demolished and used to create the docks around the new sand bar.
Between the 16th and 17th centuries, the river's instability at the mouth (between the Ria and open ocean) resulted in the closure of the canal, impeding the use of the port of Aveiro, and creating stagnation in the waters of the lagoon. This blow to the economy created a social and economic crisis, and resulted in the decrease in the population and emigration. It was at this time that the Church of the Miserícordia was constructed, during the Philippine Dynastic union.
In 1759, King José I elevated the town to the status of city, a few months after condemning the Duke of Aveiro (a title established in 1547 by João III), José Mascarenhas, to death. As a result, Aveiro became known as Nova Bragança: it was later abandoned much later, and returned to Aveiro. In 1774, by request of King José, Pope Clement XIV instituted the Diocese of Aveiro.
In the 19th century, the Aveirense were active during the Liberal Wars, and it was José Estêvão Coelho de Magalhães, a parliamentary member who was determinant in resolving the problem of access along the Ria. He also helped with the development of transport, especially the railway line between Lisbon and Porto. It was the opening of the artificial canals, completed in 1808, that allowed Aveiro to expand economically, marking the beginning in the town's growth.
The municipality was elevated to the status of town, centered on its principal church, consecrated to the Archangel Michael, today the location of the Praça da República (having been demolished in 1835).
Geography
Located on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, Aveiro is an industrial city with an important seaport.
The seat of the municipality is the city of Aveiro, comprising the five urban parishes with about 73,003 inhabitants. The city of Aveiro is also the capital of the District of Aveiro, and the largest city in the Baixo Vouga intermunicipal community subregion.
Aveiro is known as "the Portuguese Venice", due to its system of canals and boats similar to the Italian city of Venice.
Climate
Aveiro has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate influenced by its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. The maritime influence causes a narrow temperature range resulting in summers averaging around in daytime temperatures, considerably lower than inland areas on the same parallel on the Iberian Peninsula. As typical of mediterranean climates, summers are dry and winters are wet. A coastal feature is that frosts are rare and never severe. The hottest temperature recorded was . Temperatures above are only occasional.
Demography
Administratively, the municipality is divided into 10 civil parishes ():
Aradas
Cacia
Eixo e Eirol
Esgueira
Glória e Vera Cruz (urban centre and location of the seat of the municipality of Aveiro)
Oliveirinha
Requeixo, Nossa Senhora de Fátima e Nariz
Santa Joana
São Bernardo
São Jacinto
São Jacinto is located on an eponymous peninsula, between the Atlantic Ocean and Ria de Aveiro. Aveiro had 61,430 eligible voters in 2006.
International relations
Aveiro's sister cities are:
– Arcachon, France, since 1989
– Belém, Brazil, since 1970
– Bourges, France, since 1989
– Cholargos, Greece, since 2001
– Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain, since 1989
– Cubatão, Brazil, since 1992
– Farim, Guinea-Bissau, since 1992
– Forlì, Italy, since 1990
– Inhambane, Mozambique, since 1989
– Mahdia, Tunisia, since 1998
– Ōita, Japan, since 1978
– Panyu District, China since 2000
– Pelotas, Brazil, since 1996
– Pemba, Mozambique, since 1995
– Santa Cruz, Cape Verde, since 1993
– Santo António, São Tomé and Príncipe, since 1998
– Trois-Rivières, Canada, since 1996
– Viana do Castelo, Portugal, since 1910
Economy
Aveiro was known for many years for its production of salt and for the moliço seagrass harvest, which was used as fertilizer before the development of chemicals for that purpose. The boats once used for harvesting now carry tourists on the canals. Salt production has also decreased dramatically with only a few salt ponds still remaining.
The region is now known for the preponderance of ceramics industries, a reflection of the regions advancements, resulting in a long productive tradition since the late Roman, early Medieval period (reflected in the ceramics kilns).
Software development is important too, both at the R&D centre for a large telecom company and at the University of Aveiro (UA) which is attended by 15,000 students on undergraduate and postgraduate programs. UA works with companies in national and European R&D projects.
The city of Aveiro has several shopping centers and malls (Pingo Doce Shopping Center, Fórum Aveiro, Glicínias Plaza (Jumbo – Auchan), Aveiro's Shopping Center (Continente & Mediamarkt), Aveiro's Retail Park and the Oita Shopping Center). This city has many traditional commerce stores. The most central one being Forum Aveiro with clothes stores, restaurant zone and book stores.
The town's unemployment rate in 2015 was 12.5%; the University of Aveiro is a major employer.
Tourism
Tourism is also important for the economy. The old town centre, with its Art Nouveau and Romanesque architecture and "gondolas" (barcos moliceiros once used for collecting moliço seaweed) plying the Ria de Aveiro canals, is referred to as "The Venice of Portugal" in some tourist brochures.
Important tourist attractions are the Arte Nova (Art Nouveau) architectural designs and tiles of some buildings that were created in the early 20th century, the Art Nouveau museum, the Aveiro Museum (Museu de Aveiro, formerly the Mosteiro de Jesus convent with exhibits of King Afonso V's daughter, Santa Joana), the 15th century Aveiro Sé or São Domingos cathedral and the Church of Jesus (Igreja de Jesus) with its architecture. The nearby beaches, Costa Nova and Barra, attract many visitors in warm weather; they can be reached by bus from Aveiro. Other sites of interest to tourists include the Carmelite Church and the Misericórdia Church built in the 16th century.
Transport
The local economy is fed by a series of transport networks that cross the municipal boundaries.
Air
Regional gateways include air service through the Aeródromo de Aveiro/São Jacinto (LPAV) and the Porto de Aveiro (Ílhavo/Aveiro).
Rail
Rail service includes service by Alfa Pendular (between Lisbon and Braga; Lisbon and Oporto; Faro and Oporto) and Intercity (between Lisbon and Oporto as well as Lisbon and Guimarães) trains; suburban links through the Urbanos do Porto and, also, the Linha do Vouga, a narrow gauge railway to Águeda and Sernada do Vouga.
Road
The primary expressways and inter-regional thoroughfares include: A1 (between Porto and Lisbon); and the A25 (which links Viseu, Guarda and Vilar Formoso).
Intercity buses connect Aveiro with Porto and Lisbon several times a day.
Water
Moliceiros provide access along the Ria for tourist visits, in addition to traditional fishing or recreational purposes, including regattas.
Architecture
The architecture of Aveiro is influenced by two phases: the pre-Kingdom era, with a number of historical monuments; and the modernist movements resulting from the expansion of economy during the 19th-20th centuries.
The city's primary landmark is the 15th century Monastery of Jesus (), containing the tomb of King Afonso V's daughter, St. Joana (who died in 1490). The presence of this royal personage, beatified in 1693, proved to be of great benefit when she bequeathed her valuable estate to the convent. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the convent housed a school of embroidery, but was transformed into the Museu de Santa Joana, or simply, the Museum of Aveiro, housing many of these handicrafts.
The abundance of 19th-20th century architectural buildings reflects the effects of the boom during that period, including many of the Arte Nova and Art Deco buildings, inspired by modernist trends and Nationalist tendencies of the Estado Novo regime. The best of these is in the university campus, where many of the nationalist architects were involved in construction projects. The Arte Nova architecture was built by wealthy families from Brazil; their buildings included homes and shops. Traditional Portuguese decorations such as tiles were used. The concept did not last for a long time, but its presence is very distinctive in Aveiro; it is one of only 20 cities in the world that are included in the Réseau Art Nouveau Network, listing cities in Europe that are known for this architectural style.
There are several attractions in the city of Aveiro, including cathedrals, canals and the beaches, including the Ílhavo ceramica de Vista Alegre and the beaches of Barra, Costa Nova do Prado, and Gafanha da Nazaré.
Culture
Aveiro is known in Portugal for its traditional sweets, Ovos Moles de Aveiro (PGI), trouxas de ovos, both made from eggs. Raivas are also typical biscuits of Aveiro.
The municipal holiday is 12 May, the day of Joanna, Princess of Portugal (1452-1490).
Education
The University of Aveiro was created in 1973 and attracts thousands of students to the city. It is ranked as the 354th best university in the world in the Times World University Rankings, and the 2nd best in Portugal.
The university has about 430 professors (with PhD degrees), 11,000 undergraduate students, and 1,300 post-graduate students.
Sport
Sport Clube Beira-Mar is an association football club. Founded in 1922, it has a sports academy with various youth levels in sports including basketball and futsal. The club used to play at Estádio Municipal de Aveiro, designed by Portuguese architect Tomás Taveira for Euro 2004, where it held two group matches.
The other long-established club in the city, Os Galitos, was founded in 1904 and houses a wide variety of sports. Its rowers have represented Portugal in international tournaments including the Olympic Games.
Notable citizens
Fernão de Oliveira (1507 – ca.1581) a Portuguese grammarian, Dominican friar, historian, cartographer, naval pilot and theorist on naval warfare and shipbuilding
Antónia Rodrigues (1580-1641) a Portuguese soldier and national heroine
Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan (1722–1790) a Portuguese natural philosopher
José Luciano de Castro (1834 in Oliveirinha – 1914) a politician, statesman and journalist who served three times as Prime Minister of Portugal
Jaime de Magalhães Lima (1859–1936) a Portuguese philosopher, poet and writer
Mário Sacramento (1920–1969), physician and essayist, famous for his anti-fascist activities against the Estado Novo regime.
José Afonso (1929–1987) known as Zeca Afonso, one of the most influential folk and political musicians in Portugal
Rosa Alice Branco (born 1950 in Aveiro) a Portuguese poet.
Sport
Arnaldo Edi Lopes da Silva (born 1982), known as Edinho, a Portuguese footballer with almost 500 club caps
Diogo Valente (born 1984) a Portuguese footballer with over 360 club caps
Rui Raínho (born 1989) a Portuguese footballer with over 330 club caps
Gallery
See also
Aveiro Lagoon
Doutor Lourenço Peixinho Avenue
References
External links
Portal of Aveiro
Town Hall official website
Cities in Portugal
Port cities and towns in Portugal
Municipalities of Aveiro District
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Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid rain has a pH level lower than this and ranges from 4–5 on average. The more acidic the acid rain is, the lower its pH is. Acid rain can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which react with the water molecules in the atmosphere to produce acids.
Acid rain has been shown to have adverse impacts on forests, freshwaters, soils, microbes, insects and aquatic life-forms. In ecosystems, persistent acid rain reduces tree bark durability, leaving flora more susceptible to environmental stressors such as drought, heat/cold and pest infestation. Acid rain is also capable of detrimenting soil composition by stripping it of nutrients such as calcium and magnesium which play a role in plant growth and maintaining healthy soil. In terms of human infrastructure, acid rain also causes paint to peel, corrosion of steel structures such as bridges, and weathering of stone buildings and statues as well as having impacts on human health.
Some governments, including those in Europe and North America, have made efforts since the 1970s to reduce the release of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere through air pollution regulations. These efforts have had positive results due to the widespread research on acid rain starting in the 1960s and the publicized information on its harmful effects. The main source of sulfur and nitrogen compounds that result in acid rain are anthropogenic, but nitrogen oxides can also be produced naturally by lightning strikes and sulfur dioxide is produced by volcanic eruptions.
Definition
"Acid rain" is a popular term referring to the deposition of a mixture from wet (rain, snow, sleet, fog, cloudwater, and dew) and dry (acidifying particles and gases) acidic components. Distilled water, once carbon dioxide is removed, has a neutral pH of 7. Liquids with a pH less than 7 are acidic, and those with a pH greater than 7 are alkaline. "Clean" or unpolluted rain has an acidic pH, but usually no lower than 5.7, because carbon dioxide and water in the air react together to form carbonic acid, a weak acid according to the following reaction:
Carbonic acid then can ionize in water forming low concentrations of carbonate and hydronium ions:
Unpolluted rain can also contain other chemicals which affect its pH (acidity level). A common example is nitric acid produced by electric discharge in the atmosphere such as lightning. Acid deposition as an environmental issue (discussed later in the article) would include additional acids other than .
Occasional pH readings in rain and fog water of well below 2.4 have been reported in industrialized areas.
The main sources of the SO2 and NOx pollution that causes acid rain are burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power internal combustion vehicles, to refine oil, and in industrial manufacturing and other processes.
History
Acid rain was first systematically studied in Europe, in the 1960s, and in the United States and Canada, the following decade.
In Europe
The corrosive effect of polluted, acidic city air on limestone and marble was noted in the 17th century by John Evelyn, who remarked upon the poor condition of the Arundel marbles.
Since the Industrial Revolution, emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere have increased. In 1852, Robert Angus Smith was the first to show the relationship between acid rain and atmospheric pollution in Manchester, England. Smith coined the term "acid rain" in 1872.
In the late 1960s, scientists began widely observing and studying the phenomenon. At first, the main focus in this research lay on local effects of acid rain. Waldemar Christofer Brøgger was the first to acknowledge long-distance transportation of pollutants crossing borders from the United Kingdom to Norway – a problem systematically studied by Brynjulf Ottar in the 1970s. Ottar's work was strongly influenced by Swedish soil scientist Svante Odén, who had drawn widespread attention to Europe's acid rain problem in popular newspapers and wrote a landmark paper on the subject in 1968.
In the United States
The earliest report about acid rain in the United States came from chemical evidence gathered from Hubbard Brook Valley; public awareness of acid rain in the US increased in the 1970s after The New York Times reported on these findings.
In 1972, a group of scientists including Gene Likens discovered the rain that was deposited at White Mountains of New Hampshire was acidic. The pH of the sample was measured to be 4.03 at Hubbard Brook. The Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study followed up with a series of research studies that analyzed the environmental effects of acid rain. Acid rain that mixed with stream water at Hubbard Brook was neutralized by the alumina from soils. The result of this research indicated that the chemical reaction between acid rain and aluminium leads to an increasing rate of soil weathering. Experimental research was done to examine the effects of increased acidity in streams on ecological species. In 1980, a group of scientists modified the acidity of Norris Brook, New Hampshire, and observed the change in species' behaviors. There was a decrease in species diversity, an increase in community dominants, and a decrease in the food web complexity.
In 1980, the US Congress passed an Acid Deposition Act. This Act established an 18-year assessment and research program under the direction of the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP). NAPAP enlarged a network of monitoring sites to determine how acidic the precipitation actually was, seeking to determine long-term trends, and established a network for dry deposition. Using a statistically based sampling design, NAPAP quantified the effects of acid rain on a regional basis by targeting research and surveys to identify and quantify the effects of acid precipitation on freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. NAPAP also assessed the effects of acid rain on historical buildings, monuments, and building materials. It also funded extensive studies on atmospheric processes and potential control programs.
From the start, policy advocates from all sides attempted to influence NAPAP activities to support their particular policy advocacy efforts, or to disparage those of their opponents. For the US Government's scientific enterprise, a significant impact of NAPAP were lessons learned in the assessment process and in environmental research management to a relatively large group of scientists, program managers, and the public.
In 1981, the National Academy of Sciences was looking into research about the controversial issues regarding acid rain. President Ronald Reagan dismissed the issues of acid rain until his personal visit to Canada and confirmed that the Canadian border suffered from the drifting pollution from smokestacks originating in the US Midwest. Reagan honored the agreement to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's enforcement of anti-pollution regulation. In 1982, Reagan commissioned William Nierenberg to serve on the National Science Board. Nierenberg selected scientists including Gene Likens to serve on a panel to draft a report on acid rain. In 1983, the panel of scientists came up with a draft report, which concluded that acid rain is a real problem and solutions should be sought. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reviewed the draft report and sent Fred Singer's suggestions of the report, which cast doubt on the cause of acid rain. The panelists revealed rejections against Singer's positions and submitted the report to Nierenberg in April. In May 1983, the House of Representatives voted against legislation that aimed to control sulfur emissions. There was a debate about whether Nierenberg delayed to release the report. Nierenberg himself denied the saying about his suppression of the report and stated that the report was withheld after the House's vote because it was not ready to be published.
In 1991, the US National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) provided its first assessment of acid rain in the United States. It reported that 5% of New England Lakes were acidic, with sulfates being the most common problem. They noted that 2% of the lakes could no longer support Brook Trout, and 6% of the lakes were unsuitable for the survival of many species of minnow. Subsequent Reports to Congress have documented chemical changes in soil and freshwater ecosystems, nitrogen saturation, decreases in amounts of nutrients in soil, episodic acidification, regional haze, and damage to historical monuments.
Meanwhile, in 1990, the US Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act. Title IV of these amendments established a cap and trade system designed to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Both these emissions proved to cause a significant problem on U.S. citizens and their access to healthy clean air. Title IV called for a total reduction of about 10 million tons of SO2 emissions from power plants, close to a 50% reduction. It was implemented in two phases. Phase I began in 1995, and limited sulfur dioxide emissions from 110 of the largest power plants to a combined total of 8.7 million tons of sulfur dioxide. One power plant in New England (Merrimack) was in Phase I. Four other plants (Newington, Mount Tom, Brayton Point, and Salem Harbor) were added under other provisions of the program. Phase II began in 2000, and affects most of the power plants in the country.
During the 1990s, research continued. On March 10, 2005, the EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This rule provides states with a solution to the problem of power plant pollution that drifts from one state to another. CAIR will permanently cap emissions of SO2 and NOx in the eastern United States. When fully implemented, CAIR will reduce SO2 emissions in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia by over 70% and NOx emissions by over 60% from 2003 levels.
Overall, the program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976. Conventional regulation was used in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.
In 2007, total SO2 emissions were 8.9 million tons, achieving the program's long-term goal ahead of the 2010 statutory deadline.
In 2007 the EPA estimated that by 2010, the overall costs of complying with the program for businesses and consumers would be $1 billion to $2 billion a year, only one fourth of what was originally predicted. Forbes says: "In 2010, by which time the cap and trade system had been augmented by the George W. Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule, SO2 emissions had fallen to 5.1 million tons."
The term citizen science can be traced back as far as January 1989 to a campaign by the Audubon Society to measure acid rain. Scientist Muki Haklay cites in a policy report for the Wilson Center entitled 'Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective' a first use of the term 'citizen science' by R. Kerson in the magazine MIT Technology Review from January 1989. Quoting from the Wilson Center report: "The new form of engagement in science received the name "citizen science". The first recorded example of the use of the term is from 1989, describing how 225 volunteers across the US collected rain samples to assist the Audubon Society in an acid-rain awareness raising campaign. The volunteers collected samples, checked for acidity, and reported back to the organization. The information was then used to demonstrate the full extent of the phenomenon."
In Canada
Canadian Harold Harvey was among the first to research a "dead" lake. In 1971, he and R. J. Beamish published a report, "Acidification of the La Cloche Mountain Lakes", documenting the gradual deterioration of fish stocks in 60 lakes in Killarney Park in Ontario, which they had been studying systematically since 1966.
In the 1970s and 80s, acid rain was a major topic of research at the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Researchers added sulfuric acid to whole lakes in controlled ecosystem experiments to simulate the effects of acid rain. Because its remote conditions allowed for whole-ecosystem experiments, research at the ELA showed that the effect of acid rain on fish populations started at concentrations much lower than those observed in laboratory experiments. In the context of a food web, fish populations crashed earlier than when acid rain had direct toxic effects to the fish because the acidity led to crashes in prey populations (e.g. mysids). As experimental acid inputs were reduced, fish populations and lake ecosystems recovered at least partially, although invertebrate populations have still not completely returned to the baseline conditions. This research showed both that acidification was linked to declining fish populations and that the effects could be reversed if sulfuric acid emissions decreased, and influenced policy in Canada and the United States.
In 1985, seven Canadian provinces (all except British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan) and the federal government signed the Eastern Canada Acid Rain Program. The provinces agreed to limit their combined sulfur dioxide emissions to 2.3 million tonnes by 1994. The Canada-US Air Quality Agreement was signed in 1991. In 1998, all federal, provincial, and territorial Ministers of Energy and Environment signed The Canada-Wide Acid Rain Strategy for Post-2000, which was designed to protect lakes that are more sensitive than those protected by earlier policies.
Emissions of chemicals leading to acidification
The most important gas which leads to acidification is sulfur dioxide. Emissions of nitrogen oxides which are oxidized to form nitric acid are of increasing importance due to stricter controls on emissions of sulfur compounds. 70 Tg(S) per year in the form of SO2 comes from fossil fuel combustion and industry, 2.8 Tg(S) from wildfires, and 7–8 Tg(S) per year from volcanoes.
Natural phenomena
The principal natural phenomena that contribute acid-producing gases to the atmosphere are emissions from volcanoes. Thus, for example, fumaroles from the Laguna Caliente crater of Poás Volcano create extremely high amounts of acid rain and fog, with acidity as high as a pH of 2, clearing an area of any vegetation and frequently causing irritation to the eyes and lungs of inhabitants in nearby settlements. Acid-producing gasses are also created by biological processes that occur on the land, in wetlands, and in the oceans. The major biological source of sulfur compounds is dimethyl sulfide.
Nitric acid in rainwater is an important source of fixed nitrogen for plant life, and is also produced by electrical activity in the atmosphere such as lightning.
Acidic deposits have been detected in glacial ice thousands of years old in remote parts of the globe.
Human activity
The principal cause of acid rain is sulfur and nitrogen compounds from human sources, such as electricity generation, animal agriculture, factories, and motor vehicles. These also include power plants, which use electric power generators that account for a quarter of nitrogen oxides and two-thirds of sulfur dioxide within the atmosphere. Industrial acid rain is a substantial problem in China and Russia and areas downwind from them. These areas all burn sulfur-containing coal to generate heat and electricity.
The problem of acid rain has not only increased with population and industrial growth, but has become more widespread. The use of tall smokestacks to reduce local pollution has contributed to the spread of acid rain by releasing gases into regional atmospheric circulation; dispersal from these taller stacks causes pollutants to be carried farther, causing widespread ecological damage. Often deposition occurs a considerable distance downwind of the emissions, with mountainous regions tending to receive the greatest deposition (because of their higher rainfall). An example of this effect is the low pH of rain which falls in Scandinavia. Regarding low pH and pH imbalances in correlation to acid rain, low levels, or those under the pH value of 7, are considered acidic. Acid rain falls at a pH value of roughly 4, making it harmful to consume for humans. When these low pH levels fall in specific regions, they not only affect the environment but also human health. With acidic pH levels in humans comes hair loss, low urinary pH, severe mineral imbalances, constipation, and many cases of chronic disorders like Fibromyalgia and Basal Carcinoma.
Chemical process
Combustion of fuels produces sulfur dioxide and nitric oxides. They are converted into sulfuric acid and nitric acid.
Gas phase chemistry
In the gas phase sulfur dioxide is oxidized by reaction with the hydroxyl radical via an intermolecular reaction:
SO2 + OH· → HOSO2·
which is followed by:
HOSO2· + O2 → HO2· + SO3
In the presence of water, sulfur trioxide (SO3) is converted rapidly to sulfuric acid:
SO3 (g) + H2O (l) → H2SO4 (aq)
Nitrogen dioxide reacts with OH to form nitric acid:
NO2 + OH· → HNO3
Chemistry in cloud droplets
When clouds are present, the loss rate of SO2 is faster than can be explained by gas phase chemistry alone. This is due to reactions in the liquid water droplets.
Hydrolysis
Sulfur dioxide dissolves in water and then, like carbon dioxide, hydrolyses in a series of equilibrium reactions:
SO2 (g) + H2O SO2·H2O
SO2·H2O H+ + HSO3−
HSO3− H+ + SO32−
Oxidation
There are a large number of aqueous reactions that oxidize sulfur from S(IV) to S(VI), leading to the formation of sulfuric acid. The most important oxidation reactions are with ozone, hydrogen peroxide and oxygen (reactions with oxygen are catalyzed by iron and manganese in the cloud droplets).
Acid deposition
Wet deposition
Wet deposition of acids occurs when any form of precipitation (rain, snow, and so on) removes acids from the atmosphere and delivers it to the Earth's surface. This can result from the deposition of acids produced in the raindrops (see aqueous phase chemistry above) or by the precipitation removing the acids either in clouds or below clouds. Wet removal of both gases and aerosols are both of importance for wet deposition.
Dry deposition
Acid deposition also occurs via dry deposition in the absence of precipitation. This can be responsible for as much as 20 to 60% of total acid deposition. This occurs when particles and gases stick to the ground, plants or other surfaces.
Adverse effects
Acid rain has been shown to have adverse impacts on forests, freshwaters and soils, killing insect and aquatic life-forms as well as causing damage to buildings and having impacts on human health.
Surface waters and aquatic animals
Both the lower pH and higher aluminium concentrations in surface water that occur as a result of acid rain can cause damage to fish and other aquatic animals. At pH lower than 5 most fish eggs will not hatch and lower pH can kill adult fish. As lakes and rivers become more acidic biodiversity is reduced. Acid rain has eliminated insect life and some fish species, including the brook trout in some lakes, streams, and creeks in geographically sensitive areas, such as the Adirondack Mountains of the United States. However, the extent to which acid rain contributes directly or indirectly via runoff from the catchment to lake and river acidity (i.e., depending on characteristics of the surrounding watershed) is variable. The United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) website states: "Of the lakes and streams surveyed, acid rain caused acidity in 75% of the acidic lakes and about 50% of the acidic streams". Lakes hosted by silicate basement rocks are more acidic than lakes within limestone or other basement rocks with a carbonate composition (i.e. marble) due to buffering effects by carbonate minerals, even with the same amount of acid rain.
Soils
Soil biology and chemistry can be seriously damaged by acid rain. Some microbes are unable to tolerate changes to low pH and are killed. The enzymes of these microbes are denatured (changed in shape so they no longer function) by the acid. The hydronium ions of acid rain also mobilize toxins, such as aluminium, and leach away essential nutrients and minerals such as magnesium.
2 H+ (aq) + Mg2+ (clay) 2 H+ (clay) + Mg2+ (aq)
Soil chemistry can be dramatically changed when base cations, such as calcium and magnesium, are leached by acid rain, thereby affecting sensitive species, such as sugar maple (Acer saccharum).
Soil acidification
Impacts of acidic water and soil acidification on plants could be minor or in most cases major. Most minor cases which do not result in fatality of plant life can be attributed to the plants being less susceptible to acidic conditions and/or the acid rain being less potent. However, even in minor cases, the plant will eventually die due to the acidic water lowering the plant's natural pH. Acidic water enters the plant and causes important plant minerals to dissolve and get carried away; which ultimately causes the plant to die of lack of minerals for nutrition. In major cases, which are more extreme, the same process of damage occurs as in minor cases, which is removal of essential minerals, but at a much quicker rate. Likewise, acid rain that falls on soil and on plant leaves causes drying of the waxy leaf cuticle, which ultimately causes rapid water loss from the plant to the outside atmosphere and eventually results in death of the plant. To see if a plant is being affected by soil acidification, one can closely observe the plant leaves. If the leaves are green and look healthy, the soil pH is normal and acceptable for plant life. But if the plant leaves have yellowing between the veins on their leaves, that means the plant is suffering from acidification and is unhealthy. Moreover, a plant suffering from soil acidification cannot photosynthesize; the acid-water-induced process of drying out of the plant can destroy chloroplast organelles. Without being able to photosynthesize, a plant cannot create nutrients for its own survival or oxygen for the survival of aerobic organisms, which affects most species on Earth and ultimately ends the purpose of the plant's existence.
Forests and other vegetation
Adverse effects may be indirectly related to acid rain, like the acid's effects on soil (see above) or high concentration of gaseous precursors to acid rain. High altitude forests are especially vulnerable as they are often surrounded by clouds and fog which are more acidic than rain.
Other plants can also be damaged by acid rain, but the effect on food crops is minimized by the application of lime and fertilizers to replace lost nutrients. In cultivated areas, limestone may also be added to increase the ability of the soil to keep the pH stable, but this tactic is largely unusable in the case of wilderness lands. When calcium is leached from the needles of red spruce, these trees become less cold tolerant and exhibit winter injury and even death.
Ocean acidification
Acid rain has a much less harmful effect on oceans on a global scale, but it creates an amplified impact in the shallower waters of coastal waters. Acid rain can cause the ocean's pH to fall, known as ocean acidification, making it more difficult for different coastal species to create their exoskeletons that they need to survive. These coastal species link together as part of the ocean's food chain, and without them being a source for other marine life to feed off of, more marine life will die. Coral's limestone skeleton is particularly sensitive to pH decreases, because the calcium carbonate, a core component of the limestone skeleton, dissolves in acidic (low pH) solutions.
In addition to acidification, excess nitrogen inputs from the atmosphere promote increased growth of phytoplankton and other marine plants, which, in turn, may cause more frequent harmful algal blooms and eutrophication (the creation of oxygen-depleted "dead zones") in some parts of the ocean.
Human health effects
Acid rain does not directly affect human health. The acid in the rainwater is too dilute to have direct adverse effects. The particulates responsible for acid rain (sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) do have an adverse effect. These particulates come together and react in the atmosphere, forming nitrate particles and fine sulfate. Increased amounts of fine particulate matter in the air contribute to heart and lung problems, including asthma and bronchitis. These particular effects on the heart and lungs can alter their function, including heart attack caused death for those with an increased risk of heart disease and other heart conditions.
Other adverse effects
Acid rain can damage buildings, historic monuments, and statues, especially those made of rocks, such as limestone and marble, that contain large amounts of calcium carbonate. Acids in the rain react with the calcium compounds in the stones to create gypsum, which then flakes off.
CaCO3 (s) + H2SO4 (aq) CaSO4 (s) + CO2 (g) + H2O (l)
The effects of this are commonly seen on old gravestones, where acid rain can cause the inscriptions to become completely illegible. Acid rain also increases the corrosion rate of metals, in particular iron, steel, copper and bronze.
Affected areas
Places significantly impacted by acid rain around the globe include most of eastern Europe from Poland northward into Scandinavia, the eastern third of the United States, and southeastern Canada. Other affected areas include the southeastern coast of China and Taiwan.
Prevention methods
Technical solutions
Many coal-firing power stations use flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) to remove sulfur-containing gases from their stack gases. For a typical coal-fired power station, FGD will remove 95% or more of the SO2 in the flue gases. An example of FGD is the wet scrubber which is commonly used. A wet scrubber is basically a reaction tower equipped with a fan that extracts hot smoke stack gases from a power plant into the tower. Lime or limestone in slurry form is also injected into the tower to mix with the stack gases and combine with the sulfur dioxide present. The calcium carbonate of the limestone produces pH-neutral calcium sulfate that is physically removed from the scrubber. That is, the scrubber turns sulfur pollution into industrial sulfates.
In some areas the sulfates are sold to chemical companies as gypsum when the purity of calcium sulfate is high. In others, they are placed in landfill. The effects of acid rain can last for generations, as the effects of pH level change can stimulate the continued leaching of undesirable chemicals into otherwise pristine water sources, killing off vulnerable insect and fish species and blocking efforts to restore native life.
Fluidized bed combustion also reduces the amount of sulfur emitted by power production.
Vehicle emissions control reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles.
International treaties
International treaties on the long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants have been agreed upon by western countries for some time now. Beginning in 1979, European countries convened in order to ratify general principles discussed during the UNECE Convention. The purpose was to combat Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. The 1985 Helsinki Protocol on the Reduction of Sulfur Emissions under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution furthered the results of the convention. Results of the treaty have already come to fruition, as evidenced by an approximate 40 percent drop in particulate matter in North America. The effectiveness of the Convention in combatting acid rain has inspired further acts of international commitment to prevent the proliferation of particulate matter. Canada and the US signed the Air Quality Agreement in 1991. Most European countries and Canada signed the treaties. Activity of the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention remained dormant after 1999, when 27 countries convened to further reduce the effects of acid rain. In 2000, foreign cooperation to prevent acid rain was sparked in Asia for the first time. Ten diplomats from countries ranging throughout the continent convened to discuss ways to prevent acid rain. Following these discussions, the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET) was established in 2001 as an intergovernmental initiative to provide science-based inputs for decision makers and promote international cooperation on acid deposition in East Asia. In 2023, the EANET member countries include Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Emissions trading
In this regulatory scheme, every current polluting facility is given or may purchase on an open market an emissions allowance for each unit of a designated pollutant it emits. Operators can then install pollution control equipment, and sell portions of their emissions allowances they no longer need for their own operations, thereby recovering some of the capital cost of their investment in such equipment. The intention is to give operators economic incentives to install pollution controls.
The first emissions trading market was established in the United States by enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The overall goal of the Acid Rain Program established by the Act is to achieve significant environmental and public health benefits through reductions in emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), the primary causes of acid rain. To achieve this goal at the lowest cost to society, the program employs both regulatory and market based approaches for controlling air pollution.
See also
Alkaline precipitation
Citizen science – one of two 'first uses' of the term was in an acid rain campaign in 1989.
Gene Likens
List of environmental issues
Lists of environmental topics
Ocean acidification
Rain dust (an alkaline rain)
Soil retrogression and degradation
References
External links
National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Report – a 98-page report to Congress (2005)
Acid rain for schools
Acid rain for schools – Hubbard Brook
United States Environmental Protection Agency – New England Acid Rain Program (superficial)
Acid Rain (more depth than ref. above)
U.S. Geological Survey – What is acid rain?
Acid Rain: A Continuing National Tragedy – a report from The Adirondack Council on acid rain in the Adirondack region (1998)
What Happens to Acid Rain?
Acid Rain and how it affects fish and other aquatic organisms
Fourth Report for Policy Makers (RPM4): Towards Clean Air for Sustainable Future in East Asia through Collaborative Activities- a report for policy-makers, Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia, EANET, (2019).
Rain
Pollution
Air pollution
Water pollution
Forest pathology
Environmental chemistry
Sulfuric acid
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Antioxidants are compounds that inhibit oxidation (usually occurring as autoxidation), a chemical reaction that can produce free radicals. Autoxidation leads to degradation of organic compounds, including living matter. Antioxidants are frequently added to industrial products, such as polymers, fuels, and lubricants, to extend their usable lifetimes. Food are also treated with antioxidants to forestall spoilage, in particular the rancidification of oils and fats. In cells, antioxidants such as glutathione, mycothiol or bacillithiol, and enzyme systems like superoxide dismutase, can prevent damage from oxidative stress.
Known dietary antioxidants are vitamins A, C, and E, but the term antioxidant has also been applied to numerous other dietary compounds that only have antioxidant properties in vitro, with little evidence for antioxidant properties in vivo. Dietary supplements marketed as antioxidants have not been shown to maintain health or prevent disease in humans.
History
As part of their adaptation from marine life, terrestrial plants began producing non-marine antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C), polyphenols and tocopherols. The evolution of angiosperm plants between 50 and 200 million years ago resulted in the development of many antioxidant pigments – particularly during the Jurassic period – as chemical defences against reactive oxygen species that are byproducts of photosynthesis. Originally, the term antioxidant specifically referred to a chemical that prevented the consumption of oxygen. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, extensive study concentrated on the use of antioxidants in important industrial processes, such as the prevention of metal corrosion, the vulcanization of rubber, and the polymerization of fuels in the fouling of internal combustion engines.
Early research on the role of antioxidants in biology focused on their use in preventing the oxidation of unsaturated fats, which is the cause of rancidity. Antioxidant activity could be measured simply by placing the fat in a closed container with oxygen and measuring the rate of oxygen consumption. However, it was the identification of vitamins C and E as antioxidants that revolutionized the field and led to the realization of the importance of antioxidants in the biochemistry of living organisms. The possible mechanisms of action of antioxidants were first explored when it was recognized that a substance with anti-oxidative activity is likely to be one that is itself readily oxidized. Research into how vitamin E prevents the process of lipid peroxidation led to the identification of antioxidants as reducing agents that prevent oxidative reactions, often by scavenging reactive oxygen species before they can damage cells.
Uses in technology
Food preservatives
Antioxidants are used as food additives to help guard against food deterioration. Exposure to oxygen and sunlight are the two main factors in the oxidation of food, so food is preserved by keeping in the dark and sealing it in containers or even coating it in wax, as with cucumbers. However, as oxygen is also important for plant respiration, storing plant materials in anaerobic conditions produces unpleasant flavors and unappealing colors. Consequently, packaging of fresh fruits and vegetables contains an ≈8% oxygen atmosphere. Antioxidants are an especially important class of preservatives as, unlike bacterial or fungal spoilage, oxidation reactions still occur relatively rapidly in frozen or refrigerated food. These preservatives include natural antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (AA, E300) and tocopherols (E306), as well as synthetic antioxidants such as propyl gallate (PG, E310), tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA, E320) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT, E321).
Unsaturated fats can be highly susceptible to oxidation, causing rancidification. Oxidized lipids are often discolored and can impart unpleasant tastes and flavors. Thus, these foods are rarely preserved by drying; instead, they are preserved by smoking, salting, or fermenting. Even less fatty foods such as fruits are sprayed with sulfurous antioxidants prior to air drying. Metals catalyse oxidation. Some fatty foods such as olive oil are partially protected from oxidation by their natural content of antioxidants. Fatty foods are sensitive to photooxidation, which forms hydroperoxides by oxidizing unsaturated fatty acids and ester. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation can cause direct photooxidation and decompose peroxides and carbonyl molecules. These molecules undergo free radical chain reactions, but antioxidants inhibit them by preventing the oxidation processes.
Cosmetics preservatives
Antioxidant stabilizers are also added to fat-based cosmetics such as lipstick and moisturizers to prevent rancidity. Antioxidants in cosmetic products prevent oxidation of active ingredients and lipid content. For example, phenolic antioxidants such as stilbenes, flavonoids, and hydroxycinnamic acid strongly absorb UV radiation due to the presence of chromophores. They reduce oxidative stress from sun exposure by absorbing UV light.
Industrial uses
Antioxidants may be added to industrial products, such as stabilizers in fuels and additives in lubricants, to prevent oxidation and polymerization that leads to the formation of engine-fouling residues.
Antioxidant polymer stabilizers are widely used to prevent the degradation of polymers such as rubbers, plastics and adhesives that causes a loss of strength and flexibility in these materials. Polymers containing double bonds in their main chains, such as natural rubber and polybutadiene, are especially susceptible to oxidation and ozonolysis. They can be protected by antiozonants. Oxidation can be accelerated by UV radiation in natural sunlight to cause photo-oxidation. Various specialised light stabilisers, such as HALS may be added to plastics to prevent this. Synthetic phenolic and aminic antioxidants are increasingly being identified as potential human and environmental health hazards.
Environmental and health hazards
Synthetic phenolic antioxidants (SPAs) and aminic antioxidants have potential human and environmental health hazards. SPAs are common in indoor dust, small air particles, sediment, sewage, river water and wastewater. They are synthesized from phenolic compounds and include 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-methylphenol (BHT), 2,6-di-tert-butyl-p-benzoquinone (BHT-Q), 2,4-di-tert-butyl-phenol (DBP) and 3-tert-butyl-4-hydroxyanisole (BHA). BHT can cause hepatotoxicity and damage to the endocrine system and may increase tumor development rates due to dimethylhydrazine. BHT-Q can cause DNA damage and mismatches through the cleavage process, generating superoxide radicals. DBP is toxic to marine life if exposed long-term. Phenolic antioxidants have low biodegradability, but they do not have severe toxicity toward aquatic organisms at low concentrations. Another type of antioxidant, diphenylamine (DPA), is commonly used in the production of commercial, industrial lubricants and rubber products and it also acts as a supplement for automotive engine oils.
Oxidative challenge in biology
The vast majority of complex life on Earth requires oxygen for its metabolism, but this same oxygen is a highly reactive element that can damage living organisms. Organisms contain chemicals and enzymes that minimize this oxidative damage without interfering with the beneficial effect of oxygen. In general, antioxidant systems either prevent these reactive species from being formed, or remove them, thus minimizing their damage. Reactive oxygen species can have useful cellular functions, such as redox signaling. Thus, ideally, antioxidant systems do not remove oxidants entirely, but maintain them at some optimum concentration.
Reactive oxygen species produced in cells include hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), hypochlorous acid (HClO), and free radicals such as the hydroxyl radical (·OH) and the superoxide anion (O2−). The hydroxyl radical is particularly unstable and will react rapidly and non-specifically with most biological molecules. This species is produced from hydrogen peroxide in metal-catalyzed redox reactions such as the Fenton reaction. These oxidants can damage cells by starting chemical chain reactions such as lipid peroxidation, or by oxidizing DNA or proteins. Damage to DNA can cause mutations and possibly cancer, if not reversed by DNA repair mechanisms, while damage to proteins causes enzyme inhibition, denaturation and protein degradation.
The use of oxygen as part of the process for generating metabolic energy produces reactive oxygen species. In this process, the superoxide anion is produced as a by-product of several steps in the electron transport chain. Particularly important is the reduction of coenzyme Q in complex III, since a highly reactive free radical is formed as an intermediate (Q·−). This unstable intermediate can lead to electron "leakage", when electrons jump directly to oxygen and form the superoxide anion, instead of moving through the normal series of well-controlled reactions of the electron transport chain. Peroxide is also produced from the oxidation of reduced flavoproteins, such as complex I. However, although these enzymes can produce oxidants, the relative importance of the electron transfer chain to other processes that generate peroxide is unclear. In plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, reactive oxygen species are also produced during photosynthesis, particularly under conditions of high light intensity. This effect is partly offset by the involvement of carotenoids in photoinhibition, and in algae and cyanobacteria, by large amount of iodide and selenium, which involves these antioxidants reacting with over-reduced forms of the photosynthetic reaction centres to prevent the production of reactive oxygen species.
Examples of bioactive antioxidant compounds
Physiological antioxidants are classified into two broad divisions, depending on whether they are soluble in water (hydrophilic) or in lipids (lipophilic). In general, water-soluble antioxidants react with oxidants in the cell cytosol and the blood plasma, while lipid-soluble antioxidants protect cell membranes from lipid peroxidation. These compounds may be synthesized in the body or obtained from the diet. The different antioxidants are present at a wide range of concentrations in body fluids and tissues, with some such as glutathione or ubiquinone mostly present within cells, while others such as uric acid are more systemically distributed (see table below). Some antioxidants are only found in a few organisms, and can be pathogens or virulence factors.
The interactions between these different antioxidants may be synergistic and interdependent. The action of one antioxidant may therefore depend on the proper function of other members of the antioxidant system. The amount of protection provided by any one antioxidant will also depend on its concentration, its reactivity towards the particular reactive oxygen species being considered, and the status of the antioxidants with which it interacts.
Some compounds contribute to antioxidant defense by chelating transition metals and preventing them from catalyzing the production of free radicals in the cell. The ability to sequester iron for iron-binding proteins, such as transferrin and ferritin, is one such function. Selenium and zinc are commonly referred to as antioxidant minerals, but these chemical elements have no antioxidant action themselves, but rather are required for the activity of antioxidant enzymes, such as glutathione reductase and superoxide dismutase. (See also selenium in biology and zinc in biology.)
Uric acid
Uric acid (UA) is an antioxidant oxypurine produced from xanthine by the enzyme xanthine oxidase, and is an intermediate product of purine metabolism. In almost all land animals, urate oxidase further catalyzes the oxidation of uric acid to allantoin, but in humans and most higher primates, the urate oxidase gene is nonfunctional, so that UA is not further broken down. The evolutionary reasons for this loss of urate conversion to allantoin remain the topic of active speculation. The antioxidant effects of uric acid have led researchers to suggest this mutation was beneficial to early primates and humans. Studies of high altitude acclimatization support the hypothesis that urate acts as an antioxidant by mitigating the oxidative stress caused by high-altitude hypoxia.
Uric acid has the highest concentration of any blood antioxidant and provides over half of the total antioxidant capacity of human serum. Uric acid's antioxidant activities are also complex, given that it does not react with some oxidants, such as superoxide, but does act against peroxynitrite, peroxides, and hypochlorous acid. Concerns over elevated UA's contribution to gout must be considered one of many risk factors. By itself, UA-related risk of gout at high levels (415–530 μmol/L) is only 0.5% per year with an increase to 4.5% per year at UA supersaturation levels (535+ μmol/L). Many of these aforementioned studies determined UA's antioxidant actions within normal physiological levels, and some found antioxidant activity at levels as high as 285 μmol/L.
Vitamin C
Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is a monosaccharide oxidation-reduction (redox) catalyst found in both animals and plants. As one of the enzymes needed to make ascorbic acid has been lost by mutation during primate evolution, humans must obtain it from their diet; it is therefore a dietary vitamin. Most other animals are able to produce this compound in their bodies and do not require it in their diets. Ascorbic acid is required for the conversion of the procollagen to collagen by oxidizing proline residues to hydroxyproline. In other cells, it is maintained in its reduced form by reaction with glutathione, which can be catalysed by protein disulfide isomerase and glutaredoxins. Ascorbic acid is a redox catalyst which can reduce, and thereby neutralize, reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide. In addition to its direct antioxidant effects, ascorbic acid is also a substrate for the redox enzyme ascorbate peroxidase, a function that is used in stress resistance in plants. Ascorbic acid is present at high levels in all parts of plants and can reach concentrations of 20 millimolar in chloroplasts.
Glutathione
Glutathione is a cysteine-containing peptide found in most forms of aerobic life. It is not required in the diet and is instead synthesized in cells from its constituent amino acids. Glutathione has antioxidant properties since the thiol group in its cysteine moiety is a reducing agent and can be reversibly oxidized and reduced. In cells, glutathione is maintained in the reduced form by the enzyme glutathione reductase and in turn reduces other metabolites and enzyme systems, such as ascorbate in the glutathione-ascorbate cycle, glutathione peroxidases and glutaredoxins, as well as reacting directly with oxidants. Due to its high concentration and its central role in maintaining the cell's redox state, glutathione is one of the most important cellular antioxidants. In some organisms glutathione is replaced by other thiols, such as by mycothiol in the Actinomycetes, bacillithiol in some gram-positive bacteria, or by trypanothione in the Kinetoplastids.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is the collective name for a set of eight related tocopherols and tocotrienols, which are fat-soluble vitamins with antioxidant properties. Of these, α-tocopherol has been most studied as it has the highest bioavailability, with the body preferentially absorbing and metabolising this form.
It has been claimed that the α-tocopherol form is the most important lipid-soluble antioxidant, and that it protects membranes from oxidation by reacting with lipid radicals produced in the lipid peroxidation chain reaction. This removes the free radical intermediates and prevents the propagation reaction from continuing. This reaction produces oxidised α-tocopheroxyl radicals that can be recycled back to the active reduced form through reduction by other antioxidants, such as ascorbate, retinol or ubiquinol. This is in line with findings showing that α-tocopherol, but not water-soluble antioxidants, efficiently protects glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4)-deficient cells from cell death. GPx4 is the only known enzyme that efficiently reduces lipid-hydroperoxides within biological membranes.
However, the roles and importance of the various forms of vitamin E are presently unclear, and it has even been suggested that the most important function of α-tocopherol is as a signaling molecule, with this molecule having no significant role in antioxidant metabolism. The functions of the other forms of vitamin E are even less well understood, although γ-tocopherol is a nucleophile that may react with electrophilic mutagens, and tocotrienols may be important in protecting neurons from damage.
Pro-oxidant activities
Antioxidants that are reducing agents can also act as pro-oxidants. For example, vitamin C has antioxidant activity when it reduces oxidizing substances such as hydrogen peroxide; however, it will also reduce metal ions such as iron and copper that generate free radicals through the Fenton reaction. While ascorbic acid is effective antioxidant, it can also oxidatively change the flavor and color of food. With the presence of transition metals, there are low concentrations of ascorbic acid that can act as a radical scavenger in the Fenton reaction.
2 Fe3+ + Ascorbate → 2 Fe2+ + Dehydroascorbate
2 Fe2+ + 2 H2O2 → 2 Fe3+ + 2 OH· + 2 OH−
The relative importance of the antioxidant and pro-oxidant activities of antioxidants is an area of current research, but vitamin C, which exerts its effects as a vitamin by oxidizing polypeptides, appears to have a mostly antioxidant action in the human body.
Enzyme systems
As with the chemical antioxidants, cells are protected against oxidative stress by an interacting network of antioxidant enzymes. Here, the superoxide released by processes such as oxidative phosphorylation is first converted to hydrogen peroxide and then further reduced to give water. This detoxification pathway is the result of multiple enzymes, with superoxide dismutases catalysing the first step and then catalases and various peroxidases removing hydrogen peroxide. As with antioxidant metabolites, the contributions of these enzymes to antioxidant defenses can be hard to separate from one another, but the generation of transgenic mice lacking just one antioxidant enzyme can be informative.
Superoxide dismutase, catalase, and peroxiredoxins
Superoxide dismutases (SODs) are a class of closely related enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of the superoxide anion into oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. SOD enzymes are present in almost all aerobic cells and in extracellular fluids. Superoxide dismutase enzymes contain metal ion cofactors that, depending on the isozyme, can be copper, zinc, manganese or iron. In humans, the copper/zinc SOD is present in the cytosol, while manganese SOD is present in the mitochondrion. There also exists a third form of SOD in extracellular fluids, which contains copper and zinc in its active sites. The mitochondrial isozyme seems to be the most biologically important of these three, since mice lacking this enzyme die soon after birth. In contrast, the mice lacking copper/zinc SOD (Sod1) are viable but have numerous pathologies and a reduced lifespan (see article on superoxide), while mice without the extracellular SOD have minimal defects (sensitive to hyperoxia). In plants, SOD isozymes are present in the cytosol and mitochondria, with an iron SOD found in chloroplasts that is absent from vertebrates and yeast.
Catalases are enzymes that catalyse the conversion of hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen, using either an iron or manganese cofactor. This protein is localized to peroxisomes in most eukaryotic cells. Catalase is an unusual enzyme since, although hydrogen peroxide is its only substrate, it follows a ping-pong mechanism. Here, its cofactor is oxidised by one molecule of hydrogen peroxide and then regenerated by transferring the bound oxygen to a second molecule of substrate. Despite its apparent importance in hydrogen peroxide removal, humans with genetic deficiency of catalase — "acatalasemia" — or mice genetically engineered to lack catalase completely, experience few ill effects.
Peroxiredoxins are peroxidases that catalyze the reduction of hydrogen peroxide, organic hydroperoxides, as well as peroxynitrite. They are divided into three classes: typical 2-cysteine peroxiredoxins; atypical 2-cysteine peroxiredoxins; and 1-cysteine peroxiredoxins. These enzymes share the same basic catalytic mechanism, in which a redox-active cysteine (the peroxidatic cysteine) in the active site is oxidized to a sulfenic acid by the peroxide substrate. Over-oxidation of this cysteine residue in peroxiredoxins inactivates these enzymes, but this can be reversed by the action of sulfiredoxin. Peroxiredoxins seem to be important in antioxidant metabolism, as mice lacking peroxiredoxin 1 or 2 have shortened lifespans and develop hemolytic anaemia, while plants use peroxiredoxins to remove hydrogen peroxide generated in chloroplasts.
Thioredoxin and glutathione systems
The thioredoxin system contains the 12-kDa protein thioredoxin and its companion thioredoxin reductase. Proteins related to thioredoxin are present in all sequenced organisms. Plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, have a particularly great diversity of isoforms. The active site of thioredoxin consists of two neighboring cysteines, as part of a highly conserved CXXC motif, that can cycle between an active dithiol form (reduced) and an oxidized disulfide form. In its active state, thioredoxin acts as an efficient reducing agent, scavenging reactive oxygen species and maintaining other proteins in their reduced state. After being oxidized, the active thioredoxin is regenerated by the action of thioredoxin reductase, using NADPH as an electron donor.
The glutathione system includes glutathione, glutathione reductase, glutathione peroxidases, and glutathione S-transferases. This system is found in animals, plants and microorganisms. Glutathione peroxidase is an enzyme containing four selenium-cofactors that catalyzes the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide and organic hydroperoxides. There are at least four different glutathione peroxidase isozymes in animals. Glutathione peroxidase 1 is the most abundant and is a very efficient scavenger of hydrogen peroxide, while glutathione peroxidase 4 is most active with lipid hydroperoxides. Surprisingly, glutathione peroxidase 1 is dispensable, as mice lacking this enzyme have normal lifespans, but they are hypersensitive to induced oxidative stress. In addition, the glutathione S-transferases show high activity with lipid peroxides. These enzymes are at particularly high levels in the liver and also serve in detoxification metabolism.
Health research
Relation to diet
The dietary antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E are essential and required in specific daily amounts to prevent diseases. Polyphenols, which have antioxidant properties in vitro due to their free hydroxy groups, are extensively metabolized by catechol-O-methyltransferase which methylates free hydroxyl groups, and thereby prevents them from acting as antioxidants in vivo.
Interactions
Common pharmaceuticals (and supplements) with antioxidant properties may interfere with the efficacy of certain anticancer medication and radiation therapy. Pharmaceuticals and supplements that have antioxidant properties suppress the formation of free radicals by inhibiting oxidation processes. Radiation therapy induce oxidative stress that damages essential components of cancer cells, such as proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids that comprise cell membranes.
Adverse effects
Relatively strong reducing acids can have antinutrient effects by binding to dietary minerals such as iron and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract and preventing them from being absorbed. Examples are oxalic acid, tannins and phytic acid, which are high in plant-based diets. Calcium and iron deficiencies are not uncommon in diets in developing countries where less meat is eaten and there is high consumption of phytic acid from beans and unleavened whole grain bread. However, germination, soaking, or microbial fermentation are all household strategies that reduce the phytate and polyphenol content of unrefined cereal. Increases in Fe, Zn and Ca absorption have been reported in adults fed dephytinized cereals compared with cereals containing their native phytate.
High doses of some antioxidants may have harmful long-term effects. The Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET) study of lung cancer patients found that smokers given supplements containing beta-carotene and vitamin A had increased rates of lung cancer. Subsequent studies confirmed these adverse effects. These harmful effects may also be seen in non-smokers, as one meta-analysis including data from approximately 230,000 patients showed that β-carotene, vitamin A or vitamin E supplementation is associated with increased mortality, but saw no significant effect from vitamin C. No health risk was seen when all the randomized controlled studies were examined together, but an increase in mortality was detected when only high-quality and low-bias risk trials were examined separately. As the majority of these low-bias trials dealt with either elderly people, or people with disease, these results may not apply to the general population. This meta-analysis was later repeated and extended by the same authors, confirming the previous results. These two publications are consistent with some previous meta-analyses that also suggested that vitamin E supplementation increased mortality, and that antioxidant supplements increased the risk of colon cancer. Beta-carotene may also increase lung cancer. Overall, the large number of clinical trials carried out on antioxidant supplements suggest that either these products have no effect on health, or that they cause a small increase in mortality in elderly or vulnerable populations.
Exercise and muscle soreness
A 2017 review showed that taking antioxidant dietary supplements before or after exercise does not likely lead to a noticeable reduction in muscle soreness after a person exercises.
Levels in food
Antioxidant vitamins are found in vegetables, fruits, eggs, legumes and nuts. Vitamins A, C, and E can be destroyed by long-term storage or prolonged cooking. The effects of cooking and food processing are complex, as these processes can also increase the bioavailability of antioxidants, such as some carotenoids in vegetables. Processed food contains fewer antioxidant vitamins than fresh and uncooked foods, as preparation exposes food to heat and oxygen.
Other antioxidants are not obtained from the diet, but instead are made in the body. For example, ubiquinol (coenzyme Q) is poorly absorbed from the gut and is made through the mevalonate pathway. Another example is glutathione, which is made from amino acids. As any glutathione in the gut is broken down to free cysteine, glycine and glutamic acid before being absorbed, even large oral intake has little effect on the concentration of glutathione in the body. Although large amounts of sulfur-containing amino acids such as acetylcysteine can increase glutathione, no evidence exists that eating high levels of these glutathione precursors is beneficial for healthy adults.
Measurement and invalidation of ORAC
Measurement of polyphenol and carotenoid content in food is not a straightforward process, as antioxidants collectively are a diverse group of compounds with different reactivities to various reactive oxygen species. In food science analyses in vitro, the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) was once an industry standard for estimating antioxidant strength of whole foods, juices and food additives, mainly from the presence of polyphenols. Earlier measurements and ratings by the United States Department of Agriculture were withdrawn in 2012 as biologically irrelevant to human health, referring to an absence of physiological evidence for polyphenols having antioxidant properties in vivo. Consequently, the ORAC method, derived only from in vitro experiments, is no longer considered relevant to human diets or biology, as of 2010.
Alternative in vitro measurements of antioxidant content in foods – also based on the presence of polyphenols – include the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent, and the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity assay.
References
Further reading
External links
Anti-aging substances
Physiology
Process chemicals
Redox
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Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic, and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion. In use since prehistoric times, it is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other within the same crystal structure.
Brass is similar to bronze, another copper alloy that uses tin instead of zinc. Both bronze and brass may include small proportions of a range of other elements including arsenic (As), lead (Pb), phosphorus (P), aluminium (Al), manganese (Mn), and silicon (Si). Historically, the distinction between the two alloys has been less consistent and clear, and increasingly museums use the more general term "copper alloy."
Brass has long been a popular material for its bright gold-like appearance and is still used for drawer pulls and doorknobs. It has also been widely used to make sculpture and utensils because of its low melting point, high workability (both with hand tools and with modern turning and milling machines), durability, and electrical and thermal conductivity. Brasses with higher copper content are softer and more golden in colour; conversely those with less copper and thus more zinc are harder and more silvery in colour.
Brass is still commonly used in applications where corrosion resistance and low friction are required, such as locks, hinges, gears, bearings, ammunition casings, zippers, plumbing, hose couplings, valves, and electrical plugs and sockets. It is used extensively for musical instruments such as horns and bells. The composition of brass, generally 66% copper and 34% zinc, makes it a favorable substitute for copper in costume jewelry and fashion jewelry, as it exhibits greater resistance to corrosion. Brass is not as hard as bronze, and so is not suitable for most weapons and tools. Nor is it suitable for marine uses, because the zinc reacts with minerals in salt water, leaving porous copper behind; marine brass, with added tin, avoids this, as does bronze.
Brass is often used in situations in which it is important that sparks not be struck, such as in fittings and tools used near flammable or explosive materials.
Properties
Brass is more malleable than bronze or zinc. The relatively low melting point of brass (, depending on composition) and its flow characteristics make it a relatively easy material to cast. By varying the proportions of copper and zinc, the properties of the brass can be changed, allowing hard and soft brasses. The density of brass is .
Today, almost 90% of all brass alloys are recycled. Because brass is not ferromagnetic, ferrous scrap can be separated from it by passing the scrap near a powerful magnet. Brass scrap is melted and recast into billets that are extruded into the desired form and size. The general softness of brass means that it can often be machined without the use of cutting fluid, though there are exceptions to this.
Aluminium makes brass stronger and more corrosion-resistant. Aluminium also causes a highly beneficial hard layer of aluminium oxide (Al2O3) to be formed on the surface that is thin, transparent, and self-healing. Tin has a similar effect and finds its use especially in seawater applications (naval brasses). Combinations of iron, aluminium, silicon, and manganese make brass wear- and tear-resistant. The addition of as little as 1% iron to a brass alloy will result in an alloy with a noticeable magnetic attraction.
Brass will corrode in the presence of moisture, chlorides, acetates, ammonia, and certain acids. This often happens when the copper reacts with sulfur to form a brown and eventually black surface layer of copper sulfide which, if regularly exposed to slightly acidic water such as urban rainwater, can then oxidize in air to form a patina of green-blue copper carbonate. Depending on how the patina layer was formed, it may protect the underlying brass from further damage.
Although copper and zinc have a large difference in electrical potential, the resulting brass alloy does not experience internalized galvanic corrosion because of the absence of a corrosive environment within the mixture. However, if brass is placed in contact with a more noble metal such as silver or gold in such an environment, the brass will corrode galvanically; conversely, if brass is in contact with a less-noble metal such as zinc or iron, the less noble metal will corrode and the brass will be protected.
Lead content
To enhance the machinability of brass, lead is often added in concentrations of about 2%. Since lead has a lower melting point than the other constituents of the brass, it tends to migrate towards the grain boundaries in the form of globules as it cools from casting. The pattern the globules form on the surface of the brass increases the available lead surface area which, in turn, affects the degree of leaching. In addition, cutting operations can smear the lead globules over the surface. These effects can lead to significant lead leaching from brasses of comparatively low lead content.
In October 1999, the California State Attorney General sued 13 key manufacturers and distributors over lead content. In laboratory tests, state researchers found the average brass key, new or old, exceeded the California Proposition 65 limits by an average factor of 19, assuming handling twice a day. In April 2001 manufacturers agreed to reduce lead content to 1.5%, or face a requirement to warn consumers about lead content. Keys plated with other metals are not affected by the settlement, and may continue to use brass alloys with a higher percentage of lead content.
Also in California, lead-free materials must be used for "each component that comes into contact with the wetted surface of pipes and pipe fittings, plumbing fittings and fixtures". On 1 January 2010, the maximum amount of lead in "lead-free brass" in California was reduced from 4% to 0.25% lead.
Corrosion-resistant brass for harsh environments
Dezincification-resistant (DZR or DR) brasses, sometimes referred to as CR (corrosion resistant) brasses, are used where there is a large corrosion risk and where normal brasses do not meet the requirements. Applications with high water temperatures, chlorides present or deviating water qualities (soft water) play a role. DZR-brass is used in water boiler systems. This brass alloy must be produced with great care, with special attention placed on a balanced composition and proper production temperatures and parameters to avoid long-term failures.
An example of DZR brass is the C352 brass, with about 30% zinc, 61–63% copper, 1.7–2.8% lead, and 0.02–0.15% arsenic. The lead and arsenic significantly suppress the zinc loss.
"Red brasses", a family of alloys with high copper proportion and generally less than 15% zinc, are more resistant to zinc loss. One of the metals called "red brass" is 85% copper, 5% tin, 5% lead, and 5% zinc. Copper alloy C23000, which is also known as "red brass", contains 84–86% copper, 0.05% each iron and lead, with the balance being zinc.
Another such material is gunmetal, from the family of red brasses. Gunmetal alloys contain roughly 88% copper, 8-10% tin, and 2-4% zinc. Lead can be added for ease of machining or for bearing alloys.
"Naval brass", for use in seawater, contains 40% zinc but also 1% tin. The tin addition suppresses zinc leaching.
The NSF International requires brasses with more than 15% zinc, used in piping and plumbing fittings, to be dezincification-resistant.
Use in musical instruments
The high malleability and workability, relatively good resistance to corrosion, and traditionally attributed acoustic properties of brass, have made it the usual metal of choice for construction of musical instruments whose acoustic resonators consist of long, relatively narrow tubing, often folded or coiled for compactness; silver and its alloys, and even gold, have been used for the same reasons, but brass is the most economical choice. Collectively known as brass instruments, these include the trombone, tuba, trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, baritone horn, euphonium, tenor horn, and French horn, and many other "horns", many in variously sized families, such as the saxhorns.
Other wind instruments may be constructed of brass or other metals, and indeed most modern student-model flutes and piccolos are made of some variety of brass, usually a cupronickel alloy similar to nickel silver (also known as German silver). Clarinets, especially low clarinets such as the contrabass and subcontrabass, are sometimes made of metal because of limited supplies of the dense, fine-grained tropical hardwoods traditionally preferred for smaller woodwinds. For the same reason, some low clarinets, bassoons and contrabassoons feature a hybrid construction, with long, straight sections of wood, and curved joints, neck, and/or bell of metal. The use of metal also avoids the risks of exposing wooden instruments to changes in temperature or humidity, which can cause sudden cracking. Even though the saxophones and sarrusophones are classified as woodwind instruments, they are normally made of brass for similar reasons, and because their wide, conical bores and thin-walled bodies are more easily and efficiently made by forming sheet metal than by machining wood.
The keywork of most modern woodwinds, including wooden-bodied instruments, is also usually made of an alloy such as nickel silver. Such alloys are stiffer and more durable than the brass used to construct the instrument bodies, but still workable with simple hand tools—a boon to quick repairs. The mouthpieces of both brass instruments and, less commonly, woodwind instruments are often made of brass among other metals as well.
Next to the brass instruments, the most notable use of brass in music is in various percussion instruments, most notably cymbals, gongs, and orchestral (tubular) bells (large "church" bells are normally made of bronze). Small handbells and "jingle bells" are also commonly made of brass.
The harmonica is a free reed aerophone, also often made from brass. In organ pipes of the reed family, brass strips (called tongues) are used as the reeds, which beat against the shallot (or beat "through" the shallot in the case of a "free" reed). Although not part of the brass section, snare drums are also sometimes made of brass. Some parts on electric guitars are also made from brass, especially inertia blocks on tremolo systems for its tonal properties, and for string nuts and saddles for both tonal properties and its low friction.
Germicidal and antimicrobial applications
The bactericidal properties of brass have been observed for centuries, particularly in marine environments where it prevents biofouling. Depending upon the type and concentration of pathogens and the medium they are in, brass kills these microorganisms within a few minutes to hours of contact.
A large number of independent studies confirm this antimicrobial effect, even against antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA and VRSA. The mechanisms of antimicrobial action by copper and its alloys, including brass, are a subject of intense and ongoing investigation.
Season cracking
Brass is susceptible to stress corrosion cracking, especially from ammonia or substances containing or releasing ammonia. The problem is sometimes known as season cracking after it was first discovered in brass cartridges used for rifle ammunition during the 1920s in the British Indian Army. The problem was caused by high residual stresses from cold forming of the cases during manufacture, together with chemical attack from traces of ammonia in the atmosphere. The cartridges were stored in stables and the ammonia concentration rose during the hot summer months, thus initiating brittle cracks. The problem was resolved by annealing the cases, and storing the cartridges elsewhere.
Types
Other phases than α, β and γ are ε, a hexagonal intermetallic CuZn3, and η, a solid solution of copper in zinc.
Brass alloys
History
Although forms of brass have been in use since prehistory, its true nature as a copper-zinc alloy was not understood until the post-medieval period because the zinc vapor which reacted with copper to make brass was not recognized as a metal. The King James Bible makes many references to "brass" to translate "nechosheth" (bronze or copper) from Hebrew to English. The earliest brasses may have been natural alloys made by smelting zinc-rich copper ores. By the Roman period brass was being deliberately produced from metallic copper and zinc minerals using the cementation process, the product of which was calamine brass, and variations on this method continued until the mid-19th century. It was eventually replaced by speltering, the direct alloying of copper and zinc metal which was introduced to Europe in the 16th century.
Brass has sometimes historically been referred to as "yellow copper".
Early copper-zinc alloys
In West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean early copper-zinc alloys are now known in small numbers from a number of 3rd millennium BC sites in the Aegean, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kalmykia, Turkmenistan and Georgia and from 2nd millennium BC sites in western India, Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq and Canaan. Isolated examples of copper-zinc alloys are known in China from the 1st century AD, long after bronze was widely used.
The compositions of these early "brass" objects are highly variable and most have zinc contents of between 5% and 15% wt which is lower than in brass produced by cementation. These may be "natural alloys" manufactured by smelting zinc rich copper ores in redox conditions. Many have similar tin contents to contemporary bronze artefacts and it is possible that some copper-zinc alloys were accidental and perhaps not even distinguished from copper. However the large number of copper-zinc alloys now known suggests that at least some were deliberately manufactured and many have zinc contents of more than 12% wt which would have resulted in a distinctive golden colour.
By the 8th–7th century BC Assyrian cuneiform tablets mention the exploitation of the "copper of the mountains" and this may refer to "natural" brass. "Oreikhalkon" (mountain copper), the Ancient Greek translation of this term, was later adapted to the Latin aurichalcum meaning "golden copper" which became the standard term for brass. In the 4th century BC Plato knew orichalkos as rare and nearly as valuable as gold and Pliny describes how aurichalcum had come from Cypriot ore deposits which had been exhausted by the 1st century AD. X-ray fluorescence analysis of 39 orichalcum ingots recovered from a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off Sicily found them to be an alloy made with 75–80% copper, 15–20% zinc and small percentages of nickel, lead and iron.
Roman world
During the later part of first millennium BC the use of brass spread across a wide geographical area from Britain and Spain in the west to Iran, and India in the east. This seems to have been encouraged by exports and influence from the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean where deliberate production of brass from metallic copper and zinc ores had been introduced. The 4th century BC writer Theopompus, quoted by Strabo, describes how heating earth from Andeira in Turkey produced "droplets of false silver", probably metallic zinc, which could be used to turn copper into oreichalkos. In the 1st century BC the Greek Dioscorides seems to have recognized a link between zinc minerals and brass describing how Cadmia (zinc oxide) was found on the walls of furnaces used to heat either zinc ore or copper and explaining that it can then be used to make brass.
By the first century BC brass was available in sufficient supply to use as coinage in Phrygia and Bithynia, and after the Augustan currency reform of 23 BC it was also used to make Roman dupondii and sestertii. The uniform use of brass for coinage and military equipment across the Roman world may indicate a degree of state involvement in the industry, and brass even seems to have been deliberately boycotted by Jewish communities in Palestine because of its association with Roman authority.
Brass was produced by the cementation process where copper and zinc ore are heated together until zinc vapor is produced which reacts with the copper. There is good archaeological evidence for this process and crucibles used to produce brass by cementation have been found on Roman period sites including Xanten and Nidda in Germany, Lyon in France and at a number of sites in Britain. They vary in size from tiny acorn sized to large amphorae like vessels but all have elevated levels of zinc on the interior and are lidded. They show no signs of slag or metal prills suggesting that zinc minerals were heated to produce zinc vapor which reacted with metallic copper in a solid state reaction. The fabric of these crucibles is porous, probably designed to prevent a buildup of pressure, and many have small holes in the lids which may be designed to release pressure or to add additional zinc minerals near the end of the process. Dioscorides mentioned that zinc minerals were used for both the working and finishing of brass, perhaps suggesting secondary additions.
Brass made during the early Roman period seems to have varied between 20% and 28% wt zinc. The high content of zinc in coinage and brass objects declined after the first century AD and it has been suggested that this reflects zinc loss during recycling and thus an interruption in the production of new brass. However it is now thought this was probably a deliberate change in composition and overall the use of brass increases over this period making up around 40% of all copper alloys used in the Roman world by the 4th century AD.
Medieval period
Little is known about the production of brass during the centuries immediately after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Disruption in the trade of tin for bronze from Western Europe may have contributed to the increasing popularity of brass in the east and by the 6th–7th centuries AD over 90% of copper alloy artefacts from Egypt were made of brass. However other alloys such as low tin bronze were also used and they vary depending on local cultural attitudes, the purpose of the metal and access to zinc, especially between the Islamic and Byzantine world. Conversely the use of true brass seems to have declined in Western Europe during this period in favor of gunmetals and other mixed alloys but by about 1000 brass artefacts are found in Scandinavian graves in Scotland, brass was being used in the manufacture of coins in Northumbria and there is archaeological and historical evidence for the production of calamine brass in Germany and the Low Countries, areas rich in calamine ore.
These places would remain important centres of brass making throughout the Middle Ages period, especially Dinant. Brass objects are still collectively known as dinanderie in French. The baptismal font at St Bartholomew's Church, Liège in modern Belgium (before 1117) is an outstanding masterpiece of Romanesque brass casting, though also often described as bronze. The metal of the early 12th-century Gloucester Candlestick is unusual even by medieval standards in being a mixture of copper, zinc, tin, lead, nickel, iron, antimony and arsenic with an unusually large amount of silver, ranging from 22.5% in the base to 5.76% in the pan below the candle. The proportions of this mixture may suggest that the candlestick was made from a hoard of old coins, probably Late Roman. Latten is a term for medieval alloys of uncertain and often variable composition often covering decorative borders and similar objects cut from sheet metal, whether of brass or bronze. Especially in Tibetan art, analysis of some objects shows very different compositions from different ends of a large piece. Aquamaniles were typically made in brass in both the European and Islamic worlds.
The cementation process continued to be used but literary sources from both Europe and the Islamic world seem to describe variants of a higher temperature liquid process which took place in open-topped crucibles. Islamic cementation seems to have used zinc oxide known as tutiya or tutty rather than zinc ores for brass-making, resulting in a metal with lower iron impurities. A number of Islamic writers and the 13th century Italian Marco Polo describe how this was obtained by sublimation from zinc ores and condensed onto clay or iron bars, archaeological examples of which have been identified at Kush in Iran. It could then be used for brass making or medicinal purposes. In 10th century Yemen al-Hamdani described how spreading al-iglimiya, probably zinc oxide, onto the surface of molten copper produced tutiya vapor which then reacted with the metal. The 13th century Iranian writer al-Kashani describes a more complex process whereby tutiya was mixed with raisins and gently roasted before being added to the surface of the molten metal. A temporary lid was added at this point presumably to minimize the escape of zinc vapor.
In Europe a similar liquid process in open-topped crucibles took place which was probably less efficient than the Roman process and the use of the term tutty by Albertus Magnus in the 13th century suggests influence from Islamic technology. The 12th century German monk Theophilus described how preheated crucibles were one sixth filled with powdered calamine and charcoal then topped up with copper and charcoal before being melted, stirred then filled again. The final product was cast, then again melted with calamine. It has been suggested that this second melting may have taken place at a lower temperature to allow more zinc to be absorbed. Albertus Magnus noted that the "power" of both calamine and tutty could evaporate and described how the addition of powdered glass could create a film to bind it to the metal.
German brass making crucibles are known from Dortmund dating to the 10th century AD and from Soest and Schwerte in Westphalia dating to around the 13th century confirm Theophilus' account, as they are open-topped, although ceramic discs from Soest may have served as loose lids which may have been used to reduce zinc evaporation, and have slag on the interior resulting from a liquid process.
Africa
Some of the most famous objects in African art are the lost wax castings of West Africa, mostly from what is now Nigeria, produced first by the Kingdom of Ife and then the Benin Empire. Though normally described as "bronzes", the Benin Bronzes, now mostly in the British Museum and other Western collections, and the large portrait heads such as the Bronze Head from Ife of "heavily leaded zinc-brass" and the Bronze Head of Queen Idia, both also British Museum, are better described as brass, though of variable compositions. Work in brass or bronze continued to be important in Benin art and other West African traditions such as Akan goldweights, where the metal was regarded as a more valuable material than in Europe.
Renaissance and post-medieval Europe
The Renaissance saw important changes to both the theory and practice of brassmaking in Europe. By the 15th century there is evidence for the renewed use of lidded cementation crucibles at Zwickau in Germany. These large crucibles were capable of producing c.20 kg of brass. There are traces of slag and pieces of metal on the interior. Their irregular composition suggests that this was a lower temperature, not entirely liquid, process. The crucible lids had small holes which were blocked with clay plugs near the end of the process presumably to maximize zinc absorption in the final stages. Triangular crucibles were then used to melt the brass for casting.
16th-century technical writers such as Biringuccio, Ercker and Agricola described a variety of cementation brass making techniques and came closer to understanding the true nature of the process noting that copper became heavier as it changed to brass and that it became more golden as additional calamine was added. Zinc metal was also becoming more commonplace. By 1513 metallic zinc ingots from India and China were arriving in London and pellets of zinc condensed in furnace flues at the Rammelsberg in Germany were exploited for cementation brass making from around 1550.
Eventually it was discovered that metallic zinc could be alloyed with copper to make brass, a process known as speltering, and by 1657 the German chemist Johann Glauber had recognized that calamine was "nothing else but unmeltable zinc" and that zinc was a "half ripe metal". However some earlier high zinc, low iron brasses such as the 1530 Wightman brass memorial plaque from England may have been made by alloying copper with zinc and include traces of cadmium similar to those found in some zinc ingots from China.
However, the cementation process was not abandoned, and as late as the early 19th century there are descriptions of solid-state cementation in a domed furnace at around 900–950 °C and lasting up to 10 hours. The European brass industry continued to flourish into the post medieval period buoyed by innovations such as the 16th century introduction of water powered hammers for the production of wares such as pots. By 1559 the Germany city of Aachen alone was capable of producing 300,000 cwt of brass per year. After several false starts during the 16th and 17th centuries the brass industry was also established in England taking advantage of abundant supplies of cheap copper smelted in the new coal fired reverberatory furnace. In 1723 Bristol brass maker Nehemiah Champion patented the use of granulated copper, produced by pouring molten metal into cold water. This increased the surface area of the copper helping it react and zinc contents of up to 33% wt were reported using this new technique.
In 1738 Nehemiah's son William Champion patented a technique for the first industrial scale distillation of metallic zinc known as distillation per descencum or "the English process". This local zinc was used in speltering and allowed greater control over the zinc content of brass and the production of high-zinc copper alloys which would have been difficult or impossible to produce using cementation, for use in expensive objects such as scientific instruments, clocks, brass buttons and costume jewelry. However Champion continued to use the cheaper calamine cementation method to produce lower-zinc brass and the archaeological remains of bee-hive shaped cementation furnaces have been identified at his works at Warmley. By the mid-to-late 18th century developments in cheaper zinc distillation such as John-Jaques Dony's horizontal furnaces in Belgium and the reduction of tariffs on zinc as well as demand for corrosion-resistant high zinc alloys increased the popularity of speltering and as a result cementation was largely abandoned by the mid-19th century.
See also
Brass bed
Brass rubbing
List of copper alloys
Citations
General references
Bayley, J. (1990). "The Production of Brass in Antiquity with Particular Reference to Roman Britain". In Craddock, P. T. (ed.). 2000 Years of Zinc and Brass. London: British Museum.
Craddock, P. T. and Eckstein, K (2003). "Production of Brass in Antiquity by Direct Reduction". In Craddock, P. T. and Lang, J. (eds.). Mining and Metal Production Through the Ages. London: British Museum.
Day, J. (1990). "Brass and Zinc in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 19th century". In Craddock, P. T. (ed.). 2000 Years of Zinc and Brass. London: British Museum.
Day, J. (1991). "Copper, Zinc and Brass Production". In Day, J. and Tylecote, R. F. (eds.). The Industrial Revolution in Metals. London: The Institute of Metals.
Rehren, T. and Martinon Torres, M. (2008) "Naturam ars imitate: European brassmaking between craft and science". In Martinon-Torres, M. and Rehren, T. (eds.). Archaeology, History and Science: Integrating Approaches to Ancient Material. Left Coast Press.
External links
Copper alloys
History of metallurgy
Zinc alloys
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Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. It has a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany's largest metropolitan area, with over 11 million inhabitants. It is a university city, was the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven and was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990. Bonn was the seat of government of reunited Germany from 1990 to 1999.
Founded in the 1st century BC as a Roman settlement in the province Germania Inferior, Bonn is one of Germany's oldest cities. It was the capital city of the Electorate of Cologne from 1597 to 1794, residence of the Archbishops and Prince-electors of Cologne. From 1949 to 1990, Bonn was the capital of West Germany, and Germany's present constitution, the Basic Law, was declared in the city in 1949. The era when Bonn served as the capital of West Germany is referred to by historians as the Bonn Republic.
Due to a political compromise (Berlin-Bonn Act) following the reunification, the German federal government maintains a substantial presence in Bonn. Roughly a third of all ministerial jobs are located in Bonn , and the city is considered a second, unofficial, capital of the country. Bonn is the secondary seat of the President, the Chancellor, and the Bundesrat, and the primary seat of six federal government ministries and twenty federal authorities. The title of Federal City () reflects its important political status within Germany.
The headquarters of Deutsche Post DHL and Deutsche Telekom, both DAX-listed corporations, are in Bonn. The city is home to the University of Bonn and a total of 20 United Nations institutions, the highest number in all of Germany. These institutions include the headquarters for Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the UN Volunteers programme.
Geography
Topography
Situated in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany's largest metropolitan area with over 11 million inhabitants, Bonn lies within the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on the border with Rhineland-Palatinate. Spanning an area of more on both sides of the river Rhine, almost three-quarters of the city lies on the river's left bank.
To the south and to the west, Bonn borders the Eifel region which encompasses the Rhineland Nature Park. To the north, Bonn borders the Cologne Lowland. Natural borders are constituted by the river Sieg to the north-east and by the Siebengebirge (also known as the Seven Hills) to the east. The largest extension of the city in north–south dimensions is and in west–east dimensions. The city borders have a total length of . The geographical centre of Bonn is the Bundeskanzlerplatz (Chancellor Square) in Bonn-Gronau.
Administration
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is divided into five governmental districts (), and Bonn is part of the governmental district of Cologne (). Within this governmental district, the city of Bonn is an urban district in its own right. The urban district of Bonn is then again divided into four administrative municipal districts (). These are Bonn, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Bonn-Beuel and Bonn-Hardtberg. In 1969, the independent towns of Bad Godesberg and Beuel as well as several villages were incorporated into Bonn, resulting in a city more than twice as large as before.
Climate
Bonn has an oceanic climate (Cfb). In the south of the Cologne lowland in the Rhine valley, Bonn is in one of Germany's warmest regions.
History
Founding and Roman period
The history of the city dates back to Roman times. In about 12 BC, the Roman army appears to have stationed a small unit in what is presently the historical centre of the city. Even earlier, the army had resettled members of a Germanic tribal group allied with Rome, the Ubii, in Bonn. The Latin name for that settlement, "Bonna", may stem from the original population of this and many other settlements in the area, the Eburoni. The Eburoni were members of a large tribal coalition effectively wiped out during the final phase of Caesar's War in Gaul. After several decades, the army gave up the small camp linked to the Ubii-settlement. During the 1st century AD, the army then chose a site to the north of the emerging town in what is now the section of Bonn-Castell to build a large military installation dubbed Castra Bonnensis, i.e., literally, "Fort Bonn". Initially built from wood, the fort was eventually rebuilt in stone. With additions, changes and new construction, the fort remained in use by the army into the waning days of the Western Roman Empire, possibly the mid-5th century. The structures themselves remained standing well into the Middle Ages, when they were called the Bonnburg. They were used by Frankish kings until they fell into disuse. Eventually, much of the building materials seem to have been re-used in the construction of Bonn's 13th-century city wall. The (star gate) in the city center is a reconstruction using the last remnants of the medieval city wall.
To date, Bonn's Roman fort remains the largest fort of its type known from the ancient world, i.e. a fort built to accommodate a full-strength Imperial Legion and its auxiliaries. The fort covered an area of approximately . Between its walls it contained a dense grid of streets and a multitude of buildings, ranging from spacious headquarters and large officers' quarters to barracks, stables and a military jail. Among the legions stationed in Bonn, the "1st", i.e. the Prima Legio Minervia, seems to have served here the longest. Units of the Bonn legion were deployed to theatres of war ranging from modern-day Algeria to what is now the Russian republic of Chechnya.
The chief Roman road linking the provincial capitals of Cologne and Mainz cut right through the fort where it joined the fort's main road (now, Römerstraße). Once past the South Gate, the Cologne–Mainz road continued along what are now streets named Belderberg, Adenauerallee et al. On both sides of the road, the local settlement, Bonna, grew into a sizeable Roman town. Bonn is shown on the 4th century Peutinger Map.
In late antiquity, much of the town seems to have been destroyed by marauding invaders. The remaining civilian population then took refuge inside the fort along with the remnants of the troops stationed here. During the final decades of Imperial rule, the troops were supplied by Franci chieftains employed by the Roman administration. When the end came, these troops simply shifted their allegiances to the new barbarian rulers, the Kingdom of the Franks. From the fort, the Bonnburg, as well as from a new medieval settlement to the South centered around what later became the minster, grew the medieval city of Bonn. Local legends arose from this period that the name of the village came from Saint Boniface via Vulgar Latin *Bonnifatia, but this proved to be a myth.
Middle ages and early modern period
Between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Romanesque style Bonn Minster was built, and in 1597 Bonn became the seat of the Archdiocese of Cologne. The city gained more influence and grew considerably. The city was subject to a major bombardment during the Siege of Bonn in 1689. Bonn was then returned to Cologne where it remained the capital at the Peace of Ryswick. The elector Clemens August (ruled 1723–1761) ordered the construction of a series of Baroque buildings which still give the city its character. Another memorable ruler was Max Franz (ruled 1784–1794), who founded the university and the spa quarter of Bad Godesberg. In addition he was a patron of the young Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in Bonn in 1770; the elector financed the composer's first journey to Vienna.
In 1794, the city was seized by French troops, becoming a part of the First French Empire. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, Bonn became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Administered within the Prussian Rhine Province, the city became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany. Bonn was of little relevance in these years.
20th century and the "Bonn Republic"
During the Second World War, Bonn acquired military significance because of its strategic location on the Rhine, which formed a natural barrier to easy penetration into the German heartland from the west. The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Bonn on 7 March 1945, and the US 1st Infantry Division captured the city during the battle of 8–9 March 1945.
After the Second World War, Bonn was in the British zone of occupation. Following the advocacy of West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, a former Cologne Mayor and a native of that area, Bonn became the de facto capital, officially designated the "temporary seat of the Federal institutions," of the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. However, the Bundestag, seated in Bonn's Bundeshaus, affirmed Berlin's status as the German capital. Bonn was chosen as the provisional capital and seat of government despite the fact that Frankfurt already had most of the required facilities and using Bonn was estimated to be 95 million DM more expensive than using Frankfurt. Bonn was chosen because Adenauer and other prominent politicians intended to make Berlin the capital of the reunified Germany, and they felt that locating the capital in a major city like Frankfurt or Hamburg would imply a permanent capital and even weaken support in West Germany for reunification.
In 1949, the Parliamentary Council in Bonn drafted and adopted the current German constitution, the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. As the political centre of West Germany, Bonn saw six Chancellors and six Presidents of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bonn's time as the capital of West Germany is commonly referred to as the Bonn Republic, in contrast to the Berlin Republic which followed reunification in 1990.
After national reunification
German reunification in 1990 made Berlin the nominal capital of Germany again. This decision, however, did not mandate that the republic's political institutions would also move. While some argued for the seat of government to move to Berlin, others advocated leaving it in Bonn – a situation roughly analogous to that of the Netherlands, where Amsterdam is the capital but The Hague is the seat of government. Berlin's previous history as united Germany's capital was strongly connected with the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and more ominously with both Nazi Germany and Prussia. It was felt that a new peacefully united Germany should not be governed from a city connected to such overtones of war. Additionally, Bonn was closer to Brussels, headquarters of the European Economic Community. Former West German chancellor and mayor of West Berlin Willy Brandt caused considerable offence to the Western Allies during the debate by stating that France would not have kept the seat of government at Vichy after Liberation.
The heated debate that resulted was settled by the Bundestag (Germany's parliament) only on 20 June 1991. By a vote of 338–320, the Bundestag voted to move the seat of government to Berlin. The vote broke largely along regional lines, with legislators from the south and west favouring Bonn and legislators from the north and east voting for Berlin. It also broke along generational lines as well; older legislators with memories of Berlin's past glory favoured Berlin, while younger legislators favoured Bonn. Ultimately, the votes of the eastern German legislators tipped the balance in favour of Berlin.
From 1990 to 1999, Bonn served as the seat of government of reunited Germany. In recognition of its former status as German capital, it holds the name of Federal City (). Bonn currently shares the status of Germany's seat of government with Berlin, with the President, the Chancellor and many government ministries (such as Food & Agriculture and Defence) maintaining large presences in Bonn. Over 8,000 of the 18,000 federal officials remain in Bonn. A total of 19 United Nations (UN) institutions operate from Bonn today.
Politics and government
Mayor
The current Mayor of Bonn is Katja Dörner of Alliance 90/The Greens since 2020. She defeated incumbent mayor Ashok-Alexander Sridharan in the most recent mayoral election, which was held on 13 September 2020, with a runoff held on 27 September. The results were as follows:
! rowspan=2 colspan=2| Candidate
! rowspan=2| Party
! colspan=2| First round
! colspan=2| Second round
|-
! Votes
! %
! Votes
! %
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Ashok-Alexander Sridharan
| align=left| Christian Democratic Union
| 48,454
| 34.5
| 52,762
| 43.7
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Katja Dörner
| align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens
| 38,793
| 27.6
| 67,880
| 56.3
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Lissi von Bülow
| align=left| Social Democratic Party
| 28,389
| 20.2
|-
|
| align=left| Christoph Artur Manka
| align=left| Citizens' League Bonn
| 8,694
| 6.2
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Michael Faber
| align=left| The Left
| 7,032
| 5.0
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Werner Hümmrich
| align=left| Free Democratic Party
| 4,853
| 3.5
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Frank Rudolf Christian Findeiß
| align=left| Die PARTEI
| 2,873
| 2.0
|-
|
| align=left| Kaisa Ilunga
| align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice
| 1,507
| 1.1
|-
! colspan=3| Valid votes
! 140,595
! 99.1
! 120,642
! 99.5
|-
! colspan=3| Invalid votes
! 1,219
! 0.9
! 627
! 0.5
|-
! colspan=3| Total
! 141,814
! 100.0
! 121,269
! 100.0
|-
! colspan=3| Electorate/voter turnout
! 249,091
! 56.9
! 249,098
! 48.7
|-
| colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
|}
City council
The Bonn city council governs the city alongside the Mayor. It used to be based in the Rococo-style (old city hall), built in 1737, located adjacent to Bonn's central market square. However, due to the enlargement of Bonn in 1969 through the incorporation of Beuel and Bad Godesberg, it moved into the larger Stadthaus facilities further north. This was necessary for the city council to accommodate an increased number of representatives. The mayor of Bonn still sits in the , which is also used for representative and official purposes.
The most recent city council election was held on 13 September 2020, and the results were as follows:
! colspan=2| Party
! Votes
! %
! +/-
! Seats
! +/-
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne)
| 39,311
| 27.9
| 9.2
| 19
| 3
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
| 36,315
| 25.7
| 4.7
| 17
| 10
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Social Democratic Party (SPD)
| 21,956
| 15.6
| 7.9
| 11
| 9
|-
|
| align=left| Citizens' League Bonn (BBB)
| 9,948
| 7.1
| 2.0
| 5
| 1
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| The Left (Die Linke)
| 8,745
| 6.2
| 0.0
| 4
| 1
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Free Democratic Party (FDP)
| 7,268
| 5.2
| 3.0
| 3
| 4
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Volt Germany (Volt)
| 7,148
| 5.1
| New
| 3
| New
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Alternative for Germany (AfD)
| 4,569
| 3.2
| 0.4
| 2
| 1
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Die PARTEI (PARTEI)
| 3,095
| 2.2
| New
| 1
| New
|-
|
| align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice (BIG)
| 1,775
| 1.3
| 0.2
| 1
| ±0
|-
| colspan=7 bgcolor=lightgrey|
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Pirate Party Germany (Piraten)
| 869
| 0.6
| 1.6
| 0
| 2
|-
| bgcolor=|
| align=left| Independents
| 101
| 0.1
| –
| 0
| –
|-
! colspan=2| Valid votes
! 141,100
! 99.3
!
!
!
|-
! colspan=2| Invalid votes
! 1,052
! 0.7
!
!
!
|-
! colspan=2| Total
! 142,152
! 100.0
!
! 66
! 20
|-
! colspan=2| Electorate/voter turnout
! 249,091
! 57.1
! 0.3
!
!
|-
| colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
|}
State government
Four delegates represent the Federal city of Bonn in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. The last election took place in May 2017. The current delegates are Guido Déus (CDU), Christos Katzidis (CDU), Joachim Stamp (FDP) and Franziska Müller-Rech (FDP).
Federal government
Bonn's constituency is called (096). In the German federal election 2017, Ulrich Kelber (SPD) was elected a member of German Federal parliament, the Bundestag by direct mandate. It is his fifth term. Katja Dörner representing Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff for FDP were elected as well. Kelber resigned in 2019 because he was appointed Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. As Dörner was elected Lord Mayor of Bonn in September 2020, she resigned as a member of parliament after her entry into office.
Culture
Beethoven's birthplace is located in Bonngasse near the market place. Next to the market place is the Old City Hall, built in 1737 in Rococo style, under the rule of Clemens August of Bavaria. It is used for receptions of guests of the city, and as an office for the mayor. Nearby is the Kurfürstliches Schloss, built as a residence for the prince-elector and now the main building of the University of Bonn.
The Poppelsdorfer Allee is an avenue flanked by Chestnut trees which had the first horsecar of the city. It connects the Kurfürstliches Schloss with the Poppelsdorfer Schloss, a palace that was built as a resort for the prince-electors in the first half of the 18th century, and whose grounds are now a botanical garden (the Botanischer Garten Bonn). This axis is interrupted by a railway line and Bonn Hauptbahnhof, a building erected in 1883/84.
The Beethoven Monument stands on the Münsterplatz, which is flanked by the Bonn Minster, one of Germany's oldest churches.
The three highest structures in the city are the WDR radio mast in Bonn-Venusberg (), the headquarters of the Deutsche Post called Post Tower () and the former building for the German members of parliament Langer Eugen () now the location of the UN Campus.
Churches
Bonn Minster
Doppelkirche Schwarzrheindorf built in 1151
Old Cemetery Bonn (Alter Friedhof), one of the best known cemeteries in Germany
, built in 1627 with Johann Balthasar Neumann's Heilige Stiege, it is a stairway for Christian pilgrims
St. Remigius, where Beethoven was baptized
Castles and residences
Godesburg fortress ruins
The Röttgen suburb was once home to Schloss Herzogsfreude, now lost, but once a hunting lodge of elector Clemens August.
Modern buildings
Beethovenhalle
Bundesviertel (federal quarter) with many government structures including
Post Tower, the tallest building in the state North Rhine-Westphalia, housing the headquarters of Deutsche Post/DHL
Maritim Bonn, five-star hotel and convention centre
Schürmann-Bau, headquarters of Deutsche Welle
Langer Eugen, since 2006 the centre of the United Nations Campus, formerly housing the offices of the members of the German parliament
Deutsche Telekom headquarters
T-Mobile headquarters
Kameha Grand, five-star hotel
Museums
Just as Bonn's other four major museums, the Haus der Geschichte or Museum of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, is located on the so-called Museumsmeile ("Museum Mile"). The Haus der Geschichte is one of the foremost German museums of contemporary German history, with branches in Berlin and Leipzig. In its permanent exhibition, the Haus der Geschichte presents German history from 1945 until the present, also shedding light on Bonn's own role as former capital of West Germany. Numerous temporary exhibitions emphasize different features, such as Nazism or important personalities in German history.
The Kunstmuseum Bonn or Bonn Museum of Modern Art is an art museum founded in 1947. The Kunstmuseum exhibits both temporary exhibitions and its permanent collection. The latter is focused on Rhenish Expressionism and post-war German art. German artists on display include Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Hanne Darboven, Anselm Kiefer, Blinky Palermo and Wolf Vostell. The museum owns one of the largest collections of artwork by Expressionist painter August Macke. His work is also on display in the August-Macke-Haus, located in Macke's former home where he lived from 1911 to 1914.
The Bundeskunsthalle (full name: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland or Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany), focuses on the crossroads of culture, arts, and science. To date, it attracted more than 17 million visitors. One of its main objectives is to show the cultural heritage outside of Germany or Europe. Next to its changing exhibitions, the Bundeskunsthalle regularly hosts concerts, discussion panels, congresses, and lectures.
The Museum Koenig is Bonn's natural history museum. Affiliated with the University of Bonn, it is also a zoological research institution housing the Leibniz-Institut für Biodiversität der Tiere. Politically interesting, it is on the premises of the Museum Koenig where the Parlamentarischer Rat first met.
The Deutsches Museum Bonn, affiliated with one of the world's foremost science museums, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, is an interactive science museum focusing on post-war German scientists, engineers, and inventions.
Other museums include the Beethoven House, birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn (Rhinish Regional Museum Bonn), the Bonn Women's Museum, the Rheinisches Malermuseum and the Arithmeum.
Nature
There are several parks, leisure and protected areas in and around Bonn. The is Bonn's most important leisure park, with its role being comparable to what Central Park is for New York City. It lies on the banks of the Rhine and is the city's biggest park intra muros. The Rhine promenade and the Alter Zoll (Old Toll Station) are in direct neighbourhood of the city centre and are popular amongst both residents and visitors. The Arboretum Park Härle is an arboretum with specimens dating to back to 1870. The Botanischer Garten (Botanical Garden) is affiliated with the university. The natural reserve of Kottenforst is a large area of protected woods on the hills west of the city centre. It is about in area and part of the Rhineland Nature Park ().
In the very south of the city, on the border with Wachtberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, there is an extinct volcano, the Rodderberg, featuring a popular area for hikes. Also south of the city, there is the Siebengebirge which is part of the lower half of the Middle Rhine region. The nearby upper half of the Middle Rhine from Bingen to Koblenz is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with more than 40 castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages and important German vineyards.
Transportation
Air traffic
Named after Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war Chancellor of West Germany, Cologne Bonn Airport is situated north-east from the city centre of Bonn. With around 10.3 million passengers passing through it in 2015, it is the seventh-largest passenger airport in Germany and the third-largest in terms of cargo operations. By traffic units, which combines cargo and passengers, the airport is in fifth position in Germany. As of March 2015, Cologne Bonn Airport had services to 115 passenger destinations in 35 countries. The airport is one of Germany's few 24-hour airports, and is a hub for Eurowings and cargo operators FedEx Express and UPS Airlines.
The federal motorway (Autobahn) A59 connects the airport with the city. Long distance and regional trains to and from the airport stop at Cologne/Bonn Airport station. Another major airport within a one-hour drive by car is Düsseldorf International Airport.
Rail and bus system
Bonn's central railway station, Bonn Hauptbahnhof is the city's main public transportation hub. It lies just outside the old town and near the central university buildings. It is served by regional (S-Bahn and Regionalbahn) and long-distance (IC and ICE) trains. Daily, more than 67,000 people travel via Bonn Hauptbahnhof. In late 2016, around 80 long distance and more than 165 regional trains departed to or from Bonn every day. Another long-distance station, (Siegburg/Bonn), is located in the nearby town of Siegburg and serves as Bonn's station on the high-speed rail line between Cologne and Frankfurt, offering faster connections to Southern Germany. It can be reached by Stadtbahn line 66 (approx. 25 minutes from central Bonn).
Bonn has a Stadtbahn light rail and a tram system. The Bonn Stadtbahn has 4 regular lines that connect the main north–south axis (centre to Bad Godesberg) and quarters east of the Rhine (Beuel and Oberkassel), as well as many nearby towns like Brühl, Wesseling, Sankt Augustin, Siegburg, Königswinter, and Bad Honnef. All lines serve the Central Station and two lines continue to Cologne, where they connect to the Cologne Stadtbahn. The Bonn tram system consists of two lines that connect closer quarters in the south, north and east of Bonn to the Central Station. While the Stadtbahn mostly has its own right-of-way, the tram often operates on general road lanes. A few sections of track are used by both systems. These urban rail lines are supplemented by a bus system of roughly 30 regular lines, especially since some parts of the city like Hardtberg and most of Bad Godesberg completely lack a Stadtbahn/Tram connection. Several lines offer night services, especially during the weekends. Bonn is part of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (Rhine-Sieg Transport Association) which is the public transport association covering the area of the Cologne/Bonn Region.
Road network
Four Autobahns run through or are adjacent to Bonn: the A59 (right bank of the Rhine, connecting Bonn with Düsseldorf and Duisburg), the A555 (left bank of the Rhine, connecting Bonn with Cologne), the A562 (connecting the right with the left bank of the Rhine south of Bonn), and the A565 (connecting the A59 and the A555 with the A61 to the southwest). Three Bundesstraßen, which have a general speed limit in contrast to the Autobahn, connect Bonn to its immediate surroundings (Bundesstraßen B9, B42 and B56).
With Bonn being divided into two parts by the Rhine, three bridges are crucial for inner-city road traffic: the Konrad-Adenauer-Brücke (A562) in the South, the Friedrich-Ebert-Brücke (A565) in the North, and the Kennedybrücke (B56) in the centre. In addition, regular ferries operate between Bonn-Mehlem and Königswinter, Bonn-Bad Godesberg and Königswinter-Niederdollendorf, and Bonn-Graurheindorf and Niederkassel-Mondorf.
Port
Located in the northern sub-district of Graurheindorf, the inland harbour of Bonn is used for container traffic as well as oversea transport. The annual turnover amounts to around . Regular passenger transport occurs to Cologne and Düsseldorf.
Economy
The head offices of Deutsche Telekom, its subsidiary T-Mobile, Deutsche Post, German Academic Exchange Service, and SolarWorld are in Bonn.
The third largest employer in the city of Bonn is the University of Bonn (including the university clinics) and Stadtwerke Bonn also follows as a major employer.
On the other hand, there are several traditional, nationally known private companies in Bonn such as luxury food producers Verpoorten and Kessko, the Klais organ manufacture and the Bonn flag factory.
The largest confectionery manufacturer in Europe, Haribo, has its founding headquarters (founded in 1922) and a production site in Bonn. Today the company is located in the Rhineland-Palatinate municipality of Grafschaft.
Other companies of supraregional importance are Weck Glaswerke (production site), Fairtrade, Eaton Industries (formerly Klöckner & Moeller), IVG Immobilien, Kautex Textron, SolarWorld, Vapiano and the SER Group.
Education
The Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn (University of Bonn) is one of the largest universities in Germany. It is also the location of the German research institute Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) offices and of the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD).
Private schools
Aloisiuskolleg, a Jesuit private school in Bad Godesberg with boarding facilities
Amos-Comenius-Gymnasium, a Protestant private school in Bad Godesberg
Bonn International School (BIS), a private English-speaking school set in the former American Compound in the Rheinaue, which offers places from kindergarten to 12th grade. It follows the curriculum of the International Baccalaureate.
Libysch Schule, private Arabic high school
Independent Bonn International School, (IBIS) private primary school (serving from kindergarten, reception, and years 1 to 6)
École de Gaulle - Adenauer, private French-speaking school serving grades pre-school ("maternelle") to grade 4 (CM1)
Kardinal-Frings-Gymnasium (KFG), private catholic school of the Archdiocese of Cologne in Beuel
Liebfrauenschule (LFS), private catholic school of the Archdiocese of Cologne
, private catholic school of the Archdiocese of Cologne in Beuel
, private Catholic school of the Archdiocese of Cologne in Bad Godesberg
, private boarding and day school in Oberkassel
("PÄDA"), private day school in Bad Godesberg
("CoJoBo"), private catholic day school
Akademie für Internationale Bildung, private higher educational facility offering programs for international students
Former schools
King Fahd Academy, private Islamic school in Bad Godesberg
Demographics
, Bonn had a population of 327,913. About 70% of the population was entirely of German origin, while about 100,000 people, equating to roughly 30%, were at least partly of non-German origin. The city is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Germany and the 18th most populous city in the country. Bonn's population is predicted to surpass the populations of Wuppertal and Bochum before the year 2030.
The following list shows the largest groups of origin of minorites with "migration background" in Bonn .
Sports
Bonn is home of the Telekom Baskets Bonn, the only basketball club in Germany that owns its arena, the Telekom Dome. The club is the reigning champion of the 2022–23 Basketball Champions League.
The city also has a semi-professional football team Bonner SC which was formed in 1965 through the merger of Bonner FV and Tura Bonn. The Bonn Gamecocks American football team play at the 12,000-capacity Stadion Pennenfeld.
The headquarters of the International Paralympic Committee has been located in Bonn since 1999.
The successful German Baseball Team Bonn Capitals are also found in the city of Bonn.
International relations
Since 1983, the City of Bonn has established friendship relations with the City of Tel Aviv, Israel, and since 1988 Bonn, in former times the residence of the Princes Electors of Cologne, and Potsdam, Germany, the formerly most important residential city of the Prussian rulers, have established a city-to-city partnership.
Central Bonn is surrounded by a number of traditional towns and villages which were independent up to several decades ago. As many of those communities had already established their own contacts and partnerships before the regional and local reorganisation in 1969, the Federal City of Bonn now has a dense network of city district partnerships with European partner towns.
The city district of Bonn is a partner of the English university city of Oxford, England, UK (since 1947), of Budafok, District XXII of Budapest, Hungary (since 1991) and of Opole, Poland (officially since 1997; contacts were established 1954).
The district of Bad Godesberg has established partnerships with Saint-Cloud in France, Frascati in Italy, Windsor and Maidenhead in England, UK and Kortrijk in Belgium; a friendship agreement has been signed with the town of Yalova, Turkey.
The district of Beuel on the right bank of the Rhine and the city district of Hardtberg foster partnerships with towns in France: Mirecourt and Villemomble.
Moreover, the city of Bonn has developed a concept of international co-operation and maintains sustainability oriented project partnerships in addition to traditional city twinning, among others with Minsk in Belarus, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, Bukhara in Uzbekistan, Chengdu in China and La Paz in Bolivia.
Twin towns – sister cities
Bonn is twinned with:
Bukhara, Uzbekistan (1999)
Cape Coast, Ghana (2012)
Chengdu, China (2009)
Kherson, Ukraine (2023)
Minsk, Belarus (1993)
La Paz, Bolivia (1996)
Potsdam, Germany (1988)
Tel Aviv, Israel (1983)
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (1993)
Bonn city district is twinned with:
Oxford, United Kingdom (1947)
Budafok-Tétény (Budapest), Hungary (1991)
For twin towns of other city districts, see Bad Godesberg, Beuel and Hardtberg.
Notable people
Pre–20th century
Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815), musician
Franz Anton Ries (1755–1846), violinist and violin teacher
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), composer
Salomon Oppenheim, Jr. (1772–1828), banker
Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866), gardener and landscape architect
Friedrich von Gerolt (1797–1879), diplomat
Karl Joseph Simrock (1802–1876), writer and specialist in German
Wilhelm Neuland (1806–1889), composer and conductor
Johanna Kinkel (1810–1858), composer and writer
Moses Hess (1812–1875), philosopher and writer
Johann Gottfried Kinkel (1815–1882), theologian, writer, and politician
Alexander Kaufmann (1817–1893), author and archivist
Leopold Kaufmann (1821–1898), mayor
Julius von Haast (1822–1887), New Zealand, professor of geology
Dietrich Brandis (1824–1907), botanist
Balduin Möllhausen (1825–1905), traveler and writer
Maurus Wolter (1825–1890), Benedictine, founder and first abbot of the Abbey of Beuron and Beuronese Congregation
August Reifferscheid (1835–1887), philologist
Antonius Maria Bodewig (1839–1915), Jesuit missionary and founder
Nathan Zuntz (1847–1920), physician
Alexander Koenig (1858–1940), zoologist, founder of Museum Koenig in Bonn
Alfred Philippson (1864–1953), geographer
Johanna Elberskirchen (1864–1943), writer and activist
Max Alsberg (1877–1933), lawyer
Kurt Wolff (1887–1963), publisher
Hans Riegel Sr. (1893–1945), entrepreneur
Eduard Krebsbach (1894–1947), SS doctor in Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp, executed for war crimes
Paul Kemp (1896–1953), actor
1900–1949
Hermann Josef Abs (1901–1994), board member of the Deutsche Bank
Paul Ludwig Landsberg (1901–1944), in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, philosopher
Heinrich Lützeler (1902–1988), philosopher, art historian, and literary scholar
Helmut Horten (1909–1987), entrepreneur
Theodor Schieffer (1910–1992), historian and medievalist
Irene Sänger-Bredt (1911–1983), mathematician and physicist
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (1911–1977), economist
Klaus Barbie (1913–1991), Nazi SS and Gestapo war criminal, the "Butcher of Lyon"
Karl-Theodor Molinari (1915–1993), General and founding chairman of the German Armed Forces Association
Karlrobert Kreiten (1916–1943), pianist
Hans Walter Zech-Nenntwich (born 1916), Second Polish Republic, SS Cavalry member and war criminal
Walther Killy (1917–1985), German literary scholar, Der Killy
Hannjo Hasse (1921–1983), actor
Walter Gotell (1924–1997), actor
Walter Eschweiler (born 1935), football referee
Alexandra Cordes (1935–1986), writer
Joachim Bißmeier (born 1936), actor
Roswitha Esser (born 1941), canoeist, gold medal winner at the Olympic Games in 1964 and 1968, Sportswoman of the Year 1964
Heide Simonis (1943-2023), politician (SPD), former Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, since 2005 honorary chairman of UNICEF Germany
Paul Alger (born 1943), football player
Johannes Mötsch (born 1949), archivist and historian
Klaus Ludwig (born 1949), race car driver
1950–1999
Günter Ollenschläger (born 1951), medical and science journalist
Hans "Hannes" Bongartz (born 1951), football player and coach
Christa Goetsch (born 1952), politician (Alliance '90 / The Greens)
Michael Meert (born 1953), film author and director
Thomas de Maizière (born 1954), politician (CDU), former Minister of Defense and of the Interior
Gerd Faltings (born 1954), mathematician, Fields Medal winner
Olaf Manthey (born 1955), former touring car racing driver
Michael Kühnen (1955–1991), Neo-Nazi
Roger Willemsen (1955–2016), publicist, author, essayist, and presenter
Norman Rentrop (born 1957), publisher, author, and investor
Markus Maria Profitlich (born 1960), comedian and actor
Guido Westerwelle (1961–2016), politician (FDP), Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011
Mathias Dopfner (born 1963), chief executive officer of Axel Springer AG
Nikolaus Blome (born 1963), journalist
Maxim Kontsevich (born 1964), mathematician, Fields Medal winner
Johannes B. Kerner (born 1964), TV presenter, Abitur at the Aloisiuskolleg, and studied in Bonn
Anthony Baffoe (born 1965), football player, sports presenter, and actor
Sonja Zietlow (born 1968), TV presenter
Burkhard Garweg (born 1968), member of the Red Army Faction
Sabriye Tenberken (born 1970), Tibetologist, founder of Braille Without Borders
Thorsten Libotte (born 1972), writer
Tamara Gräfin von Nayhauß (born 1972), television presenter
Silke Bodenbender (born 1974), actress
Juli Zeh (born 1974), writer
Oliver Mintzlaff (born 1975), track and field athlete and sports manager, CEO of RB Leipzig
Markus Dieckmann (born 1976), beach volleyball player
Bernadette Heerwagen (born 1977), actress
Melanie Amann (born 1978), journalist
Bushido (born 1978), musician and rapper
Sebastian Stahl (born 1978), race car driver
Sonja Fuss (born 1978), football player
DJ Manian DJ of Cascada (born 1978) owner of Zooland Records
Andreas Tölzer (born 1980), judoka
Jens Hartwig (born 1980), actor
Natalie Horler (born 1981), front woman of the Dance Project Cascada
Marcel Ndjeng (born 1982), football player
Marc Zwiebler (born 1984), badminton player
Benjamin Barg (born 1984), football player
Alexandros Margaritis (born 1984), race car driver
Ken Miyao (born 1986), pop singer
Felix Reda (born 1986), politician
Peter Scholze (born 1987), mathematician, Fields Medal winner
Célia Okoyino da Mbabi (born 1988), football player
Luke Mockridge (born 1989), comedian and author
Pius Heinz (born 1989), poker player, 2011 WSOP Main Event champion
Jonas Wohlfarth-Bottermann (born 1990), basketball player
Levina (born 1991), singer
Bienvenue Basala-Mazana (born 1992), football player
Kim Petras (born 1992), pop singer and songwriter
Annika Beck (born 1994), tennis player
James Hyndman (born 1962), stage actor
Konstanze Klosterhalfen (born 1997), track and field athlete
21st century
Anny Ogrezeanu (born 2001), singer and The Voice of Germany winner 2022
References
Bibliography
External links
Official website
Tourist information
"The Museum Mile"
Germany's Museum of Art in Bonn
Former national capitals
Populated places on the Rhine
Roman towns and cities in Germany
10s BC establishments in the Roman Empire
Roman legionary fortresses in Germany
Roman fortifications in Germania Inferior
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Ballroom dance is a set of partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the world, mostly because of its performance and entertainment aspects. Ballroom dancing is also widely enjoyed on stage, film, and television.
Ballroom dance may refer, at its widest definition, to almost any recreational dance with a partner. However, with the emergence of dance competition (now known as Dancesport), two principal schools have emerged and the term is used more narrowly to refer to the dances recognized by those schools.
The International School, originally developed in England and now regulated by the World Dance Council (WDC) and the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), is most prevalent in Europe. It encompasses two categories, Standard and Latin, each of which consist of five dances—International Waltz, International Tango, International Viennese Waltz, International Slow Foxtrot, and International Quickstep in the Standard category and International Samba, International Cha Cha, International Rumba, International Paso Doble, and International Jive in the Latin category. A "Standard" or "Latin" competition encompasses all five dances in the respective category, and a "Ten Dance" competition encompasses all ten dances. The two styles, while differing in technique, rhythm, and costumes, exemplify core elements of ballroom dancing such as control and cohesiveness.
The American School, also called North American School, is most prevalent in the United States and Canada, where it's regulated by USA Dance and Canada Dancesport (CDS) -- the respective national member bodies of the WDSF. It also consists of two categories analogous to the Standard and Latin categories of the International School, respectively called Smooth and Rhythm. The Smooth category consists of only four dances—American Waltz, American Tango, American Foxtrot, and American Viennese Waltz, omitting American Peabody (the American School equivalent to Quickstep) -- while the dances selected for competition in the Rhythm category are American Cha Cha, American Rumba, American East Coast Swing (the American School equivalent to International Jive), American Bolero, and American Mambo. A "Smooth" or "Rhythm" competition encompasses the dances in the respective category, and a "Nine Dance" competition encompassing all nine of these dances is analogous to the "Ten Dance" competition of the International School. USA Dance additionally recognizes American Peabody, American Merengue, American Paso Doble, American Samba, American West Coast Swing, American Polka, and American Hustle as ballroom dances in which sanctioned competition may take place.
Note that dances of the two schools that bear the same name may differ considerably in permitted patterns (figures), technique, and styling.
Exhibitions and social situations that feature ballroom dancing also may include additional partner dances such as Lindy Hop, Night Club Two Step, Night Club Swing, Bachata, Country Two Step, and regional (local or national) favorites that normally are not regarded as part of the ballroom family, and a number of historical dances also may be danced in ballrooms or salons. Additionally, some sources regard Sequence Dancing, in pairs or other formations, to be a style of ballroom dance.
Definitions and history
The term 'ballroom dancing' is derived from the word ball which in turn originates from the Latin word ballare which means 'to dance' (a ball-room being a large room specially designed for such dances). In times past, ballroom dancing was social dancing for the privileged, leaving folk dancing for the lower classes. These boundaries have since become blurred. The definition of ballroom dance also depends on the era: balls have featured popular dances of the day such as the Minuet, Quadrille, Polonaise, Polka, Mazurka, and others, which are now considered to be historical dances.
Early modern period
The first authoritative knowledge of the earliest ballroom dances was recorded toward the end of the 16th century, when Jehan Tabourot, under the pen name "Thoinot-Arbeau", published in 1588 his Orchésographie, a study of late 16th-century French renaissance social dance. Among the dances described were the solemn basse danse, the livelier branle, pavane, and the galliarde which Shakespeare called the "cinq pace" as it was made of five steps.
In 1650, the Minuet, originally a peasant dance of Poitou, was introduced into Paris and set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and danced by the King Louis XIV in public. The Minuet dominated the ballroom from that time until the close of the 18th century.
Toward the later half of the 17th century, Louis XIV founded his 'Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse', where specific rules for the execution of every dance and the "five positions" of the feet were formulated for the first time by members of the Académie. Eventually, the first definite cleavage between ballet and ballroom came when professional dancers appeared in the ballets, and the ballets left the Court and went to the stage. Ballet technique such as the turned out positions of the feet, however, lingered for over two centuries and past the end of the Victoria era.
19th century
The waltz with its modern hold took root in England in about 1812; in 1819 Carl Maria von Weber wrote Invitation to the Dance, which marked the adoption of the waltz form into the sphere of absolute music. The dance was initially met with tremendous opposition due to the semblance of impropriety associated with the closed hold, though the stance gradually softened. In the 1840s several new dances made their appearance in the ballroom, including the polka, mazurka, and the Schottische. In the meantime a strong tendency emerged to drop all 'decorative' steps such as entrechats and ronds de jambes that had found a place in the Quadrilles and other dances.
Early 20th century
Modern ballroom dance has its roots early in the 20th century, when several different things happened more or less at the same time. The first was a movement away from the sequence dances towards dances where the couples moved independently. This had been pre-figured by the waltz, which had already made this transition. The second was a wave of popular music, such as jazz. Since dance is to a large extent tied to music, this led to a burst of newly invented dances. There were many dance crazes in the period 1910–1930.
The third event was a concerted effort to transform some of the dance crazes into dances which could be taught to a wider dance public in the U.S. and Europe. Here Vernon and Irene Castle were important, and so was a generation of English dancers in the 1920s, including Josephine Bradley and Victor Silvester. These professionals analysed, codified, published, and taught a number of standard dances. It was essential, if popular dance was to flourish, for dancers to have some basic movements they could confidently perform with any partner they might meet. Here the huge Arthur Murray organisation in America, and the dance societies in England, such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, were highly influential. Finally, much of this happened during and after a period of World War, and the effect of such a conflict in dissolving older social customs was considerable.
Later, in the 1930s, the on-screen dance pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers influenced all forms of dance in the U.S. and elsewhere. Although both actors had separate careers, their filmed dance sequences together, which included portrayals of the Castles, have reached iconic status. Much of Astaire and Rogers' work portrayed social dancing, although the performances were highly choreographed (often by Astaire or Hermes Pan) and meticulously staged and rehearsed.
Competitive dancing
Competitions, sometimes referred to as dancesport, range from world championships, regulated by the World Dance Council (WDC), to less advanced dancers at various proficiency levels. Most competitions are divided into professional and amateur, though in the USA pro-am competitions typically accompany professional competitions. The International Olympic Committee now recognizes competitive ballroom dance. It has recognized another body, the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), as the sole representative body for dancesport in the Olympic Games.
Ballroom dance competitions are regulated by each country in its own way. There are about 30 countries which compete regularly in international competitions. There are another 20 or so countries which have membership of the WDC and/or the WDSF, but whose dancers rarely appear in international competitions. In Britain there is the British Dance Council, which grants national and regional championship titles, such as the British Ballroom Championships, the British Sequence Championships and the United Kingdom Championships. In the United States, the member branches of the WDC (National Dance Council of America) and the WDSF (USA Dance) both grant national and regional championship titles.
Ballroom dancing competitions in the former USSR also included the Soviet Ballroom dances, or Soviet Programme. Australian New Vogue is danced both competitively and socially. In competition, there are 15 recognized New Vogue dances, which are performed by the competitors in sequence. These dance forms are not recognized internationally, neither are the US variations such as American Smooth, and Rhythm. Such variations in dance and competition methods are attempts to meets perceived needs in the local market-place.
Internationally, the Blackpool Dance Festival, hosted annually at Blackpool, England is considered the most prestigious event a dancesport competitor can attend.
Formation dance is another style of competitive dance recognized by the WDSF. In this style, multiple dancers (usually in couples and typically up to 16 dancers at one time) compete on the same team, moving in and out of various formations while dancing. The Blackpool Dance Festival also holds an annual event for competitive formation dancing.
Elements of competition
In competitive ballroom, dancers are judged by diverse criteria such as poise, the hold or frame, posture, musicality and expression, timing, body alignment and shape, floor craft, foot and leg action, and presentation. Judging in a performance-oriented sport is inevitably subjective in nature, and controversy and complaints by competitors over judging placements are not uncommon. The scorekeepers—called scrutineers—will tally the total number recalls accumulated by each couple through each round until the finals when the Skating system is used to place each couple by ordinals, typically 1–6, though the number of couples in the final may vary. Sometimes, up to 8 couples may be present on the floor during the finals.
Competitors dance at different levels based on their ability and experience. The levels are split into two categories, syllabus and open. The syllabus levels are newcomer/pre-bronze, bronze, silver, and gold—with gold the highest syllabus level and newcomer the lowest. In these levels, moves are restricted to those written in a syllabus, and illegal moves can lead to disqualification. Each level, bronze, silver, and gold, has different moves on their syllabus, increasing in difficulty. There are three levels in the open category; novice, pre-champ, and champ in increasing order of skill. At those levels, dancers no longer have restrictions on their moves, so complex routines are more common.
Medal evaluations
Medal evaluations for amateurs enable dancers' individual abilities to be recognized according to conventional standards. In medal evaluations, which are run by bodies such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) and the United Kingdom Alliance (UKA), each dancer performs two or more dances in a certain genre in front of a judge. Genres such as Modern Ballroom or Latin are the most popular. Societies such as the ISTD and UKA also offer medal tests on other dance styles (such as Country & Western, Rock 'n Roll or Tap). In some North American examinations, levels include Newcomer, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Novice, Pre-championship, and Championship; each level may be further subdivided into either two or four separate sections.
Collegiate ballroom
There is a part of the ballroom world dedicated to students. These chapters are typically clubs or teams that have an interest in ballroom dancing. Teams hold fundraisers, social events, and ballroom dance lessons. Ballroom dance teams' goals are to have fun and learn to dance well. There is a strong focus on finding a compatible dance partner and bonding with teammates. There is also a competitive side to collegiate ballroom - collegiate teams often hold competitions and invite other teams to participate. These competitions are often run with many of the same rules are regular amateur competitions as outlined above, but are usually organized entirely by collegiate teams. Examples include the MIT Open Ballroom Dance Competition, Big Apple Dancesport Challenge, Purdue Ballroom Classic, Cardinal Classic, Berkeley Classic, and Harvard Invitational.
Dances
"Ballroom dance" refers most often to the ten dances of Standard and Latin, though the term is also often used interchangeably with the five International Ballroom dances. Sequence dancing, which is danced predominantly in the United Kingdom, and its development New Vogue in Australia and New Zealand, are also sometimes included as a type of Ballroom dancing.
In the United States and Canada, the American Style (American Smooth and American Rhythm) also exists. The dance technique used for both International and American styles is similar, but International Ballroom allows only closed dance positions, whereas American Smooth allows closed, open and separated dance movements. In addition, different sets of dance figures are usually taught for the two styles. International Latin and American Rhythm have different styling, and have different dance figures in their respective syllabi.
Other dances sometimes placed under the umbrella "ballroom dance" include nightclub dances such as Lindy Hop, West Coast swing, nightclub two step, hustle, salsa, and merengue. The categorization of dances as "ballroom dances" has always been fluid, with new dances or folk dances being added to or removed from the ballroom repertoire from time to time, so no list of subcategories or dances is any more than a description of current practices. There are other dances historically accepted as ballroom dances, and are revived via the vintage dance movement.
In Europe, Latin Swing dances include Argentine tango, mambo, Lindy Hop, swing boogie (sometimes also known as nostalgic boogie), and discofox. One example of this is the subcategory of cajun dances that originated in Acadiana, with branches reaching both coasts of the United States.
Standard/Smooth dances are normally danced to Western music (often from the mid-twentieth century), and couples dance counter-clockwise around a rectangular floor following the line of dance. In competitions, competitors are costumed as would be appropriate for a white tie affair, with full gowns for the ladies and bow tie and tail coats for the men; though in American Smooth it is now conventional for the men to abandon the tailsuit in favor of shorter tuxedos, vests, and other creative outfits.
Latin/Rhythm dances are commonly danced to contemporary Latin American music and (in case of jive) Western music. With the exception of a few traveling dances like samba and pasodoble, couples do not follow the line of dance but perform their routines more or less in one spot. In competitions, the women are often dressed in short-skirted Latin outfits while the men are outfitted in tight-fitting shirts and pants, the goal being to emphasize the dancers' leg action and body movements.
Competitive dances
Standard/Smooth
Waltz
Waltz began as a country folk dance in Austria and Bavaria in the 17th century. In the early 19th century it was introduced in England. It was the first dance where a man held a woman close to his body. When performing the dance, the upper body is kept to the left throughout all figures, the follower's body leans to the right side of the leader while the head is extended left to follow the elbow. Figures with rotation have little rise. The start of the rise begins slowly from the first count, peaks on the 2nd count and lowers slowly on the 3rd. Sway is also used on the second step to make the step longer and also to slow down the momentum by bringing the feet together. Waltz is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth.
Viennese Waltz
Viennese waltz originated in Provence area in France in 1559 and is recognized as the oldest of all ballroom dances. It was introduced in England as German waltz in 1812 and became popular throughout the 19th century by the music of Josef and Johann Strauss. It is often referred to as the classic “old-school” ballroom. Viennese Waltz music is quite fast. Slight shaping of the body moves towards the inside of the turn and shaping forward and up to lengthen the opposite side from direction. Reverse turn is used to travel down long side and is overturned. While natural turn is used to travel short side and is underturned to go around the corners. Viennese waltz is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth.
Tango
Tango originated in Buenos Aires in the late 19th century. Modern Argentine tango is danced in both open and closed embraces which focuses on the lead and follow moving in harmony of the tango's passionate charging music. The tango's technique is like walking to the music while keeping feet grounded and allowing ankles and knees to brush against one another during each step taken. Tango is a flat-footed dance and unlike the other dances, has no rise and fall. Body weight is kept over the toes and the connection is held between the dancers in the hips.
Ballroom tango, however, is a dance with a far more open frame, often utilising strong and staccato movements. Ballroom tango, rather than Argentine tango, is performed in international competition.
Foxtrot
The foxtrot is an American dance, believed to be of African-American origin. It was named by a vaudeville performer Harry Fox in 1914. Fox was rapidly trotting step to ragtime music. The dance therefore was originally named as the “Fox’s trot”. The foxtrot can be danced at slow, medium, or fast tempos depending on the speed of the jazz or big band music. The partners are facing one another and frame rotates from one side to another, changing direction after a measure. The dance is generally danced flat, with not much rise and fall. The walking steps are taken as slow for the two beats per steps and quick for one beat per step. Foxtrot is performed for both International Standard and American Smooth.
Quickstep
The quickstep is an English dance and was invented in the 1920s as a combination of faster tempo of foxtrot and the Charleston. It is a fast moving dance, so men are allowed to close their feet and the couples move in short syncopated steps. Quickstep includes the walks, runs, chasses, and turns of the original foxtrot dance, with some other fast figures such as locks, hops, run, quick step, jump and skips. Quick step is performed as an International Standard dance.
Latin/Rhythm
Pasodoble
The pasodoble originated from Spain and its dramatic bullfights. The dance is mostly performed only in competitions and rarely socially because of its many choreographic rules. The lead plays the role of the matador while the follow takes the role of the matador's cape, the bull, or even the matador. The chasse cape refers to the lead using the follow to turn them as if they are the cape, and the appel is when the lead stomps their foot to get the bull's attention. Pasodoble is performed as an International Latin dance.
Spanish bolero
The Spanish bolero was developed in the late 18th century out of the seguidilla, and its popularization is attributed to court dancers such as Sebastián Cerezo. It became one of the most popular ballroom dances of the 19th century and saw many classical adaptations. However, by the 20th century it had become old-fashioned. A Cuban music genre of the same name, bolero, which became popular in the early 20th century, is unrelated to the Spanish dance.
Cuban bolero
Although Cuban bolero was born as a form of trova, traditional singer/songwriter tradition from eastern Cuba, with no associated dance, it soon became a ballroom favorite in Cuba and all of Latin America. The dance most commonly represents the couple falling in love. Modern bolero is seen as a combination of many dances: like a slow salsa with contra-body movement of tango, patterns of rhumba, and rise and fall technique and personality of waltz and foxtrot. Bolero can be danced in a closed hold or singly and then coming back together. It is performed as an American Rhythm dance.
Samba
Samba is the national dance of Brazil. The rhythm of samba and its name originated from the language and culture of West African slaves. In 1905, samba became known to other countries during an exhibition in Paris. In the 1940s, samba was introduced in America through Carmen Miranda. The international version of Ballroom Samba has been based on an early version of Brazilian Samba called Maxixe, but has since developed away and differs strongly from Brazilian Ballroom Samba, which is called Samba de Gafieira. International Ballroom Samba is danced with a slight bounce which is created through the bending and straightening the knee. It is performed as an International Latin dance, although most of its modern development has occurred outside Latin America.
Rumba
Rumba came to the United States from Cuba in the 1920s and became a popular cabaret dance during prohibition. Rumba is a ballroom adaptation of son cubano and bolero (the Cuban genre) and, despite its name, it rarely included elements of Cuban rumba. It includes Cuban motions through knee-strengthening, figure-eight hip rotation, and swiveling foot action. An important characteristic of rumba is the powerful and direct lead achieved through the ball of the foot. Rumba is performed for both International Latin and American Rhythm.
Mambo
Mambo was developed as an offshoot of danzón, the national dance of Cuba, in the late 1930s by Orestes López and his brother Cachao, of Arcaño y sus Maravillas. They conceived a new form of danzón influenced by son cubano, with a faster, improvised final section, which allowed dancers to more freely express themselves, given that danzón had traditionally a very rigid structure. In the 1940s, Dámaso Pérez Prado transformed the mambo from the charanga into the big band format, and took it to Mexico and the United States, where it became a "dance craze".
Cha Cha
Cha Cha (sometimes wrongly called Cha Cha Cha based on a "street version" of the dance with shifted timing) was developed by Enrique Jorrín in the early 1950s, as a slower alternative to Mambo—and, in fact, was originally called Triple Mambo. The Cha Cha is a flirtatious dance with many hip rotations and partners synchronising their movements. The dance includes bending and straightening of the knee giving it a touch of Cuban motion. Cha-cha is performed for both International Latin and American Rhythm.
East Coast Swing
Swing in 1927 was originally named the Lindy Hop named by Shorty George Snowden. There have been 40 different versions documented over the years; most common is the East Coast swing which is performed in the American Smooth (or American Rhythm) only in the U.S. or Canada. The East Coast swing was established by Arthur Murray and others only shortly after World War II. Swing music is very lively and upbeat and can be danced to jazz or big band music. The swing dancing style has much bounce and energy. Swing also includes many spins and underarm turns. East Coast swing is performed as an American Rhythm dance.
Jive
The jive is part of the swing dance group and is a very lively variation of the jitterbug. Jive originated from African American clubs in the early 1940s. During World War II, American soldiers introduced the jive in England where it was adapted to today's competitive jive. In jive, the man leads the dance while the woman encourages the man to ask her to dance. It is danced to big band music, and some technique is taken from salsa, swing and tango. Jive is performed as an International Latin dance.
Dance style classification
International Style competition dances
According to World Dance Council.
Standard
Waltz:
28 bars per minute, time, also known as Slow Waltz or English Waltz depending on locality
Tango:
31 bars per minute, time
Viennese Waltz:
58 bars per minute, time.
On the European continent, the Viennese waltz is known simply as waltz, while the waltz is recognized as English waltz or Slow Waltz.
Foxtrot:
28 bars per minute, time
Quickstep:
50 bars per minute, time
Latin
Cha-cha-cha:
29 bars per minute, time
Samba:
49 bars per minute, time
Rumba:
24 bars per minute, time
Paso Doble:
60 bars per minute, time
Jive:
41 bars per minute, time
American Style competition dances
Smooth
Waltz:
29–30 bars per minute.
30–32 bars per minute for Bronze
Tango:
60 bars per minute
30–32 bars per minute for Bronze
Foxtrot:
30 bars per minute
32–34 bars per minute for Bronze
Viennese Waltz:
53–54 bars per minute
54 bars per minute for Bronze
Rhythm
Cha Cha:
30 bars per minute
Rumba:
30–32 bars per minute
32–36 bars per minute for Bronze
East Coast Swing:
36 bars per minute
34–36 bars per minute for Bronze
Bolero:
24 bars per minute
24–26 bars per minute for Bronze
Mambo:
47 bars per minute
48–51 bars per minute for Bronze
Others
Historical/Vintage Ballroom dance:
Waltz – Polka – Schottische – Tango – One-Step – Foxtrot – Peabody
Other dances occasionally categorized as ballroom:
Nightclub
Nightclub Two-step – Hustle – Modern Jive / LeRoc / Ceroc – and the whole swing variety: West Coast Swing / East Coast Swing/ Lindy Hop (always included in the "Rhythm-Swing" category) / Carolina Shag / Collegiate Shag / Balboa / Blues – Fusion
Latin nightclub
Salsa – Cumbia – Mambo – Merengue – Porro – Cha cha – Bachata
African nightclub
Kizomba – Semba – Zouk
Brazilian Dances
Forró – Pagode – Samba de Gafieira – Lambada - Zouk-Lambada
Country/Western
C/W Polka – C/W Cha-cha – C/W Two-step – C/W Waltz
Cajun dances
Cajun One Step or Cajun Jig – Cajun Two Step – Zydeco – Cajun Waltz – Cajun Jitterbug
Musette dances
Java – musette-waltz – musette-tango – musette-paso-doble
Other
Argentine tango – New Vogue
See also
Dance in Canada
Dance sport in Austria
Australian Dance
Dancesport at the Asian Games
References
Further reading
Arthur Murray,(1938) How To Become A Good Dancer ,
Abra, Allison. "Review of James Nott, Going to the palais: a social and cultural history of dancing and dance halls in Britain, 1918–1960." Contemporary British History (Sep 2016) 30#3 pp 432–433.
It's a Fabulous world,(2020) Documentary about ballroom dance industry
https://imdb.com/title/tt6727522/
External links
Digitized material from the American Ballroom Companion Collection: Dance Instruction Manuals (ca. 1490–1920) in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress
Partner dance
Social dance
Dancesport
Competitive dance
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The Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman, is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play The Clansman. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and produced the film with Harry Aitken.
The Birth of a Nation is a landmark of film history, lauded for its technical virtuosity. It was the first non-serial American 12-reel film ever made. Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicles the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and the relationship of two families in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy (Southern) Camerons. It was originally shown in two parts separated by an intermission, and it was the first American-made film to have a musical score for an orchestra. It pioneered closeups and fadeouts, and it includes a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras (another first) made to look like thousands. It came with a 13-page Souvenir Program. It was the first motion picture to be screened inside the White House, viewed there by President Woodrow Wilson, his family, and members of his cabinet.
The film was controversial even before its release, and it has remained so ever since; it has been called "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history". The film has been denounced for its racist depiction of African Americans. The film portrays its black characters (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is portrayed as a heroic force, necessary to preserve American values, protect white women, and maintain white supremacy.
Popular among white audiences nationwide upon its release, the film's success was both a consequence of and a contributor to racial segregation throughout the U.S. In response to the film's depictions of black people and Civil War history, African Americans across the U.S. organized and protested. In Boston and other localities, black leaders and the NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to have it banned on the basis that it inflamed racial tensions and could incite violence. Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year.
In spite of its divisiveness, The Birth of a Nation was a huge commercial success across the nation—grossing more than any previous motion picture—and it profoundly influenced both the film industry and American culture. The film has been acknowledged as an inspiration for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, which took place only a few months after its release. In 1992, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Plot
Part 1: Civil War of United States
Phil, the elder son of the Stonemans (a Northern family), falls in love with Margaret Cameron (the daughter of a Southern family), during a visit to the Cameron estate in South Carolina. There, Margaret's brother, Ben, idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman, Phil's sister. When the Civil War arrives, the young men of both families enlist in their respective armies. The younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in combat. Meanwhile, a black militia attacks the Cameron home and is routed by Confederate soldiers, who save the Cameron women. Leading the final charge at the Siege of Petersburg, Ben Cameron earns the nickname of "the Little Colonel", but is also wounded and captured. He is then taken to a Union military hospital in Washington, D.C.
During his stay at the hospital, he is told that he will be hanged. Working there as a nurse is Elsie Stoneman, whose picture he has been carrying. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who had traveled there to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Cameron persuades him to pardon Ben. When Lincoln is assassinated, his conciliatory postwar policy expires with him. In the wake of Lincoln's death, Elsie's father and other Radical Republicans are determined to punish the South.
Part 2: Reconstruction
Stoneman and his protégé Silas Lynch, a psychopathic mulatto head to South Carolina to observe the implementation of Reconstruction policies. During the election, in which Lynch is elected lieutenant governor, black people stuff the ballot boxes, while many white people are denied the vote. The newly elected members of the South Carolina legislature are mostly black.
Inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare black children, Ben fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks up with him. While going off alone into the woods to fetch water, Flora Cameron is followed by Gus, a freedman and soldier who is now a captain. He tells Flora he desires to marry her. Uninterested, she rejects him, but Gus keeps insisting. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. While looking for Flora, Ben sees her jump and holds her as she dies. He then carries her body to the Cameron home. In response, the Klan hunts down Gus, tries him, finds him guilty, and lynches him.
After discovering Gus' murder, Lynch orders a crackdown on the Klan. He also secures the passing of legislation allowing mixed-race marriages. Dr. Cameron is arrested for possessing Ben's Klan regalia, now considered a capital crime. He is rescued by Phil Stoneman and a few of his black servants. Together with Margaret Cameron, they flee. When their wagon breaks down, they make their way through the woods to a small hut that is home to two former Union soldiers who agree to hide them.
Congressman Stoneman, Elsie's father, leaves to avoid being connected with Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch, who lusts after Elsie, tries to force her to marry him, which causes her to faint. Stoneman returns, causing Elsie to be placed in another room. At first Stoneman is happy when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but he is then angered when Lynch says that it is Elsie he wishes to marry. Elsie breaks a window and cries out for help, getting the attention of undercover Klansman spies. The Klan gathered together, with Ben leading them, ride in to gain control of the town. When news about Elsie reaches Ben, he and others go to her rescue. Lynch is captured while his militia attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. However, the Klansmen, with Ben at their head, save them. The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes and are intimidated into not voting.
Margaret Cameron marries Phil Stoneman and Elsie Stoneman marries Ben Cameron.
Cast
Credited
Lillian Gish as Elsie Stoneman
Mae Marsh as Flora Cameron, the pet sister
Henry B. Walthall as Colonel Benjamin Cameron ("The Little Colonel")
Miriam Cooper as Margaret Cameron, elder sister
Mary Alden as Lydia Brown, Stoneman's housekeeper
Ralph Lewis as Austin Stoneman, Leader of the House
George Siegmann as Silas Lynch
Walter Long as Gus, the renegade
Wallace Reid as Jeff, the blacksmith
Joseph Henabery as Abraham Lincoln
Elmer Clifton as Phil Stoneman, elder son
Robert Harron as Tod Stoneman
Josephine Crowell as Mrs. Cameron
Spottiswoode Aitken as Dr. Cameron
George Beranger as Wade Cameron, second son
Maxfield Stanley as Duke Cameron, youngest son
Jennie Lee as Mammy, the faithful servant
Donald Crisp as General Ulysses S. Grant
Howard Gaye as General Robert E. Lee
Uncredited
Harry Braham as Cameron's faithful servant
Edmund Burns as Klansman
David Butler as Union soldier / Confederate soldier
William Freeman as Jake, a mooning sentry at Federal hospital
Sam De Grasse as Senator Charles Sumner
Olga Grey as Laura Keene
Russell Hicks
Elmo Lincoln as ginmill owner / slave auctioneer
Eugene Pallette as Union soldier
Harry Braham as Jake / Nelse
Charles Stevens as volunteer
Madame Sul-Te-Wan as woman with gypsy shawl
Raoul Walsh as John Wilkes Booth
Lenore Cooper as Elsie's maid
Violet Wilkey as young Flora
Tom Wilson as Stoneman's servant
Donna Montran as belles of 1861
Alberta Lee as Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln
Allan Sears as Klansmen
Dark Cloud as General at Appomattox Surrender
Vester Pegg
Alma Rubens
Mary Wynn
Jules White
Monte Blue
Gibson Gowland
Fred Burns
Charles King
Production
1911 version
In 1911, the Kinemacolor Company of America produced a lost film in Kinemacolor titled The Clansman. It was filmed in the southern United States and directed by William F. Haddock. According to different sources, the ten-reel film was either completed by January 1912 or left uncompleted with a little more than a reel of footage. There are several speculated reasons why the film production failed, including unresolved legal issues regarding the rights to the story, financial issues, problems with the Kinemacolor process and poor direction. Frank E. Woods, the films scriptwriter, showed his work to Griffith, who was inspired to create his own film adaptation of the novel, titled The Birth of a Nation.
Inspiration
Many of the fictional characters in the film are based on real historical figures. Abolitionist U.S. Representative Austin Stoneman is based on the Reconstruction-era Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. Ben Cameron is modeled after Leroy McAfee. Silas Lynch was modeled after Alonzo J. Ransier and Richard Howell Gleaves.
Development
After the failure of the Kinemacolor project, in which Dixon was willing to invest his own money, he began visiting other studios to see if they were interested. In late 1913, Dixon met the film producer Harry Aitken, who was interested in making a film out of The Clansman; through Aitken, Dixon met Griffith. Like Dixon, Griffith was a Southerner, a fact that Dixon points out; Griffith's father served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army and, like Dixon, viewed Reconstruction negatively. Griffith believed that a passage from The Clansman where Klansmen ride "to the rescue of persecuted white Southerners" could be adapted into a great cinematic sequence. Griffith first announced his intent to adapt Dixon's play to Gish and Walthall after filming Home, Sweet Home in 1914.
Birth of a Nation "follows The Clansman [the play] nearly scene by scene". While some sources also credit The Leopard's Spots as source material, Russell Merritt attributes this to "the original 1915 playbills and program for Birth which, eager to flaunt the film's literary pedigree, cited both The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots as sources." According to Karen Crowe, "[t]here is not a single event, word, character, or circumstance taken from The Leopard's Spots.... Any likenesses between the film and The Leopard's Spots occur because some similar scenes, circumstances, and characters appear in both books."
Griffith agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equivalent to $ in ) for the rights to his play The Clansman. Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed, and the unprecedented success of the film made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received [up to 2007] for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars. The American historian John Hope Franklin suggested that many aspects of the script for The Birth of a Nation appeared to reflect Dixon's concerns more than Griffith's, as Dixon had an obsession in his novels of describing in loving detail the lynchings of black men, which did not reflect Griffith's interests.
Filming
Griffith began filming on July 4, 1914 and was finished by October 1914. Some filming took place in Big Bear Lake, California. Griffith took over the Hollywood studio of Kinemacolor. West Point engineers provided technical advice on the American Civil War battle scenes, providing Griffith with the artillery used in the film. Much of the filming was done on the Griffith Ranch in San Fernando Valley, with the Petersburg scenes being shot at what is today Forest Lawn Memorial Park and other scenes being shot in Whittier and Ojai Valley. The film's war scenes were influenced by Robert Underwood Johnson's book Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, The Soldier in Our Civil War, and Mathew Brady's photography.
Many of the African Americans in the film were portrayed by white actors in blackface. Griffith initially claimed this was deliberate, stating "on careful weighing of every detail concerned, the decision was to have no black blood among the principals; it was only in the legislative scene that Negroes were used, and then only as 'extra people'." However black extras who had been housed in segregated quarters, including Griffith's acquaintance and frequent collaborator Madame Sul-Te-Wan, can be seen in many other shots of the film.
Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equivalent to $ in ) but rose to over $100,000 (equivalent to $ in ).
By the time he finished filming, Griffith had shot approximately 150,000 feet of footage (approximately 36 hours of film), which he edited down to 13,000 feet (just over 3 hours). The film was edited after early screenings in reaction to audience reception, and existing prints of the film are missing footage from the standard version of the film. Evidence exists that the film originally included scenes of white slave traders seizing blacks from West Africa and detaining them aboard a slave ship, Southern congressmen in the House of Representatives, Northerners reacting to the results of the 1860 presidential election, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, a Union League meeting, depictions of martial law in South Carolina, and a battle sequence. In addition, several scenes were cut at the insistence of New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel due to their highly racist content before its release in New York City, including a female abolitionist activist recoiling from the body odor of a black boy, black men seizing white women on the streets of Piedmont, and deportations of blacks with the title "Lincoln's Solution". It was also long rumored, including by Griffith's biographer Seymour Stern, that the original film included a rape scene between Gus and Flora before her suicide, but in 1974 the cinematographer Karl Brown denied that such a scene had been filmed.
Score
Although The Birth of a Nation is commonly regarded as a landmark for its dramatic and visual innovations, its use of music was arguably no less revolutionary. Though film was still silent at the time, it was common practice to distribute musical cue sheets, or less commonly, full scores (usually for organ or piano accompaniment) along with each print of a film.
For The Birth of a Nation, composer Joseph Carl Breil created a three-hour-long musical score that combined all three types of music in use at the time: adaptations of existing works by classical composers, new arrangements of well-known melodies, and original composed music. Though it had been specifically composed for the film, Breil's score was not used for the Los Angeles première of the film at Clune's Auditorium; rather, a score compiled by Carli Elinor was performed in its stead, and this score was used exclusively in West Coast showings. Breil's score was not used until the film debuted in New York at the Liberty Theatre but it was the score featured in all showings save those on the West Coast.
Outside of original compositions, Breil adapted classical music for use in the film, including passages from Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber, Leichte Kavallerie by Franz von Suppé, Symphony No. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, and "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner, the latter used as a leitmotif during the ride of the KKK. Breil also arranged several traditional and popular tunes that would have been recognizable to audiences at the time, including many Southern melodies; among these songs were "Maryland, My Maryland", "Dixie", "Old Folks at Home", "The Star-Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Auld Lang Syne", and "Where Did You Get That Hat?" DJ Spooky has called Breil's score, with its mix of Dixieland songs, classical music and "vernacular heartland music" "an early, pivotal accomplishment in remix culture." He has also cited Breil's use of music by Wagner as influential on subsequent Hollywood films, including Star Wars (1977) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
In his original compositions for the film, Breil wrote numerous leitmotifs to accompany the appearance of specific characters. The principal love theme that was created for the romance between Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron was published as "The Perfect Song" and is regarded as the first marketed "theme song" from a film; it was later used as the theme song for the popular radio and television sitcom Amos 'n' Andy.
Release
Theatrical run
The first public showing of the film, then called The Clansman, was on January 1 and 2, 1915, at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California. The second night, it was sold out and people were turned away. It was shown on February 8, 1915, to an audience of 3,000 people at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles.
At the New York premiere, Dixon spoke on stage when the interlude started halfway through the film, reminding the audience that the dramatic version of The Clansman appeared in that venue nine years previously. "Mr. Dixon also observed that he would have allowed none but the son of a Confederate soldier to direct the film version of The Clansman."
The film's backers understood that the film needed a massive publicity campaign if they were to cover the immense cost of producing it. A major part of this campaign was the release of the film in a roadshow theatrical release. This allowed Griffith to charge premium prices for tickets, sell souvenirs, and build excitement around the film before giving it a wide release. For several months, Griffith's team traveled to various cities to show the film for one or two nights before moving on. This strategy was immensely successful.
Change of title
Dixon had seen a screening of the film for an invited audience in New York in early 1915, when the title was still The Clansmen. Struck by the power of the film, he told Griffith that The Clansmen was not an appropriate title, and suggested that it be changed to The Birth of a Nation. The title was changed before the March 2 New York opening. However, the title was used in the press as early as January 2, 1915, while it was still referred to as The Clansman in October.
Special screenings
White House showing
The Birth of a Nation was the first movie shown in the White House, in the East Room, on February 18, 1915 (An earlier movie, the Italian Cabiria (1914), was shown on the lawn.). It was attended by President Woodrow Wilson, members of his family, and members of his Cabinet. Both Dixon and Griffith were present. As put by Dixon, not an impartial source, "it repeated the triumph of the first showing".
There is dispute about Wilson's attitude toward the movie. A newspaper reported that he "received many letters protesting against his alleged action in Indorsing the pictures ", including a letter from Massachusetts Congressman Thomas Chandler Thacher. The showing of the movie had caused "several near-riots". When former Assistant Attorney General William H. Lewis and A. Walters, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, called at the White House "to add their protests", President Wilson's private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, showed them a letter he had written to Thacher on Wilson's behalf. According to the letter, Wilson had been "entirely unaware of the character of the play [movie] before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Dixon, in his autobiography, quotes Wilson as saying, when Dixon proposed showing the movie at the White House, that "I am pleased to be able to do this little thing for you, because a long time ago you took a day out of your busy life to do something for me." What Dixon had done for Wilson was to suggest him for an honorary degree, which Wilson received, from Dixon's alma mater, Wake Forest College.
Dixon had been a fellow graduate student in history with Wilson at Johns Hopkins University and, in 1913, dedicated his historical novel about Lincoln, The Southerner, to "our first Southern-born president since Lincoln, my friend and collegemate Woodrow Wilson".
The evidence that Wilson knew "the character of the play" in advance of seeing it is circumstantial but very strong: "Given Dixon's career and the notoriety attached to the play The Clansman, it is not unreasonable to assume that Wilson must have had some idea of at least the general tenor of the film." The movie was based on a best-selling novel and was preceded by a stage version (play) which was received with protests in several cities—in some cities it was prohibited—and received a great deal of news coverage. Wilson issued no protest when the Evening Star, at that time Washington's "newspaper of record", reported in advance of the showing, in language suggesting a press release from Dixon and Griffiths, that Dixon was "a schoolmate of President Wilson and is an intimate friend", and that Wilson's interest in it "is due to the great lesson of peace it teaches". Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted by name in the movie for his observations on American history, and the title of Wilson's book (History of the American People) is mentioned as well. The three title cards with quotations from Wilson's book read:
"Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes... [Ellipsis in the original.] In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences."
"... The policy of the congressional leaders wrought…a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South... in their determination to 'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'" [Ellipses and underscore in the original.]
"The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country." [Ellipsis in the original.]
In the same book, Wilson has harsh words about the abyss between the original goals of the Klan and that into which it evolved. Dixon has been accused of misquoting Wilson.
In 1937, a popular magazine reported that Wilson said of the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson over the years had several times used the metaphor of illuminating history as if by lightning and he may well have said it at the time. The accuracy of his saying it was "terribly true" is disputed by historians; there is no contemporary documentation of the remark. Vachel Lindsay, a popular poet of the time, is known to have referred to the film as "art by lightning flash."
Showing in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom
The next day, February 19, 1915, Griffith and Dixon held a showing of the film in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom, which they had hired for the occasion. Early that morning, Dixon called on a North Carolina friend, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy. Daniels set up a meeting that morning for Dixon with Edward Douglass White, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Initially Justice White was not interested in seeing the film, but when Dixon told him it was the "true story" of Reconstruction and the Klan's role in "saving the South", White, recalling his youth in Louisiana, jumped to attention and said: "I was a member of the Klan, sir". With White agreeing to see the film, the rest of the Supreme Court followed. In addition to the entire Supreme Court, in the audience were "many members of Congress and members of the diplomatic corps", the Secretary of the Navy, 38 members of the Senate, and about 50 members of the House of Representatives. The audience of 600 "cheered and applauded throughout."
Consequences
In Griffith's words, the showings to the president and the entire Supreme Court conferred an "honor" upon Birth of a Nation. Dixon and Griffith used this commercially.
The following day, Griffith and Dixon transported the film to New York City for review by the National Board of Censorship. They presented the film as "endorsed" by the President and the cream of Washington society. The Board approved the film by 15 to 8.
A warrant to close the theater in which the movie was to open was dismissed after a long-distance call to the White House confirmed that the film had been shown there.
Justice White was very angry when advertising for the film stated that he approved it, and he threatened to denounce it publicly.
Dixon, a racist and white supremacist, clearly was rattled and upset by criticism by African Americans that the movie encouraged hatred against them, and he wanted the endorsement of as many powerful men as possible to offset such criticism. Dixon always vehemently denied having anti-black prejudices—despite the way his books promoted white supremacy—and stated: "My books are hard reading for a Negro, and yet the Negroes, in denouncing them, are unwittingly denouncing one of their greatest friends".
In a letter sent on May 1, 1915, to Joseph P. Tumulty, Wilson's secretary, Dixon wrote: "The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in the audience into a good Democrat... Every man who comes out of the theater is a Southern partisan for life!" In a letter to President Wilson sent on September 5, 1915, Dixon boasted: "This play is transforming the entire population of the North and the West into sympathetic Southern voters. There will never be an issue of your segregation policy". Dixon was alluding to the fact that Wilson, upon becoming president in 1913, had allowed cabinet members to impose segregation on federal workplaces in Washington, D.C. by reducing the number of black employees through demotion or dismissal.
New opening titles on re-release
One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints).
These are the second and third of three opening title cards that defend the film. The added titles read:
A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE:
We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word—that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare and If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.
Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in The Birth of a Nation was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle... under the rein of an outdated, but comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models... are not the pioneers of film spectacle... but the giants of literary narrative". On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards, while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates a film that "erodes the very ideal" of liberty that he asserts.
Social impact
KKK support
Studies have linked the film to greater support for the KKK. Glorifying the Klan to approving white audiences, the film became a national cultural phenomenon: merchandisers made Ku Klux hats and kitchen aprons, and ushers dressed in white Klan robes for openings. In New York there were Klan-themed balls and, in Chicago that Halloween, thousands of college students dressed in robes for a massive Klan-themed party.
Anti-black violence
When the film was released, riots broke out in Philadelphia and other major cities in the United States. The film's inflammatory nature was a catalyst for gangs of white people to attack black people. On April 24, 1916, the Chicago American reported that a white man murdered a black teenager in Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the film, although there has been some controversy as to whether the murderer had actually seen The Birth of a Nation. Over a century later, a Harvard University research paper found that "[o]n average, lynchings in a county rose fivefold in the month after [the film] arrived." The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa was the first of twelve mayors to ban the film in 1915 out of concern that it would promote race prejudice, after meeting with a delegation of black citizens. The NAACP set up a precedent-setting national boycott of the film, likely seen as the most successful effort. Additionally, they organized a mass demonstration when the film was screened in Boston, and it was banned in three states and several cities.
A 2023 study found that roadshow screenings of the film were associated with a sharp spike in lynchings and race riots.
Contemporary reception
Critical response
The New York Times gave the film a quite brief review, calling it "melodramatic" and "inflammatory", adding that: "A great deal might be said concerning the spirit revealed in Mr. Dixon's review of the unhappy chapter of Reconstruction and concerning the sorry service rendered by its plucking at old wounds." Variety praised Griffith's direction, claiming he "set such a pace it will take a long time before one will come along that can top it in point of production, acting, photography and direction. Every bit of the film was laid, played and made in America. One may find some flaws in the general running of the picture, but they are so small and insignificant that the bigness and greatness of the entire film production itself completely crowds out any little defects that might be singled out."
Burns Mantle in the New York Daily News noted "an element of excitement that swept a sophisticated audience like a prairie fire in a high wind", while the New York Tribune said it was a "spectacular drama" with "thrills piled upon thrills". The New Republic, however, called it "aggressively vicious and defamatory" that was a "spiritual assassination. It degrades the censors that passed it and the white race that endures it".
Box office
The box office gross of The Birth of a Nation is not known and has been the subject of exaggeration. When the film opened, the tickets were sold at premium prices. The film played at the Liberty Theater at Times Square in New York City for 44 weeks with tickets priced at $2.20 (). By the end of 1917, Epoch reported to its shareholders cumulative receipts of $4.8 million, and Griffith's own records put Epoch's worldwide earnings from the film at $5.2 million as of 1919, although the distributor's share of the revenue at this time was much lower than the exhibition gross. In the biggest cities, Epoch negotiated with individual theater owners for a percentage of the box office; elsewhere, the producer sold all rights in a particular state to a single distributor (an arrangement known as "state's rights" distribution). The film historian Richard Schickel says that under the state's rights contracts, Epoch typically received about 10% of the box office gross—which theater owners often underreported—and concludes that "Birth certainly generated more than $60 million in box-office business in its first run".
The film held the mantle of the highest-grossing film until it was overtaken by Gone with the Wind (1939), another film about the Civil War and Reconstruction era. By 1940 Time magazine estimated the film's cumulative gross rental (the distributor's earnings) at approximately $15 million. For years Variety had the gross rental listed as $50 million, but in 1977 repudiated the claim and revised its estimate down to $5 million. It is not known for sure how much the film has earned in total, but producer Harry Aitken put its estimated earnings at $15–18 million in a letter to a prospective investor in a proposed sound version. It is likely the film earned over $20 million for its backers and generated $50–100 million in box office receipts. In a 2015 Time article, Richard Corliss estimated the film had earned the equivalent of $1.8 billion adjusted for inflation, a milestone that at the time had only been surpassed by Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) in nominal earnings.
Criticism
Like Dixon's novels and play, Birth of a Nation received considerable criticism, both before and after its premiere. Dixon, who believed the film to be entirely truthful and historically accurate, attributed this to "Sectionalists", i.e. non-Southerners who in Dixon's opinion were hostile to the "truth" about the South. It was to counter these "sinister forces" and the "dangerous... menace" that Dixon and Griffiths sought "the backing" of President Wilson and the Supreme Court.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested at premieres of the film in numerous cities. According to the historian David Copeland, "by the time of the movie's March 3 [1915] premiere in New York City, its subject matter had embroiled the film in charges of racism, protests, and calls for censorship, which began after the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP requested the city's film board ban the movie. Since film boards were composed almost entirely of whites, few review boards initially banned Griffith's picture". The NAACP also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction. Because of the lack of success in NAACP's actions to ban the film, on April 17, 1915, NAACP secretary Mary Childs Nerney wrote to NAACP Executive Committee member George Packard: "I am utterly disgusted with the situation in regard to The Birth of a Nation ... kindly remember that we have put six weeks of constant effort of this thing and have gotten nowhere." W. E. B. Du Bois's biographer David Levering Lewis opined that "... The Birth of a Nation and the NAACP helped make each other", in that the NAACP campaign in one sense served as advertising for the film, but that it also "... mobilized thousands of black and white men and women in large cities across the country... who had been unaware of the existence of the [NAACP] or indifferent to it."
Jane Addams, an American social worker and social reformer, and the founder of Hull House, voiced her reaction to the film in an interview published by the New York Post on March 13, 1915, just ten days after the film was released. She stated that "One of the most unfortunate things about this film is that it appeals to race prejudice upon the basis of conditions of half a century ago, which have nothing to do with the facts we have to consider to-day. Even then it does not tell the whole truth. It is claimed that the play is historical: but history is easy to misuse." In New York, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise told the press after seeing The Birth of a Nation that the film was "an indescribable foul and loathsome libel on a race of human beings". In Boston, Booker T. Washington wrote a newspaper column asking readers to boycott the film, while the civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter organized demonstrations against the film, which he predicted was going to worsen race relations. On Saturday, April 10, and again on April 17, Trotter and a group of other blacks tried to buy tickets for the show's premiere at the Tremont Theater and were refused. They stormed the box office in protest, 260 police on standby rushed in, and a general melee ensued. Trotter and ten others were arrested. The following day a huge demonstration was staged at Faneuil Hall. In Washington D.C, the Reverend Francis James Grimké published a pamphlet entitled "Fighting a Vicious Film" that challenged the historical accuracy of The Birth of a Nation on a scene-by-scene basis.
Both Griffith and Dixon in letters to the press dismissed African-American protests against The Birth of a Nation. In a letter to The New York Globe, Griffith wrote that his film was "an influence against the intermarriage of blacks and whites". Dixon likewise called the NAACP "the Negro Intermarriage Society" and said it was against The Birth of a Nation "for one reason only—because it opposes the marriage of blacks to whites". Griffith—indignant at the film's negative critical reception—wrote letters to newspapers and published a pamphlet in which he accused his critics of censoring unpopular opinions.
When Sherwin Lewis of The New York Globe wrote a piece that expressed criticism of the film's distorted portrayal of history and said that it was not worthy of constitutional protection because its purpose was to make a few "dirty dollars", Griffith responded that "the public should not be afraid to accept the truth, even though it might not like it". He also added that the man who wrote the editorial was "damaging my reputation as a producer" and "a liar and a coward".
Audience reaction
The Birth of a Nation was very popular, despite the film's controversy; it was unlike anything that American audiences had ever seen before. The Los Angeles Times called it "the greatest picture ever made and the greatest drama ever filmed". Mary Pickford said: "Birth of a Nation was the first picture that really made people take the motion picture industry seriously". The producers had 15 "detectives" at the Liberty Theater in New York City "to prevent disorder on the part of those who resent the 'reconstruction period' episodes depicted."
The Reverend Charles Henry Parkhurst argued that the film was not racist, saying that it "was exactly true to history" by depicting freedmen as they were and, therefore, it was a "compliment to the black man" by showing how far black people had "advanced" since Reconstruction. Critic Dolly Dalrymple wrote that, "when I saw it, it was far from silent... incessant murmurs of approval, roars of laughter, gasps of anxiety, and outbursts of applause greeted every new picture on the screen". One man viewing the film was so moved by the scene where Flora Cameron flees Gus to avoid being raped that he took out his handgun and began firing at the screen in an effort to help her. Katharine DuPre Lumpkin recalled watching the film as an 18-year-old in 1915 in her 1947 autobiography The Making of a Southerner: "Here was the black figure—and the fear of the white girl—though the scene blanked out just in time. Here were the sinister men the South scorned and the noble men the South revered. And through it all the Klan rode. All around me people sighed and shivered, and now and then shouted or wept, in their intensity."
Sequel and spin-offs
D. W. Griffith made a film in 1916, called Intolerance, partly in response to the criticism that The Birth of a Nation received. Griffith made clear within numerous interviews that the film's title and main themes were chosen in response to those who he felt had been intolerant to The Birth of a Nation. A sequel called The Fall of a Nation was released in 1916, depicting the invasion of the United States by a German-led confederation of European monarchies and criticizing pacifism in the context of the First World War. It was the first feature-length sequel in film history. The film was directed by Thomas Dixon Jr., who adapted it from his novel of the same name. Despite its success in the foreign market, the film was not a success among American audiences, and is now a lost film.
In 1918, an American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble called The Birth of a Race was released as a direct response to The Birth of a Nation. The film was an ambitious project by producer Emmett Jay Scott to challenge Griffith's film and tell another side of the story, but was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1920, African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates, a response to The Birth of a Nation. Within Our Gates depicts the hardships faced by African Americans during the era of Jim Crow laws. Griffith's film was remixed in 2004 as Rebirth of a Nation by DJ Spooky. Quentin Tarantino has said that he made his film Django Unchained (2012) to counter the falsehoods of The Birth of a Nation.
Influence
In November 1915, William Joseph Simmons revived the Klan in Atlanta, Georgia, holding a cross burning at Stone Mountain. The historian John Hope Franklin observed that, had it not been for The Birth of a Nation, the Klan might not have been reborn.
Franklin wrote in 1979 that "The influence of Birth of a Nation on the current view of Reconstruction has been greater than any other single force", but that "It is not at all difficult to find inaccuracies and distortions" in the movie.
Modern reception
Critical response
Released in 1915, The Birth of a Nation has been credited as groundbreaking among its contemporaries for its innovative application of the medium of film. According to the film historian Kevin Brownlow, the film was "astounding in its time" and initiated "so many advances in film-making technique that it was rendered obsolete within a few years". The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatant racism. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet.
Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics, with Ebert mentioning its use as a historical tool: "The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil."
According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. History.com states that "There is no doubt that Birth of a Nation played no small part in winning wide public acceptance" for the KKK, and that throughout the film "African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous." David Duke used the film to recruit Klansmen in the 1970s.
In 2013, the American critic Richard Brody wrote The Birth of a Nation was:
... a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality. It's tempting to think of the film's influence as evidence of the inherent corruption of realism as a cinematic mode—but it's even more revealing to acknowledge the disjunction between its beauty, on the one hand, and, on the other, its injustice and falsehood. The movie's fabricated events shouldn't lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn't lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of Birth of a Nation, even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda. The worst thing about The Birth of a Nation is how good it is. The merits of its grand and enduring aesthetic make it impossible to ignore and, despite its disgusting content, also make it hard not to love. And it's that very conflict that renders the film all the more despicable, the experience of the film more of a torment—together with the acknowledgment that Griffith, whose short films for Biograph were already among the treasures of world cinema, yoked his mighty talent to the cause of hatred (which, still worse, he sincerely depicted as virtuous).
Brody also argued that Griffith unintentionally undercut his own thesis in the film, citing the scene before the Civil War when the Cameron family offers up lavish hospitality to the Stoneman family who travel past mile after mile of slaves working the cotton fields of South Carolina to reach the Cameron home. Brody maintained that a modern audience can see that the wealth of the Camerons comes from the slaves, forced to do back-breaking work picking the cotton. Likewise, Brody argued that the scene where people in South Carolina celebrate the Confederate victory at the Battle of Bull Run by dancing around the "eerie flare of a bonfire" implies "a dance of death", foreshadowing the destruction of Sherman's March that was to come. In the same way, Brody wrote that the scene where the Klan dumps Gus's body off at the doorstep of Lynch is meant to have the audience cheering, but modern audiences find the scene "obscene and horrifying". Finally, Brody argued that the end of the film, where the Klan prevents defenseless African Americans from exercising their right to vote by pointing guns at them, today seems "unjust and cruel".
In an article for The Atlantic, film critic Ty Burr deemed The Birth of a Nation the most influential film in history while criticizing its portrayal of black men as savage. Richard Corliss of Time wrote that Griffith "established in the hundreds of one- and two-reelers he directed a cinematic textbook, a fully formed visual language, for the generations that followed. More than anyone else—more than all others combined—he invented the film art. He brought it to fruition in The Birth of a Nation." Corliss praised the film's "brilliant storytelling technique" and noted that "The Birth of a Nation is nearly as antiwar as it is antiblack. The Civil War scenes, which consume only 30 minutes of the extravaganza, emphasize not the national glory but the human cost of combat. ... Griffith may have been a racist politically, but his refusal to find uplift in the South's war against the Union—and, implicitly, in any war at all—reveals him as a cinematic humanist."
Accolades
In 1992, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American Film Institute recognized the film by ranking it #44 within the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998.
Historical portrayal
The film remains controversial due to its interpretation of American history. University of Houston historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: "Reconstruction was an unmitigated disaster, African-Americans could never be integrated into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government". The South is portrayed as a victim. The first overt mentioning of the war is the scene in which Abraham Lincoln signs the call for the first 75,000 volunteers. However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, is not mentioned in the film. The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the postwar South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbagging Republican politicians from the North. This is similar to the Dunning School of historiography which was current in academe at the time. The film is slightly less extreme than the books upon which it is based, in which Dixon misrepresented Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, storming into weddings to rape white women with impunity.
The film portrayed President Abraham Lincoln as a friend of the South and refers to him as "the Great Heart". The two romances depicted in the film, Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman, reflect Griffith's retelling of history. The couples are used as a metaphor, representing the film's broader message of the need for the reconciliation of the North and South to defend white supremacy. Among both couples, there is an attraction that forms before the war, stemming from the friendship between their families. With the war, however, both families are split apart, and their losses culminate in the end of the war with the defense of white supremacy. One of the intertitles clearly sums up the message of unity: "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."
The film further reinforced the popular belief held by whites, especially in the South, of Reconstruction as a disaster. In his 1929 book The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln, Claude Bowers treated The Birth of a Nation as a factually accurate account of Reconstruction. In The Tragic Era, Bowers presented every black politician in the South as corrupt, portrayed Republican Representative Thaddeus Stevens as a vicious "race traitor" intent upon making blacks the equal of whites, and praised the Klan for "saving civilization" in the South. Bowers wrote about black empowerment that the worst sort of "scum" from the North like Stevens "inflamed the Negro's egoism and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape was the foul daughter of Reconstruction!"
Academic assessment
The American historian John Hope Franklin wrote that not only did Claude Bowers treat The Birth of a Nation as accurate history, but his version of history seemed to be drawn from The Birth of a Nation. Historian E. Merton Coulter treated The Birth of a Nation as historically correct and painted a vivid picture of "black beasts" running amok, encouraged by alcohol-sodden, corrupt and vengeful black Republican politicians. Franklin wrote as recently as the 1970s that the popular journalist Alistair Cooke in his books and TV shows was still essentially following the version of history set out by The Birth of a Nation, noting that Cooke had much sympathy with the suffering of whites in Reconstruction while having almost nothing to say about the suffering of blacks or about how blacks were stripped of almost all their rights after 1877.
Veteran film reviewer Roger Ebert wrote:
... stung by criticisms that the second half of his masterpiece was racist in its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its brutal images of blacks, Griffith tried to make amends in Intolerance (1916), which criticized prejudice. And in Broken Blossoms he told perhaps the first interracial love story in the movies—even though, to be sure, it's an idealized love with no touching.
Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1868. However, Stevens's biracial housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith, was considered his common-law wife, and was generously provided for in his will.
In the film, Abraham Lincoln is portrayed in a positive light due to his belief in conciliatory postwar policies toward Southern whites. The president's views are opposite those of Austin Stoneman, a character presented in a negative light, who acts as an antagonist. The assassination of Lincoln marks the transition from war to Reconstruction, each of which periods has one of the two "acts" of the film. In including the assassination, the film also establishes to the audience that the plot of the movie has historical basis. Franklin wrote the film's depiction of Reconstruction as a hellish time when black freedmen ran amok, raping and killing whites with impunity until the Klan stepped in is not supported by the facts. Franklin wrote that most freed slaves continued to work for their former masters in Reconstruction for the want of a better alternative and, though relations between freedmen and their former masters were not friendly, very few freedmen sought revenge against the people who had enslaved them.
The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications, prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention, and the organized Klan continued activities as small groups of "night riders".
The civil rights movement and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on W. E. B. DuBois' work, but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party and its affiliated white militias had used extensive terrorism, intimidation and even assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.
Legacy
Film innovations
In his review of The Birth of a Nation in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Jonathan Kline writes that "with countless artistic innovations, Griffith essentially created contemporary film language... virtually every film is beholden to [The Birth of a Nation] in one way, shape or form. Griffith introduced the use of dramatic close-ups, tracking shots, and other expressive camera movements; parallel action sequences, crosscutting, and other editing techniques". He added that "the fact that The Birth of a Nation remains respected and studied to this day—despite its subject matter—reveals its lasting importance."
Griffith pioneered such camera techniques as close-ups, fade-outs, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. The Birth of a Nation also contained many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction, and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra.
Home media and restorations
For many years, The Birth of a Nation was poorly represented in home media and restorations. This stemmed from several factors, one of which was the fact that Griffith and others had frequently reworked the film, leaving no definitive version. According to the silent film website Brenton Film, many home media releases of the film consisted of "poor quality DVDs with different edits, scores, [and] running speeds," which were "usually in definitely unoriginal black and white."
One of the earliest high-quality home versions was film preservationist David Shepard's 1992 transfer of a 16mm print for VHS and LaserDisc release via Image Entertainment. A short documentary, The Making of The Birth of a Nation, newly produced and narrated by Shepard, was also included. Both were released on DVD by Image in 1998 and the United Kingdom's Eureka Entertainment in 2000.
In the UK, Photoplay Productions restored the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print that was the source of Shepard's 16 mm print, though they also augmented it with extra material from the British Film Institute. It was also given a full orchestral recording of the original Breil score. Though broadcast on Channel 4 television and screened in theaters many times, Photoplay's 1993 version was never released on home video.
Shepard's transfer and documentary were reissued in the US by Kino Video in 2002, this time in a 2-DVD set with added extras on the second disc. These included several Civil War shorts also directed by D. W. Griffith. In 2011, Kino prepared an HD transfer of a 35 mm negative from the Paul Killiam Collection. They added some material from the Library of Congress and gave it a new compilation score. This version was released on Blu-ray by Kino in the US, Eureka in the UK (as part of their "Masters of Cinema" collection) and Divisa Home Video in Spain.
In 2015, the year of the film's centenary, Photoplay Productions' Patrick Stanbury, in conjunction with the British Film Institute, carried out the first full restoration. It mostly used new 4K scans of the LoC's original camera negative, along with other early generation material. It, too, was given the original Breil score and featured the film's original tinting for the first time since its 1915 release. The restoration was released on a 2-Blu-ray set in the UK and US by the BFI and Twilight Time, alongside a host of extras, including many other newly restored Civil War-related films from the period.
In popular culture
The Birth of a Nation reverent depiction of the Klan was lampooned in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles (1974).
Ryan O'Neal's character Leo Harrigan in Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon (1976) attends the premiere of The Birth of a Nation and realizes that it will change the course of American cinema.
Clips from Griffith's film are shown in
Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994), where the footage is meant to portray the titular character's ancestor and namesake Nathan Bedford Forrest
The closing montage of Spike Lee's Bamboozled (2000), along with other footage from demeaning portrayals of African Americans in early 20th century film
Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018), where Harry Belafonte's character Jerome Turner speaks about its role in the lynching of Jesse Washington as the modern Ku Kluk Klan led by Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) screens it as propaganda.
Director Kevin Willmott's mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) portrays an imagined history where the Confederacy won the Civil War. It shows part of an imagined Griffith film, The Capture of Dishonest Abe, which resembles The Birth of a Nation and was supposedly adapted from Thomas Dixon's The Yankee.
In Justin Simien's Dear White People (2014), Sam (Tessa Thompson) screens a short film called The Rebirth of a Nation which portrays white people wearing whiteface while criticizing Barack Obama.
In 2016, Nate Parker produced and directed the film The Birth of a Nation, based on Nat Turner's slave rebellion; Parker clarified:
I've reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change.
Dinesh D'Souza's 2016 political documentary Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party depicts President Wilson and his cabinet viewing The Birth of a Nation in the White House before a Klansman comes out of the screen and into the real world. The film is meant to accuse the Democratic Party and the American political left in covering up its past support of white supremacy and continuing it through welfare policies and machine politics. The title of D'Souza's 2018 film The Death of a Nation is a reference to Griffith's film, and like his previous film is meant to accuse the Democratic Party, and historical American left-wing of racism.
The 2019 feature film I Am Not a Racist is a comedy that uses The Birth of a Nations original material, changing its order and creating new contexts and new dialogues to mock the movie and to criticize racism.
In 2019, Bowling Green State University renamed its Gish Film Theater, which was named for actress Lilian Gish, after protests alleging that using her name is inappropriate because of her role in The Birth of a Nation.
See also
List of American films of 1915
List of films and television shows about the American Civil War
List of films featuring slavery
List of highest-grossing films
List of racism-related films
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
Racism against African Americans
Racism in the United States
Tom Rice (film historian)
References
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
Addams, Jane, in Crisis: A Record of Darker Races, X (May 1915), 19, 41, and (June 1915), 88.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973).
Brodie, Fawn M. Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), pp. 86–93. Corrects the historical record as to Dixon's false representation of Stevens in this film with regard to his racial views and relations with his housekeeper.
Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965), p. 30
Franklin, John Hope. "Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker". In Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II. 1997. Gerster, Patrick, and Cords, Nicholas. (editors.) Brandywine Press, St. James, NY.
Franklin, John Hope, "Propaganda as History" pp. 10–23 in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 (Louisiana State University Press, 1989); first published in The Massachusetts Review, 1979. Describes the history of the novel The Clan and this film.
Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago, 1961), pp. 5–7.
Gallagher, Gary W. (2008) Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood & Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
Hickman, Roger. Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006).
Hodapp, Christopher L., and Alice Von Kannon, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) pp. 235–236.
Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens. A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72–76. corrects Dixon's false characterization of Stevens' racial views and of his dealings with his housekeeper.
Leab, Daniel J., From Sambo to Superspade (Boston, 1975), pp. 23–39.
New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915.
The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185
Poole, W. Scott, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2011), 30.
Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction", Journal of Southern History, V (February 1939), pp. 49–61.
The latest study of the film's making and subsequent career.
Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965). This book corrects Dixon's false reporting of Reconstruction, as shown in his novel, his play and this film.
Further reading
External links
The Birth of a Nation essay by David Kehr at National Film Registry
The Birth of a Nation: Controversial Classic Gets a Definitive New Restoration essay by Patrick Stanbury
Why You Shouldn't Watch The Birth of a Nation (AND WHY YOU SHOULD) | Brows Held High on YouTube
1910s political films
1910s war drama films
1915 war films
1915 drama films
1915 films
African-American-related controversies in film
African-American riots in the United States
American black-and-white films
American Civil War films
American epic films
American films based on plays
American propaganda films
American silent feature films
American war drama films
Anti-war films
Art works that caused riots
Articles containing video clips
Blackface minstrel shows and films
Censored films
Cultural depictions of John Wilkes Booth
Cultural depictions of Robert E. Lee
Cultural depictions of Ulysses S. Grant
Fictional depictions of Abraham Lincoln in film
Film controversies in the United States
Films about racism in the United States
Films about the Ku Klux Klan
Films based on adaptations
Films based on American novels
Films based on multiple works
Films based on works by Thomas Dixon Jr.
Films directed by D. W. Griffith
Films set in South Carolina
Films set in the 1860s
Films set in the 1870s
Films set in the 19th century
Films shot in Big Bear Lake, California
Films shot in Mississippi
Films with screenplays by D. W. Griffith
Films with screenplays by Frank E. Woods
History of racism in the cinema of the United States
History of the Southern United States
Mass media-related controversies in the United States
Political controversies in film
Presidency of Woodrow Wilson
Surviving American silent films
United States National Film Registry films
Films about American slavery
Dunning School
Films shot in Los Angeles County, California
1910s English-language films
1910s American films
Silent American drama films
Silent adventure films
Silent war drama films
| 8
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The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. It is a shelf sea and marginal sea of the Atlantic with limited water exchange between the two, making it an inland sea. The Baltic Sea drains through the Danish Straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia (divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea), the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk.
The "Baltic Proper" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula.
The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea–Baltic Canal and to the German Bight of the North Sea via the Kiel Canal.
Definitions
Administration
The Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area includes the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat, without calling Kattegat a part of the Baltic Sea, "For the purposes of this Convention the 'Baltic Sea Area' shall be the Baltic Sea and the Entrance to the Baltic Sea, bounded by the parallel of the Skaw in the Skagerrak at 57°44.43'N."
Traffic history
Historically, the Kingdom of Denmark collected Sound Dues from ships at the border between the ocean and the land-locked Baltic Sea, in tandem: in the Øresund at Kronborg castle near Helsingør; in the Great Belt at Nyborg; and in the Little Belt at its narrowest part then Fredericia, after that stronghold was built. The narrowest part of Little Belt is the "Middelfart Sund" near Middelfart.
Oceanography
Geographers widely agree that the preferred physical border between the Baltic and North Seas is the Langelandsbælt (the southern part of the Great Belt strait near Langeland) and the Drogden-Sill strait. The Drogden Sill is situated north of Køge Bugt and connects Dragør in the south of Copenhagen to Malmö; it is used by the Øresund Bridge, including the Drogden Tunnel. By this definition, the Danish Straits is part of the entrance, but the Bay of Mecklenburg and the Bay of Kiel are parts of the Baltic Sea.
Another usual border is the line between Falsterbo, Sweden, and Stevns Klint, Denmark, as this is the southern border of Øresund. It is also the border between the shallow southern Øresund (with a typical depth of 5–10 meters only) and notably deeper water.
Hydrography and biology
Drogden Sill (depth of ) sets a limit to Øresund and Darss Sill (depth of ), and a limit to the Belt Sea. The shallow sills are obstacles to the flow of heavy salt water from the Kattegat into the basins around Bornholm and Gotland.
The Kattegat and the southwestern Baltic Sea are well oxygenated and have a rich biology. The remainder of the Sea is brackish, poor in oxygen, and in species. Thus, statistically, the more of the entrance that is included in its definition, the healthier the Baltic appears; conversely, the more narrowly it is defined, the more endangered its biology appears.
Etymology and nomenclature
Tacitus called it the Suebic Sea, Latin: Mare Suebicum after the Germanic people of the Suebi, and Ptolemy Sarmatian Ocean after the Sarmatians, but the first to name it the Baltic Sea () was the eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen. The origin of the latter name is speculative and it was adopted into Slavic and Finnic languages spoken around the sea, very likely due to the role of Medieval Latin in cartography. It might be connected to the Germanic word belt, a name used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts, while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin balteus "belt". Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt (Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam).
He might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia (or Balcia) with reference to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon. It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia ("the royal") in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from "belt", and therein mean "near belt of sea, strait".
Others have suggested that the name of the island originates from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰel meaning "white, fair", which may echo the naming of seas after colours relating to the cardinal points (as per Black Sea and Red Sea). This '*bʰel' root and basic meaning were retained in Lithuanian (as baltas), Latvian (as balts) and Slavic (as bely). On this basis, a related hypothesis holds that the name originated from this Indo-European root via a Baltic language such as Lithuanian. Another explanation is that, while derived from the aforementioned root, the name of the sea is related to names for various forms of water and related substances in several European languages, that might have been originally associated with colors found in swamps (compare Proto-Slavic *bolto "swamp"). Yet another explanation is that the name originally meant "enclosed sea, bay" as opposed to open sea.
In the Middle Ages the sea was known by a variety of names. The name Baltic Sea became dominant only after 1600. Usage of Baltic and similar terms to denote the region east of the sea started only in the 19th century.
Name in other languages
The Baltic Sea was known in ancient Latin language sources as Mare Suebicum or even Mare Germanicum. Older native names in languages that used to be spoken on the shores of the sea or near it usually indicate the geographical location of the sea (in Germanic languages), or its size in relation to smaller gulfs (in Old Latvian), or tribes associated with it (in Old Russian the sea was known as the Varanghian Sea). In modern languages, it is known by the equivalents of "East Sea", "West Sea", or "Baltic Sea" in different languages:
"Baltic Sea" is used in Modern English; in the Baltic languages Latvian (Baltijas jūra; in Old Latvian it was referred to as "the Big Sea", while the present day Gulf of Riga was referred to as "the Little Sea") and Lithuanian (Baltijos jūra); in Latin (Mare Balticum) and the Romance languages French (Mer Baltique), Italian (Mar Baltico), Portuguese (Mar Báltico), Romanian (Marea Baltică) and Spanish (Mar Báltico); in Greek ( Valtikí Thálassa); in Albanian (Deti Balltik); in Welsh (Môr Baltig); in the Slavic languages Polish (Morze Bałtyckie or Bałtyk), Czech (Baltské moře or Balt), Slovenian (Baltsko morje), Bulgarian ( Baltijsko More), Kashubian (Bôłt), Macedonian (Балтичко Море Baltičko More), Ukrainian ( Baltijs′ke More), Belarusian (Балтыйскае мора Baltyjskaje Mora), Russian ( Baltiyskoye More) and Serbo-Croatian (Baltičko more / ); in Hungarian (Balti-tenger).
In Germanic languages, except English, "East Sea" is used, as in Afrikaans (Oossee), Danish (Østersøen ), Dutch (Oostzee), German (Ostsee), Low German (Oostsee), Icelandic and Faroese (Eystrasalt), Norwegian (Bokmål: Østersjøen ; Nynorsk: Austersjøen), and Swedish (Östersjön). In Old English it was known as Ostsǣ; also in Hungarian the former name was Keleti-tenger ("East-sea", due to German influence). In addition, Finnish, a Finnic language, uses the term Itämeri "East Sea", possibly a calque from a Germanic language. As the Baltic is not particularly eastward in relation to Finland, the use of this term may be a leftover from the period of Swedish rule.
In another Finnic language, Estonian, it is called the "West Sea" (Läänemeri), with the correct geography (the sea is west of Estonia). In South Estonian, it has the meaning of both "West Sea" and "Evening Sea" (Õdagumeri). In the endangered Livonian language of Latvia, the sea (and sometimes the Irbe Strait as well) is called the "Large Sea" (Sūŗ meŗ or Sūr meŗ).
History
Classical world
At the time of the Roman Empire, the Baltic Sea was known as the Mare Suebicum or Mare Sarmaticum. Tacitus in his AD 98 Agricola and Germania described the Mare Suebicum, named for the Suebi tribe, during the spring months, as a brackish sea where the ice broke apart and chunks floated about. The Suebi eventually migrated southwest to temporarily reside in the Rhineland area of modern Germany, where their name survives in the historic region known as Swabia. Jordanes called it the Germanic Sea in his work, the Getica.
Middle Ages
In the early Middle Ages, Norse (Scandinavian) merchants built a trade empire all around the Baltic. Later, the Norse fought for control of the Baltic against Wendish tribes dwelling on the southern shore. The Norse also used the rivers of Russia for trade routes, finding their way eventually to the Black Sea and southern Russia. This Norse-dominated period is referred to as the Viking Age.
Since the Viking Age, the Scandinavians have referred to the Baltic Sea as Austmarr ("Eastern Lake"). "Eastern Sea", appears in the Heimskringla and Eystra salt appears in Sörla þáttr. Saxo Grammaticus recorded in Gesta Danorum an older name, Gandvik, -vik being Old Norse for "bay", which implies that the Vikings correctly regarded it as an inlet of the sea. Another form of the name, "Grandvik", attested in at least one English translation of Gesta Danorum, is likely to be a misspelling.
In addition to fish the sea also provides amber, especially from its southern shores within today's borders of Poland, Russia and Lithuania. First mentions of amber deposits on the South Coast of the Baltic Sea date back to the 12th century. The bordering countries have also traditionally exported lumber, wood tar, flax, hemp and furs by ship across the Baltic. Sweden had from early medieval times exported iron and silver mined there, while Poland had and still has extensive salt mines. Thus, the Baltic Sea has long been crossed by much merchant shipping.
The lands on the Baltic's eastern shore were among the last in Europe to be converted to Christianity. This finally happened during the Northern Crusades: Finland in the twelfth century by Swedes, and what are now Estonia and Latvia in the early thirteenth century by Danes and Germans (Livonian Brothers of the Sword). The Teutonic Order gained control over parts of the southern and eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they set up their monastic state. Lithuania was the last European state to convert to Christianity.
An arena of conflict
In the period between the 8th and 14th centuries, there was much piracy in the Baltic from the coasts of Pomerania and Prussia, and the Victual Brothers held Gotland.
Starting in the 11th century, the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic were settled by migrants mainly from Germany, a movement called the Ostsiedlung ("east settling"). Other settlers were from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Scotland. The Polabian Slavs were gradually assimilated by the Germans. Denmark gradually gained control over most of the Baltic coast, until she lost much of her possessions after being defeated in the 1227 Battle of Bornhöved.
In the 13th to 16th centuries, the strongest economic force in Northern Europe was the Hanseatic League, a federation of merchant cities around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden fought wars for Dominium maris baltici ("Lordship over the Baltic Sea"). Eventually, it was Sweden that virtually encompassed the Baltic Sea. In Sweden, the sea was then referred to as Mare Nostrum Balticum ("Our Baltic Sea"). The goal of Swedish warfare during the 17th century was to make the Baltic Sea an all-Swedish sea (Ett Svenskt innanhav), something that was accomplished except the part between Riga in Latvia and Stettin in Pomerania. However, the Dutch dominated the Baltic trade in the seventeenth century.
In the eighteenth century, Russia and Prussia became the leading powers over the sea. Sweden's defeat in the Great Northern War brought Russia to the eastern coast. Russia became and remained a dominating power in the Baltic. Russia's Peter the Great saw the strategic importance of the Baltic and decided to found his new capital, Saint Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva river at the east end of the Gulf of Finland. There was much trading not just within the Baltic region but also with the North Sea region, especially eastern England and the Netherlands: their fleets needed the Baltic timber, tar, flax, and hemp.
During the Crimean War, a joint British and French fleet attacked the Russian fortresses in the Baltic; the case is also known as the Åland War. They bombarded Sveaborg, which guards Helsinki; and Kronstadt, which guards Saint Petersburg; and they destroyed Bomarsund in Åland. After the unification of Germany in 1871, the whole southern coast became German. World War I was partly fought in the Baltic Sea. After 1920 Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea at the expense of Germany by the Polish Corridor and enlarged the port of Gdynia in rivalry with the port of the Free City of Danzig.
After the Nazis' rise to power, Germany reclaimed the Memelland and after the outbreak of the Eastern Front (World War II) occupied the Baltic states. In 1945, the Baltic Sea became a mass grave for retreating soldiers and refugees on torpedoed troop transports. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff remains the worst maritime disaster in history, killing (very roughly) 9,000 people. In 2005, a Russian group of scientists found over five thousand airplane wrecks, sunken warships, and other material, mainly from World War II, on the bottom of the sea.
Since World War II
Since the end of World War II, various nations, including the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States have disposed of chemical weapons in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns of environmental contamination. Today, fishermen occasionally find some of these materials: the most recent available report from the Helsinki Commission notes that four small scale catches of chemical munitions representing approximately of material were reported in 2005. This is a reduction from the 25 incidents representing of material in 2003. Until now, the U.S. Government refuses to disclose the exact coordinates of the wreck sites. Deteriorating bottles leak mustard gas and other substances, thus slowly poisoning a substantial part of the Baltic Sea.
After 1945, the German population was expelled from all areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, making room for new Polish and Russian settlement. Poland gained most of the southern shore. The Soviet Union gained another access to the Baltic with the Kaliningrad Oblast, that had been part of German-settled East Prussia. The Baltic states on the eastern shore were annexed by the Soviet Union. The Baltic then separated opposing military blocs: NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Neutral Sweden developed incident weapons to defend its territorial waters after the Swedish submarine incidents. This border status restricted trade and travel. It ended only after the collapse of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. In 2023, Finland joined NATO.
Since May 2004, with the accession of the Baltic states and Poland, the Baltic Sea has been almost entirely surrounded by countries of the European Union (EU). The remaining non-EU shore areas are Russian: the Saint Petersburg area and the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.
Winter storms begin arriving in the region during October. These have caused numerous shipwrecks, and contributed to the extreme difficulties of rescuing passengers of the ferry M/S Estonia en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, in September 1994, which claimed the lives of 852 people. Older, wood-based shipwrecks such as the Vasa tend to remain well-preserved, as the Baltic's cold and brackish water does not suit the shipworm.
Storm floods
Storm surge floods are generally taken to occur when the water level is more than one metre above normal. In Warnemünde about 110 floods occurred from 1950 to 2000, an average of just over two per year.
Historic flood events were the All Saints' Flood of 1304 and other floods in the years 1320, 1449, 1625, 1694, 1784 and 1825. Little is known of their extent. From 1872, there exist regular and reliable records of water levels in the Baltic Sea. The highest was the flood of 1872 when the water was an average of above sea level at Warnemünde and a maximum of above sea level in Warnemünde. In the last very heavy floods the average water levels reached above sea level in 1904, in 1913, in January 1954, on 2–4 November 1995 and on 21 February 2002.
Geography
Geophysical data
An arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea is enclosed by Sweden and Denmark to the west, Finland to the northeast, and the Baltic countries to the southeast.
It is about long, an average of wide, and an average of deep. The maximum depth is which is on the Swedish side of the center. The surface area is about and the volume is about . The periphery amounts to about of coastline.
The Baltic Sea is one of the largest brackish inland seas by area, and occupies a basin (a Zungenbecken) formed by glacial erosion during the last few ice ages.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Physical characteristics of the Baltic Sea, its main sub-regions, and the transition zone to the Skagerrak/North Sea area! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| Sub-area
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| Area
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| Volume
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| Maximum depth
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| Average depth
|-
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"|
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| km2
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| km3
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| m
! style="background: DarkCyan; color: white; text-align: center"| m
|-
| style="text-align: left"|Baltic proper
| style="text-align: right"| 211,069
| style="text-align: right"| 13,045
| style="text-align: right"| 459
| style="text-align: right"| 62.1
|-
| style="text-align: left"|Gulf of Bothnia
| style="text-align: right"| 115,516
| style="text-align: right"| 6,389
| style="text-align: right"| 230
| style="text-align: right"| 60.2
|-
| style="text-align: left"|Gulf of Finland
| style="text-align: right"| 29,600
| style="text-align: right"| 1,100
| style="text-align: right"| 123
| style="text-align: right"| 38.0
|-
| style="text-align: left"|Gulf of Riga
| style="text-align: right"| 16,300
| style="text-align: right"| 424
| style="text-align: right"| > 60
| style="text-align: right"| 26.0
|-
| style="text-align: left"| Belt Sea/Kattegat
| style="text-align: right"| 42,408
| style="text-align: right"| 802
| style="text-align: right"| 109
| style="text-align: right"| 18.9
|-
! style="text-align: left"| Total Baltic Sea
! style="text-align: right"| 415,266
! style="text-align: right"| 21,721
! style="text-align: right"| 459
! style="text-align: right"| 52.3
|}
Extent
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Baltic Sea as follows:
Bordered by the coasts of Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it extends north-eastward of the following limits:
In the Little Belt. A line joining Falshöft () and Vejsnæs Nakke (Ærø: ).
In the Great Belt. A line joining Gulstav (South extreme of Langeland Island) and Kappel Kirke () on Island of Lolland.
In the Guldborg Sound. A line joining Flinthorne-Rev and Skjelby ().
In the Sound. A line joining Stevns Lighthouse () and Falsterbo Point ().
Subdivisions
The northern part of the Baltic Sea is known as the Gulf of Bothnia, of which the northernmost part is the Bay of Bothnia or Bothnian Bay. The more rounded southern basin of the gulf is called Bothnian Sea and immediately to the south of it lies the Sea of Åland. The Gulf of Finland connects the Baltic Sea with Saint Petersburg. The Gulf of Riga lies between the Latvian capital city of Riga and the Estonian island of Saaremaa.
The Northern Baltic Sea lies between the Stockholm area, southwestern Finland, and Estonia. The Western and Eastern Gotland basins form the major parts of the Central Baltic Sea or Baltic proper. The Bornholm Basin is the area east of Bornholm, and the shallower Arkona Basin extends from Bornholm to the Danish isles of Falster and Zealand.
In the south, the Bay of Gdańsk lies east of the Hel Peninsula on the Polish coast and west of the Sambia Peninsula in Kaliningrad Oblast. The Bay of Pomerania lies north of the islands of Usedom/Uznam and Wolin, east of Rügen. Between Falster and the German coast lie the Bay of Mecklenburg and Bay of Lübeck. The westernmost part of the Baltic Sea is the Bay of Kiel. The three Danish straits, the Great Belt, the Little Belt and The Sound (Öresund/Øresund), connect the Baltic Sea with the Kattegat and Skagerrak strait in the North Sea.
Temperature and ice
The water temperature of the Baltic Sea varies significantly depending on exact location, season and depth. At the Bornholm Basin, which is located directly east of the island of the same name, the surface temperature typically falls to during the peak of the winter and rises to during the peak of the summer, with an annual average of around . A similar pattern can be seen in the Gotland Basin, which is located between the island of Gotland and Latvia. In the deep of these basins the temperature variations are smaller. At the bottom of the Bornholm Basin, deeper than , the temperature typically is , and at the bottom of the Gotland Basin, at depths greater than , the temperature typically is . Generally, offshore locations, lower latitudes and islands maintain maritime climates, but adjacent to the water continental climates are common, especially on the Gulf of Finland. In the northern tributaries the climates transition from moderate continental to subarctic on the northernmost coastlines.
On the long-term average, the Baltic Sea is ice-covered at the annual maximum for about 45% of its surface area. The ice-covered area during such a typical winter includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the archipelago west of Estonia, the Stockholm archipelago, and the Archipelago Sea southwest of Finland. The remainder of the Baltic does not freeze during a normal winter, except sheltered bays and shallow lagoons such as the Curonian Lagoon. The ice reaches its maximum extent in February or March; typical ice thickness in the northernmost areas in the Bothnian Bay, the northern basin of the Gulf of Bothnia, is about for landfast sea ice. The thickness decreases farther south.
Freezing begins in the northern extremities of the Gulf of Bothnia typically in the middle of November, reaching the open waters of the Bothnian Bay in early January. The Bothnian Sea, the basin south of Kvarken, freezes on average in late February. The Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga freeze typically in late January. In 2011, the Gulf of Finland was completely frozen on 15 February.
The ice extent depends on whether the winter is mild, moderate, or severe. In severe winters ice can form around southern Sweden and even in the Danish straits. According to the 18th-century natural historian William Derham, during the severe winters of 1703 and 1708, the ice cover reached as far as the Danish straits. Frequently, parts of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, in addition to coastal fringes in more southerly locations such as the Gulf of Riga. This description meant that the whole of the Baltic Sea was covered with ice.
Since 1720, the Baltic Sea has frozen over entirely 20 times, most recently in early 1987, which was the most severe winter in Scandinavia since 1720. The ice then covered . During the winter of 2010–11, which was quite severe compared to those of the last decades, the maximum ice cover was , which was reached on 25 February 2011. The ice then extended from the north down to the northern tip of Gotland, with small ice-free areas on either side, and the east coast of the Baltic Sea was covered by an ice sheet about wide all the way to Gdańsk. This was brought about by a stagnant high-pressure area that lingered over central and northern Scandinavia from around 10 to 24 February. After this, strong southern winds pushed the ice further into the north, and much of the waters north of Gotland were again free of ice, which had then packed against the shores of southern Finland. The effects of the afore-mentioned high-pressure area did not reach the southern parts of the Baltic Sea, and thus the entire sea did not freeze over. However, floating ice was additionally observed near Świnoujście harbor in January 2010.
In recent years before 2011, the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea were frozen with solid ice near the Baltic coast and dense floating ice far from it. In 2008, almost no ice formed except for a short period in March.
During winter, fast ice, which is attached to the shoreline, develops first, rendering ports unusable without the services of icebreakers. Level ice, ice sludge, pancake ice, and rafter ice form in the more open regions. The gleaming expanse of ice is similar to the Arctic, with wind-driven pack ice and ridges up to . Offshore of the landfast ice, the ice remains very dynamic all year, and it is relatively easily moved around by winds and therefore forms pack ice, made up of large piles and ridges pushed against the landfast ice and shores.
In spring, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia normally thaw in late April, with some ice ridges persisting until May in the eastern extremities of the Gulf of Finland. In the northernmost reaches of the Bothnian Bay, ice usually stays until late May; by early June it is practically always gone. However, in the famine year of 1867 remnants of ice were observed as late as 17 July near Uddskär. Even as far south as Øresund, remnants of ice have been observed in May on several occasions; near Taarbaek on 15 May 1942 and near Copenhagen on 11 May 1771. Drift ice was also observed on 11 May 1799.
The ice cover is the main habitat for two large mammals, the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and the Baltic ringed seal (Pusa hispida botnica), both of which feed underneath the ice and breed on its surface. Of these two seals, only the Baltic ringed seal suffers when there is not adequate ice in the Baltic Sea, as it feeds its young only while on ice. The grey seal is adapted to reproducing also with no ice in the sea. The sea ice also harbors several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside unfrozen brine pockets in the ice.
Due to the often fluctuating winter temperatures between above and below freezing, the saltwater ice of the Baltic Sea can be treacherous and hazardous to walk on, in particular in comparison to the more stable fresh water-ice sheets in the interior lakes.
Hydrography
The Baltic Sea flows out through the Danish straits; however, the flow is complex. A surface layer of brackish water discharges per year into the North Sea. Due to the difference in salinity, by salinity permeation principle, a sub-surface layer of more saline water moving in the opposite direction brings in per year. It mixes very slowly with the upper waters, resulting in a salinity gradient from top to bottom, with most of the saltwater remaining below deep. The general circulation is anti-clockwise: northwards along its eastern boundary, and south along with the western one .
The difference between the outflow and the inflow comes entirely from fresh water. More than 250 streams drain a basin of about , contributing a volume of per year to the Baltic. They include the major rivers of north Europe, such as the Oder, the Vistula, the Neman, the Daugava and the Neva. Additional fresh water comes from the difference of precipitation less evaporation, which is positive.
An important source of salty water is infrequent inflows (also known as major Baltic inflows or MBIs) of North Sea water into the Baltic. Such inflows, important to the Baltic ecosystem because of the oxygen they transport into the Baltic deeps, happen on average once per year, but large pulses that can replace the anoxic deep water in the Gotland Deep occur about once in ten years. Previously, it was believed that the frequency of MBIs had declined since 1980, but recent studies have challenged this view and no longer display a clear change in the frequency or intensity of saline inflows. Instead, a decadal variability in the intensities of MBIs is observed with a main period of approximately 30 years.
The water level is generally far more dependent on the regional wind situation than on tidal effects. However, tidal currents occur in narrow passages in the western parts of the Baltic Sea. Tides can reach in the Gulf of Finland.
The significant wave height is generally much lower than that of the North Sea. Quite violent, sudden storms sweep the surface ten or more times a year, due to large transient temperature differences and a long reach of the wind. Seasonal winds also cause small changes in sea level, of the order of . According to the media, during a storm in January 2017, an extreme wave above has been measured and significant wave height of around has been measured by the FMI. A numerical study has shown the presence of events with significant wave heights. Those extreme waves events can play an important role in the coastal zone on erosion and sea dynamics.
Salinity
The Baltic Sea is the world's largest inland brackish sea. Only two other brackish waters are larger according to some measurements: The Black Sea is larger in both surface area and water volume, but most of it is located outside the continental shelf (only a small fraction is inland). The Caspian Sea is larger in water volume, but—despite its name—it is a lake rather than a sea.
The Baltic Sea's salinity is much lower than that of ocean water (which averages 3.5%), as a result of abundant freshwater runoff from the surrounding land (rivers, streams and alike), combined with the shallowness of the sea itself; runoff contributes roughly one-fortieth its total volume per year, as the volume of the basin is about and yearly runoff is about .
The open surface waters of the Baltic Sea "proper" generally have a salinity of 0.3 to 0.9%, which is border-line freshwater. The flow of freshwater into the sea from approximately two hundred rivers and the introduction of salt from the southwest builds up a gradient of salinity in the Baltic Sea. The highest surface salinities, generally 0.7–0.9%, are in the southwesternmost part of the Baltic, in the Arkona and Bornholm basins (the former located roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm, and the latter directly east of Bornholm). It gradually falls further east and north, reaching the lowest in the Bothnian Bay at around 0.3%. Drinking the surface water of the Baltic as a means of survival would actually hydrate the body instead of dehydrating, as is the case with ocean water.
As saltwater is denser than freshwater, the bottom of the Baltic Sea is saltier than the surface. This creates a vertical stratification of the water column, a halocline, that represents a barrier to the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, and fosters completely separate maritime environments. The difference between the bottom and surface salinities varies depending on location. Overall it follows the same southwest to east and north pattern as the surface. At the bottom of the Arkona Basin (equalling depths greater than ) and Bornholm Basin (depths greater than ) it is typically 1.4–1.8%. Further east and north the salinity at the bottom is consistently lower, being the lowest in Bothnian Bay (depths greater than ) where it is slightly below 0.4%, or only marginally higher than the surface in the same region.
In contrast, the salinity of the Danish straits, which connect the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, tends to be significantly higher, but with major variations from year to year. For example, the surface and bottom salinity in the Great Belt is typically around 2.0% and 2.8% respectively, which is only somewhat below that of the Kattegat. The water surplus caused by the continuous inflow of rivers and streams to the Baltic Sea means that there generally is a flow of brackish water out through the Danish Straits to the Kattegat (and eventually the Atlantic). Significant flows in the opposite direction, salt water from the Kattegat through the Danish Straits to the Baltic Sea, are less regular and are known as major Baltic inflows (MBIs).
Major tributaries
The rating of mean discharges differs from the ranking of hydrological lengths (from the most distant source to the sea) and the rating of the nominal lengths. Göta älv, a tributary of the Kattegat, is not listed, as due to the northward upper low-salinity-flow in the sea, its water hardly reaches the Baltic proper:
Islands and archipelagoes
Åland (Finland, autonomous)
Archipelago Sea (Finland)
Pargas
Nagu
Korpo
Houtskär
Kustavi
Kimito
Blekinge archipelago (Sweden)
Bornholm, including Christiansø (Denmark)
Falster (Denmark)
Gotland (Sweden)
Hailuoto (Finland)
Kotlin (Russia)
Lolland (Denmark)
Kvarken archipelago, including Valsörarna (Finland)
Møn (Denmark)
Öland (Sweden)
Rügen (Germany)
Stockholm archipelago (Sweden)
Värmdön (Sweden)
Usedom or Uznam (split between Germany and Poland)
West Estonian archipelago (Estonia):
Hiiumaa
Muhu
Saaremaa
Vormsi
Wolin (Poland)
Zealand (Denmark)
Coastal countries
Countries that border the sea: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden.
Countries lands in the outer drainage basin: Belarus, Czech Republic, Norway, Slovakia, Ukraine.
The Baltic Sea drainage basin is roughly four times the surface area of the sea itself. About 48% of the region is forested, with Sweden and Finland containing the majority of the forest, especially around the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.
About 20% of the land is used for agriculture and pasture, mainly in Poland and around the edge of the Baltic Proper, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. About 17% of the basin is unused open land with another 8% of wetlands. Most of the latter are in the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland.
The rest of the land is heavily populated. About 85 million people live in the Baltic drainage basin, 15 million within of the coast and 29 million within of the coast. Around 22 million live in population centers of over 250,000. 90% of these are concentrated in the band around the coast. Of the nations containing all or part of the basin, Poland includes 45% of the 85 million, Russia 12%, Sweden 10% and the others less than 6% each.
Cities The biggest coastal cities (by population): Saint Petersburg (Russia) 5,392,992 (metropolitan area 6,000,000)
Stockholm (Sweden) 962,154 (metropolitan area 2,315,612)
Helsinki (Finland) 665,558 (metropolitan area 1,559,558)
Riga (Latvia) 614,618 (metropolitan area 1,070,00)
Gdańsk (Poland) 462,700 (metropolitan area 1,041,000)
Tallinn (Estonia) 458,398 (metropolitan area 542,983)
Kaliningrad (Russia) 431,500
Szczecin (Poland) 413,600 (metropolitan area 778,000)
Espoo (Finland) 306,792 (part of Helsinki metropolitan area)
Gdynia (Poland) 255,600 (metropolitan area 1,041,000)
Kiel (Germany) 247,000
Lübeck (Germany) 216,100
Rostock (Germany) 212,700
Klaipėda (Lithuania) 194,400
Oulu (Finland) 191,050
Turku (Finland) 180,350Other important ports: Estonia:
Pärnu 44,568
Maardu 16,570
Sillamäe 16,567
Finland:
Pori 83,272
Kotka 54,887
Kokkola 46,809
Port of Naantali 18,789
Mariehamn 11,372
Hanko 9,270
Germany:
Flensburg 94,000
Stralsund 58,000
Greifswald 55,000
Wismar 44,000
Eckernförde 22,000
Neustadt in Holstein 16,000
Wolgast 12,000
Sassnitz 10,000
Latvia:
Liepāja 85,000
Ventspils 44,000
Lithuania:
Palanga 17,000
Poland:
Kołobrzeg 44,800
Świnoujście 41,500
Police 34,284
Władysławowo 15,000
Darłowo 14,000
Russia:
Vyborg 79,962
Baltiysk 34,000
Sweden:
Norrköping 84,000
Gävle 75,451
Trelleborg 26,000
Karlshamn 19,000
Oxelösund 11,000
Geology
The Baltic Sea somewhat resembles a riverbed, with two tributaries, the Gulf of Finland and Gulf of Bothnia. Geological surveys show that before the Pleistocene, instead of the Baltic Sea, there was a wide plain around a great river that paleontologists call the Eridanos. Several Pleistocene glacial episodes scooped out the river bed into the sea basin. By the time of the last, or Eemian Stage (MIS 5e), the Eemian Sea was in place. Instead of a true sea, the Baltic can even today also be understood as the common estuary of all rivers flowing into it.
From that time the waters underwent a geologic history summarized under the names listed below. Many of the stages are named after marine animals (e.g. the Littorina mollusk) that are clear markers of changing water temperatures and salinity.
The factors that determined the sea's characteristics were the submergence or emergence of the region due to the weight of ice and subsequent isostatic readjustment, and the connecting channels it found to the North Sea-Atlantic, either through the straits of Denmark or at what are now the large lakes of Sweden, and the White Sea-Arctic Sea.
Eemian Sea, 130,000–115,000 (years ago)
Baltic Ice Lake, 12,600–10,300
Yoldia Sea, 10,300–9500
Ancylus Lake, 9,500–8,000
Mastogloia Sea, 8,000–7,500
Littorina Sea, 7,500–4,000
Post-Littorina Sea, 4,000–present
The land is still emerging isostatically from its depressed state, which was caused by the weight of ice during the last glaciation. The phenomenon is known as post-glacial rebound. Consequently, the surface area and the depth of the sea are diminishing. The uplift is about eight millimeters per year on the Finnish coast of the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia. In the area, the former seabed is only gently sloping, leading to large areas of land being reclaimed in what are, geologically speaking, relatively short periods (decades and centuries).
The "Baltic Sea anomaly"
The "Baltic Sea anomaly" is a feature on an indistinct sonar image taken by Swedish salvage divers on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea in June 2011. The treasure hunters suggested the image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly extraordinary origin. Speculation published in tabloid newspapers claimed that the object was a sunken UFO. A consensus of experts and scientists say that the image most likely shows a natural geological formation.
Biology
Fauna and flora
The fauna of the Baltic Sea is a mixture of marine and freshwater species. Among marine fishes are Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, European hake, European plaice, European flounder, shorthorn sculpin and turbot, and examples of freshwater species include European perch, northern pike, whitefish and common roach. Freshwater species may occur at outflows of rivers or streams in all coastal sections of the Baltic Sea. Otherwise, marine species dominate in most sections of the Baltic, at least as far north as Gävle, where less than one-tenth are freshwater species. Further north the pattern is inverted. In the Bothnian Bay, roughly two-thirds of the species are freshwater. In the far north of this bay, saltwater species are almost entirely absent. For example, the common starfish and shore crab, two species that are very widespread along European coasts, are both unable to cope with the significantly lower salinity. Their range limit is west of Bornholm, meaning that they are absent from the vast majority of the Baltic Sea. Some marine species, like the Atlantic cod and European flounder, can survive at relatively low salinities but need higher salinities to breed, which therefore occurs in deeper parts of the Baltic Sea. The common blue mussel is the dominating animal species, and makes up more than 90% of the total animal biomass in the sea.
There is a decrease in species richness from the Danish belts to the Gulf of Bothnia. The decreasing salinity along this path causes restrictions in both physiology and habitats. At more than 600 species of invertebrates, fish, aquatic mammals, aquatic birds and macrophytes, the Arkona Basin (roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm) is far richer than other more eastern and northern basins in the Baltic Sea, which all have less than 400 species from these groups, with the exception of the Gulf of Finland with more than 750 species. However, even the most diverse sections of the Baltic Sea have far fewer species than the almost-full saltwater Kattegat, which is home to more than 1600 species from these groups. The lack of tides has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.
Since the Baltic Sea is so young there are only two or three known endemic species: the brown alga Fucus radicans and the flounder Platichthys solemdali. Both appear to have evolved in the Baltic basin and were only recognized as species in 2005 and 2018 respectively, having formerly been confused with more widespread relatives. The tiny Copenhagen cockle (Parvicardium hauniense), a rare mussel, is sometimes considered endemic, but has now been recorded in the Mediterranean. However, some consider non-Baltic records to be misidentifications of juvenile lagoon cockles (Cerastoderma glaucum). Several widespread marine species have distinctive subpopulations in the Baltic Sea adapted to the low salinity, such as the Baltic Sea forms of the Atlantic herring and lumpsucker, which are smaller than the widespread forms in the North Atlantic.
A peculiar feature of the fauna is that it contains a number of glacial relict species, isolated populations of arctic species which have remained in the Baltic Sea since the last glaciation, such as the large isopod Saduria entomon, the Baltic subspecies of ringed seal, and the fourhorn sculpin. Some of these relicts are derived from glacial lakes, such as Monoporeia affinis, which is a main element in the benthic fauna of the low-salinity Bothnian Bay.
Cetaceans in the Baltic Sea are monitored by the countries bordering the sea and data compiled by various intergovernmental bodies, such as ASCOBANS. A critically endangered population of harbor porpoise inhabit the Baltic proper, whereas the species is abundant in the outer Baltic (Western Baltic and Danish Straits) and occasionally oceanic and out-of-range species such as minke whales, bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, orcas, and beaked whales visit the waters. In recent years, very small, but with increasing rates, fin whalesJansson N.. 2007. "Vi såg valen i viken" . Aftonbladet.
Retrieved on 7 September 2017 and humpback whales migrate into Baltic sea including mother and calf pair. Now extinct Atlantic grey whales (remains found from Gräsö along Bothnian Sea/southern Bothnian Gulf and Ystad) and eastern population of North Atlantic right whales that is facing functional extinction once migrated into Baltic Sea.
Other notable megafauna include the basking sharks.
Environmental status
Satellite images taken in July 2010 revealed a massive algal bloom covering in the Baltic Sea. The area of the bloom extended from Germany and Poland to Finland. Researchers of the phenomenon have indicated that algal blooms have occurred every summer for decades. Fertilizer runoff from surrounding agricultural land has exacerbated the problem and led to increased eutrophication.
Approximately of the Baltic's seafloor (a quarter of its total area) is a variable dead zone. The more saline (and therefore denser) water remains on the bottom, isolating it from surface waters and the atmosphere. This leads to decreased oxygen concentrations within the zone. It is mainly bacteria that grow in it, digesting organic material and releasing hydrogen sulfide. Because of this large anaerobic zone, the seafloor ecology differs from that of the neighboring Atlantic.
Plans to artificially oxygenate areas of the Baltic that have experienced eutrophication have been proposed by the University of Gothenburg and Inocean AB. The proposal intends to use wind-driven pumps to inject oxygen (air) into waters at, or around, 130m below sea level.
After World War II, Germany had to be disarmed and large quantities of ammunition stockpiles were disposed directly into the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Environmental experts and marine biologists warn that these ammunition dumps pose a major environmental threat with potentially life-threatening consequences to the health and safety of humans on the coastlines of these seas.
Economy
Construction of the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark (completed 1997) and the Øresund Bridge-Tunnel (completed 1999), linking Denmark with Sweden, provided a highway and railroad connection between Sweden and the Danish mainland (the Jutland Peninsula, precisely the Zealand). The undersea tunnel of the Øresund Bridge-Tunnel provides for navigation of large ships into and out of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is the main trade route for the export of Russian petroleum. Many of the countries neighboring the Baltic Sea have been concerned about this since a major oil leak in a seagoing tanker would be disastrous for the Baltic—given the slow exchange of water. The tourism industry surrounding the Baltic Sea is naturally concerned about oil pollution.
Much shipbuilding is carried out in the shipyards around the Baltic Sea. The largest shipyards are at Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, Poland; Kiel, Germany; Karlskrona and Malmö, Sweden; Rauma, Turku, and Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Ventspils, and Liepāja, Latvia; Klaipėda, Lithuania; and Saint Petersburg, Russia.
There are several cargo and passenger ferries that operate on the Baltic Sea, such as Scandlines, Silja Line, Polferries, the Viking Line, Tallink, and Superfast Ferries.
Construction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Denmark and Germany is due to finish in 2029. It will be a three-bore tunnel carrying four motorway lanes and two rail tracks.
Through the development of offshore wind power the Baltic Sea is expected to become a major source of energy for countries in the region. According to the Marienborg Declaration, signed in 2022, all EU Baltic Sea states have announced their intentions to have 19.6 gigawatts of offshore wind in operation by 2030.
TourismPiers Ahlbeck (Usedom), Germany
Bansin, Germany
Binz, Germany
Heiligendamm, Germany
Kühlungsborn, Germany
Sellin, Germany
Liepāja, Latvia
Šventoji, Lithuania
Klaipėda, Lithuania
Gdańsk, Poland
Gdynia, Poland
Kołobrzeg, Poland
Misdroy, Poland
Sopot, PolandResort towns' Haapsalu, Estonia
Kuressaare, Estonia
Narva-Jõesuu, Estonia
Pärnu, Estonia
Hanko, Finland
Mariehamn, Finland
Binz, Germany
Heiligendamm, Germany
Heringsdorf, Germany
Travemünde, Germany
Sellin, Germany
Ueckermünde, Germany
Jūrmala, Latvia
Nida, Lithuania
Palanga, Lithuania
Šventoji, Lithuania
Juodkrantė, Lithuania
Pervalka, Lithuania
Karklė, Lithuania
Kamień Pomorski, Poland
Kołobrzeg, Poland
Sopot, Poland
Świnoujście, Poland
Ustka, Poland
Svetlogorsk, Russia
The Helsinki Convention
1974 Convention
For the first time ever, all the sources of pollution around an entire sea were made subject to a single convention, signed in 1974 by the then seven Baltic coastal states. The 1974 Convention entered into force on 3 May 1980.
1992 Convention
In the light of political changes and developments in international environmental and maritime law, a new convention was signed in 1992 by all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea, and the European Community. After ratification, the Convention entered into force on 17 January 2000. The Convention covers the whole of the Baltic Sea area, including inland waters and the water of the sea itself, as well as the seabed. Measures are also taken in the whole catchment area of the Baltic Sea to reduce land-based pollution. The convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1992, entered into force on 17 January 2000.
The governing body of the convention is the Helsinki Commission, also known as HELCOM, or Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission. The present contracting parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.
The ratification instruments were deposited by the European Community, Germany, Latvia and Sweden in 1994, by Estonia and Finland in 1995, by Denmark in 1996, by Lithuania in 1997, and by Poland and Russia in November 1999.
See also
Baltic (disambiguation)
Baltic region
Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG)
Council of the Baltic Sea States
List of cities and towns around the Baltic Sea
List of rivers of the Baltic Sea
Nord Stream 1
Nord Stream 2
Northern Europe
Ports of the Baltic Sea
Scandinavia
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Norbert Götz. "Spatial Politics and Fuzzy Regionalism: The Case of the Baltic Sea Area." Baltic Worlds 9 (2016) 3: 54–67.
Aarno Voipio (ed., 1981): "The Baltic Sea." Elsevier Oceanography Series, vol. 30, Elsevier Scientific Publishing, 418 p,
Historical
Bogucka, Maria. "The Role of Baltic Trade in European Development from the XVIth to the XVIIIth Centuries". Journal of European Economic History 9 (1980): 5–20.
Davey, James. The Transformation of British Naval Strategy: Seapower and Supply in Northern Europe, 1808–1812 (Boydell, 2012).
Fedorowicz, Jan K. England's Baltic Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Study in Anglo-Polish Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge UP, 2008).
Frost, Robert I. The Northern Wars: War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (Longman, 2000).
Grainger, John D. The British Navy in the Baltic (Boydell, 2014).
Kent, Heinz S. K. War and Trade in Northern Seas: Anglo-Scandinavian Economic Relations in the Mid Eighteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 1973).
Koningsbrugge, Hans van. "In War and Peace: The Dutch and the Baltic in Early Modern Times". Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 16 (1995): 189–200.
Lindblad, Jan Thomas. "Structural Change in the Dutch Trade in the Baltic in the Eighteenth Century". Scandinavian Economic History Review 33 (1985): 193–207.
Lisk, Jill. The Struggle for Supremacy in the Baltic, 1600–1725 (U of London Press, 1967).
Roberts, Michael. The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611 (Cambridge UP, 1968).
Rystad, Göran, Klaus-R. Böhme, and Wilhelm M. Carlgren, eds. In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500–1990. Vol. 1, 1500–1890. Stockholm: Probus, 1994.
Salmon, Patrick, and Tony Barrow, eds. Britain and the Baltic: Studies in Commercial, Political and Cultural Relations (Sunderland University Press, 2003).
Stiles, Andrina. Sweden and the Baltic 1523–1721 (1992).
Thomson, Erik. "Beyond the Military State: Sweden's Great Power Period in Recent Historiography". History Compass'' 9 (2011): 269–283.
Tielhof, Milja van. The "Mother of All Trades": The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th to Early 19th Century. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
Warner, Richard. "British Merchants and Russian Men-of-War: The Rise of the Russian Baltic Fleet". In Peter the Great and the West: New Perspectives. Edited by Lindsey Hughes, 105–117. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
External links
The Baltic Sea, Kattegat and Skagerrak – sea areas and draining basins, poster with integral information by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
Baltic Sea clickable map and details.
Protect the Baltic Sea while it's still not too late.
The Baltic Sea Portal – a site maintained by the (FIMR) (in English, Finnish, Swedish and Estonian)
www.balticnest.org
Encyclopedia of Baltic History
Old shipwrecks in the Baltic
How the Baltic Sea was changing – Prehistory of the Baltic from the Polish Geological Institute
Late Weichselian and Holocene shore displacement history of the Baltic Sea in Finland – more prehistory of the Baltic from the Department of Geography of the University of Helsinki
Baltic Environmental Atlas: Interactive map of the Baltic Sea region
Can a New Cleanup Plan Save the Sea? – spiegel.de
List of all ferry lines in the Baltic Sea
The Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) HELCOM is the governing body of the "Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area"
Baltice.org – information related to winter navigation in the Baltic Sea.
Baltic Sea Wind – Marine weather forecasts
Ostseeflug – A short film (55'), showing the coastline and the major German cities at the Baltic sea.
Baltic region
Seas of the Atlantic Ocean
European seas
Geography of Europe
Geography of Scandinavia
Seas of Germany
Federal waterways in Germany
Seas of Russia
Seas of Denmark
Bodies of water of Estonia
Bodies of water of Finland
Bodies of water of Lithuania
Bodies of water of Poland
Bodies of water of Sweden
Bodies of water of Kaliningrad Oblast
Bodies of water of Leningrad Oblast
Bodies of water of Saint Petersburg
Ecoregions of Denmark
Ecoregions of Estonia
Ecoregions of Finland
Ecoregions of Germany
Ecoregions of Latvia
Ecoregions of Lithuania
Ecoregions of Poland
Ecoregions of Russia
Ecoregions of Sweden
Landforms of the Øresund Region
Articles containing video clips
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The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx has a land area of and a population of 1,472,654 in the 2020 census. If each borough were ranked as a city, the Bronx would rank as the ninth-most-populous in the U.S. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density. It is the only borough of New York City not primarily on an island. With a population that is 54.8% Hispanic as of 2020, it is the only majority-Hispanic county in the Northeastern United States and the fourth-most-populous nationwide.
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914. About a quarter of the Bronx's area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center. The Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden is thousands of years old; it is New York City's largest remaining tract of the original forest that once covered the city. These open spaces are primarily on land reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan.
The word "Bronx" originated with Swedish-born (or Faroese-born) Jonas Bronck, who established the first European settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639. European settlers displaced the native Lenape after 1643. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from European countries particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe, and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Haiti, Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic), and immigrants from West Africa (particularly from Ghana and Nigeria), African American migrants from the Southern United States, Panamanians, Hondurans, and South Asians.
The Bronx contains the poorest congressional district in the United States, New York's 15th. There are, however, some upper-income, as well as middle-income neighborhoods such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club. Parts of the Bronx saw a steep decline in population, livable housing, and quality of life starting from the mid-to-late 1960s, continuing throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, ultimately culminating in a wave of arson in the late 1970s, a period when hip hop music evolved. The South Bronx, in particular, experienced severe urban decay. The borough began experiencing new population growth starting in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day.
Etymology and naming
Early names
The Bronx was called by the native Siwanoy band of Lenape (also known historically as the Delawares), while other Native Americans knew the Bronx as Keskeskeck. It was divided by the Aquahung River (now known in English as the Bronx River).
The Bronx was named after Jonas Bronck (), a European settler whose precise origins are disputed. Documents indicate he was a Swedish-born immigrant from Komstad, Norra Ljunga parish, in Småland, Sweden, who arrived in New Netherland during the spring of 1639. Bronck became the first recorded European settler in the present-day Bronx and built a farm named "Emmaus" close to what today is the corner of Willis Avenue and 132nd Street in Mott Haven. He leased land from the Dutch West India Company on the neck of the mainland immediately north of the Dutch settlement of New Haarlem (on Manhattan Island), and bought additional tracts from the local tribes. He eventually accumulated between the Harlem River and the Aquahung, which became known as Bronck's River or the Bronx [River]. Dutch and English settlers referred to the area as Bronck's Land. The American poet William Bronk was a descendant of Pieter Bronck, either Jonas Bronck's son or his younger brother, but most probably a nephew or cousin, as there was an age difference of 16 years. Much work on the Swedish claim has been undertaken by Brian G. Andersson, former Commissioner of New York City's Department of Records, who helped organize a 375th Anniversary celebration in Bronck's hometown in 2014.
Use of definite article
The Bronx is referred to with the definite article as "the Bronx" or "The Bronx", both legally and colloquially. The "County of the Bronx" also takes "the" immediately before "Bronx" in formal references, like the coextensive "Borough of the Bronx". The United States Postal Service uses "Bronx, NY" for mailing addresses. The region was apparently named after the Bronx River and first appeared in the "Annexed District of The Bronx", created in 1874 out of part of Westchester County. It was continued in the "Borough of The Bronx", created in 1898, which included a larger annexation from Westchester County in 1895. The use of the definite article is attributed to the style of referring to rivers. A time-worn story purportedly explaining the use of the definite article in the borough's name says it stems from the phrase "visiting the Broncks", referring to the settler's family.
The capitalization of the borough's name is sometimes disputed. Generally, the definite article is lowercase in place names ("the Bronx") except in some official references. The definite article is capitalized ("The Bronx") at the beginning of a sentence or in any other situation when a normally lowercase word would be capitalized. However, some people and groups refer to the borough with a capital letter at all times, such as Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx County Historical Society, and the Bronx-based organization Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx, arguing the definite article is part of the proper name. In particular, the Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx is leading efforts to make the city refer to the borough with an uppercase definite article in all uses, comparing the lowercase article in the Bronx's name to "not capitalizing the 's' in 'Staten Island.
History
European colonization of the Bronx began in 1639. The Bronx was originally part of Westchester County, but it was ceded to New York County in two major parts (West Bronx, 1874 and East Bronx, 1895) before it became Bronx County. Originally, the area was part of the Lenape's Lenapehoking territory inhabited by Siwanoy of the Wappinger Confederacy. Over time, European colonists converted the borough into farmlands.
Before 1914
The Bronx's development is directly connected to its strategic location between New England and New York (Manhattan). Control over the bridges across the Harlem River plagued the period of British colonial rule. The King's Bridge, built in 1693 where Broadway reached the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was a possession of Frederick Philipse, lord of Philipse Manor. Local farmers on both sides of the creek resented the tolls, and in 1759, Jacobus Dyckman and Benjamin Palmer led them in building a free bridge across the Harlem River. After the American Revolutionary War, the King's Bridge toll was abolished.
The territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, one of the 12 original counties of the English Province of New York. The present Bronx County was contained in the town of Westchester and parts of the towns in Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham. In 1846, a new town was created by division of Westchester, called West Farms. The town of Morrisania was created, in turn, from West Farms in 1855. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge was established within the former borders of the town of Yonkers, roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, and Woodlawn Heights, and included Woodlawn Cemetery.
Among famous settlers in the Bronx during the 19th and early 20th centuries were author Willa Cather, tobacco merchant Pierre Lorillard, and inventor Jordan L. Mott, who established Mott Haven to house the workers at his iron works.
The consolidation of the Bronx into New York City proceeded in two stages. In 1873, the state legislature annexed Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania to New York, effective in 1874; the three towns were soon abolished in the process.
The whole territory east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895, three years before New York's consolidation with Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. This included the Town of Westchester (which had voted against consolidation in 1894) and parts of Eastchester and Pelham. The nautical community of City Island voted to join the city in 1896.
Following these two annexations, the Bronx's territory had moved from Westchester County into New York County, which already included Manhattan and the rest of pre-1874 New York City.
On January 1, 1898, the consolidated City of New York was born, including the Bronx as one of the five distinct boroughs. However, it remained part of New York County until Bronx County was created in 1914.
On April 19, 1912, those parts of New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in previous decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, the 62nd and last county to be created by the state, effective in 1914. Bronx County's courts opened for business on January 2, 1914 (the same day that John P. Mitchel started work as Mayor of New York City). Marble Hill, Manhattan, was now connected to the Bronx by filling in the former waterway, but it did not become part of the borough or county.
After 1914
The history of the Bronx during the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom period during 1900–1929, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and post World War II years saw a slowing of growth leading into an eventual decline. The mid to late century were hard times, as the Bronx changed during 1950–1985 from a predominantly moderate-income to a predominantly lower-income area with high rates of violent crime and poverty in some areas. The Bronx has experienced an economic and developmental resurgence starting in the late 1980s that continues into today.
New York City expands
The Bronx was a mostly rural area for many generations, with small farms supplying the city markets. In the late 19th century, however, it grew into a railroad suburb. Faster transportation enabled rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways and the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904.
The South Bronx was a manufacturing center for many years and was noted as a center of piano manufacturing in the early part of the 20th century. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.
At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.
The Bronx underwent rapid urban growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants came to the Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, Polish, and other immigrants moved into the borough. As evidence of the change in population, by 1937, 592,185 Jews lived in the Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population), while only 54,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2011. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.
Change
Bootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx during Prohibition (1920–1933). Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey, and the oldest sections of the borough became poverty-stricken. Police Commissioner Richard Enright said that speakeasies provided a place for "the vicious elements, bootleggers, gamblers and their friends in all walks of life" to cooperate and to "evade the law, escape punishment for their crimes, [and] to deter the police from doing their duty".
Between 1930 and 1960, moderate and upper income Bronxites (predominantly non-Hispanic Whites) began to relocate from the borough's southwestern neighborhoods. This migration has left a mostly poor African American and Hispanic (largely Puerto Rican) population in the West Bronx. One significant factor that shifted the racial and economic demographics was the construction of Co-op City, built to house middle-class residents in family-sized apartments. The high-rise complex played a significant role in draining middle-class residents from older tenement buildings in the borough's southern and western fringes. Most predominantly non-Hispanic White communities today are in the eastern and northwestern sections of the borough.
From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the quality of life changed for some Bronx residents. Historians and social scientists have suggested many factors, including the theory that Robert Moses' Cross Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods and created instant slums, as put forward in Robert Caro's biography The Power Broker. Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects, particularly in the South Bronx. Yet another factor may have been a reduction in the real estate listings and property-related financial services offered in some areas of the Bronx, such as mortgage loans or insurance policies—a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting. There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.
In the 1970s, parts of the Bronx were plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was predominantly in the poorest communities, such as the South Bronx. One explanation of this event was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money, as it was easier for them to get insurance money than to try to refurbish a dilapidated building or sell a building in a severely distressed area. The Bronx became identified with a high rate of poverty and unemployment, which was mainly a persistent problem in the South Bronx. There were cases where tenants set fire to the building they lived in so they could qualify for emergency relocations by city social service agencies to better residences, sometimes being relocated to other parts of the city.
Out of 289 census tracts in the Bronx borough, 7 tracts lost more than 97% of their buildings to arson and abandonment between 1970 and 1980; another 44 tracts had more than 50% of their buildings meet the same fate. By the early 1980s, the Bronx was considered the most blighted urban area in the country, particularly the South Bronx which experienced a loss of 60% of the population and 40% of housing units. However, starting in the 1990s, many of the burned-out and run-down tenements were replaced by new housing units.
Revitalization
Since the late 1980s, significant development has occurred in the Bronx, first stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan" and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx. The IRT White Plains Road Line () began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.
In 1997, the Bronx was designated an All America City by the National Civic League, acknowledging its comeback from the decline of the mid-century. In 2006, The New York Times reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.
In addition there came a revitalization of the existing housing market in areas such as Hunts Point, the Lower Concourse, and the neighborhoods surrounding the Third Avenue Bridge as people buy apartments and renovate them. Several boutique and chain hotels opened in the 2010s in the South Bronx.
New developments are underway. The Bronx General Post Office on the corner of the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street is being converted into a market place, boutiques, restaurants and office space with a USPS concession. The Kingsbridge Armory, often cited as the largest armory in the world, is currently slated for redevelopment.
Under consideration for future development is the construction of a platform over the New York City Subway's Concourse Yard adjacent to Lehman College. The construction would permit approximately of development and would cost .
Despite significant investment compared to the post war period, many exacerbated social problems remain including high rates of violent crime, substance abuse, overcrowding, and substandard housing conditions. The Bronx has the highest rate of poverty in New York City, and the greater South Bronx is the poorest area.
Geography
Location and physical features
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Bronx County has a total area of , of which is land and (27%) is water.
The Bronx is New York City's northernmost borough, New York State's southernmost mainland county and the only part of New York City that is almost entirely on the North American mainland. The bedrock of the West Bronx is primarily Fordham gneiss, a high-grade heavily banded metamorphic rock containing significant amounts of pink feldspar. Marble Hill – politically part of Manhattan but now physically attached to the Bronx – is so-called because of the formation of Inwood marble there as well as in Inwood, Manhattan and parts of the Bronx and Westchester County.
The Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle. There is also a short southern land boundary with Marble Hill in the Borough of Manhattan, over the filled-in former course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek; Marble Hill's postal ZIP code, telephonic area codes and fire service, however, are shared with the Bronx and not Manhattan.
The Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City. It separates the West Bronx from the schist of the East Bronx. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.
The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire city, is also part of the Bronx.
The Bronx's highest elevation at is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School. The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once salt marsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throggs Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island. The Bronx's irregular shoreline extends for .
Parks and open space
Although Bronx County was the third most densely populated county in the United States as of 2006 (after Manhattan and Brooklyn), of the Bronx—about one fifth of the Bronx's area, and one quarter of its land area—is given over to parkland. The vision of a system of major Bronx parks connected by park-like thoroughfares is usually attributed to John Mullaly.
Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, in what was then the town of Yonkers, at the time a rural area.
The borough's northern side includes the largest park in New York City—Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach—and the third-largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers. Also in the northern Bronx, Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins—known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts—overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale. Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park; its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the county, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the United States. In 1904 the Chestnut Blight pathogen (Cryphonectria parasitica) was found for the first time outside of Asia, here, at the Bronx Zoo. Over the next 40 years it spread throughout eastern North America and killed back essentially every American Chestnut (Castanea dentata), causing ecological and economic devastation.
Just south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood; the reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack. Further south is Crotona Park, home to a lake, 28 species of trees, and a large swimming pool. The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.
Some of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.
In 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.
Adjacent counties
The Bronx adjoins:
Westchester County – north
Nassau County, New York – southeast (across the East River)
Queens County, New York (Queens) – south (across the East River)
New York County, New York (Manhattan) – southwest
Bergen County, New Jersey – west (across the Hudson River)
Divisions of the Bronx
Regional divisions
There are two primary systems for dividing the Bronx into regions, which do not necessarily agree with one another. One system is based on the Bronx River, while the other strictly separates South Bronx from the rest of the borough.
The Bronx River divides the borough nearly in half, putting the earlier-settled, more urban, and hillier sections in the western lobe and the newer, more suburban coastal sections in the eastern lobe. It is an accurate reflection on the Bronx's history considering that the towns that existed in the area prior to annexation to the City of New York generally did not straddle the Bronx River. In addition, what is today the Bronx was annexed to New York City in two stages: areas west of the Bronx River were annexed in 1874 while areas to the east of the river were annexed in 1895.
West Bronx: all parts of the Bronx west of the Bronx River (as opposed to Jerome Avenue – this street is simply the "east-west" divider for designating numbered streets as "east" or "west." As the Bronx's numbered streets continue from Manhattan to south, on which the street numbering system is based, Jerome Avenue actually represents a longitudinal halfway point for Manhattan, not the Bronx.)
East Bronx: all parts of the Bronx east of the Bronx River (as opposed to Jerome Avenue)
Under this system, the Bronx can be further divided into the following regions:
Northwest Bronx: the northern half of the West Bronx; the area north of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River
Southwest Bronx: the southern half of the West Bronx; the area south of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River
Northeast Bronx: the northern half of the East Bronx; the area north of Pelham Parkway and east of the Bronx River
Southeast Bronx: the southern half of the East Bronx; the area south of Pelham Parkway and east of the Bronx River
A second system divides the borough first and foremost into the following sections:
North Bronx: all areas not in the South Bronx (Southwest Bronx) – i.e. the Northwest Bronx, Northeast Bronx, and Southeast Bronx
South Bronx: the Southwest Bronx – south of Fordham Road and west of the Bronx River. This includes the areas traditionally considered part of the South Bronx.
Neighborhoods
The number, locations, and boundaries of the Bronx's neighborhoods (many of them sitting on the sites of 19th-century villages) have become unclear with time and successive waves of newcomers. Even city officials do not necessarily agree. In a 2006 article for The New York Times, Manny Fernandez described the disagreement:
According to a Department of City Planning map of the city's neighborhoods, the Bronx has 49. The map publisher Hagstrom identifies 69. The borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., says 61. The Mayor's Community Assistance Unit, in a listing of the borough's community boards, names 68.
Major neighborhoods of the Bronx include the following.
East Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 9 [south central], 10 [east], 11 [east central] and 12 [north central])
East of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.
Neighborhoods include: Clason's Point, Harding Park, Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester (Community District 9); Throggs Neck, Country Club, City Island, Pelham Bay, Edgewater Park, Co-op City (Community District 10); Westchester Square, Van Nest, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park (Community District 11); Williamsbridge, Eastchester, Baychester, Edenwald and Wakefield (Community District 12).
City Island and Hart Island
(Bronx Community District 10)
City Island is east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound and is known for its seafood restaurants and private waterfront homes. City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge.
East of City Island is Hart Island, which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's potter's field for unclaimed bodies.
West Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 1 to 8, progressing roughly from south to northwest)
The western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston. It includes New York City's third-largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.
Northwestern Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 7 [between the Bronx and Harlem Rivers] and 8 [facing the Hudson River] – plus part of Board 12)
Neighborhoods include: Fordham-Bedford, Bedford Park, Norwood, Kingsbridge Heights (Community District 7), Kingsbridge, Riverdale (Community District 8), and Woodlawn Heights (Community District 12).
(Marble Hill, Manhattan is now connected by land to the Bronx rather than Manhattan and is served by Bronx Community District 8.)
South Bronx
(Bronx Community Districts 1 to 6 plus part of CD 7—progressing northwards, CDs 2, 3 and 6 border the Bronx River from its mouth to Bronx Park, while 1, 4, 5 and 7 face Manhattan across the Harlem River)
Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and is applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s, Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.
Neighborhoods include: The Hub (a retail district at Third Avenue and East 149th Street), Port Morris, Mott Haven (Community District 1), Melrose (Community District 1 & Community District 3), Morrisania, East Morrisania [also known as Crotona Park East] (Community District 3), Hunts Point, Longwood (Community District 2), Highbridge, Concourse (Community District 4), West Farms, Belmont, East Tremont (Community District 6), Tremont, Morris Heights (Community District 5), University Heights. (Community District 5 & Community District 7).
Demographics
Race, ethnicity, language, and immigration
2018 estimates
The borough's most populous racial group, white, declined from 99.3% in 1920 to 14.9% in 2018.
The Bronx has 532,487 housing units, with a median value of $371,800, and with an owner-occupancy rate of 19.7%, the lowest of the five boroughs. There are 495,356 households, with 2.85 persons per household. 59.3% of residents speak a language besides English at home, the highest rate of the five boroughs.
In the Bronx, the population is 7.2% under 5, 17.6% 6–18, 62.4% 19–64, and 12.8% over 65. 52.9% of the population is female. 35.3% of residents are foreign born.
The per capita income is $19,721, while the median household income is $36,593, both being the lowest of the five boroughs. 27.9% of residents live below the poverty line, the highest of the five boroughs.
2010 census
According to the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race); 30.1% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 10.9% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 3.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 1.2% of two or more races (non-Hispanic), and 0.6% from some other race (non-Hispanic).
As of 2010, 46.29% (584,463) of Bronx residents aged five and older spoke Spanish at home, while 44.02% (555,767) spoke English, 2.48% (31,361) African languages, 0.91% (11,455) French, 0.90% (11,355) Italian, 0.87% (10,946) various Indic languages, 0.70% (8,836) other Indo-European languages, and Chinese was spoken at home by 0.50% (6,610) of the population over the age of five. In total, 55.98% (706,783) of the Bronx's population age five and older spoke a language at home other than English. A Garifuna-speaking community from Honduras and Guatemala also makes the Bronx its home.
2009 community survey
According to the 2009 American Community Survey, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-fifth (22.9%) of the Bronx's population. However, non-Hispanic whites formed under one-eighth (12.1%) of the population, down from 34.4% in 1980. Out of all five boroughs, the Bronx has the lowest number and percentage of white residents. 320,640 whites called the Bronx home, of which 168,570 were non-Hispanic whites. The majority of the non-Hispanic European American population is of Italian and Irish descent. People of Italian descent numbered over 55,000 individuals and made up 3.9% of the population. People of Irish descent numbered over 43,500 individuals and made up 3.1% of the population. German Americans and Polish Americans made up 1.4% and 0.8% of the population respectively. The Bronx has the largest Albanian community in the United States.
The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a Hispanic majority, many of whom are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
At the 2009 American Community Survey, Black Americans made the second largest group in the Bronx after Hispanics and Latinos. Black people of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-third (35.4%) of the Bronx's population. Black people of non-Hispanic origin made up 30.8% of the population. Over 495,200 Black people resided in the borough, of which 430,600 were non-Hispanic Black people. Over 61,000 people identified themselves as "Sub-Saharan African" in the survey, making up 4.4% of the population.
Multiracial Americans are also a sizable minority in the Bronx. People of multiracial heritage number over 41,800 individuals and represent 3.0% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and African American heritage number over 6,850 members and form 0.5% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Native American heritage number over 2,450 members and form 0.2% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage number over 880 members and form 0.1% of the population. People of mixed African American and Native American heritage number over 1,220 members and form 0.1% of the population.
Older estimates
The Census of 1930 counted only 1.0% (12,930) of the Bronx's population as Negro (while making no distinct counts of Hispanic or Spanish-surname residents).
Population and housing
As of the 2010 Census, there were 1,385,108 people living in the Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000.
As of the United States Census of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was . There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of . Census estimates place total population of Bronx county at 1,392,002 as of 2012.
There were 463,212 households, out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.
The age distribution of the population in the Bronx were as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.0 males.
Individual and household income
The 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median family income was $30,682. Men had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for women. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over. More than half of the neighborhoods in the Bronx are high poverty or extreme poverty areas.
From 2015 Census data, the median income for a household was (in 2015 dollars) $34,299. Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2015 dollars): $18,456 with persons in poverty at 30.3%. Per the 2016 Census data, the median income for a household was $35,302. Per capita income was cited at $18,896.
Culture and institutions
The Bronx's recognition as an important center of African-American culture has led Fordham University to establish the Bronx African-American History Project (BAAHP).
Music
The Bronx has had a long association with music. In the early 19th century, it was a center for the evolution of Latin jazz. The Bronx Opera was founded in the 1960s.
In the 1970s, The Bronx was strongly associated with the development of hip hop music. One of the genre's pioneers, DJ Kool Herc, held parties in the community room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where he experimented with turntablist techniques such as mixing and scratching of funk records, as well as rapping during extended instrumentals. Other significant Bronx DJs from this period include Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa.
Sports
The Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees, nicknamed "the Bronx Bombers", of Major League Baseball. The original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 on 161st Street and River Avenue, a year that saw the Yankees bring home the first of their 27 World Series Championships. With the famous façade, the short right field porch and Monument Park, Yankee Stadium has been home to many of baseball's greatest players including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.
The original stadium was the scene of Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech in 1939, Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Roger Maris' record breaking 61st home run in 1961, and Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs to clinch Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. The Stadium was the former home of the New York Giants of the National Football League from 1956 to 1973. It would be renovated during the Yankees' 1974 and 1975 seasons, while they played at Shea Stadium in Queens, then the home stadium of the New York Mets; the refurbished Yankee Stadium opened in 1976, and saw its first three seasons end in World Series appearances (a loss in 1976, and wins in 1977 and 1978).
The original Yankee Stadium closed in 2008 to make way for a new Yankee Stadium in which the team started play in 2009. It is north-northeast of the 1923 Yankee Stadium, on the former site of Macombs Dam Park. The current Yankee Stadium is also the home of New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who began play in 2015.
The Yankees won 26 World Series titles while playing at the first Yankee Stadium; they added a 27th at the end of their first season in their current home.
Off-Off-Broadway
The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Some artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge on the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002. However, rising prices directly correlate to a housing shortage across the city and the entire metro area.
Arts
The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, founded in 1998 by Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez, provides dance, theatre and art workshops, festivals and performances focusing on contemporary and modern art in relation to race, gender and sexuality. It is home to the Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre, a contemporary dance company, and the Bronx Dance Coalition. The academy was formerly in the American Bank Note Company Building before relocating to a venue on the grounds of St. Peter's Episcopal Church.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent an expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica that would double the museum's size to .
The Bronx has also become home to a peculiar poetic tribute in the form of the "Heinrich Heine Memorial", better known as the Lorelei Fountain. After Heine's German birthplace of Düsseldorf had rejected, allegedly for antisemitic motives, a centennial monument to the radical German-Jewish poet (1797–1856), his incensed German-American admirers, including Carl Schurz, started a movement to place one instead in Midtown Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. However, this intention was thwarted by a combination of ethnic antagonism, aesthetic controversy and political struggles over the institutional control of public art. In 1899, the memorial by Ernst Gustav Herter was placed in Joyce Kilmer Park, near the Yankee Stadium. In 1999, it was moved to 161st Street and the Concourse.
Maritime heritage
The peninsular borough's maritime heritage is acknowledged in several ways. The City Island Historical Society and Nautical Museum occupies a former public school designed by the New York City school system's turn-of-the-last-century master architect C. B. J. Snyder. The state's Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (on the southeastern shore) houses the Maritime Industry Museum. In addition, the Harlem River is reemerging as "Scullers' Row" due in large part to the efforts of the Bronx River Restoration Project, a joint public-private endeavor of the city's parks department. Canoeing and kayaking on the borough's namesake river have been promoted by the Bronx River Alliance. The river is also straddled by the New York Botanical Gardens, its neighbor, the Bronx Zoo, and a little further south, on the west shore, Bronx River Art Center.
Community celebrations
"Bronx Week", traditionally held in May, began as a one-day celebration. Begun by Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan and supported by then borough president Robert Abrams, the original one-day program was based on the "Bronx Borough Day" festival which took place in the 1920s. The following year, at the height of the decade's civil unrest, the festival was extended to a one-week event. In the 1980s the key event, the "Bronx Ball", was launched. The week includes the Bronx Week Parade as well as inductions into the "Bronx Walk of Fame."
Various Bronx neighborhoods conduct their own community celebrations. The Arthur Avenue "Little Italy" neighborhood conducts an annual Autumn Ferragosto Festival that celebrates Italian culture. Hunts Point hosts an annual "Fish Parade and Summer Festival" at the start of summer. Edgewater Park hosts an annual "Ragamuffin" children's walk in November. There are several events to honor the borough's veterans. Albanian Independence Day is also observed.
There are also parades to celebrate Dominican, Italian, and Irish heritage.
Press and broadcasting
The Bronx is home to several local newspapers and radio and television studios.
Newspapers
The Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Bronx Daily, The Bronx News, Parkchester News, City News, The Norwood News, The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Review, The Bronx Times Reporter, Inner City Press (which now has more of a focus on national issues) and Co-op City Times. Four non-profit news outlets, Norwood News, Mount Hope Monitor, Mott Haven Herald and The Hunts Point Express serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of The Riverdale Press, Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)
The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, The Bronx Home News, which started publishing on January 20, 1907, and merged into the New York Post in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.
Radio and television
One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, a National Public Radio-affiliated 50,000-watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna was relocated to the top an apartment building owned by Montefiore Medical Center, which expanded the reach of the station's signal.
The City of New York has an official television station run by NYC Media and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12 The Bronx, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in the Bronx, and the first in New York beyond Manhattan, to have its own cable television provider. The local public-access television station BronxNet originates from Herbert H. Lehman College, the borough's only four year CUNY school, and provides government-access television (GATV) public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents.
Economy
Shopping malls and markets in the Bronx include:
Bay Plaza Shopping Center
Bronx Terminal Market
Hunts Point Cooperative Market
Shopping districts
Prominent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza in Co-op City, The Hub, the Riverdale/Kingsbridge shopping center, and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard, and Broadway. The Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.
The Bronx has three primary shopping centers: The Hub, Gateway Center and Southern Boulevard. The Hub–Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.), in The Hub, is the retail heart of the South Bronx, where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues. It is primarily inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven. The Hub has been called "the Broadway of the Bronx", being likened to the real Broadway in Manhattan and the northwestern Bronx. It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial "bow-tie" created by the geometry of the street. The Hub is part of Bronx Community Board 1.
The Bronx Terminal Market, in the West Bronx, formerly known as Gateway Center, is a shopping center that encompasses less than one million square feet of retail space, built on a site that formerly held a wholesale fruit and vegetable market also named Bronx Terminal Market as well as the former Bronx House of Detention, south of Yankee Stadium. The $500 million shopping center, which was completed in 2009, saw the construction of new buildings and two smaller buildings, one new and the other a renovation of an existing building that was part of the original market. The two main buildings are linked by a six-level garage for 2,600 cars. The center's design has earned it a LEED "Silver" designation.
Government and politics
Local government
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" mayor–council system has governed the Bronx. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in the Bronx.
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional on the grounds that Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.
Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations.
Until March 1, 2009, the Borough President of the Bronx was Adolfo Carrión Jr., elected as a Democrat in 2001 and 2005 before retiring early to direct the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy. His successor, Democratic New York State Assembly member Rubén Díaz, Jr. — after winning a special election on April 21, 2009, by a vote of 86.3% (29,420) on the "Bronx Unity" line to 13.3% (4,646) for the Republican district leader Anthony Ribustello on the "People First" line, — became Borough President on May 1, 2009. In 2021, Rubén Díaz's Democratic successor, Vanessa Gibson was elected (to begin serving in 2022) with 79.9% of the vote against 13.4% for Janell King (Republican) and 6.5% for Sammy Ravelo (Conservative).
All of the Bronx's currently elected public officials have first won the nomination of the Democratic Party (in addition to any other endorsements). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and annexation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.
Since its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Darcel D. Clark has been the Bronx County District Attorney since 2016. Her predecessor was Robert T. Johnson, the District Attorney from 1989 to 2015. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.
The Bronx also has twelve Community Boards, appointed bodies that advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions.
Politics
U.S. Presidential elections
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After becoming a separate county in 1914, the Bronx has supported only two Republican presidential candidates. It voted heavily for the winning Republican Warren G. Harding in 1920, but much more narrowly on a split vote for his victorious Republican successor Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (Coolidge 79,562; John W. Davis, Dem., 72,834; Robert La Follette, 62,202 equally divided between the Progressive and Socialist lines).
Since then, the Bronx has always supported the Democratic Party's nominee for president, starting with a vote of 2–1 for the unsuccessful Al Smith in 1928, followed by four 2–1 votes for the successful Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Both had been Governors of New York, but Republican former Gov. Thomas E. Dewey won only 28% of the Bronx's vote in 1948 against 55% for Pres. Harry Truman, the winning Democrat, and 17% for Henry A. Wallace of the Progressives. It was only 32 years earlier, by contrast, that another Republican former Governor who narrowly lost the Presidency, Charles Evans Hughes, had won 42.6% of the Bronx's 1916 vote against Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's 49.8% and Socialist candidate Allan Benson's 7.3%.)
Elections for Mayor of New York
The Bronx has often shown striking differences from other boroughs in elections for Mayor. The only Republican to carry the Bronx since 1914 was Fiorello La Guardia in 1933, 1937, and 1941 (and in the latter two elections, only because his 30% to 32% vote on the American Labor Party line was added to 22% to 23% as a Republican). The Bronx was thus the only borough not carried by the successful Republican re-election campaigns of Mayors Rudy Giuliani in 1997 and Michael Bloomberg in 2005. The anti-war Socialist campaign of Morris Hillquit in the 1917 mayoral election won over 31% of the Bronx's vote, putting him second and well ahead of the 20% won by the incumbent pro-war Fusion Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who came in second (ahead of Hillquit) everywhere else and outpolled Hillquit citywide by 23.2% to 21.7%.
{| border="2" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" "border="2" cellpadding="3"; border-collapse:collapse; font-size:90%;"
| colspan="8" style="background:#d5d5d5;" |
|- style="text-align:center;"
| colspan="5" style="background:#ff7;" |President and Vice President of the United States|| colspan="3" style="background:#ffd588;" |Mayor of the City of New York
|- style="background:#ff7;"
! Year
! |Republican,Conservative &Independence
! style="background:#7cf;" |Democratic,Liberal &Working Families
! style="background:#e5e5e5;" | Won theBronx
! style="background:#f0f0f0;" |ElectedPresident
! style="text-align:center; background:#ffd588;" |Year
! style="text-align:center; background:#e5e5e5;" |Candidate carryingthe Bronx
! style="text-align:center; background:#f0f0f0;" |Elected Mayor
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2020
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |15.9% 67,740
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |83.4% 355,374
| style="background:#def;" |Joe Biden || style="background:#edffff;" |Joe Biden
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2021|| style="background:#def;" |Eric Adams,D|| style="background:#edffff;" |Eric Adams,D
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2016
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |9.5% 37,797
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |88.5% 353,646
| style="background:#def;" |Hillary Clinton || style="background:#fff3f3;" |Donald Trump
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2017|| style="background:#def;" |Bill de Blasio,D-Working Families || style="background:#edffff;" |Bill de Blasio,D-Working Families
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2012
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |8.1% 29,967
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |91.5% 339,211
| style="background:#def;" |Barack Obama || style="background:#edffff;" |Barack Obama
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2013|| style="background:#def;" |Bill de Blasio,D-Working Families || style="background:#edffff;" |Bill de Blasio,D-Working Families
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2008
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |10.9% 41,683
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |88.7% 338,261
| style="background:#def;" |Barack Obama || style="background:#edffff;" |Barack Obama
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2009|| style="background:#def;" |Bill Thompson,D-Working Families|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Michael Bloomberg,R–Indep'ce/Jobs & Educ'n
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2004
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |16.3% 56,701
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |81.8% 283,994
| style="background:#def;" |John Kerry || style="background:#fff3f3;" |George W. Bush
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2005|| style="background:#def;" |Fernando Ferrer, D || style="background:#fff3f3;" |Michael Bloomberg, R/Lib-Indep'ce
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |2000
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |11.8% 36,245
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |86.3% 265,801
| style="background:#def;" |Al Gore || style="background:#fff3f3;" |George W. Bush
| style="background:#ffd588;" |2001|| style="background:#def;" |Mark Green,D-Working Families|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Michael Bloomberg,R-Independence
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1996
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |10.5% 30,435
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |85.8% 248,276
| style="background:#def;" |Bill Clinton || style="background:#edffff;" |Bill Clinton
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1997|| style="background:#def;" |Ruth Messinger, D|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Rudy Giuliani, R-Liberal
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1992
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |20.7% 63,310
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |73.7% 225,038
| style="background:#def;" |Bill Clinton|| style="background:#edffff;" |Bill Clinton
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1993|| style="background:#def;" |David Dinkins, D || style="background:#fff3f3;" |Rudy Giuliani, R-Liberal
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1988
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |25.5% 76,043
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |73.2% 218,245
| style="background:#def;" |Michael Dukakis|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |George H. W. Bush
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1989|| style="background:#def;" |David Dinkins, D || style="background:#edffff;" |David Dinkins, D
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1984
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |32.8% 109,308
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |66.9% 223,112
| style="background:#def;" |Walter Mondale|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Ronald Reagan
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1985|| style="background:#def;" |Ed Koch, D-Indep.|| style="background:#edffff;" |Ed Koch, D-Independent
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1980
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |30.7% 86,843| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |64.0% 181,090
| style="background:#def;" |Jimmy Carter || style="background:#fff3f3;" |Ronald Reagan
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1981|| style="background:#def;" |Ed Koch, D-R || style="background:#edffff;" |Ed Koch, D-R
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1976
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |28.7% 96,842
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |70.8% 238,786
| style="background:#def;" |Jimmy Carter|| style="background:#edffff;" |Jimmy Carter
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1977|| style="background:#def;" |Ed Koch, D|| style="background:#edffff;" |Ed Koch, D
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1972
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |44.6% 196,756
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |55.2% 243,345
| style="background:#def;" |George McGovern|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Richard Nixon
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1973|| style="background:#def;" |Abraham Beame, D || style="background:#edffff;" |Abraham Beame, D
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1968
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |32.0% 142,314
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |62.4% 277,385
| style="background:#def;" |Hubert Humphrey|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Richard Nixon
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1969|| style="background:#def;" |Mario Procaccino,D-Nonpartisan-Civil Svce Ind. || style="background:#fefeea;" |John Lindsay, Liberal
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1964
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |25.2% 135,780
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |74.7% 403,014
| style="background:#def;" |Lyndon B. Johnson|| style="background:#edffff;" |Lyndon B. Johnson
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1965|| style="background:#def;" |Abraham Beame,D-Civil Service Fusion || style="background:#fff3f3;" |John Lindsay,R-Liberal-Independent Citizens
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1960
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" |31.8% 182,393
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" |67.9% 389,818
| style="background:#def;" |John F. Kennedy|| style="background:#edffff;" |John F. Kennedy
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1961|| style="background:#def;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr.,D-Liberal-Brotherhood || style="background:#edffff;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr.,D-Liberal-Brotherhood
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1956
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" | 42.8% 256,909
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" | 57.2% 343,656
| style="background:#def;" |Adlai Stevenson II|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Dwight D. Eisenhower
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1957|| style="background:#def;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr.,D-Liberal-Fusion|| style="background:#edffff;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr.,D-Liberal-Fusion
|-
| style="text-align:center; background:#ff7;" |1952
| style="text-align:center; background:#fff3f3;" | 37.3% 241,898
| style="text-align:center; background:#edffff;" | 60.6%''' 309,482| style="background:#def;" |Adlai Stevenson II|| style="background:#fff3f3;" |Dwight D. Eisenhower
| style="background:#ffd588;" | 1953|| style="background:#def;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr., D || style="background:#edffff;" |Robert F. Wagner Jr., D
|}
Republican and Democratic columns for presidential elections also include their candidates' votes on other lines, such as the New York State Right to Life Party and the Working Families Party.
For details of votes and parties in a particular election, click the year or see New York City mayoral elections.
Education
Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions, many of which draw students who live beyond the Bronx. The New York City Department of Education manages the borough's public noncharter schools. In 2000, public schools enrolled nearly 280,000 of the Bronx's residents over 3 years old (out of 333,100 enrolled in all pre-college schools). There are also several public charter schools. Private schools range from élite independent schools to religiously affiliated schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.
A small portion of land between Pelham and Pelham Bay Park, with 35 houses, is a part of the Bronx, but is cut off from the rest of the borough due to the county boundaries; the New York City government pays for the residents' children to go to Pelham Union Free School District schools, including Pelham Memorial High School, since that is more cost effective than sending school buses to take the students to New York City schools. This arrangement has been in place since 1948.
Educational attainment
In 2000, according to the United States Census, out of the nearly 800,000 people in the Bronx who were then at least 25 years old, 62.3% had graduated from high school and 14.6% held a bachelor's or higher college degree. These percentages were lower than those for New York's other boroughs, which ranged from 68.8% (Brooklyn) to 82.6% (Staten Island) for high school graduates over 24, and from 21.8% (Brooklyn) to 49.4% (Manhattan) for college graduates. (The respective state and national percentages were [NY] 79.1% & 27.4% and [US] 80.4% & 24.4%.)
High schools
In the 2000 Census, 79,240 of the nearly 95,000 Bronx residents enrolled in high school attended public schools.
Many public high schools are in the borough including the elite Bronx High School of Science, Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music, DeWitt Clinton High School, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2, Bronx International High School, the School for Excellence, the Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, Wings Academy for young adults, The Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, Validus Preparatory Academy, The Eagle Academy For Young Men, Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School, Bronx Academy of Letters, Herbert H. Lehman High School and High School of American Studies. The Bronx is also home to three of New York City's most prestigious private, secular schools: Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School.
High schools linked to the Catholic Church include: Saint Raymond's Academy for Girls, All Hallows High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Monsignor Scanlan High School, St. Raymond High School for Boys, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, The Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School, Preston High School, St. Catharine Academy, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and St. Barnabas High School.
The SAR Academy and SAR High School are Modern Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva coeducational day schools in Riverdale, with roots in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
In the 1990s, New York City began closing the large, public high schools in the Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Among the reasons cited for the changes were poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include John F. Kennedy, James Monroe, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Morris, Walton, and South Bronx High Schools.
Colleges and universities
In 2000, 49,442 (57.5%) of the 86,014 Bronx residents seeking college, graduate or professional degrees attended public institutions.
Several colleges and universities are in the Bronx.
Fordham University was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Diocese of New York as the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeast. It is now officially an independent institution, but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill, is the main campus of the university, and is among the largest within the city (other Fordham campuses are in Manhattan and Westchester County).
Three campuses of the City University of New York are in the Bronx: Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University) and Herbert H. Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College), which offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Its campus is also home to the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school.
Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale which offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. It also offers graduate programs in education and engineering.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of the Montefiore Medical Center, is in Morris Park.
The coeducational and non-sectarian Mercy College—with its main campus in Dobbs Ferry—has a Bronx campus near Westchester Square.
The State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)—at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx—is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum. (Directly across Long Island Sound is Kings Point, Long Island, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and the American Merchant Marine Museum.) As of 2017, graduates from the university earned an average annual salary of $144,000, the highest of any university graduates in the United States.
In addition, the private, proprietary Monroe College, focused on preparation for business and the professions, started in the Bronx in 1933 and now has a campus in New Rochelle (Westchester County) as well the Bronx's Fordham neighborhood.
Transportation
Roads and streets
Surface streets
The Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.
The East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a misalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.
Three major north–south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north–south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.
Most east–west streets are prefixed with either East or West, to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line).
The historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east–west in some places, and sometimes northeast–southwest.
Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths.
As of the 2000 Census, approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.
Highways
Several major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include:
the Bronx River Parkway
the Bruckner Expressway (I-278/I-95)
the Cross Bronx Expressway (I-95/I-295)
the New England Thruway (I-95)
the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY-9A)
the Hutchinson River Parkway
the Major Deegan Expressway (I-87)
Bridges and tunnels
Thirteen bridges and three tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan, and three bridges connect the Bronx to Queens. These are, from west to east:To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).To both Manhattan and Queens: the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, formerly known as the Triborough Bridge.To Queens: the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.
Mass transit
The Bronx is served by seven New York City Subway services along six physical lines, with 70 stations in the Bronx:
IND Concourse Line ()
IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line ()
IRT Dyre Avenue Line ()
IRT Jerome Avenue Line ()
IRT Pelham Line ()
IRT White Plains Road Line ()
There are also many MTA Regional Bus Operations bus routes in the Bronx. This includes local and express routes as well as Bee-Line Bus System routes.
Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, some trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Plaza. As part of Penn Station Access, the 2018 MTA budget funded construction of four new stops along the New Haven Line to serve Hunts Point, Parkchester, Morris Park, and Co-op City.
In 2018, NYC Ferry's Soundview line opened, connecting the Soundview landing in Clason Point Park to three East River locations in Manhattan. On December 28, 2021; the Throgs Neck Ferry landing at Ferry Point Park in Throgs Neck was opened providing an additional stop on the Soundview line. The ferry is operated by Hornblower Cruises.
Climate
In popular culture
Film and television
Mid-20th century
Mid-20th century movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely settled, working-class, urban culture. From This Day Forward (1946), set in Highbridge, occasionally delved into Bronx life. The most notable examinations of working class Bronx life were Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning Marty and his 1956 film The Catered Affair. Other films that portrayed life in the Bronx are: the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale, Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, which focused on an Italian-American Bronx community in the 1970s, 1994's I Like It Like That which takes place in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and Doughboys, the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.
The Bronx's gritty urban life had worked its way into the movies even earlier, with depictions of the "Bronx cheer", a loud flatulent-like sound of disapproval, allegedly first made by New York Yankees fans. The sound can be heard, for example, on the Spike Jones and His City Slickers recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face" (from the 1942 Disney animated film of the same name), repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"
Symbolism
Starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the observation that "The Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both an editorial in The New York Times and a BBC documentary film. The line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell is wrongly remembered to have said something like, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City often point to Cosell's remark as an acknowledgement of both the city and the borough's decline. A feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagán called Bronx Burning chronicled what led up to the many arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s in the borough.
Bronx gang life was depicted in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors, the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way out of the borough and get back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. A Bronx Tale (1993) depicts gang activities in the Belmont "Little Italy" section of the Bronx. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (a play off the name Gun Hill Road). This theme lends itself to the title of The Bronx Is Burning, an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series. The TV series emphasizes the team's boisterous nature, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson, as well as the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the city's serious financial woes and near bankruptcy, the arson for insurance payments, and the election of Ed Koch as mayor.
The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx is another film that used the Bronx's gritty image for its storyline. The movie's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx which was nicknamed "Fort Apache". Also from 1981 is the horror film Wolfen making use of the rubble of the Bronx as a home for werewolf type creatures. Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is another film also set in the Bronx released in 2005. The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000, an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!" Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in Queens, substituting as the Bronx. Rumble in the Bronx, filmed in Vancouver, was a 1995 Jackie Chan kung-fu film, another which popularized the Bronx to international audiences. Last Bronx, a 1996 Sega game played on the bad reputation of the Bronx to lend its name to an alternate version of post-Japanese bubble Tokyo, where crime and gang warfare is rampant. The 2016 Netflix series The Get Down is based on the development of hip hop in 1977 in the South Bronx.
Literature
Books
The Bronx has been featured significantly in fiction literature. All of the characters in Herman Wouk's City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder (1948) live in the Bronx, and about half of the action is set there. Kate Simon's Bronx Primitive: Portraits of a Childhood (1982) is directly autobiographical, a warm account of a Polish-Jewish girl in an immigrant family growing up before World War II, and living near Arthur Avenue and Tremont Avenue. In Jacob M. Appel's short story, "The Grand Concourse" (2007), a woman who grew up in the iconic Lewis Morris Building returns to the Morrisania neighborhood with her adult daughter. Similarly, in Avery Corman's book The Old Neighborhood (1980), an upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse), and learns that even though the folks are poor, Hispanic and African-American, they are good people.
By contrast, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) portrays a wealthy, white protagonist, Sherman McCoy, getting lost off the Bruckner Expressway in the South Bronx and having an altercation with locals. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Courthouse. However, times change, and in 2007, The New York Times reported that "the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman's accident are now dotted with townhouses and apartments." In the same article, the Reverend Al Sharpton (whose fictional analogue in the novel is "Reverend Bacon") asserts that "twenty years later, the cynicism of The Bonfire of the Vanities is as out of style as Tom Wolfe's wardrobe."
Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997) is also set in the Bronx and offers a perspective on the area from the 1950s onward.
Poetry
In poetry, the Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets:
The Bronx?
No Thonx
Ogden Nash, The New Yorker, 1931
Nash repented 33 years after his calumny, penning in 1964 the following prose poem to the Dean of Bronx Community College:
I can't seem to escape
the sins of my smart-alec youth;
Here are my amends.
I wrote those lines, "The Bronx?
No thonx";
I shudder to confess them.
Now I'm an older, wiser man
I cry, "The Bronx?
God bless them!"
In 2016, W. R. Rodriguez published Bronx Trilogy—consisting of the shoe shine parlor poems et al., concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx, and from the banks of brook avenue. The trilogy celebrates Bronx people, places, and events. DeWitt Clinton High School, St. Mary's Park, and Brook Avenue are a few of the schools, parks, and streets Rodriguez uses as subjects for his poems.
Nash's couplet "The Bronx? No Thonx" and his subsequent blessing are mentioned in Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough, edited by Llyod Ultan and Barbara Unger and published in 2000. The book, which includes the work of Yiddish poets, offers a selection from Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, as his Aunt Elanor and his mother, Naomi, lived near Woodlawn Cemetery. Also featured is Ruth Lisa Schecther's poem, "Bronx", which is described as a celebration of the borough's landmarks. There is a selection of works from poets such as Sandra María Esteves, Milton Kessler, Joan Murray, W. R. Rodriguez, Myra Shapiro, Gayl Teller, and Terence Wynch.
"Bronx Migrations" by Michelle M. Tokarczyk is a collection that spans five decades of Tokarczyk's life in the Bronx, from her exodus in 1962 to her return in search of her childhood tenement.
Bronx Memoir ProjectBronx Memoir Project: Vol. 1 is a published anthology by the Bronx Council on the Arts and brought forth through a series of workshops meant to empower Bronx residents and shed the stigma on the Bronx's burning past. The Bronx Memoir Project was created as an ongoing collaboration between the Bronx Council on the Arts and other cultural institutions, including the Bronx Documentary Center, the Bronx Library Center, the (Edgar Allan) Poe Park Visitor Center, Mindbuilders, and other institutions and funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The goal was to develop and refine memoir fragments written by people of all walks of life that share a common bond residing within the Bronx.
Songs
"Jenny from the Block" (2002) by Jennifer Lopez,Cartlidge, Cherese (2012). Jennifer Lopez. Lucent Books. p. 13. . Jennifer Lynn Lopez's parents, David and Guadalupe, were both born in Ponce, the second-largest city in Puerto Rico. from the album This is me...Then is about the South Bronx, where Lopez grew up.
In Marc Ferris's 5-page, 15-column list of "Songs and Compositions Inspired by New York City" in The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995), only a handful refer to the Bronx; most refer to New York City proper, especially Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ferris's extensive but selective 1995 list mentions only four songs referring specifically to the Bronx: "On the Banks of the Bronx" (1919), by William LeBaron & Victor Jacobi; "Bronx Express" (1922), by Henry Creamer, Ossip Dymow & Turner Layton; "The Tremont Avenue Cruisewear Fashion Show" (1973), by Jerry Livingston & Mark David; and "I Love the New York Yankees" (1987), by Paula Lindstrom.
Theater
Clifford Odets's play Awake and Sing is set in 1933 in the Bronx. The play, first produced at the Belasco Theater in 1935, concerns a poor family living in small quarters, the struggles of the controlling parents and the aspirations of their children.
René Marqués The Oxcart (1959), concerns a rural Puerto Rican family who immigrate to the Bronx for a better life.
A Bronx Tale is an autobiographical one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri. It is a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx. It premiered in Los Angeles in the 1980s and then played on Off-Broadway. After a film version involving Palminteri and Robert De Niro, Palminteri performed his one-man show on Broadway and on tour in 2007.
See also
Bronx Borough Hall
Bronx court system delays
List of counties in New York
List of people from the Bronx
National Register of Historic Places listings in the Bronx
Wildlife in the Bronx
References
Notes
Citations
Further reading
General
Briggs, Xavier de Souza, Anita Miller and John Shapiro. 1996. "CCRP in the South Bronx." Planners' Casebook, Winter.
Corman, Avery. "My Old Neighborhood Remembered, A Memoir." Barricade Books (2014)
Chronopoulos, Themis. "Paddy Chayefsky's 'Marty' and Its Significance to the Social History of Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, in the 1950s." The Bronx County Historical Society Journal XLIV (Spring/Fall 2007): 50–59.
Chronopoulos, Themis. "Urban Decline and the Withdrawal of New York University from University Heights, The Bronx." The Bronx County Historical Society Journal XLVI (Spring/Fall 2009): 4–24.
de Kadt, Maarten. The Bronx River: An Environmental and Social History. The History Press (2011)
DiBrino, Nicholas. The History of the Morris Park Racecourse and the Morris Family (1977)
Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, (1995) ), has entries, maps, illustrations, statistics and bibliographic references on almost all of the significant topics in this article, from the entire borough to individual neighborhoods, people, events and artistic works.
McNamara, John History In Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (1993)
McNamara, John McNamara's Old Bronx (1989)
Twomey, Bill and Casey, Thomas Images of America Series: Northwest Bronx (2011)
Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. Throggs Neck Memories (1993)
Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. Images of America Series: Throggs Neck-Pelham Bay (1998)
Twomey, Bill and Moussot, Peter. Throggs Neck (1983), pictorial
Twomey, Bill. Images of America Series: East Bronx (1999)
Twomey, Bill. Images of America Series: South Bronx (2002)
Twomey, Bill. The Bronx in Bits and Pieces (2007)
Bronx history
Barrows, Edward, and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1999)
Federal Writers' Project. New York City Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond (1939) online edition
Fitzpatrick Benedict. The Bronx and Its People; A History 1609–1927 (The Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1927. 3 volumes), Narrative history plus many biographies of prominent citizens
Gonzalez, Evelyn. The Bronx. (Columbia University Press, 2004. 263 ), scholarly history focused on the slums of the South Bronx online edition
Goodman, Sam. "The Golden Ghetto: The Grand Concourse in the Twentieth Century", Bronx County Historical Society Journal 2004 41(1): 4–18 and 2005 42(2): 80–99
Greene, Anthony C., "The Black Bronx: A Look at the Foundation of the Bronx's Black Communities until 1900", Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 44 (Spring–Fall 2007), 1–18.
Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, (1995) ), has entries, maps, illustrations, statistics and bibliographic references on almost all of the significant topics in this article, from the entire borough to individual neighborhoods, people, events and artistic works.
Jonnes, Jull. South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City (2002) online edition
Melancholy in the Bronx, but Not Because of the Stadium by David Gonzales, The New York Times, published and retrieved on September 19, 2008
Rodríguez, Clara E. Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A (1991) online edition
Samtur, Stephen M. and Martin A. Jackson. The Bronx: Lost, Found, and Remembered, 1935–1975 (1999) online review, nostalgia
Ultan, Lloyd. The Northern Borough: A History Of The Bronx (2009), popular general history
Ultan, Lloyd. The Bronx in the frontier era: from the beginning to 1696 (1994)
Ultan, Lloyd. The Beautiful Bronx (1920–1950) (1979), heavily illustrated
Ultan, Lloyd. The Birth of the Bronx, 1609–1900 (2000), popular
Ultan, Lloyd. The Bronx in the innocent years, 1890–1925 (1985), popular
Ultan, Lloyd. The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, "The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday 1935–1965'' (1992), heavily illustrated popular history
External links
Bronx Borough President's Office
Newspapers
The Bronx Times Reporter
The Bronx Daily
Weekly Bronx Report from Inner City Press
The Hunts Point Express
The Mott Haven Herald
Norwood News
The Riverdale Press
Associations
The Bronx River Alliance
Bronx Council for Environmental Quality
Throggs Neck Merchant Association
The Bronx Market
The South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation
Bronx County, NY Website
History
City Island Nautical Museum
East Bronx History Forum
Kingsbridge Historical Society
Museum of Bronx History
The Bronx County Historical Society
The Bronx: A Swedish Connection
Report of the Bronx Parkway Commission, December 31, 1918, retrieved on July 24, 2008
Remembrance of Synagogues Past: The Lost Civilization of the Jewish South Bronx by Seymour Perlin, retrieved on August 10, 2008
Forgotten New York: Relics of a Rich History in the Everyday Life of New York City
Boroughs of New York City
County seats in New York (state)
Populated coastal places in New York (state)
Populated places established in 1898
1898 establishments in New York City
Majority-minority counties in New York
Hispanic and Latino American culture in New York (state)
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of and has a population of more than 11.5 million, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe, with a density of . Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, historically a somewhat larger region than the Benelux group of states, as it also included parts of northern France. The capital and largest metropolitan region is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.
Belgium is a sovereign state and a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Its institutional organization is complex and is structured on both regional and linguistic grounds. It is divided into three highly autonomous regions: the Flemish Region (Flanders) in the north, the Walloon Region (Wallonia) in the south, and the Brussels-Capital Region. Brussels is the smallest and most densely populated region, as well as the richest region in terms of GDP per capita. Belgium is also home to two main linguistic communities: the Flemish Community, which constitutes about 60 percent of the population, and the French Community, which constitutes about 40 percent of the population. A small German-speaking Community, making up around one percent of the population, exists in the East Cantons. The Brussels-Capital Region is officially bilingual in French and Dutch, although French is the majority language and lingua franca. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its complex system of governance, made up of six different governments.
Since the Middle Ages, Belgium's central location has meant that the area has been relatively prosperous, connected commercially and politically to its bigger neighbours. The country as it exists today was established following the 1830 Belgian Revolution, when it seceded from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which had incorporated the Southern Netherlands (which comprised most of modern-day Belgium) after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The name chosen for the new state is derived from the Latin word , used in Julius Caesar's "Gallic Wars", to describe a nearby region in the period around 55 BCE. Belgium has also been the battleground of European powers, earning the moniker "the Battlefield of Europe", a reputation reinforced in the 20th century by both world wars.
Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution, and during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. Between 1885 and 1908, the Congo Free State, which was privately owned by King Leopold II of Belgium, was characterized by widespread atrocities and disease; amid public outcry in Europe, Belgium annexed the territory as a colony. The Belgian colonial empire gained independence between 1960 and 1962. The second half of the 20th century was marked by rising tensions between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking citizens fueled by differences in language and culture and the unequal economic development of Flanders and Wallonia. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching state reforms, resulting in the transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement between 1970 and 1993. Despite the reforms, tensions have persisted: there is particularly significant separatist sentiment among the Flemish, language laws such as the municipalities with language facilities have been the source of much controversy, and the government formation period following the 2010 federal election set the world record at 589 days. Unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders, which boomed after the Second World War.
Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy. The country is one of the six founding members of the European Union, and its capital, Brussels, is also the de facto capital of the European Union itself, hosting the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Council, as well as one of two seats of the European Parliament (the other being Strasbourg). Belgium is also a founding member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD, and WTO, and a part of the trilateral Benelux Union and the Schengen Area. Brussels also hosts the headquarters of many major international organizations, such as NATO.{{efn-ua|Belgium is a member of, or affiliated to, many international organizations, including ACCT, AfDB, AsDB, Australia Group, Benelux, BIS, CCC, CE, CERN, EAPC, EBRD, EIB, EMU, ESA, EU, FAO, G-10, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IEA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, IMSO, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, MONUSCO (observers), NATO, NEA, NSG, OAS (observer), OECD, OPCW, OSCE, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNECE, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNMIK, UNMOGIP, UNRWA, UNTSO, UPU, WADB (non-regional), WEU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTrO, ZC.
History
Antiquity
According to Julius Caesar, the Belgae were the inhabitants of the northernmost part of Gaul. They lived in a region stretching from Paris to the Rhine, which is much bigger than modern Belgium. But he also specifically used the Latin word "Belgium", to refer to a politically dominant part of that region, which is now in northernmost France. Modern Belgium corresponds to the lands of the most northerly Belgae, the Morini, Menapii, Nervii, Germani Cisrhenani, and Aduatuci, who Caesar found particularly warlike and economically undeveloped. Caesar described this region as having strong kinship links to the Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. The area around Arlon in southern Belgium was a part of the country of the Treveri.
After Caesar's conquests, Gallia Belgica came to be the Latin name of a large Roman province covering most of Northern Gaul, including the Treveri. However, areas closer to the lower Rhine frontier, including the eastern part of modern Belgium, subsequently became part of the frontier province of Germania Inferior, which continued to interact with their neighbours outside the empire. At the time when central government collapsed in the Western Roman Empire, the Roman provinces of Belgica and Germania were inhabited by a mix of a Romanized population and Germanic-speaking Franks who came to dominate the military and political class.
Middle Ages
During the 5th century, the area came under the rule of the Frankish Merovingian kings, who initially established a kingdom ruling over the Romanized population in what is now northern France, and then conquered the other Frankish kingdoms. During the 8th century, the empire of the Franks came to be ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, whose centre of power included the area which is now eastern Belgium. Over the centuries, it was divided up in many ways, but the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three kingdoms whose borders had a lasting impact on medieval political boundaries. Most of modern Belgium was in the Middle Kingdom, later known as Lotharingia, but the coastal county of Flanders, west of the Scheldt, became the northernmost part of West Francia, the predecessor of France. In 870 in the Treaty of Meerssen, modern Belgium lands all became part of the western kingdom for a period, but in 880 in the Treaty of Ribemont, Lotharingia came under the lasting control of the eastern kingdom, which became the Holy Roman Empire. The lordships and bishoprics along the "March" (frontier) between the two great kingdoms maintained important connections between each other. For example, the county of Flanders expanded over the Scheldt into the empire, and during several periods was ruled by the same lords as the county of Hainaut.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, the cloth industry and commerce boomed especially in the County of Flanders and it became one of the richest areas in Europe. This prosperity played a role in conflicts between Flanders and the king of France. Famously, Flemish militias scored a surprise victory at the Battle of the Golden Spurs against a strong force of mounted knights in 1302, but France soon regained control of the rebellious province.
Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands
In the 15th century, the Duke of Burgundy in France took control of Flanders, and from there they proceeded to unite much of what is now the Benelux, the so-called Burgundian Netherlands. "Burgundy" and "Flanders" were the first two common names used for the Burgundian Netherlands which was the predecessor of the Austrian Netherlands, the predecessor of modern Belgium. The union, technically stretching between two kingdoms, gave the area economic and political stability which led to an even greater prosperity and artistic creation.
Born in Belgium, the Habsburg Emperor Charles V was heir of the Burgundians, but also of the royal families of Austria, Castile and Aragon. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 he gave the Seventeen Provinces more legitimacy as a stable entity, rather than just a temporary personal union. He also increased the influence of these Netherlands over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, which continued to exist as a large semi-independent enclave.
Spanish and Austrian Netherlands
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) was triggered by the Spanish government's policy towards Protestantism, which was becoming popular in the Low Countries. The rebellious northern United Provinces (Belgica Foederata in Latin, the "Federated Netherlands") eventually separated from the Southern Netherlands (Belgica Regia, the "Royal Netherlands"). The southern part continued to be ruled successively by the Spanish (Spanish Netherlands) and the Austrian House of Habsburgs (Austrian Netherlands) and comprised most of modern Belgium. This was the theatre of several more protracted conflicts during much of the 17th and 18th centuries involving France, including the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), and part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748).
French Revolution and United Kingdom of the Netherlands
Following the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countriesincluding territories that were never nominally under Habsburg rule, such as the Prince-Bishopric of Liègewere annexed by the French First Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region. A reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1814, after the abdication of Napoleon.
Independent Belgium
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution led to the re-separation of the Southern Provinces from the Netherlands and to the establishment of a Catholic and bourgeois, officially French-speaking and neutral, independent Belgium under a provisional government and a national congress. Since the installation of Leopold I as king on 1831, now celebrated as Belgium's National Day, Belgium has been a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a laicist constitution based on the Napoleonic code. Although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 (with plural voting until 1919) and for women in 1949.
The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party and the Liberal Party, with the Belgian Labour Party emerging towards the end of the 19th century. French was originally the official language used by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, especially after the rejection of the Dutch monarchy. French progressively lost its dominance as Dutch began to recover its status. This recognition became official in 1898, and in 1967, the parliament accepted a Dutch version of the Constitution.
The Berlin Conference of 1885 ceded control of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II as his private possession. From around 1900 there was growing international concern for the extreme and savage treatment of the Congolese population under Leopold II, for whom the Congo was primarily a source of revenue from ivory and rubber production. Many Congolese were killed by Leopold's agents for failing to meet production quotas for ivory and rubber. In 1908, this outcry led the Belgian state to assume responsibility for the government of the colony, henceforth called the Belgian Congo. A Belgian commission in 1919 estimated that Congo's population was half what it was in 1879.
Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 as part of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France, and much of the Western Front fighting of World War I occurred in western parts of the country. The opening months of the war were known as the Rape of Belgium due to German excesses. Belgium assumed control of the German colonies of Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day Rwanda and Burundi) during the war, and in 1924 the League of Nations mandated them to Belgium. In the aftermath of the First World War, Belgium annexed the Prussian districts of Eupen and Malmedy in 1925, thereby causing the presence of a German-speaking minority.
German forces again invaded the country in May 1940, and 40,690 Belgians, over half of them Jews, were killed during the subsequent occupation and the Holocaust. From September 1944 to February 1945 the Allies liberated Belgium. After World War II, a general strike forced King Leopold III to abdicate in 1951 in favour of his son, Prince Baudouin, since many Belgians thought he had collaborated with Germany during the war. The Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960 during the Congo Crisis; Ruanda-Urundi followed with its independence two years later. Belgium joined NATO as a founding member and formed the Benelux group of nations with the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Belgium became one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and of the European Atomic Energy Community and European Economic Community, established in 1957. The latter has now become the European Union, for which Belgium hosts major administrations and institutions, including the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the extraordinary and committee sessions of the European Parliament.
In the early 1990s, Belgium saw several large corruption scandals notably surrounding Marc Dutroux, Andre Cools, the Dioxin Affair, Agusta Scandal and the murder of Karel van Noppen.
Geography
Belgium shares borders with France (), Germany (), Luxembourg () and the Netherlands (). Its total surface, including water area, is . Before 2018, its total area was believed to be . However, when the country's statistics were measured in 2018, a new calculation method was used. Unlike previous calculations, this one included the area from the coast to the low-water line, revealing the country to be larger in surface area than previously thought. Its land area alone is 30,446 square kilometers. It lies between latitudes 49°30' and 51°30' N, and longitudes 2°33' and 6°24' E.
Belgium has three main geographical regions; the coastal plain in the northwest and the central plateau both belong to the Anglo-Belgian Basin, and the Ardennes uplands in the southeast to the Hercynian orogenic belt. The Paris Basin reaches a small fourth area at Belgium's southernmost tip, Belgian Lorraine.
The coastal plain consists mainly of sand dunes and polders. Further inland lies a smooth, slowly rising landscape irrigated by numerous waterways, with fertile valleys and the northeastern sandy plain of the Campine (Kempen). The thickly forested hills and plateaus of the Ardennes are more rugged and rocky with caves and small gorges. Extending westward into France, this area is eastwardly connected to the Eifel in Germany by the High Fens plateau, on which the Signal de Botrange forms the country's highest point at .
The climate is maritime temperate with significant precipitation in all seasons (Köppen climate classification: Cfb), like most of northwest Europe. The average temperature is lowest in January at and highest in July at . The average precipitation per month varies between for February and April, to for July. Averages for the years 2000 to 2006 show daily temperature minimums of and maximums of and monthly rainfall of ; these are about 1 °C and nearly 10 millimeters above last century's normal values, respectively.
Phytogeographically, Belgium is shared between the Atlantic European and Central European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the territory of Belgium belongs to the terrestrial ecoregions of Atlantic mixed forests and Western European broadleaf forests. Belgium had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 1.36/10, ranking it 163rd globally out of 172 countries.
Provinces
The territory of Belgium is divided into three Regions, two of which, the Flemish Region and Walloon Region, are in turn subdivided into provinces; the third Region, the Brussels Capital Region, is neither a province nor a part of a province.
Politics and government
Belgium is a constitutional, popular monarchy and a federal parliamentary democracy. The bicameral federal parliament is composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Representatives. The former is made up of 50 senators appointed by the parliaments of the communities and regions and 10 co-opted senators. Prior to 2014, most of the Senate's members were directly elected. The Chamber's 150 representatives are elected under a proportional voting system from 11 electoral districts. Belgium has compulsory voting and thus maintains one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the world.
The King (currently Philippe) is the head of state, though with limited prerogatives. He appoints ministers, including a Prime Minister, that have the confidence of the Chamber of Representatives to form the federal government. The Council of Ministers is composed of no more than fifteen members. With the possible exception of the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers is composed of an equal number of Dutch-speaking members and French-speaking members.
The judicial system is based on civil law and originates from the Napoleonic code. The Court of Cassation is the court of last resort, with the courts of appeal one level below.
Political culture
Belgium's political institutions are complex; most political power rests on representation of the main cultural communities.
Since about 1970, the significant national Belgian political parties have split into distinct components that mainly represent the political and linguistic interests of these communities.
The major parties in each community, though close to the political center, belong to three main groups: Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Social Democrats.
Further notable parties came into being well after the middle of last century, mainly to represent linguistic, nationalist, or environmental interests, and recently smaller ones of some specific liberal nature.
A string of Christian Democrat coalition governments from 1958 was broken in 1999 after the first dioxin crisis, a major food contamination scandal. A "rainbow coalition" emerged from six parties: the Flemish and the French-speaking Liberals, Social Democrats and Greens. Later, a "purple coalition" of Liberals and Social Democrats formed after the Greens lost most of their seats in the 2003 election.
The government led by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt from 1999 to 2007 achieved a balanced budget, some tax reforms, a labor-market reform, scheduled nuclear phase-out and instigated legislation allowing more stringent war crime and more lenient soft drug usage prosecution. Restrictions on euthanasia were reduced and same-sex marriage was introduced. The government promoted active diplomacy in Africa and opposed the invasion of Iraq. It is the only country that does not have age restrictions on euthanasia.
Verhofstadt's coalition fared badly in the June 2007 elections. For more than a year, the country experienced a political crisis. This crisis was such that many observers speculated on a possible partition of Belgium. From 2007 until 2008 the temporary Verhofstadt III Government was in office. This was a coalition of the Flemish and Francophone Christian Democrats, the Flemish and Francophone Liberals together with the Francophone Social Democrats.
On that day a new government, led by Flemish Christian Democrat Yves Leterme, the actual winner of the federal elections of , was sworn in by the king. On 2008 Leterme offered the resignation of the cabinet to the king, as no progress in constitutional reforms had been made.
In December 2008, Leterme once more offered his resignation after a crisis surrounding the sale of Fortis to BNP Paribas. At this juncture, his resignation was accepted and Christian Democratic and Flemish Herman Van Rompuy was sworn in as Prime Minister on 2008.
After Herman Van Rompuy was designated the first permanent President of the European Council on 2009, he offered the resignation of his government to King Albert II on 2009. A few hours later, the new government under Prime Minister Yves Leterme was sworn in. On 2010, Leterme again offered the resignation of his cabinet to the king after one of the coalition partners, the OpenVLD, withdrew from the government, and on 2010 King Albert officially accepted the resignation.
The Parliamentary elections in Belgium on 2010 saw the Flemish nationalist N-VA become the largest party in Flanders, and the Socialist Party PS the largest party in Wallonia. Until December 2011, Belgium was governed by Leterme's caretaker government awaiting the end of the deadlocked negotiations for formation of a new government. By 30 March 2011, this set a new world record for the elapsed time without an official government, previously held by war-torn Iraq. Finally, in December 2011 the Di Rupo Government led by Walloon socialist Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was sworn in.
The 2014 federal election (coinciding with the regional elections) resulted in a further electoral gain for the Flemish nationalist N-VA, although the incumbent coalition (composed of Flemish and French-speaking Social Democrats, Liberals, and Christian Democrats) maintains a solid majority in Parliament and in all electoral constituencies. On 22 July 2014, King Philippe nominated Charles Michel (MR) and Kris Peeters (CD&V) to lead the formation of a new federal cabinet composed of the Flemish parties N-VA, CD&V, Open Vld and the French-speaking MR, which resulted in the Michel Government. It was the first time N-VA was part of the federal cabinet, while the French-speaking side was represented only by the MR, which achieved a minority of the public votes in Wallonia.
In May 2019 federal elections in the Flemish-speaking northern region of Flanders far-right Vlaams Belang party made major gains. In the French-speaking southern area of Wallonia the Socialists were strong. The moderate Flemish nationalist party the N-VA remained the largest party in parliament.
In July 2019 prime minister Charles Michel was selected to hold the post of President of the European Council. His successor Sophie Wilmès was Belgium's first female prime minister. She led the caretaker government since October 2019. The Flemish Liberal party politician Alexander De Croo became new prime minister in October 2020. The parties had agreed on federal government 16 months after the elections.
Communities and regions
Following a usage which can be traced back to the Burgundian and Habsburg courts, in the 19th century it was necessary to speak French to belong to the governing upper class, and those who could only speak Dutch were effectively second-class citizens. Late that century, and continuing into the 20th century, Flemish movements evolved to counter this situation.
While the people in Southern Belgium spoke French or dialects of French, and most Brusselers adopted French as their first language, the Flemings refused to do so and succeeded progressively in making Dutch an equal language in the education system. Following World War II, Belgian politics became increasingly dominated by the autonomy of its two main linguistic communities. Intercommunal tensions rose and the constitution was amended to minimize the potential for conflict.
Based on the four language areas defined in 1962–63 (the Dutch, bilingual, French and German language areas), consecutive revisions of the country's constitution in 1970, 1980, 1988 and 1993 established a unique form of a federal state with segregated political power into three levels:
The federal government, based in Brussels.
The three language communities:
the Flemish Community (Dutch-speaking);
the French Community (French-speaking);
the German-speaking Community.
The three regions:
the Flemish Region, subdivided into five provinces;
the Walloon Region, subdivided into five provinces;
the Brussels-Capital Region.
The constitutional language areas determine the official languages in their municipalities, as well as the geographical limits of the empowered institutions for specific matters. Although this would allow for seven parliaments and governments when the Communities and Regions were created in 1980, Flemish politicians decided to merge both. Thus the Flemings just have one single institutional body of parliament and government is empowered for all except federal and specific municipal matters.
The overlapping boundaries of the Regions and Communities have created two notable peculiarities: the territory of the Brussels-Capital Region (which came into existence nearly a decade after the other regions) is included in both the Flemish and French Communities, and the territory of the German-speaking Community lies wholly within the Walloon Region. Conflicts about jurisdiction between the bodies are resolved by the Constitutional Court of Belgium. The structure is intended as a compromise to allow different cultures to live together peacefully.
Locus of policy jurisdiction
The Federal State's authority includes justice, defense, federal police, social security, nuclear energy, monetary policy and public debt, and other aspects of public finances. State-owned companies include the Belgian Post Group and Belgian Railways. The Federal Government is responsible for the obligations of Belgium and its federalized institutions towards the European Union and NATO. It controls substantial parts of public health, home affairs and foreign affairs. The budget—without the debt—controlled by the federal government amounts to about 50% of the national fiscal income. The federal government employs around 12% of the civil servants.
Communities exercise their authority only within linguistically determined geographical boundaries, originally oriented towards the individuals of a Community's language: culture (including audiovisual media), education and the use of the relevant language. Extensions to personal matters less directly connected with language comprise health policy (curative and preventive medicine) and assistance to individuals (protection of youth, social welfare, aid to families, immigrant assistance services, and so on.).
Regions have authority in fields that can be broadly associated with their territory. These include economy, employment, agriculture, water policy, housing, public works, energy, transport, the environment, town and country planning, nature conservation, credit and foreign trade. They supervise the provinces, municipalities and intercommunal utility companies.
In several fields, the different levels each have their own say on specifics. With education, for instance, the autonomy of the Communities neither includes decisions about the compulsory aspect nor allows for setting minimum requirements for awarding qualifications, which remain federal matters. Each level of government can be involved in scientific research and international relations associated with its powers. The treaty-making power of the Regions' and Communities' Governments is the broadest of all the Federating units of all the Federations all over the world.
Foreign relations
Because of its location at the crossroads of Western Europe, Belgium has historically been the route of invading armies from its larger neighbors. With virtually defenseless borders, Belgium has traditionally sought to avoid domination by the more powerful nations which surround it through a policy of mediation. The Belgians have been strong advocates of European integration. The headquarters of NATO and of several of the institutions of the European Union are located in Belgium.
Armed forces
The Belgian Armed Forces have about 47,000 active troops. In 2019, Belgium's defense budget totaled €4.303 billion ($4.921 billion) representing .93% of its GDP. They are organized into one unified structure which consists of four main components: Land Component or the Army, Air Component or the Air Force, Naval Component or the Navy and the Medical Component. The operational commands of the four components are subordinate to the Staff Department for Operations and Training of the Ministry of Defense, which is headed by the Assistant Chief of Staff Operations and Training, and to the Chief of Defense.
The effects of the Second World War made collective security a priority for Belgian foreign policy. In March 1948 Belgium signed the Treaty of Brussels and then joined NATO in 1948. However, the integration of the armed forces into NATO did not begin until after the Korean War. The Belgians, along with the Luxembourg government, sent a detachment of battalion strength to fight in Korea known as the Belgian United Nations Command. This mission was the first in a long line of UN missions which the Belgians supported. Currently, the Belgian Marine Component is working closely together with the Dutch Navy under the command of the Admiral Benelux.
Economy
Belgium's strongly globalized economy and its transport infrastructure are integrated with the rest of Europe. Its location at the heart of a highly industrialized region helped make it the world's 15th largest trading nation in 2007. The economy is characterized by a highly productive work force, high GNP and high exports per capita. Belgium's main imports are raw materials, machinery and equipment, chemicals, raw diamonds, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, transportation equipment, and oil products. Its main exports are machinery and equipment, chemicals, finished diamonds, metals and metal products, and foodstuffs.
The Belgian economy is heavily service-oriented and shows a dual nature: a dynamic Flemish economy and a Walloon economy that lags behind. One of the founding members of the European Union, Belgium strongly supports an open economy and the extension of the powers of EU institutions to integrate member economies. Since 1922, through the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union, Belgium and Luxembourg have been a single trade market with customs and currency union.
Belgium was the first continental European country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, in the early 19th century. Areas in Liège Province and around Charleroi rapidly developed mining and steelmaking, which flourished until the mid-20th century in the Sambre and Meuse valley and made Belgium one of the three most industrialized nations in the world from 1830 to 1910. However, by the 1840s the textile industry of Flanders was in severe crisis, and the region experienced famine from 1846 to 1850.
After World War II, Ghent and Antwerp experienced a rapid expansion of the chemical and petroleum industries. The 1973 and 1979 oil crises sent the economy into a recession; it was particularly prolonged in Wallonia, where the steel industry had become less competitive and experienced a serious decline. In the 1980s and 1990s, the economic center of the country continued to shift northwards and is now concentrated in the populous Flemish Diamond area.
By the end of the 1980s, Belgian macroeconomic policies had resulted in a cumulative government debt of about 120% of GDP. , the budget was balanced and public debt was equal to 90.30% of GDP. In 2005 and 2006, real GDP growth rates of 1.5% and 3.0%, respectively, were slightly above the average for the Euro area. Unemployment rates of 8.4% in 2005 and 8.2% in 2006 were close to the area average. By , this had grown to 8.5% compared to an average rate of 9.6% for the European Union as a whole (EU 27). From 1832 until 2002, Belgium's currency was the Belgian franc. Belgium switched to the euro in 2002, with the first sets of euro coins being minted in 1999. The standard Belgian euro coins designated for circulation show the portrait of the monarch (first King Albert II, since 2013 King Philippe).
Despite an 18% decrease observed from 1970 to 1999, Belgium still had in 1999 the highest rail network density within the European Union with 113.8 km/1 000 km2. On the other hand, the same period, 1970–1999, has seen a huge growth (+56%) of the motorway network. In 1999, the density of km motorways per 1000 km2 and 1000 inhabitants amounted to 55.1 and 16.5 respectively and were significantly superior to the EU's means of 13.7 and 15.9.
From a biological resource perspective, Belgium has a low endowment: Belgium's biocapacity adds up to only 0.8 global hectares in 2016, just about half of the 1.6 global hectares of biocapacity available per person worldwide. In contrast, in 2016, Belgians used on average 6.3 global hectares of biocapacity - their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they required about eight times as much biocapacity as Belgium contains. As a result, Belgium was running a biocapacity deficit of 5.5 global hectares per person in 2016.
Belgium experiences some of the most congested traffic in Europe. In 2010, commuters to the cities of Brussels and Antwerp spent respectively 65 and 64 hours a year in traffic jams. Like in most small European countries, more than 80% of the airways traffic is handled by a single airport, the Brussels Airport. The ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge (Bruges) share more than 80% of Belgian maritime traffic, Antwerp being the second European harbor with a gross weight of goods handled of 115 988 000 t in 2000 after a growth of 10.9% over the preceding five years. In 2016, the port of Antwerp handled 214 million tons after a year-on-year growth of 2.7%.
There is a large economic gap between Flanders and Wallonia. Wallonia was historically wealthy compared to Flanders, mostly due to its heavy industries, but the decline of the steel industry post-World War II led to the region's rapid decline, whereas Flanders rose swiftly. Since then, Flanders has been prosperous, among the wealthiest regions in Europe, whereas Wallonia has been languishing. As of 2007, the unemployment rate of Wallonia is over double that of Flanders. The divide has played a key part in the tensions between the Flemish and Walloons in addition to the already-existing language divide. Pro-independence movements have gained high popularity in Flanders as a consequence. The separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party, for instance, is the largest party in Belgium.
Science and technology
Contributions to the development of science and technology have appeared throughout the country's history. The 16th century Early Modern flourishing of Western Europe included cartographer Gerardus Mercator, anatomist Andreas Vesalius, herbalist Rembert Dodoens and mathematician Simon Stevin among the most influential scientists.
Chemist Ernest Solvay and engineer Zenobe Gramme (École industrielle de Liège) gave their names to the Solvay process and the Gramme dynamo, respectively, in the 1860s. Bakelite was developed in 1907–1909 by Leo Baekeland. Ernest Solvay also acted as a major philanthropist and gave his name to the Solvay Institute of Sociology, the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry which are now part of the Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1911, he started a series of conferences, the Solvay Conferences on Physics and Chemistry, which have had a deep impact on the evolution of quantum physics and chemistry. A major contribution to fundamental science was also due to a Belgian, Monsignor Georges Lemaître (Catholic University of Louvain), who is credited with proposing the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe in 1927.
Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Belgians: Jules Bordet (Université libre de Bruxelles) in 1919, Corneille Heymans (University of Ghent) in 1938 and Albert Claude (Université libre de Bruxelles) together with Christian de Duve (Université catholique de Louvain) in 1974. François Englert (Université libre de Bruxelles) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. Ilya Prigogine (Université libre de Bruxelles) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. Two Belgian mathematicians have been awarded the Fields Medal: Pierre Deligne in 1978 and Jean Bourgain in 1994. Belgium was ranked 23rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2023.
Demographics
As of 1 January 2020, the total population of Belgium according to its population register was 11,492,641. The population density of Belgium is as of January 2019, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world, and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe. The most densely populated province is Antwerp, the least densely populated province is Luxembourg. As of January 2019, the Flemish Region had a population of 6,589,069 (57.6% of Belgium), its most populous cities being Antwerp (523,248), Ghent (260,341) and Bruges (118,284). Wallonia had a population of 3,633,795 (31.8% of Belgium) with Charleroi (201,816), Liège (197,355) and Namur (110,939), its most populous cities. The Brussels-Capital Region has 1,208,542 inhabitants (10.6% of Belgium) in the 19 municipalities, three of which have over 100,000 residents.
In 2017 the average total fertility rate (TFR) across Belgium was 1.64 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1; it remains considerably below the high of 4.87 children born per woman in 1873. Belgium subsequently has one of the oldest populations in the world, with an average age of 41.6 years.
Migration
, nearly 92% of the population had Belgian citizenship, and other European Union member citizens account for around 6%. The prevalent foreign nationals were Italian (171,918), French (125,061), Dutch (116,970), Moroccan (80,579), Portuguese (43,509), Spanish (42,765), Turkish (39,419) and German (37,621). In 2007, there were 1.38 million foreign-born residents in Belgium, corresponding to 12.9% of the total population. Of these, 685,000 (6.4%) were born outside the EU and 695,000 (6.5%) were born in another EU Member State.
At the beginning of 2012, people of foreign background and their descendants were estimated to have formed around 25% of the total population i.e. 2.8 million new Belgians. Of these new Belgians, 1,200,000 are of European ancestry and 1,350,000 are from non-Western countries (most of them from Morocco, Turkey, and the DR Congo). Since the modification of the Belgian nationality law in 1984 more than 1.3 million migrants have acquired Belgian citizenship. The largest group of immigrants and their descendants in Belgium are Italian Belgians and Moroccan Belgians. 89.2% of inhabitants of Turkish origin have been naturalized, as have 88.4% of people of Moroccan background, 75.4% of Italians, 56.2% of the French and 47.8% of Dutch people.
Statbel released figures of the Belgian population in relation to the origin of people in Belgium. According to the data, as of 1 January 2021, 67.3% of the Belgian population was of ethnic Belgian origin and 32.7% were of foreign origin or nationality, with 20.3% of those of a foreign nationality or ethnic group originating from neighbouring countries. The study also found that 74.5% of the Brussels Capital Region were of non-Belgian origin, of which 13.8% originated from neighbouring countries.
Languages
Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French and German. A number of non-official minority languages are spoken as well.
As no census exists, there are no official statistical data regarding the distribution or usage of Belgium's three official languages or their dialects. However, various criteria, including the language(s) of parents, of education, or the second-language status of foreign born, may provide suggested figures. An estimated 60% of the Belgian population are native speakers of Dutch (often referred to as Flemish), and 40% of the population speaks French natively. French-speaking Belgians are often referred to as Walloons, although the French speakers in Brussels are not Walloons.
The total number of native Dutch speakers is estimated to be about 6.23 million, concentrated in the northern Flanders region, while native French speakers number 3.32 million in Wallonia and an estimated 870,000 (or 85%) in the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. The German-speaking Community is made up of 73,000 people in the east of the Walloon Region; around 10,000 German and 60,000 Belgian nationals are speakers of German. Roughly 23,000 more German speakers live in municipalities near the official Community.
Both Belgian Dutch and Belgian French have minor differences in vocabulary and semantic nuances from the varieties spoken respectively in the Netherlands and France. Many Flemish people still speak dialects of Dutch in their local environment. Walloon, considered either as a dialect of French or a distinct Romance language, is now only understood and spoken occasionally, mostly by elderly people. Walloon is divided into four dialects, which along with those of Picard, are rarely used in public life and have largely been replaced by French.
Religion
The Constitution of Belgium provides for freedom of religion, and the government respects this right in practice. Belgium officially recognizes three religions: Christianity (Catholic, Protestantism, Orthodox churches and Anglicanism), Islam and Judaism. During the reigns of Albert I and Baudouin, the Belgian royal family had a reputation of deeply rooted Catholicism.
Catholicism has traditionally been Belgium's majority religion; being especially strong in Flanders. However, by 2009 Sunday church attendance was 5% for Belgium in total; 3% in Brussels, and 5.4% in Flanders. Church attendance in 2009 in Belgium was roughly half of the Sunday church attendance in 1998 (11% for the total of Belgium in 1998). Despite the drop in church attendance, Catholic identity nevertheless remains an important part of Belgium's culture.
According to the Eurobarometer 2010, 37% of Belgian citizens believe in God, 31% in some sort of spirit or life-force. 27% do not believe in any sort of spirit, God, or life-force. 5% did not respond. According to the Eurobarometer 2015, 60.7% of the total population of Belgium adhered to Christianity, with Catholicism being the largest denomination with 52.9%. Protestants comprised 2.1% and Orthodox Christians were the 1.6% of the total. Non-religious people comprised 32.0% of the population and were divided between atheists (14.9%) and agnostics (17.1%). A further 5.2% of the population was Muslim and 2.1% were believers in other religions. The same survey held in 2012 found that Christianity was the largest religion in Belgium, accounting for 65% of Belgians.
In the early 2000s, there were approximately 42,000 Jews in Belgium. The Jewish Community of Antwerp (numbering some 18,000) is one of the largest in Europe, and one of the last places in the world where Yiddish is the primary language of a large Jewish community (mirroring certain Orthodox and Hasidic communities in New York, New Jersey, and Israel). In addition, most Jewish children in Antwerp receive a Jewish education. There are several Jewish newspapers and more than 45 active synagogues (30 of which are in Antwerp) in the country.
A 2006 inquiry in Flanders, considered to be a more religious region than Wallonia, showed that 55% considered themselves religious and that 36% believed that God created the universe. On the other hand, Wallonia has become one of Europe's most secular/least religious regions. Most of the French-speaking region's population does not consider religion an important part of their lives, and as much as 45% of the population identifies as irreligious. This is particularly the case in eastern Wallonia and areas along the French border.
A 2008 estimate found that approximately 6% of the Belgian population (628,751 people) is Muslim. Muslims constitute 23.6% of the population of Brussels, 4.9% of Wallonia and 5.1% of Flanders. The majority of Belgian Muslims live in the major cities, such as Antwerp, Brussels and Charleroi. The largest group of immigrants in Belgium are Moroccans, with 400,000 people. The Turks are the third largest group, and the second largest Muslim ethnic group, numbering 220,000.
Health
The Belgians enjoy good health. According to 2012 estimates, the average life expectancy is 79.65 years. Since 1960, life expectancy has, in line with the European average, grown by two months per year. Death in Belgium is mainly due to heart and vascular disorders, neoplasms, disorders of the respiratory system and unnatural causes of death (accidents, suicide). Non-natural causes of death and cancer are the most common causes of death for females up to age 24 and males up to age 44.
Healthcare in Belgium is financed through both social security contributions and taxation. Health insurance is compulsory. Health care is delivered by a mixed public and private system of independent medical practitioners and public, university and semi-private hospitals. Health care service are payable by the patient and reimbursed later by health insurance institutions, but for ineligible categories (of patients and services) so-called 3rd party payment systems exist. The Belgian health care system is supervised and financed by the federal government, the Flemish and Walloon Regional governments; and the German Community also has (indirect) oversight and responsibilities.
For the first time in Belgian history, the first child was euthanized following the 2-year mark of the removal of the euthanization age restrictions. The child had been euthanized due to an incurable disease that was inflicted upon the child. Although there may have been some support for the euthanization there is a possibility of controversy due to the issue revolving around the subject of assisted suicide.
Excluding assisted suicide, Belgium has the highest suicide rate in Western Europe and one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world (exceeded only by Lithuania, South Korea, and Latvia).
Education
Education is compulsory from 6 to 18 years of age for Belgians. Among OECD countries in 2002, Belgium had the third highest proportion of 18- to 21-year-olds enrolled in postsecondary education, at 42%. Though an estimated 99% of the adult population is literate, concern is rising over functional illiteracy. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the OECD, currently ranks Belgium's education as the 19th best in the world, being significantly higher than the OECD average. Education is organized separately by each community. The Flemish Community scores noticeably above the French and German-speaking Communities.
Mirroring the structure of the 19th-century Belgian political landscape, characterized by the Liberal and the Catholic parties, the educational system is segregated into secular and religious schools. The secular branch of schooling is controlled by the communities, the provinces, or the municipalities, while religious, mainly Catholic branch education, is organized by religious authorities, which are also subsidized and supervised by the communities.
Culture
Despite its political and linguistic divisions, the region corresponding to today's Belgium has seen the flourishing of major artistic movements that have had tremendous influence on European art and culture. Nowadays, to a certain extent, cultural life is concentrated within each language Community, and a variety of barriers have made a shared cultural sphere less pronounced. Since the 1970s, there are no bilingual universities or colleges in the country except the Royal Military Academy and the Antwerp Maritime Academy.
Fine arts
Contributions to painting and architecture have been especially rich. The Mosan art, the Early Netherlandish, the Flemish Renaissance and Baroque painting and major examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture are milestones in the history of art. While the 15th century's art in the Low Countries is dominated by the religious paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, the 16th century is characterized by a broader panel of styles such as Peter Breughel's landscape paintings and Lambert Lombard's representation of the antique. Though the Baroque style of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck flourished in the early 17th century in the Southern Netherlands, it gradually declined thereafter.
During the 19th and 20th centuries many original romantic, expressionist and surrealist Belgian painters emerged, including James Ensor and other artists belonging to the Les XX group, Constant Permeke, Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. The avant-garde CoBrA movement appeared in the 1950s, while the sculptor Panamarenko remains a remarkable figure in contemporary art. Multidisciplinary artists Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye and the painter Luc Tuymans are other internationally renowned figures on the contemporary art scene.
Belgian contributions to architecture also continued into the 19th and 20th centuries, including the work of Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde, who were major initiators of the Art Nouveau style.
The vocal music of the Franco-Flemish School developed in the southern part of the Low Countries and was an important contribution to Renaissance culture. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there was an emergence of major violinists, such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Eugène Ysaÿe and Arthur Grumiaux, while Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846. The composer César Franck was born in Liège in 1822. Contemporary popular music in Belgium is also of repute. Jazz musicians Django Reinhardt and Toots Thielemans and singer Jacques Brel have achieved global fame. Nowadays, singer Stromae has been a musical revelation in Europe and beyond, having great success. In rock/pop music, Telex, Front 242, K's Choice, Hooverphonic, Zap Mama, Soulwax and dEUS are well known. In the heavy metal scene, bands like Machiavel, Channel Zero and Enthroned have a worldwide fan-base.
Belgium has produced several well-known authors, including the poets Emile Verhaeren, Guido Gezelle, Robert Goffin and novelists Hendrik Conscience, Stijn Streuvels, Georges Simenon, Suzanne Lilar, Hugo Claus and Amélie Nothomb. The poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911. The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé is the best known of Franco-Belgian comics, but many other major authors, including Peyo (The Smurfs), André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe), Dupa (Cubitus), Morris (Lucky Luke), Greg (Achille Talon), Lambil (Les Tuniques Bleues), Edgar P. Jacobs and Willy Vandersteen brought the Belgian cartoon strip industry a worldwide fame. Additionally, famous crime author Agatha Christie created the character Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective, who has served as a protagonist in a number of her acclaimed mystery novels.
Belgian cinema has brought a number of mainly Flemish novels to life on-screen. Other Belgian directors include André Delvaux, Stijn Coninx, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; well-known actors include Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jan Decleir and Marie Gillain; and successful films include Bullhead, Man Bites Dog and The Alzheimer Affair.
Belgium is also home to a number of successful fashion designers :Category:Belgian fashion designers.
Folklore
Folklore plays a major role in Belgium's cultural life; the country has a comparatively high number of processions, cavalcades, parades, ommegangs, ducasses, kermesses, and other local festivals, nearly always with an originally religious or mythological background. The three-day Carnival of Binche, near Mons, with its famous Gilles (men dressed in high, plumed hats and bright costumes) is held just before Lent (the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter). Together with the 'Processional Giants and Dragons' of Ath, Brussels, Dendermonde, Mechelen and Mons, it is recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Other examples are the three-day Carnival of Aalst in February or March; the still very religious processions of the Holy Blood taking place in Bruges in May, the Virga Jesse procession held every seven years in Hasselt, the annual procession of Hanswijk in Mechelen, the 15 August festivities in Liège, and the Walloon festival in Namur. Originated in 1832 and revived in the 1960s, the Gentse Feesten (a music and theatre festival organized in Ghent around Belgian National Day, on 21 July) have become a modern tradition. Several of these festivals include sporting competitions, such as cycling, and many fall under the category of kermesses.
A major non-official holiday (which is however not an official public holiday) is Saint Nicholas Day (Dutch: Sinterklaas, French: la Saint-Nicolas), a festivity for children, and in Liège, for students. It takes place each year on 6 December and is a sort of early Christmas. On the evening of 5 December, before going to bed, children put their shoes by the hearth with water or wine and a carrot for Saint Nicholas' horse or donkey. According to tradition, Saint Nicholas comes at night and travels down the chimney. He then takes the food and water or wine, leaves presents, goes back up, feeds his horse or donkey, and continues on his course. He also knows whether children have been good or bad. This holiday is especially loved by children in Belgium and the Netherlands. Dutch immigrants imported the tradition into the United States, where Saint Nicholas is now known as Santa Claus.
Cuisine
Belgium is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles and French fries. The national dishes are steak and fries, and mussels with fries. Many highly ranked Belgian restaurants can be found in the most influential restaurant guides, such as the Michelin Guide. One of the many beers with the high prestige is that of the Trappist monks. Technically, it is an ale and traditionally each abbey's beer is served in its own glass (the forms, heights and widths are different). There are only eleven breweries (six of them are Belgian) that are allowed to brew Trappist beer.
Although Belgian gastronomy is connected to French cuisine, some recipes were reputedly invented there, such as French fries (despite the name, although their exact place of origin is uncertain), Flemish Carbonade (a beef stew with beer, mustard and bay laurel), speculaas (or speculoos in French, a sort of cinnamon and ginger-flavoured shortcrust biscuit), Brussels waffles (and their variant, Liège waffles), waterzooi (a broth made with chicken or fish, cream and vegetables), endive with bechamel sauce, Brussels sprouts, Belgian pralines (Belgium has some of the most renowned chocolate houses), charcuterie (deli meats) and Paling in 't groen (river eels in a sauce of green herbs).
Brands of Belgian chocolate and pralines, like Côte d'Or, Neuhaus, Leonidas and Godiva are famous, as well as independent producers such as Burie and Del Rey in Antwerp and Mary's in Brussels. Belgium produces over 1100 varieties of beer. The Trappist beer of the Abbey of Westvleteren has repeatedly been rated the world's best beer.
The biggest brewer in the world by volume is Anheuser-Busch InBev, based in Leuven.
Sports
Since the 1970s, sports clubs and federations are organized separately within each language community. The (ADEPS) is responsible for recognising the various French-speaking sports federations and also runs three sports centres in the Brussels-Capital Region. Its Dutch-speaking counterpart is (formerly called BLOSO).
Association football is the most popular sport in both parts of Belgium; also very popular are cycling, tennis, swimming, judo and basketball. The Belgium national football team has been among the best on the FIFA World Rankings ever since November 2015, when it reached the top spot for the first time. Since the 1990s, the team has been the world's number one for the most years in history, only behind the records of Brazil and Spain. The team's golden generations with the world class players in the squad, namely Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Jean-Marie Pfaff, Jan Ceulemans achieved the bronze medals at World Cup 2018, and silver medals at Euro 1980. Belgium hosted the Euro 1972, and co-hosted the Euro 2000 with the Netherlands.
Belgians hold the most Tour de France victories of any country except France. They also have the most victories on the UCI Road World Championships. With five victories in the Tour de France and numerous other cycling records, Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx is regarded as one of the greatest cyclists of all time. Philippe Gilbert and Remco Evenepoel were the 2012 and 2022 world champions, respectively. Other well-known Belgian cyclists are Tom Boonen and Wout van Aert.
Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin both were Player of the Year in the Women's Tennis Association as they were ranked the number one female tennis player.
The Spa-Francorchamps motor-racing circuit hosts the Formula One World Championship Belgian Grand Prix. The Belgian driver, Jacky Ickx, won eight Grands Prix and six 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished twice as runner-up in the Formula One World Championship. Belgium also has a strong reputation in, motocross with the riders Joël Robert, Roger De Coster, Georges Jobé, Eric Geboers and Stefan Everts, among others.
Sporting events annually held in Belgium include the Memorial Van Damme athletics competition, the Belgian Grand Prix Formula One, and a number of classic cycle races such as the Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. The 1920 Summer Olympics were held in Antwerp. The 1977 European Basketball Championship was held in Liège and Ostend.
See also
Index of Belgium-related articles
Outline of Belgium
Footnotes
References
Online sources
(mentioning other original sources)
Belgium. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved on 7 June 2007.
—Reflections on nations and nation-state developments regarding Belgium
Bibliography
[Also editions [1913], London, ; (1921) D. Unwin and Co., New York also published (1921) as Belgium from the Roman invasion to the present day, The Story of the nations, 67, T. Fisher Unwin, London, ]
Facsimile reprint of a 1902 edition by the author, London Facsimile reprint of a 1909 edition by the author, London
(Several editions in English, incl. (1997) 7th ed.)
External links
Government
Official site of the Belgian monarchy
Official site of the Belgian federal government
General
Belgium. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
Belgium at UCB Libraries GovPubs
Belgium information from the United States Department of State
Portals to the World from the United States Library of Congress
Belgium profile from the BBC News
FAO Country Profiles: Belgium
Statistical Profile of Belgium at the Association of Religion Data Archives
Key Development Forecasts for Belgium from International Futures
Official Site of the Belgian Tourist Office in the Americas and GlobeScope
Benelux
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French-speaking countries and territories
Countries and territories where German is an official language
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Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
Blues, as a genre, is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans.
Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later, the development of juke joints. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music.
Etymology
The term Blues may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase blue devils may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal." As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday.
In 1827, it was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues." The phrase "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten, then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted a number of songs, such as "Poor Rosy", that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit," conditions that have inspired countless blues songs.
Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.
Lyrics
Early traditional blues verses often consisted of a single line repeated four times. However, the most common structure of blues lyrics today was established in the first few decades of the 20th century, known as the "AAB" pattern. This structure consists of a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over the next four, and a longer concluding line over the last bars. This pattern can be heard in some of the first published blues songs, such as "Dallas Blues" (1912) and "Saint Louis Blues" (1914). According to W.C. Handy, the "AAB" pattern was adopted to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times. The lyrics are often sung in a rhythmic talk style rather than a melody, resembling a form of talking blues.
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. African-American singers voiced their "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times". This melancholy has led to the suggestion of an Igbo origin for blues because of the reputation the Igbo had throughout plantations in the Americas for their melancholic music and outlook on life when they were enslaved. Other historians have argued that there is little evidence of Sub-Sahelian influence in the blues as "elaborate polyrhythm, percussion on African drums (as opposed to European drums), [and] collective participation" which are characteristic of West-Central African music below the savannah, are conspicuously absent. According to the historian Paul Oliver, "the roots of the blues were not to be found in the coastal and forest regions of Africa. Rather...the blues was rooted in … the savanna hinterland, from Senegambia through Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Ghana, Niger, and northern Nigeria." Additionally, ethnomusicologist John Storm Roberts has argued that "The parallels between African savanna-belt string-playing and the techniques of many blues guitarists are remarkable. The big kora of Senegal and Guinea are played in a rhythmic-melodic style that uses constantly changing rhythms, often providing a ground bass overlaid with complex treble patterns, while vocal supplies a third rhythmic layer. Similar techniques can be found in hundreds of blues records."
The lyrics often relate troubles experienced within African American society. For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) tells of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927:
Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could also be humorous and raunchy:
Hokum blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterous, farcical performance style. Tampa Red and Georgia Tom's "It's Tight Like That" (1928) is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being "tight" with someone, coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity. Blues songs with sexually explicit lyrics were known as dirty blues. The lyrical content became slightly simpler in postwar blues, which tended to focus on relationship woes or sexual worries. Lyrical themes that frequently appeared in prewar blues, such as economic depression, farming, devils, gambling, magic, floods and drought, were less common in postwar blues.
The writer Ed Morales claimed that Yoruba mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua, the orisha in charge of the crossroads". However, the Christian influence was far more obvious. The repertoires of many seminal blues artists, such as Charley Patton and Skip James, included religious songs or spirituals. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music, although their lyrics clearly belong to spirituals.
Form
The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which a repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music. During the first decades of the 20th century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of a particular chord progression. With the popularity of early performers, such as Bessie Smith, use of the twelve-bar blues spread across the music industry during the 1920s and 30s. Other chord progressions, such as 8-bar forms, are still considered blues; examples include "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway". There are also 16-bar blues, such as Ray Charles's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars" and Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". Idiosyncratic numbers of bars are occasionally used, such as the 9-bar progression in "Sitting on Top of the World", by Walter Vinson.
The basic 12-bar lyric framework of many blues compositions is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a 12-bar scheme. They are labeled by Roman numbers referring to the degrees of the progression. For instance, for a blues in the key of C, C is the tonic chord (I) and F is the subdominant (IV).
The last chord is the dominant (V) turnaround, marking the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the 11th bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as a break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords.
Much of the time, some or all of these chords are played in the harmonic seventh (7th) form. The use of the harmonic seventh interval is characteristic of blues and is popularly called the "blues seven". Blues seven chords add to the harmonic chord a note with a frequency in a 7:4 ratio to the fundamental note. At a 7:4 ratio, it is not close to any interval on the conventional Western diatonic scale. For convenience or by necessity it is often approximated by a minor seventh interval or a dominant seventh chord.
In melody, blues is distinguished by the use of the flattened third, fifth and seventh of the associated major scale.
Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and they form a repetitive effect called a groove. Characteristic of the blues since its Afro-American origins, the shuffles played a central role in swing music. The simplest shuffles, which were the clearest signature of the R&B wave that started in the mid-1940s, were a three-note riff on the bass strings of the guitar. When this riff was played over the bass and the drums, the groove "feel" was created. Shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as "dow, da dow, da dow, da" or "dump, da dump, da dump, da": it consists of uneven, or "swung", eighth notes. On a guitar this may be played as a simple steady bass or it may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the sixth of the chord and back.
History
Origins
Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" was published in 1912; W.C. Handy's "The Memphis Blues" followed in the same year. The first recording by an African American singer was Mamie Smith's 1920 rendition of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues". But the origins of the blues were some decades earlier, probably around 1890. This music is poorly documented, partly because of racial discrimination in U.S. society, including academic circles, and partly because of the low rate of literacy among rural African Americans at the time.
Reports of blues music in southern Texas and the Deep South were written at the dawn of the 20th century. Charles Peabody mentioned the appearance of blues music at Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Gate Thomas reported similar songs in southern Texas around 1901–1902. These observations coincide more or less with the recollections of Jelly Roll Morton, who said he first heard blues music in New Orleans in 1902; Ma Rainey, who remembered first hearing the blues in the same year in Missouri; and W.C. Handy, who first heard the blues in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1903. The first extensive research in the field was performed by Howard W. Odum, who published an anthology of folk songs from Lafayette County, Mississippi, and Newton County, Georgia, between 1905 and 1908. The first noncommercial recordings of blues music, termed proto-blues by Paul Oliver, were made by Odum for research purposes at the very beginning of the 20th century. They are now lost.
Other recordings that are still available were made in 1924 by Lawrence Gellert. Later, several recordings were made by Robert W. Gordon, who became head of the Archive of American Folk Songs of the Library of Congress. Gordon's successor at the library was John Lomax. In the 1930s, Lomax and his son Alan made a large number of non-commercial blues recordings that testify to the huge variety of proto-blues styles, such as field hollers and ring shouts. A record of blues music as it existed before 1920 can also be found in the recordings of artists such as Lead Belly and Henry Thomas. All these sources show the existence of many different structures distinct from twelve-, eight-, or sixteen-bar.
The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of the blues is usually dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863, between 1860s and 1890s, a period that coincides with post-emancipation and later, the establishment of juke joints as places where African-Americans went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work. This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production, and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States. Several scholars characterize the development of blues music in the early 1900s as a move from group performance to individualized performance. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people.
According to Lawrence Levine, "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine stated that "psychologically, socially, and economically, African-Americans were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."
There are few characteristics common to all blues music, because the genre took its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performers. However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues. Call-and-response shouts were an early form of blues-like music; they were a "functional expression ... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure". A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave ring shouts and field hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".
Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural blacks into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. Some scholars identify strong influences on the blues from the melodic structures of certain West African musical styles of the savanna and sahel. Lucy Durran finds similarities with the melodies of the Bambara people, and to a lesser degree, the Soninke people and Wolof people, but not as much of the Mandinka people. Gerard Kubik finds similarities to the melodic styles of both the west African savanna and central Africa, both of which were sources of enslaved people.
No specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However the call-and-response format can be traced back to the music of Africa. That blue notes predate their use in blues and have an African origin is attested to by "A Negro Love Song", by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, from his African Suite for Piano, written in 1898, which contains blue third and seventh notes.
The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South sometimes referred to as a jitterbug or a one-string in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from West African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as the Igbo played (called halam or akonting by African peoples such as the Wolof, Fula and Mandinka). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as Papa Charlie Jackson and later Gus Cannon.
Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".
The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern country music arose in the same regions of the southern United States during the 19th century. Recorded blues and country music can be found as far back as the 1920s, when the record industry created the marketing categories "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country", except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies.
Though musicologists can now attempt to define the blues narrowly in terms of certain chord structures and lyric forms thought to have originated in West Africa, audiences originally heard the music in a far more general way: it was simply the music of the rural south, notably the Mississippi Delta. Black and white musicians shared the same repertoire and thought of themselves as "songsters" rather than blues musicians. The notion of blues as a separate genre arose during the black migration from the countryside to urban areas in the 1920s and the simultaneous development of the recording industry. Blues became a code word for a record designed to sell to black listeners.
The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of Afro-American community, the spirituals. The origins of spirituals go back much further than the blues, usually dating back to the middle of the 18th century, when the slaves were Christianized and began to sing and play Christian hymns, in particular those of Isaac Watts, which were very popular. Before the blues gained its formal definition in terms of chord progressions, it was defined as the secular counterpart of spirituals. It was the low-down music played by rural blacks.
Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music. Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel singers and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters. However, when rural black music began to be recorded in the 1920s, both categories of musicians used similar techniques: call-and-response patterns, blue notes, and slide guitars. Gospel music was nevertheless using musical forms that were compatible with Christian hymns and therefore less marked by the blues form than its secular counterpart.
Pre-war blues
The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues", by "Baby" Franklin Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews); "Dallas Blues", by Hart Wand; and "The Memphis Blues", by W.C. Handy.
Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Cuban habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the "Saint Louis Blues".
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers. These female performers became perhaps the first African American "superstars", and their recording sales demonstrated "a huge appetite for records made by and for black people." The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Booking Association in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as the bars along Beale Street in Memphis. Several record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began to record African-American music.
As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like Bo Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red and Blind Blake became more popular in the African American community. Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. The slide guitar became an important part of the Delta blues. The first blues recordings from the 1920s are categorized as a traditional, rural country blues and a more polished city or urban blues.
Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar. Regional styles of country blues varied widely in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by slide guitar. The little-recorded Robert Johnson combined elements of urban and rural blues. In addition to Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style included his predecessors Charley Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" Piedmont blues tradition, which used an elaborate ragtime-based fingerpicking guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition, with Curley Weaver, Tampa Red, "Barbecue Bob" Hicks and James "Kokomo" Arnold as representatives of this style.
The lively Memphis blues style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s near Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by jug bands such as the Memphis Jug Band or the Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy, Casey Bill Weldon and Memphis Minnie used a variety of unusual instruments such as washboard, fiddle, kazoo or mandolin. Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinct style was smoother and had some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement.
Urban blues
City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate, as a performer was no longer within their local, immediate community, and had to adapt to a larger, more varied audience's aesthetic. Classic female urban and vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them "the big three"—Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Lucille Bogan. Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African American to record a blues song, in 1920; her second record, "Crazy Blues", sold 75,000 copies in its first month. Ma Rainey, the "Mother of Blues", and Bessie Smith each "[sang] around center tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room". Smith would "sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed".
In 1920, the vaudeville singer Lucille Hegamin became the second black woman to record blues when she recorded "The Jazz Me Blues", and Victoria Spivey, sometimes called Queen Victoria or Za Zu Girl, had a recording career that began in 1926 and spanned forty years. These recordings were typically labeled "race records" to distinguish them from records sold to white audiences. Nonetheless, the recordings of some of the classic female blues singers were purchased by white buyers as well. These blueswomen's contributions to the genre included "increased improvisation on melodic lines, unusual phrasing which altered the emphasis and impact of the lyrics, and vocal dramatics using shouts, groans, moans, and wails. The blues women thus effected changes in other types of popular singing that had spin-offs in jazz, Broadway musicals, torch songs of the 1930s and 1940s, gospel, rhythm and blues, and eventually rock and roll."
Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such as Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr. An important label of this era was the Chicago-based Bluebird Records. Before World War II, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "the Guitar Wizard". Carr accompanied himself on the piano with Scrapper Blackwell on guitar, a format that continued well into the 1950s with artists such as Charles Brown and even Nat "King" Cole.
Boogie-woogie was another important style of 1930s and early 1940s urban blues. While the style is often associated with solo piano, boogie-woogie was also used to accompany singers and, as a solo part, in bands and small combos. Boogie-woogie style was characterized by a regular bass figure, an ostinato or riff and shifts of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and trills and decorations in the right hand. Boogie-woogie was pioneered by the Chicago-based Jimmy Yancey and the Boogie-Woogie Trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Chicago boogie-woogie performers included Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the propulsive left-hand rhythms of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those of Armstrong's trumpet in the right hand". The smooth Louisiana style of Professor Longhair and, more recently, Dr. John blends classic rhythm and blues with blues styles.
Another development in this period was big band blues. The "territory bands" operating out of Kansas City, the Bennie Moten orchestra, Jay McShann, and the Count Basie Orchestra were also concentrating on the blues, with 12-bar blues instrumentals such as Basie's "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and boisterous "blues shouting" by Jimmy Rushing on songs such as "Going to Chicago" and "Sent for You Yesterday". A well-known big band blues tune is Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". In the 1940s, the jump blues style developed. Jump blues grew up from the boogie-woogie wave and was strongly influenced by big band music. It uses saxophone or other brass instruments and the guitar in the rhythm section to create a jazzy, up-tempo sound with declamatory vocals. Jump blues tunes by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, based in Kansas City, Missouri, influenced the development of later styles such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Dallas-born T-Bone Walker, who is often associated with the California blues style, performed a successful transition from the early urban blues à la Lonnie Johnson and Leroy Carr to the jump blues style and dominated the blues-jazz scene at Los Angeles during the 1940s.
1950s
The transition from country blues to urban blues that began in the 1920s was driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms that led many rural blacks to move to urban areas, in a movement known as the Great Migration. The long boom following World War II induced another massive migration of the African-American population, the Second Great Migration, which was accompanied by a significant increase of the real income of the urban blacks. The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry. The term race record, initially used by the music industry for African-American music, was replaced by the term rhythm and blues. This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by Billboard magazine's Rhythm & Blues chart. This marketing strategy reinforced trends in urban blues music such as the use of electric instruments and amplification and the generalization of the blues beat, the blues shuffle, which became ubiquitous in rhythm and blues (R&B). This commercial stream had important consequences for blues music, which, together with jazz and gospel music, became a component of R&B.
After World War II, new styles of electric blues became popular in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, Detroit and St. Louis. Electric blues used electric guitars, double bass (gradually replaced by bass guitar), drums, and harmonica (or "blues harp") played through a microphone and a PA system or an overdriven guitar amplifier. Chicago became a center for electric blues from 1948 on, when Muddy Waters recorded his first success, "I Can't Be Satisfied". Chicago blues is influenced to a large extent by Delta blues, because many performers had migrated from the Mississippi region.
Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Jimmy Reed were all born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Their style is characterized by the use of electric guitar, sometimes slide guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. The saxophonist J. T. Brown played in bands led by Elmore James and by J. B. Lenoir, but the saxophone was used as a backing instrument for rhythmic support more than as a lead instrument.
Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and Sonny Terry are well known harmonica (called "harp" by blues musicians) players of the early Chicago blues scene. Other harp players such as Big Walter Horton were also influential. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of slide electric guitar. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were known for their deep, "gravelly" voices.
The bassist and prolific songwriter and composer Willie Dixon played a major role on the Chicago blues scene. He composed and wrote many standard blues songs of the period, such as "Hoochie Coochie Man", "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both penned for Muddy Waters) and, "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man" for Howlin' Wolf. Most artists of the Chicago blues style recorded for the Chicago-based Chess Records and Checker Records labels. Smaller blues labels of this era included Vee-Jay Records and J.O.B. Records. During the early 1950s, the dominating Chicago labels were challenged by Sam Phillips' Sun Records company in Memphis, which recorded B. B. King and Howlin' Wolf before he moved to Chicago in 1960. After Phillips discovered Elvis Presley in 1954, the Sun label turned to the rapidly expanding white audience and started recording mostly rock 'n' roll.
In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music. While popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, both recording for Chess, were influenced by the Chicago blues, their enthusiastic playing styles departed from the melancholy aspects of blues. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana's zydeco music, with Clifton Chenier using blues accents. Zydeco musicians used electric solo guitar and cajun arrangements of blues standards.
In England, electric blues took root there during a much acclaimed Muddy Waters tour in 1958. Waters, unsuspecting of his audience's tendency towards skiffle, an acoustic, softer brand of blues, turned up his amp and started to play his Chicago brand of electric blues. Although the audience was largely jolted by the performance, the performance influenced local musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies to emulate this louder style, inspiring the British Invasion of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.
In the late 1950s, a new blues style emerged on Chicago's West Side pioneered by Magic Sam, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush on Cobra Records. The "West Side sound" had strong rhythmic support from a rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums and as perfected by Guy, Freddie King, Magic Slim and Luther Allison was dominated by amplified electric lead guitar. Expressive guitar solos were a key feature of this music.
Other blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker, had influences not directly related to the Chicago style. John Lee Hooker's blues is more "personal", based on Hooker's deep rough voice accompanied by a single electric guitar. Though not directly influenced by boogie-woogie, his "groovy" style is sometimes called "guitar boogie". His first hit, "Boogie Chillen", reached number 1 on the R&B charts in 1949.
By the late 1950s, the swamp blues genre developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain around the producer J. D. "Jay" Miller and the Excello label. Strongly influenced by Jimmy Reed, swamp blues has a slower pace and a simpler use of the harmonica than the Chicago blues style performers such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Songs from this genre include "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee". Alan Lomax's recordings of Mississippi Fred McDowell would eventually bring him wider attention on both the blues and folk circuit, with McDowell's droning style influencing North Mississippi hill country blues musicians.
1960s and 1970s
By the beginning of the 1960s, genres influenced by African American music such as rock and roll and soul were part of mainstream popular music. White performers such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles had brought African-American music to new audiences, within the U.S. and abroad. However, the blues wave that brought artists such as Muddy Waters to the foreground had stopped. Bluesmen such as Big Bill Broonzy and Willie Dixon started looking for new markets in Europe. Dick Waterman and the blues festivals he organized in Europe played a major role in propagating blues music abroad. In the UK, bands emulated U.S. blues legends, and UK blues rock-based bands had an influential role throughout the 1960s.
Blues performers such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to perform to enthusiastic audiences, inspiring new artists steeped in traditional blues, such as New York–born Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker blended his blues style with rock elements and playing with younger white musicians, creating a musical style that can be heard on the 1971 album Endless Boogie. B. B. King's singing and virtuoso guitar technique earned him the eponymous title "king of the blues". King introduced a sophisticated style of guitar soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. In contrast to the Chicago style, King's band used strong brass support from a saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, instead of using slide guitar or harp. Tennessee-born Bobby "Blue" Bland, like B. B. King, also straddled the blues and R&B genres. During this period, Freddie King and Albert King often played with rock and soul musicians (Eric Clapton and Booker T & the MGs) and had a major influence on those styles of music.
The music of the civil rights movement and Free Speech Movement in the U.S. prompted a resurgence of interest in American roots music and early African American music. As well festivals such as the Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues and performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Reverend Gary Davis. Many compilations of classic prewar blues were republished by the Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir from the Chicago blues movement in the 1950s recorded several LPs using acoustic guitar, sometimes accompanied by Willie Dixon on the acoustic bass or drums. His songs, originally distributed only in Europe, commented on political issues such as racism or Vietnam War issues, which was unusual for this period. His album Alabama Blues contained a song with the following lyric:
White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band featuring guitarist Michael Bloomfield and singer/songwriter Nick Gravenites, and the British blues movement. The style of British blues developed in the UK, when musicians such as Cyril Davies, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the Rolling Stones, Animals, the Yardbirds, Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Chicken Shack, early Jethro Tull, Cream and the Irish musician Rory Gallagher performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions.
In 1963, Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, was the first to write a book on the social history of the blues in Blues People: The Negro Music in White America. The British and blues musicians of the early 1960s inspired a number of American blues rock performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, the J. Geils Band, Ry Cooder, and the Allman Brothers Band. One blues rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a Black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and audio feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music. Later in the 1960s, British singer Jo Ann Kelly started her recording career. In the US, from the 1970s, female singers Bonnie Raitt and Phoebe Snow performed blues.
In the early 1970s, the Texas rock-blues style emerged, which used guitars in both solo and rhythm roles. In contrast with the West Side blues, the Texas style is strongly influenced by the British rock-blues movement. Major artists of the Texas style are Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds (led by harmonica player and singer-songwriter Kim Wilson), and ZZ Top. These artists all began their musical careers in the 1970s but they did not achieve international success until the next decade.
1980s to the present
Since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of interest in the blues among a certain part of the African-American population, particularly around Jackson, Mississippi and other deep South regions. Often termed "soul blues" or "Southern soul", the music at the heart of this movement was given new life by the unexpected success of two particular recordings on the Jackson-based Malaco label: Z. Z. Hill's Down Home Blues (1982) and Little Milton's The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who work in this style of the blues include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Mel Waiters, Clarence Carter, Dr. "Feelgood" Potts, O.B. Buchana, Ms. Jody, Shirley Brown, and dozens of others.
During the 1980s blues also continued in both traditional and new forms. In 1986 the album Strong Persuader announced Robert Cray as a major blues artist. The first Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Texas Flood was released in 1983, and the Texas-based guitarist exploded onto the international stage. John Lee Hooker's popularity was revived with the album The Healer in 1989. Eric Clapton, known for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, made a comeback in the 1990s with his album Unplugged, in which he played some standard blues numbers on acoustic guitar.
However, beginning in the 1990s, digital multitrack recording and other technological advances and new marketing strategies including video clip production increased costs, challenging the spontaneity and improvisation that are an important component of blues music. In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue were launched, major cities began forming blues societies, outdoor blues festivals became more common, and more nightclubs and venues for blues emerged. Tedeschi Trucks Band and Gov't Mule released blues rock albums. Female blues singers such as Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi, Sue Foley and Shannon Curfman also recorded albums.
In the 1990s, the largely ignored hill country blues gained minor recognition in both blues and alternative rock music circles with northern Mississippi artists R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Blues performers explored a range of musical genres, as can be seen, for example, from the broad array of nominees of the yearly Blues Music Awards, previously named W.C. Handy Awards or of the Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary and Traditional Blues Album. The Billboard Blues Album chart provides an overview of current blues hits. Contemporary blues music is nurtured by several blues labels such as: Alligator Records, Ruf Records, Severn Records, Chess Records (MCA), Delmark Records, NorthernBlues Music, Fat Possum Records and Vanguard Records (Artemis Records). Some labels are famous for rediscovering and remastering blues rarities, including Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (heir of Folkways Records), and Yazoo Records (Shanachie Records).
Musical impact
Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Bob Dylan have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even in orchestral works such as George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F". Gershwin's second "Prelude" for solo piano is an interesting example of a classical blues, maintaining the form with academic strictness. The blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music (for example, in "A Hard Day's Night"). Blues forms are used in the theme to the televised Batman, teen idol Fabian Forte's hit, "Turn Me Loose", country music star Jimmie Rodgers' music, and guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason".
Early country bluesmen such as Skip James, Charley Patton, Georgia Tom Dorsey played country and urban blues and had influences from spiritual singing. Dorsey helped to popularize Gospel music. Gospel music developed in the 1930s, with the Golden Gate Quartet. In the 1950s, soul music by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown used gospel and blues music elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues were merged in soul blues music. Funk music of the 1970s was influenced by soul; funk can be seen as an antecedent of hip-hop and contemporary R&B.
R&B music can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Musically, spirituals were a descendant of New England choral traditions, and in particular of Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response forms. Spirituals or religious chants in the African-American community are much better documented than the "low-down" blues. Spiritual singing developed because African-American communities could gather for mass or worship gatherings, which were called camp meetings.
Edward P. Comentale has noted how the blues was often used as a medium for art or self-expression, stating: "As heard from Delta shacks to Chicago tenements to Harlem cabarets, the blues proved—despite its pained origins—a remarkably flexible medium and a new arena for the shaping of identity and community."
Before World War II, the boundaries between blues and jazz were less clear. Usually, jazz had harmonic structures stemming from brass bands, whereas blues had blues forms such as the 12-bar blues. However, the jump blues of the 1940s mixed both styles. After WWII, blues had a substantial influence on jazz. Bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", used the blues form with the pentatonic scale and blue notes.
Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, from a popular style of music for dancing to a "high-art", less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz split, and the border between blues and jazz became more defined.
The blues' 12-bar structure and the blues scale was a major influence on rock and roll music. Rock and roll has been called "blues with a backbeat"; Carl Perkins called rockabilly "blues with a country beat". Rockabillies were also said to be 12-bar blues played with a bluegrass beat. "Hound Dog", with its unmodified 12-bar structure (in both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed into a rock and roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's style of rock and roll was heavily influenced by the blues and its derivative boogie-woogie. His style of music was not exactly rockabilly but it has been often called real rock and roll (this is a label he shares with several African American rock and roll performers).
Many early rock and roll songs are based on blues: "That's All Right Mama", "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the sexual themes and innuendos of blues music: "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti", Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say", Ray Charles). The 12-bar blues structure can be found even in novelty pop songs, such as Bob Dylan's "Obviously Five Believers" and Esther and Abi Ofarim's "Cinderella Rockefella".
Early country music was infused with the blues. Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams have all described themselves as blues singers and their music has a blues feel that is different, at first glance at least, from the later country-pop of artists like Eddy Arnold. Yet, if one looks back further, Arnold also started out singing bluesy songs like 'I'll Hold You in My Heart'. A lot of the 1970s-era "outlaw" country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also borrowed from the blues. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country music after the decline of 1950s style rock and roll, he sang with a blues feel and often included blues standards on his albums.
In popular culture
Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, Latin music, funk, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s. In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to popularize blues-influenced music among non-Black Americans.
During the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the critically acclaimed film Sounder (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination. Almost 30 years later, Mahal wrote blues for, and performed a banjo composition, claw-hammer style, in the 2001 movie release Songcatcher, which focused on the story of the preservation of the roots music of Appalachia.
Perhaps the most visible example of the blues style of music in the late 20th century came in 1980, when Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi released the film The Blues Brothers. The film drew many of the biggest living influencers of the rhythm and blues genre together, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker. The band formed also began a successful tour under the Blues Brothers marquee. 1998 brought a sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 that, while not holding as great a critical and financial success, featured a much larger number of blues artists, such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Traveler, Jimmie Vaughan, and Jeff Baxter.
In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called The Blues. He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs. Blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the television series The West Wing.
The blues was highlighted in season 2012, episode 1 of In Performance at the White House, entitled "Red, White and Blues". Hosted by Barack and Michelle Obama, the show featured performances by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr., Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks, Keb Mo, and others.
See also
List of blues festivals
List of blues musicians
List of blues standards
References
Bibliography
Bransford, Steve (2004). "Blues in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley" Southern Spaces.
Further reading
Abbott, Lynn; Doug Seroff. The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African-American Vaudeville, 1889–1926. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. .
Brown, Luther. "Inside Poor Monkey's", Southern Spaces, June 22, 2006.
Dixon, Robert M.W.; Godrich, John (1970). Recording the Blues. London: Studio Vista. 85 pp. SBN 289-79829-9.
Welding, Peter; Brown, Toby, eds. (1991). Bluesland: Portraits of Twelve Major American Blues Masters. New York: Penguin Group. 253 + [2] pp. .
External links
The American Folklife Center's Online Collections and Presentations
The Blue Shoe Project – Nationwide (U.S.) Blues Education Programming
"The Blues", documentary series by Martin Scorsese, aired on PBS
The Blues Foundation
The Delta Blues Museum (archived 12 June 1998)
The Music in Poetry – Smithsonian Institution lesson plan on the blues, for teachers
American Music: Archive of artist and record label discographies
African-American music
Radio formats
Jazz terminology
African-American cultural history
American styles of music
19th-century music genres
20th-century music genres
Musical improvisation
Popular music
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Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent states, Berlin is surrounded by the State of Brandenburg and contiguous with Potsdam, Brandenburg's capital. Berlin's urban area, which has a population of around 4.5 million, is the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region.
Berlin straddles the banks of the Spree, which flows into the Havel (a tributary of the Elbe) in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the Spree, Havel and Dahme, the largest of which is Lake Müggelsee. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals, and lakes. The city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being spoken.
First documented in the 13th century and at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (14171701), Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), German Empire (1871–1918), Weimar Republic (1919–1933), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). Berlin has served as a scientific, artistic and philosophical hub of the Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, and liberal revolution. The era's
industrialization-induced economic boom multiplied Berlin's population rapidly. Berlin in the roaring 1920s was the third-largest city in the world by population.
After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the devastated city was divided; West Berlin became a de facto exclave of West Germany, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (from August 1961 to November 1989) and East German territory. East Berlin was declared capital of East Germany, while Bonn became the West German capital. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany.
Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, startup companies, research facilities, media corporations, and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries also include information technology, healthcare, biomedical engineering, biotechnology, automotive, construction, electronics, social economy and clean tech.
Berlin is home to world-renowned universities such as the Humboldt University, Technical University, Free University, University of the Arts, ESMT Berlin, Hertie School, and Bard College Berlin. Its Zoological Garden is the most visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. With Babelsberg being the world's first large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an increasingly popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts, and high quality of life.
Berlin is also home to three World Heritage Sites: Museum Island; the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin; and the Modernism Housing Estates. Other landmarks include the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag building, Potsdamer Platz, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin Wall Memorial, East Side Gallery, Berlin Victory Column, Berlin Cathedral, and Berlin Television Tower, the tallest structure in Germany. Berlin has numerous museums, galleries, libraries, orchestras, and sporting events including Museum Island, the German Historical Museum, Jewish Museum, Natural History Museum, State Library, State Opera, Philharmonic, and the Berlin Marathon.
History
Etymology
Berlin lies in northeastern Germany, east of the River Elbe, that once constituted, together with the River (Saxon or Thuringian) Saale (from their confluence at Barby onwards), the eastern border of the Frankish Realm. While the Frankish Realm was primarily inhabited by Germanic tribes like the Franks and the Saxons, the regions east of the border rivers were inhabited by Slavic tribes. This is why most of the cities and villages in northeastern Germany bear Slavic-derived names (Germania Slavica). Typical Germanized place name suffixes of Slavic origin are and , prefixes are and . The name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of today's Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem ("swamp"). or Proto-Slavic bьrlogъ, (lair, den). Since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word ("bear"), a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore an example of canting arms.
Of Berlin's twelve boroughs, five bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name: Pankow (the most populous), Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Treptow-Köpenick and Spandau (named Spandow until 1878). Of its ninety-six neighborhoods, twenty-two bear a (partly) Slavic-derived name: Altglienicke, Alt-Treptow, Britz, Buch, Buckow, Gatow, Karow, Kladow, Köpenick, Lankwitz, Lübars, Malchow, Marzahn, Pankow, Prenzlauer Berg, Rudow, Schmöckwitz, Spandau, Stadtrandsiedlung Malchow, Steglitz, Tegel and Zehlendorf. The neighborhood of Moabit bears a French-derived name, and Französisch Buchholz is named after the Huguenots.
Prehistory of Berlin
The earliest human traces in the area of modern Berlin are dated around 60,000 BC. A Mesolithic deer antler mask found in Biesdorf (Berlin) was dated around 9000 BC. During Neolithic times a large number of communities existed in the area and in the Bronze Age up to 1000 people lived in 50 villages. Early Germanic tribes took settlement from 500 BC. Slavic settlements and castles began around 750 AD.
12th to 16th centuries
The earliest evidence of middle age settlements in the area of today's Berlin are remnants of a house foundation dated to 1174, found in excavations in Berlin Mitte, and a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192. The first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920. The central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document, and Berlin, across the Spree in what is now called the Nikolaiviertel, is referenced in a document from 1244. 1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the staple right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, their internal administrations still being separated.
In 1415, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. During the 15th century, his successors established Berlin-Cölln as capital of the margraviate, and subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled in Berlin until 1918, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and eventually as German emperors. In 1443, Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new royal palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln. The protests of the town citizens against the building culminated in 1448, in the "Berlin Indignation" ("Berliner Unwille"). This protest was not successful and the citizenry lost many of its political and economic privileges. After the royal palace was finished in 1451, it gradually came into use. From 1470, with the new elector Albrecht III Achilles, Berlin-Cölln became the new royal residence. Officially, the Berlin-Cölln palace became permanent residence of the Brandenburg electors of the Hohenzollerns from 1486, when John Cicero came to power. Berlin-Cölln, however, had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city. In 1539, the electors and the city officially became Lutheran.
17th to 19th centuries
The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 devastated Berlin. One third of its houses were damaged or destroyed, and the city lost half of its population. Frederick William, known as the "Great Elector", who had succeeded his father George William as ruler in 1640, initiated a policy of promoting immigration and religious tolerance. With the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Frederick William offered asylum to the French Huguenots.
By 1700, approximately 30 percent of Berlin's residents were French, because of the Huguenot immigration. Many other immigrants came from Bohemia, Poland, and Salzburg.
Since 1618, the Margraviate of Brandenburg had been in personal union with the Duchy of Prussia. In 1701, the dual state formed the Kingdom of Prussia, as Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, crowned himself as king Frederick I in Prussia. Berlin became the capital of the new Kingdom, replacing Königsberg. This was a successful attempt to centralise the capital in the very far-flung state, and it was the first time the city began to grow. In 1709, Berlin merged with the four cities of Cölln, Friedrichswerder, Friedrichstadt and Dorotheenstadt under the name Berlin, "Haupt- und Residenzstadt Berlin".
In 1740, Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great (1740–1786), came to power. Under the rule of Frederick II, Berlin became a center of the Enlightenment, but also, was briefly occupied during the Seven Years' War by the Russian army. Following France's victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Berlin in 1806, but granted self-government to the city. In 1815, the city became part of the new Province of Brandenburg.
The Industrial Revolution transformed Berlin during the 19th century; the city's economy and population expanded dramatically, and it became the main railway hub and economic center of Germany. Additional suburbs soon developed and increased the area and population of Berlin. In 1861, neighboring suburbs including Wedding, Moabit and several others were incorporated into Berlin. In 1871, Berlin became capital of the newly founded German Empire. In 1881, it became a city district separate from Brandenburg.
20th to 21st centuries
In the early 20th century, Berlin had become a fertile ground for the German Expressionist movement. In fields such as architecture, painting and cinema new forms of artistic styles were invented. At the end of the First World War in 1918, a republic was proclaimed by Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act incorporated dozens of suburban cities, villages, and estates around Berlin into an expanded city. The act increased the area of Berlin from . The population almost doubled, and Berlin had a population of around four million. During the Weimar era, Berlin underwent political unrest due to economic uncertainties but also became a renowned center of the Roaring Twenties. The metropolis experienced its heyday as a major world capital and was known for its leadership roles in science, technology, arts, the humanities, city planning, film, higher education, government, and industries. Albert Einstein rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Hitler was inspired by the architecture he had experienced in Vienna, and he wished for a German Empire with a capital city that had a monumental ensemble. The National Socialist regime embarked on monumental construction projects in Berlin as a way to express their power and authority through architecture. Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer developed architectural concepts for the conversion of the city into World Capital Germania; these were never implemented.
NSDAP rule diminished Berlin's Jewish community from 160,000 (one-third of all Jews in the country) to about 80,000 due to emigration between 1933 and 1939. After Kristallnacht in 1938, thousands of the city's Jews were imprisoned in the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Starting in early 1943, many were shipped to concentration camps, such as Auschwitz.
Berlin hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics for which the Olympic stadium was built.
During World War II, large parts of Berlin were destroyed during Allied air raids and the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The Allies dropped 67,607 tons of bombs on the city, destroying 6,427 acres of the built-up area. Around 125,000 civilians were killed. After the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945, Berlin received large numbers of refugees from the Eastern provinces. The victorious powers divided the city into four sectors, analogous to Allied-occupied Germany the sectors of the Allies of World War II (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) formed West Berlin, while the Soviet Union formed East Berlin.
All four Allies of World War II shared administrative responsibilities for Berlin. However, in 1948, when the Western Allies extended the currency reform in the Western zones of Germany to the three western sectors of Berlin, the Soviet Union imposed the Berlin Blockade on the access routes to and from West Berlin, which lay entirely inside Soviet-controlled territory. The Berlin airlift, conducted by the three western Allies, overcame this blockade by supplying food and other supplies to the city from June 1948 to May 1949. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in West Germany and eventually included all of the American, British and French zones, excluding those three countries' zones in Berlin, while the Marxist–Leninist German Democratic Republic was proclaimed in East Germany. West Berlin officially remained an occupied city, but it politically was aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany despite West Berlin's geographic isolation. Airline service to West Berlin was granted only to American, British and French airlines.
The founding of the two German states increased Cold War tensions. West Berlin was surrounded by East German territory, and East Germany proclaimed the Eastern part as its capital, a move the western powers did not recognize. East Berlin included most of the city's historic center. The West German government established itself in Bonn. In 1961, East Germany began to build the Berlin Wall around West Berlin, and events escalated to a tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. West Berlin was now de facto a part of West Germany with a unique legal status, while East Berlin was de facto a part of East Germany. John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on 26 June 1963, in front of the Schöneberg city hall, located in the city's western part, underlining the US support for West Berlin. Berlin was completely divided. Although it was possible for Westerners to pass to the other side through strictly controlled checkpoints, for most Easterners, travel to West Berlin or West Germany was prohibited by the government of East Germany. In 1971, a Four-Power agreement guaranteed access to and from West Berlin by car or train through East Germany.
In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and pressure from the East German population, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November and was subsequently mostly demolished. Today, the East Side Gallery preserves a large portion of the wall. On 3 October 1990, the two parts of Germany were reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany, and Berlin again became a reunified city. Walter Momper, the mayor of West Berlin, became the first mayor of the reunified city in the interim. City-wide elections in December 1990 resulted in the first "all Berlin" mayor being elected to take office in January 1991, with the separate offices of mayors in East and West Berlin expiring by that time, and Eberhard Diepgen (a former mayor of West Berlin) became the first elected mayor of a reunited Berlin. On 18 June 1994, soldiers from the United States, France and Britain marched in a parade which was part of the ceremonies to mark the withdrawal of allied occupation troops allowing a reunified Berlin (the last Russian troops departed on 31 August, while the final departure of Western Allies forces was on 8 September 1994). On 20 June 1991, the Bundestag (German Parliament) voted to move the seat of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin, which was completed in 1999, during the chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder.
Berlin's 2001 administrative reform merged several boroughs, reducing their number from 23 to 12.
In 2006, the FIFA World Cup Final was held in Berlin.
In a 2016 terrorist attack linked to ISIL, a truck was deliberately driven into a Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, leaving 13 people dead and 55 others injured.
In 2018, more than 200,000 protestors took to the streets in Berlin with demonstrations of solidarity against racism, in response to the emergence of far-right politics in Germany.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) opened in 2020, nine years later than planned, with Terminal 1 coming into service at the end of October, and flights to and from Tegel Airport ending in November. Due to the fall in passenger numbers resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, plans were announced to temporarily close BER's Terminal 5, the former Schönefeld Airport, beginning in March 2021 for up to one year. The connecting link of U-Bahn line U5 from Alexanderplatz to Hauptbahnhof, along with the new stations Rotes Rathaus and Unter den Linden, opened on 4 December 2020, with the Museumsinsel U-Bahn station expected to open around March 2021, which would complete all new works on the U5.
A partial opening by the end of 2020 of the Humboldt Forum museum, housed in the reconstructed Berlin Palace, which had been announced in June, was postponed until March 2021. On 16 September 2022, the opening of the eastern wing, the last section of the Humboldt Forum museum, meant the Humboldt Forum museum was finally completed. It became Germany's currently most expensive cultural project.
Berlin-Brandenburg fusion attempt
The legal basis for a combined state of Berlin and Brandenburg is different from other state fusion proposals. Normally, Article 29 of the Basic Law stipulates that a state fusion requires a federal law. However, a clause added to the Basic Law in 1994, Article 118a, allows Berlin and Brandenburg to unify without federal approval, requiring a referendum and a ratification by both state parliaments.
In 1996, there was an unsuccessful attempt of unifying the states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Both share a common history, dialect and culture and in 2020, there are over 225.000 residents of Brandenburg that commute to Berlin. The fusion had the near-unanimous support by a broad coalition of both state governments, political parties, media, business associations, trade unions and churches. Though Berlin voted in favor by a small margin, largely based on support in former West Berlin, Brandenburg voters disapproved of the fusion by a large margin. It failed largely due to Brandenburg voters not wanting to take on Berlin's large and growing public debt and fearing losing identity and influence to the capital.
Geography
Topography
Berlin is in northeastern Germany, in an area of low-lying marshy woodlands with a mainly flat topography, part of the vast Northern European Plain which stretches all the way from northern France to western Russia. The Berliner Urstromtal (an ice age glacial valley), between the low Barnim Plateau to the north and the Teltow plateau to the south, was formed by meltwater flowing from ice sheets at the end of the last Weichselian glaciation. The Spree follows this valley now. In Spandau, a borough in the west of Berlin, the Spree empties into the river Havel, which flows from north to south through western Berlin. The course of the Havel is more like a chain of lakes, the largest being the Tegeler See and the Großer Wannsee. A series of lakes also feeds into the upper Spree, which flows through the Großer Müggelsee in eastern Berlin.
Substantial parts of present-day Berlin extend onto the low plateaus on both sides of the Spree Valley. Large parts of the boroughs Reinickendorf and Pankow lie on the Barnim Plateau, while most of the boroughs of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and Neukölln lie on the Teltow Plateau.
The borough of Spandau lies partly within the Berlin Glacial Valley and partly on the Nauen Plain, which stretches to the west of Berlin. Since 2015, the Arkenberge hills in Pankow at elevation, have been the highest point in Berlin. Through the disposal of construction debris they surpassed Teufelsberg (), which itself was made up of rubble from the ruins of the Second World War. The Müggelberge at elevation is the highest natural point and the lowest is the Spektesee in Spandau, at elevation.
Climate
Berlin has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) bordering on a humid continental climate (Dfb); one of the changes being the annual rainfall according to the air masses and the greater abundance during a period of the year. This type of climate features moderate summer temperatures but sometimes hot (for being semicontinental) and cold winters but not rigorous most of the time.
Due to its transitional climate zones, frosts are common in winter, and there are larger temperature differences between seasons than typical for many oceanic climates. Furthermore, Berlin is classified as a temperate continental climate (Dc) under the Trewartha climate scheme, as are as the suburbs of New York City, although the Köppen system puts them in different types.
Summers are warm and sometimes humid with average high temperatures of and lows of . Winters are cool with average high temperatures of and lows of . Spring and autumn are generally chilly to mild. Berlin's built-up area creates a microclimate, with heat stored by the city's buildings and pavement. Temperatures can be higher in the city than in the surrounding areas. Annual precipitation is with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Snowfall mainly occurs from December through March. The hottest month in Berlin was July 1834, with a mean temperature of and the coldest was January 1709, with a mean temperature of . The wettest month on record was July 1907, with of rainfall, whereas the driest were October 1866, November 1902, October 1908 and September 1928, all with of rainfall.
Cityscape
Berlin's history has left the city with a polycentric organization and a highly eclectic array of architecture and buildings. The city's appearance today has been predominantly shaped by the key role it played in Germany's history during the 20th century. All of the national governments based in Berlin the Kingdom of Prussia, the 2nd German Empire of 1871, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany, as well as the reunified Germany initiated ambitious reconstruction programs, with each adding its own distinctive style to the city's architecture.
Berlin was devastated by air raids, fires, and street battles during the Second World War, and many of the buildings that had survived in both East and West were demolished during the postwar period. Much of this demolition was initiated by municipal architecture programs to build new business or residential districts and the main arteries. Much ornamentation on prewar buildings was destroyed following modernist dogmas, and in both postwar systems, as well as in the reunified Berlin, many important heritage structures have been reconstructed, including the Forum Fridericianum along with, the State Opera (1955), Charlottenburg Palace (1957), the monumental buildings on Gendarmenmarkt (1980s), Kommandantur (2003) and also the project to reconstruct the baroque façades of the City Palace. Many new buildings have been inspired by their historical predecessors or the general classical style of Berlin, such as Hotel Adlon.
Clusters of towers rise at various locations: Potsdamer Platz, the City West, and Alexanderplatz, the latter two delineating the former centers of East and West Berlin, with the first representing a new Berlin of the 21st century, risen from the wastes of no-man's land of the Berlin Wall. Berlin has five of the top 50 tallest buildings in Germany.
Over one-third of the city area consists of green space, woodlands, and water. Berlin's second-largest and most popular park, the Großer Tiergarten, is located right in the center of the city. It covers an area of 210 hectares and stretches from Bahnhof Zoo in the City West to the Brandenburg Gate in the east.
Among famous streets, Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße are found in the city's historic heart (and were included in the former East Berlin). Some major streets in City West are Kurfürstendamm (or just Ku´damm) and Kantstraße.
Architecture
The Fernsehturm (TV tower) at Alexanderplatz in Mitte is among the tallest structures in the European Union at . Built in 1969, it is visible throughout most of the central districts of Berlin. The city can be viewed from its observation floor. Starting here, the Karl-Marx-Allee heads east, an avenue lined by monumental residential buildings, designed in the Socialist Classicism style. Adjacent to this area is the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall), with its distinctive red-brick architecture. In front of it is the Neptunbrunnen, a fountain featuring a mythological group of Tritons, personifications of the four main Prussian rivers, and Neptune on top of it.
The Brandenburg Gate is an iconic landmark of Berlin and Germany; it stands as a symbol of eventful European history and of unity and peace. The Reichstag building is the traditional seat of the German Parliament. It was remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area, which allows free public access to the parliamentary proceedings and magnificent views of the city.
The East Side Gallery is an open-air exhibition of art painted directly on the last existing portions of the Berlin Wall. It is the largest remaining evidence of the city's historical division.
The Gendarmenmarkt is a neoclassical square in Berlin, the name of which derives from the headquarters of the famous Gens d'armes regiment located here in the 18th century. Two similarly designed cathedrals border it, the Französischer Dom with its observation platform and the Deutscher Dom. The Konzerthaus (Concert Hall), home of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, stands between the two cathedrals.
The Museum Island in the River Spree houses five museums built from 1830 to 1930 and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Restoration and construction of a main entrance to all museums, as well as reconstruction of the Stadtschloss continues. Also on the island and next to the Lustgarten and palace is Berlin Cathedral, emperor William II's ambitious attempt to create a Protestant counterpart to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. A large crypt houses the remains of some of the earlier Prussian royal family. St. Hedwig's Cathedral is Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral.
Unter den Linden is a tree-lined east–west avenue from the Brandenburg Gate to the site of the former Berliner Stadtschloss, and was once Berlin's premier promenade. Many Classical buildings line the street, and part of Humboldt University is there. Friedrichstraße was Berlin's legendary street during the Golden Twenties. It combines 20th-century traditions with the modern architecture of today's Berlin.
Potsdamer Platz is an entire quarter built from scratch after the Wall came down. To the west of Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, which houses the Gemäldegalerie, and is flanked by the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Berliner Philharmonie. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial, is to the north.
The area around Hackescher Markt is home to fashionable culture, with countless clothing outlets, clubs, bars, and galleries. This includes the Hackesche Höfe, a conglomeration of buildings around several courtyards, reconstructed around 1996. The nearby New Synagogue is the center of Jewish culture.
The Straße des 17. Juni, connecting the Brandenburg Gate and Ernst-Reuter-Platz, serves as the central east–west axis. Its name commemorates the uprisings in East Berlin of 17 June 1953. Approximately halfway from the Brandenburg Gate is the Großer Stern, a circular traffic island on which the Siegessäule (Victory Column) is situated. This monument, built to commemorate Prussia's victories, was relocated in 1938–39 from its previous position in front of the Reichstag.
The Kurfürstendamm is home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at its eastern end on Breitscheidplatz. The church was destroyed in the Second World War and left in ruins. Nearby on Tauentzienstraße is KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store. The Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech, is in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
West of the center, Bellevue Palace is the residence of the German President. Charlottenburg Palace, which was burnt out in the Second World War, is the largest historical palace in Berlin.
The Funkturm Berlin is a lattice radio tower in the fairground area, built between 1924 and 1926. It is the only observation tower which stands on insulators and has a restaurant and an observation deck above ground, which is reachable by a windowed elevator.
The Oberbaumbrücke over the Spree river is Berlin's most iconic bridge, connecting the now-combined boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. It carries vehicles, pedestrians, and the U1 Berlin U-Bahn line. The bridge was completed in a brick gothic style in 1896, replacing the former wooden bridge with an upper deck for the U-Bahn. The center portion was demolished in 1945 to stop the Red Army from crossing. After the war, the repaired bridge served as a checkpoint and border crossing between the Soviet and American sectors, and later between East and West Berlin. In the mid-1950s, it was closed to vehicles, and after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, pedestrian traffic was heavily restricted. Following German reunification, the center portion was reconstructed with a steel frame, and U-Bahn service resumed in 1995.
Demographics
At the end of 2018, the city-state of Berlin had 3.75 million registered inhabitants in an area of . The city's population density was 4,206 inhabitants per km2. Berlin is the most populous city proper in the European Union. In 2019, the urban area of Berlin had about 4.5 million inhabitants. , the functional urban area was home to about 5.2 million people. The entire Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has a population of more than 6 million in an area of .
In 2014, the city-state Berlin had 37,368 live births (+6.6%), a record number since 1991. The number of deaths was 32,314. Almost 2.0 million households were counted in the city. 54 percent of them were single-person households. More than 337,000 families with children under the age of 18 lived in Berlin. In 2014, the German capital registered a migration surplus of approximately 40,000 people.
Nationalities
National and international migration into the city has a long history. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France, the city responded with the Edict of Potsdam, which guaranteed religious freedom and tax-free status to French Huguenot refugees for ten years. The Greater Berlin Act in 1920 incorporated many suburbs and surrounding cities of Berlin. It formed most of the territory that comprises modern Berlin and increased the population from 1.9 million to 4 million.
Active immigration and asylum politics in West Berlin triggered waves of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Berlin is home to at least 180,000 Turkish and Turkish German residents, making it the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey. In the 1990s the Aussiedlergesetze enabled immigration to Germany of some residents from the former Soviet Union. Today ethnic Germans from countries of the former Soviet Union make up the largest portion of the Russian-speaking community. The last decade experienced an influx from various Western countries and some African regions. A portion of the African immigrants have settled in the Afrikanisches Viertel. Young Germans, EU-Europeans and Israelis have also settled in the city.
In December 2019, there were 777,345 registered residents of foreign nationality and another 542,975 German citizens with a "migration background" (Migrationshintergrund, MH), meaning they or one of their parents immigrated to Germany after 1955. Foreign residents of Berlin originate from about 190 countries. 48 percent of the residents under the age of 15 have a migration background in 2017. Berlin in 2009 was estimated to have 100,000 to 250,000 unregistered inhabitants. Boroughs of Berlin with a significant number of migrants or foreign born population are Mitte, Neukölln and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. The number of Arabic speakers in Berlin could be higher than 150,000. There are at least 40,000 Berliners with Syrian citizenship, third only behind Turkish and Polish citizens. The 2015 refugee crisis made Berlin Europe's capital of Arab culture. Berlin is among the cities in Germany that have received the biggest amount of refugees after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of November 2022, an estimated 85,000 Ukrainian refugees were registered in Berlin, making Berlin the most popular destination of Ukrainian refugees in Germany.
There are more than 20 non-indigenous communities with a population of at least 10,000 people, including Turkish, Polish, Russian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, Italian, Indian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, American, Romanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Chinese, Austrian, Ukrainian, French, British, Spanish, Israeli, Thai, Iranian, Egyptian and Syrian communities.
Languages
German is the official and predominant spoken language in Berlin. It is a West Germanic language that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. German is one of 24 languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission.
Berlinerisch or Berlinisch is not a dialect linguistically. It is spoken in Berlin and the surrounding metropolitan area. It originates from a Brandenburgish variant. The dialect is now seen more like a sociolect, largely through increased immigration and trends among the educated population to speak standard German in everyday life.
The most commonly spoken foreign languages in Berlin are Turkish, Polish, English, Persian, Arabic, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Romanian, Kurdish, Serbo-Croatian, French, Spanish and Vietnamese. Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, and Serbo-Croatian are heard more often in the western part due to the large Middle Eastern and former-Yugoslavian communities. Polish, English, Russian, and Vietnamese have more native speakers in East Berlin.
Religion
On the report of the 2011 census, approximately 37 percent of the population reported being members of a legally-recognized church or religious organization. The rest either did not belong to such an organization, or there was no information available about them.
The largest religious denomination recorded in 2010 was the Protestant regional church body—the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO)—a united church. EKBO is a member of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) and of the Union of Protestant Churches in the EKD (UEK). According to the EKBO, their membership accounted for 18.7 percent of the local population, while the Roman Catholic Church had 9.1 percent of residents registered as its members. About 2.7% of the population identify with other Christian denominations (mostly Eastern Orthodox, but also various Protestants). According to the Berlin residents register, in 2018 14.9 percent were members of the Evangelical Church, and 8.5 percent were members of the Catholic Church. The government keeps a register of members of these churches for tax purposes, because it collects church tax on behalf of the churches. It does not keep records of members of other religious organizations which may collect their own church tax, in this way.
In 2009, approximately 249,000 Muslims were reported by the Office of Statistics to be members of mosques and Islamic religious organizations in Berlin, while in 2016, the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel estimated that about 350,000 Muslims observed Ramadan in Berlin. In 2019, about 437,000 registered residents, 11.6% of the total, reported having a migration background from one of the Member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Between 1992 and 2011 the Muslim population almost doubled.
About 0.9% of Berliners belong to other religions. Of the estimated population of 30,000–45,000 Jewish residents, approximately 12,000 are registered members of religious organizations.
Berlin is the seat of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Berlin and EKBO's elected chairperson is titled the bishop of EKBO. Furthermore, Berlin is the seat of many Orthodox cathedrals, such as the Cathedral of St. Boris the Baptist, one of the two seats of the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Western and Central Europe, and the Resurrection of Christ Cathedral of the Diocese of Berlin (Patriarchate of Moscow).
The faithful of the different religions and denominations maintain many places of worship in Berlin. The Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church has eight parishes of different sizes in Berlin. There are 36 Baptist congregations (within Union of Evangelical Free Church Congregations in Germany), 29 New Apostolic Churches, 15 United Methodist churches, eight Free Evangelical Congregations, four Churches of Christ, Scientist (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 11th), six congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an Old Catholic church, and an Anglican church in Berlin. Berlin has more than 80 mosques, ten synagogues, and two Buddhist temples.
Government and politics
City state
Since reunification on 3 October 1990, Berlin has been one of the three city states in Germany among the present 16 states of Germany. The House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus) functions as the city and state parliament, which has 141 seats. Berlin's executive body is the Senate of Berlin (Senat von Berlin). The Senate consists of the Governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister), and up to ten senators holding ministerial positions, two of them holding the title of "Mayor" (Bürgermeister) as deputy to the Governing Mayor. The total annual state budget of Berlin in 2015 exceeded €24.5 ($30.0) billion including a budget surplus of €205 ($240) million. The state owns extensive assets, including administrative and government buildings, real estate companies, as well as stakes in the Olympic Stadium, swimming pools, housing companies, and numerous public enterprises and subsidiary companies.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and The Left (Die Linke) took control of the city government after the 2001 state election and won another term in the 2006 state election. From the 2016 state election until the 2023 state election, there was a coalition between the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Left Party. Since April 2023, the government has been formed by a coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.
The Governing Mayor is simultaneously Lord Mayor of the City of Berlin (Oberbürgermeister der Stadt) and Minister President of the State of Berlin (Ministerpräsident des Bundeslandes). The office of the Governing Mayor is in the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall). Since 2023, this office has been held by Kai Wegner of the Christian Democrats. He is the first conservative mayor in Berlin in more than two decades.
Boroughs
Berlin is subdivided into 12 boroughs or districts (Bezirke). Each borough has several subdistricts or neighborhoods (Ortsteile), which have roots in much older municipalities that predate the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920. These subdistricts became urbanized and incorporated into the city later on. Many residents strongly identify with their neighborhoods, colloquially called Kiez. At present, Berlin consists of 96 subdistricts, which are commonly made up of several smaller residential areas or quarters.
Each borough is governed by a borough council (Bezirksamt) consisting of five councilors (Bezirksstadträte) including the borough's mayor (Bezirksbürgermeister). The council is elected by the borough assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). However, the individual boroughs are not independent municipalities, but subordinate to the Senate of Berlin. The borough's mayors make up the council of mayors (Rat der Bürgermeister), which is led by the city's Governing Mayor and advises the Senate. The neighborhoods have no local government bodies.
Twin towns – sister cities
Berlin maintains official partnerships with 17 cities. Town twinning between West Berlin and other cities began with its sister city Los Angeles, California (the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics host city) in 1967. East Berlin's partnerships were canceled at the time of German reunification but later partially reestablished relations in the 1990s. West Berlin's partnerships had previously been restricted to the borough level. During the Cold War, the partnerships had reflected the different power blocs, with West Berlin partnering with capitals in the Western World and East Berlin mostly partnering with cities from the Warsaw Pact and its allies.
There are several joint projects with many other cities, such as Amsterdam, Beirut, Belgrade, Copenhagen, Hanoi, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Mumbai, New York City, Oslo, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sofia, Sydney, and Vienna. Berlin participates in international city associations such as the Union of the Capitals of the European Union, Eurocities, Network of European Cities of Culture, Metropolis, Summit Conference of the World's Major Cities, and Conference of the World's Capital Cities.
Berlin is twinned with:
Los Angeles, United States (1967)
Madrid, Spain (1988)
Istanbul, Turkey (1989)
Warsaw, Poland (1991)
Moscow, Russia (1991)
Brussels, Belgium (1992)
Budapest, Hungary (1992)
Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1993)
Mexico City, Mexico (1993)
Jakarta, Indonesia (1993)
Beijing, China (1994)
Tokyo, Japan (1994)
Buenos Aires, Argentina (1994)
Prague, Czech Republic (1995)
Windhoek, Namibia (2000)
London, United Kingdom (2000)
Kyiv, Ukraine (2023)
Since 1987, Berlin also has an official partnership with Paris, France. Every Berlin borough also established its own twin towns. For example, the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg has a partnership with the Israeli city of Kiryat Yam.
Capital city
Berlin is the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. The President of Germany, whose functions are mainly ceremonial under the German constitution, has their official residence in Bellevue Palace. Berlin is the seat of the German Chancellor (Prime Minister), housed in the Chancellery building, the Bundeskanzleramt. Facing the Chancellery is the Bundestag, the German Parliament, housed in the renovated Reichstag building since the government's relocation to Berlin in 1998. The Bundesrat ("federal council", performing the function of an upper house) is the representation of the 16 constituent states (Länder) of Germany and has its seat at the former Prussian House of Lords. The total annual federal budget managed by the German government exceeded €310 ($375) billion in 2013.
The relocation of the federal government and Bundestag to Berlin was mostly completed in 1999. However, some ministries, as well as some minor departments, stayed in the federal city Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. Discussions about moving the remaining ministries and departments to Berlin continue. The Federal Foreign Office and the ministries and departments of Defense, Justice and Consumer Protection, Finance, Interior, Economic Affairs and Energy, Labor and Social Affairs, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Food and Agriculture, Economic Cooperation and Development, Health, Transport and Digital Infrastructure and Education and Research are based in the capital.
Berlin hosts in total 158 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many think tanks, trade unions, nonprofit organizations, lobbying groups, and professional associations. Due to the influence and international partnerships of the Federal Republic of Germany, the capital city has become a significant center of German and European affairs. Frequent official visits and diplomatic consultations among governmental representatives and national leaders are common in contemporary Berlin.
Economy
In 2018, the GDP of Berlin totaled €147 billion, an increase of 3.1% over the previous year. Berlin's economy is dominated by the service sector, with around 84% of all companies doing business in services. In 2015, the total labor force in Berlin was 1.85 million. The unemployment rate reached a 24-year low in November 2015 and stood at 10.0%. From 2012 to 2015 Berlin, as a German state, had the highest annual employment growth rate. Around 130,000 jobs were added in this period.
Important economic sectors in Berlin include life sciences, transportation, information and communication technologies, media and music, advertising and design, biotechnology, environmental services, construction, e-commerce, retail, hotel business, and medical engineering.
Research and development have economic significance for the city. Several major corporations like Volkswagen, Pfizer, and SAP operate innovation laboratories in the city.
The Science and Business Park in Adlershof is the largest technology park in Germany measured by revenue. Within the Eurozone, Berlin has become a center for business relocation and international investments.
Companies
Many German and international companies have business or service centers in the city. For several years Berlin has been recognized as a major center of business founders. In 2015, Berlin generated the most venture capital for young startup companies in Europe.
Among the 10 largest employers in Berlin are the City-State of Berlin, , the hospital providers Charité and Vivantes, the Federal Government of Germany, the local public transport provider BVG, Siemens and Deutsche Telekom.
Siemens, a Global 500 and DAX-listed company is partly headquartered in Berlin. Other DAX-listed companies headquartered in Berlin are the property company Deutsche Wohnen and the online food delivery service Delivery Hero. The national railway operator , Europe's largest digital publisher Axel Springer as well as the MDAX-listed firms Zalando and HelloFresh and also have their main headquarters in the city. Among the largest international corporations who have their German or European headquarters in Berlin are Bombardier Transportation, Securing Energy for Europe, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Sony and TotalEnergies.
As of 2018, the three largest banks headquartered in the capital were Deutsche Kreditbank, Landesbank Berlin and Berlin Hyp.
Mercedes-Benz Group manufactures cars, and BMW builds motorcycles in Berlin. In 2022, American electric car manufacturer Tesla opened its first European Gigafactory outside the city borders in Grünheide (Mark), Brandenburg. The Pharmaceuticals division of Bayer and Berlin Chemie are major pharmaceutical companies in the city.
Tourism and conventions
Berlin had 788 hotels with 134,399 beds in 2014. The city recorded 28.7 million overnight hotel stays and 11.9 million hotel guests in 2014. Tourism figures have more than doubled within the last ten years and Berlin has become the third-most-visited city destination in Europe. Some of the most visited places in Berlin include: Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburger Tor, the Berlin wall, Alexanderplatz, Museumsinsel, Fernsehturm, the East-Side Gallery, Schloss-Charlottenburg, Zoologischer Garten, Siegessäule, Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Mauerpark, Botanical Garden, Französischer Dom, Deutscher Dom and Holocaust-Mahnmal. The largest visitor groups are from Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the United States.
According to figures from the International Congress and Convention Association in 2015, Berlin became the leading organizer of conferences globally, hosting 195 international meetings. Some of these congress events take place on venues such as CityCube Berlin or the Berlin Congress Center (bcc).
The Messe Berlin (also known as Berlin ExpoCenter City) is the main convention organizing company in the city. Its main exhibition area covers more than . Several large-scale trade fairs like the consumer electronics trade fair IFA, the ILA Berlin Air Show, the Berlin Fashion Week (including the Premium Berlin and the Panorama Berlin), the Green Week, the Fruit Logistica, the transport fair InnoTrans, the tourism fair ITB and the adult entertainment and erotic fair Venus are held annually in the city, attracting a significant number of business visitors.
Creative industries
The creative arts and entertainment business is an important part of Berlin's economy. The sector comprises music, film, advertising, architecture, art, design, fashion, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, TV, radio, and video games.
In 2014, around 30,500 creative companies operated in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region, predominantly SMEs. Generating a revenue of 15.6 billion Euro and 6% of all private economic sales, the culture industry grew from 2009 to 2014 at an average rate of 5.5% per year.
Berlin is an important European and German film industry hub. It is home to more than 1,000 film and television production companies, 270 movie theaters, and around 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The historic Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are adjacent to Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the German Film Academy (Deutsche Filmakademie), founded in 2003, and the European Film Academy, founded in 1988.
Media
Berlin is home to many magazine, newspaper, book, and scientific/academic publishers and their associated service industries. In addition, around 20 news agencies, more than 90 regional daily newspapers and their websites, as well as the Berlin offices of more than 22 national publications such as , and Die Zeit reinforce the capital's position as Germany's epicenter for influential debate. Therefore, many international journalists, bloggers, and writers live and work in the city.
Berlin is the central location to several international and regional television and radio stations. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters in Berlin as well as the commercial broadcasters MTV Europe and Welt. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin, and most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city, including ZDF and RTL.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical and La Gazette de Berlin a French-language newspaper.
Berlin is also the headquarter of major German-language publishing houses like Walter de Gruyter, Springer, the Ullstein Verlagsgruppe (publishing group), Suhrkamp, and Cornelsen are all based in Berlin. Each of which publishes books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Quality of life
According to Mercer, Berlin ranked number 13 in the Quality of living city ranking in 2019.
Also in 2019, according to Monocle, Berlin occupied the position of the 6th-most-livable city in the world. Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Berlin number 21 of all global cities. Berlin was also number 8 at the Global Power City Index. in the same year.
Again in 2019, Berlin has the best future prospects of all cities in Germany, according to HWWI and Berenberg Bank. According to the 2019 study by Forschungsinstitut Prognos, Berlin was ranked number 92 of all 401 regions in Germany. It is also the 4th ranked region in former East Germany after Jena, Dresden and Potsdam.
Infrastructure
Transport
Roads
Berlin's transport infrastructure is highly complex, providing a diverse range of urban mobility. A total of 979 bridges cross of inner-city waterways. of roads run through Berlin, of which are motorways (). In 2013, 1.344 million motor vehicles were registered in the city. With 377 cars per 1000 residents in 2013 (570/1000 in Germany), Berlin as a Western global city has one of the lowest numbers of cars per capita. In 2012, around 7,600 mostly beige colored taxicabs were in service. Since 2011, a number of app based e-car and e-scooter sharing services have evolved.
Rail
Long-distance rail lines connect Berlin with all of the major cities of Germany and with many cities in neighboring European countries. Regional rail lines of the provide access to the surrounding regions of Brandenburg and to the Baltic Sea. The is the largest grade-separated railway station in Europe. runs high speed Intercity-Express trains to domestic destinations like , Munich, Cologne, , and others. It also runs an airport express rail service, as well as trains to several international destinations like Vienna, Prague, , Warsaw, Wrocław, Budapest and Amsterdam.
Water transport
Berlin is connected to the Elbe and Oder rivers via the Spree and the Havel rivers. There are no frequent passenger connections to and from Berlin by water, but some of the freight is transported via waterways. Berlin's largest harbour, the Westhafen, is located in the district of Moabit. It is a transhipment and storage site for inland shipping with a growing importance.
Intercity buses
Similarly to other German cities, there is an increasing quantity of intercity bus services. The city has more than 10 stations that run buses to destinations throughout Germany and Europe, being the biggest station.
Public transport
The (BVG) and the (DB) manage several extensive urban public transport systems.
Travelers can access all modes of transport with a single ticket.
Public transport in Berlin has a long and complicated history because of the 20th-century division of the city, where movement between the two halves was not served. Since 1989, the transport network has been developed extensively; however, it still contains early 20th century traits, such as the U1.
Airports
Berlin is served by one commercial international airport: Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), located just outside Berlin's south-eastern border, in the state of Brandenburg. It began construction in 2006, with the intention of replacing Airport (TXL) and Airport (SXF) as the single commercial airport of Berlin. Previously set to open in 2012, after extensive delays and cost overruns, it opened for commercial operations in October 2020. The planned initial capacity of around 27 million passengers per year is to be further developed to bring the terminal capacity to approximately 55 million per year by 2040.
Before the opening of the BER in Brandenburg, Berlin was served by Tegel Airport and Schönefeld Airport. Tegel Airport was within the city limits, and Schönefeld Airport was located at the same site as the BER. Both airports together handled 29.5 million passengers in 2015. In 2014, 67 airlines served 163 destinations in 50 countries from Berlin. Airport was a focus city for Lufthansa and Eurowings while Schönefeld served as an important destination for airlines like , easyJet and Ryanair. Until 2008, Berlin was also served by the smaller Tempelhof Airport, which functioned as a city airport, with a convenient location near the city center, allowing for quick transit times between the central business district and the airport. The airport grounds have since been turned into a city park.
Cycling
Berlin is well known for its highly developed bicycle lane system. It is estimated Berlin has 710 bicycles per 1000 residents. Around 500,000 daily bike riders accounted for 13% of total traffic in 2010. Cyclists have access to of bicycle paths including approximately of mandatory bicycle paths, of off-road bicycle routes, of bicycle lanes on roads, of shared bus lanes which are also open to cyclists, of combined pedestrian/bike paths and of marked bicycle lanes on roadside pavements (or sidewalks). Riders are allowed to carry their bicycles on , S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains, on trams, and on night buses if a bike ticket is purchased.
Rohrpost (pneumatic postal network)
From 1865 to 1976, Berlin operated an expansive pneumatic postal network, reaching a maximum length of 400 kilometers (roughly 250 miles) by 1940. The system was divided into two distinct networks after 1949. The West Berlin system remained in public use until 1963, and continued to be utilized for government correspondence until 1972. Conversely, the East Berlin system, which incorporated the Hauptelegraphenamt—the central hub of the operation—remained functional until 1976.
Energy
Berlin's two largest energy provider for private households are the Swedish firm Vattenfall and the Berlin-based company GASAG. Both offer electric power and natural gas supply. Some of the city's electric energy is imported from nearby power plants in southern Brandenburg.
the five largest power plants measured by capacity are the Heizkraftwerk Reuter West, the Heizkraftwerk Lichterfelde, the Heizkraftwerk Mitte, the Heizkraftwerk Wilmersdorf, and the Heizkraftwerk Charlottenburg. All of these power stations generate electricity and useful heat at the same time to facilitate buffering during load peaks.
In 1993 the power grid connections in the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region were renewed. In most of the inner districts of Berlin power lines are underground cables; only a 380 kV and a 110 kV line, which run from Reuter substation to the urban Autobahn, use overhead lines. The Berlin 380-kV electric line is the backbone of the city's energy grid.
Health
Berlin has a long history of discoveries in medicine and innovations in medical technology. The modern history of medicine has been significantly influenced by scientists from Berlin. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch developed vaccines for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis.
The Charité complex (Universitätsklinik Charité) is the largest university hospital in Europe, tracing back its origins to the year 1710. More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch and Paul Ehrlich, have worked at the Charité. The Charité is spread over four campuses and comprises around 3,000 beds, 15,500 staff, 8,000 students, and more than 60 operating theaters, and it has a turnover of two billion euros annually. The Charité is a joint institution of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin, including a wide range of institutes and specialized medical centers.
Among them are the German Heart Center, one of the most renowned transplantation centers, the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine, and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. The scientific research at these institutions is complemented by many research departments of companies such as Siemens and Bayer. The World Health Summit and several international health-related conventions are held annually in Berlin.
Telecommunication
Since 2017, the digital television standard in Berlin and Germany is DVB-T2. This system transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream.
Berlin has installed several hundred free public Wireless LAN sites across the capital since 2016. The wireless networks are concentrated mostly in central districts; 650 hotspots (325 indoor and 325 outdoor access points) are installed. is planning to introduce Wi-Fi services in long-distance and regional trains in 2017.
The UMTS (3G) and LTE (4G) networks of the three major cellular operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 enable the use of mobile broadband applications citywide.
The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute develops mobile and stationary broadband communication networks and multimedia systems. Focal points are photonic components and systems, fiber optic sensor systems, and image signal processing and transmission. Future applications for broadband networks are developed as well.
Education and research
, Berlin had 878 schools, teaching 340,658 students in 13,727 classes and 56,787 trainees in businesses and elsewhere. The city has a 6-year primary education program. After completing primary school, students continue to the (a comprehensive school) or (college preparatory school). Berlin has a special bilingual school program in the , in which children are taught the curriculum in German and a foreign language, starting in primary school and continuing in high school.
The Französisches Gymnasium Berlin, which was founded in 1689 to teach the children of Huguenot refugees, offers (German/French) instruction. The John F. Kennedy School, a bilingual German–American public school in Zehlendorf, is particularly popular with children of diplomats and the English-speaking expatriate community. 82 teach Latin and 8 teach Classical Greek.
Higher education
The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region is one of the most prolific centers of higher education and research in Germany and Europe. Historically, 67 Nobel Prize winners are affiliated with the Berlin-based universities.
The city has four public research universities and more than 30 private, professional, and technical colleges (Hochschulen), offering a wide range of disciplines. A record number of 175,651 students were enrolled in the winter term of 2015/16. Among them around 18% have an international background.
The three largest universities combined have approximately 103,000 enrolled students. There are the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin, FU Berlin) with about 33,000 students, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) with 35,000 students, and the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) with 35,000 students. The Charité Medical School has around 8,000 students. The FU, the HU, the TU, and the Charité make up the Berlin University Alliance, which has received funding from the Excellence Strategy program of the German government. The Universität der Künste (UdK) has about 4,000 students and ESMT Berlin is only one of four business schools in Germany with triple accreditation. The Hertie School, a private public policy school located in Mitte, has more than 900 students and doctoral students. The Berlin School of Economics and Law has an enrollment of about 11,000 students, the Berlin University of Applied Sciences and Technology of about 12,000 students, and the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (University of Applied Sciences for Engineering and Economics) of about 14,000 students.
Research
The city has a high density of internationally renowned research institutions, such as the Fraunhofer Society, the Leibniz Association, the Helmholtz Association, and the Max Planck Society, which are independent of, or only loosely connected to its universities. In 2012, around 65,000 professional scientists were working in research and development in the city.
Berlin is one of the knowledge and innovation communities (KIC) of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The KIC is based at the Center for Entrepreneurship at TU Berlin and has a focus in the development of IT industries. It partners with major multinational companies such as Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, and SAP.
One of Europe's successful research, business and technology clusters is based at WISTA in Berlin-Adlershof, with more than 1,000 affiliated firms, university departments and scientific institutions.
In addition to the university-affiliated libraries, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a major research library. Its two main locations are on Potsdamer Straße and on Unter den Linden. There are also 86 public libraries in the city. ResearchGate, a global social networking site for scientists, is based in Berlin.
Culture
Berlin is known for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. The diversity and vivacity of the metropolis led to a trendsetting atmosphere. An innovative music, dance and art scene has developed in the 21st century.
Young people, international artists and entrepreneurs continued to settle in the city and made Berlin a popular entertainment center in the world.
The expanding cultural performance of the city was underscored by the relocation of the Universal Music Group who decided to move their headquarters to the banks of the River Spree. In 2005, Berlin was named "City of Design" by UNESCO and has been part of the Creative Cities Network ever since.
Many German and International films were shot in Berlin, including M, One, Two, Three, Cabaret, Christiane F., Possession, Octopussy, Wings of Desire, Run Lola Run, The Bourne Trilogy, Good Bye, Lenin!, The Lives of Others, Inglourious Basterds, Hanna, Unknown and Bridge of Spies.
Galleries and museums
Berlin is home to 138 museums and more than 400 art galleries.
The ensemble on the Museum Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben. As early as 1841 it was designated a "district dedicated to art and antiquities" by a royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum was built in the Lustgarten. The Neues Museum, which displays the bust of Queen Nefertiti, Alte Nationalgalerie, Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there.
Apart from the Museum Island, there are many additional museums in the city. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the "old masters" from the 13th to the 18th centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in 20th-century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. The expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum reopened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history spanning more than a millennium. The Bauhaus Archive is a museum of 20th-century design from the famous Bauhaus school. Museum Berggruen houses the collection of noted 20th century collector Heinz Berggruen, and features an extensive assortment of works by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, and Giacometti, among others. The Kupferstichkabinett Berlin (Museum of Prints and Drawings) is part of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums) and the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz in the Tiergarten district of Berlin's Mitte district. It is the largest museum of the graphic arts in Germany and at the same time one of the four most important collections of its kind in the world. The collection includes Friedrich Gilly's design for the monument to Frederick II of Prussia.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin's natural history museum) exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a Giraffatitan skeleton). A well-preserved specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex and the early bird Archaeopteryx are at display as well.
In Dahlem, there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the Museum of Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of European Cultures, as well as the Allied Museum. The Brücke Museum features one of the largest collection of works by artist of the early 20th-century expressionist movement. In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security, is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the most renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved. A private museum venture exhibits a comprehensive documentation of detailed plans and strategies devised by people who tried to flee from the East.
The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum claimed to be the largest erotic museum in the world until it closed in 2014.
The cityscape of Berlin displays large quantities of urban street art. It has become a significant part of the city's cultural heritage and has its roots in the graffiti scene of Kreuzberg of the 1980s. The Berlin Wall itself has become one of the largest open-air canvasses in the world. The leftover stretch along the Spree river in Friedrichshain remains as the East Side Gallery. Berlin today is consistently rated as an important world city for street art culture.
Berlin has galleries which are quite rich in contemporary art. Located in Mitte, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, KOW, Sprüth Magers; Kreuzberg there are a few galleries as well such as Blain Southern, Esther Schipper, Future Gallery, König Gallerie.
Nightlife and festivals
Berlin's nightlife has been celebrated as one of the most diverse and vibrant of its kind. In the 1970s and 80s, the SO36 in Kreuzberg was a center for punk music and culture. The SOUND and the Dschungel gained notoriety. Throughout the 1990s, people in their 20s from all over the world, particularly those in Western and Central Europe, made Berlin's club scene a premier nightlife venue. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many historic buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, were illegally occupied and re-built by young squatters and became a fertile ground for underground and counterculture gatherings. The central boroughs are home to many nightclubs, including the Watergate, Tresor and Berghain. The KitKatClub and several other locations are known for their sexually uninhibited parties.
Clubs are not required to close at a fixed time during the weekends, and many parties last well into the morning or even all weekend. The Weekend Club near Alexanderplatz features a roof terrace that allows partying at night. Several venues have become a popular stage for the Neo-Burlesque scene.
Berlin has a long history of gay culture, and is an important birthplace of the LGBT rights movement. Same-sex bars and dance halls operated freely as early as the 1880s, and the first gay magazine, Der Eigene, started in 1896. By the 1920s, gays and lesbians had an unprecedented visibility. Today, in addition to a positive atmosphere in the wider club scene, the city again has a huge number of queer clubs and festivals. The most famous and largest are Berlin Pride, the Christopher Street Day, the Lesbian and Gay City Festival in Berlin-Schöneberg, the Kreuzberg Pride and Hustlaball.
The annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) with around 500,000 admissions is considered to be the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. The Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures), a multi-ethnic street parade, is celebrated every Pentecost weekend. Berlin is also well known for the cultural festival Berliner Festspiele, which includes the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin, and Young Euro Classic, the largest international festival of youth orchestras in the world. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress. The annual Berlin Festival focuses on indie rock, electronic music and synthpop and is part of the International Berlin Music Week. Every year Berlin hosts one of the largest New Year's Eve celebrations in the world, attended by well over a million people. The focal point is the Brandenburg Gate, where midnight fireworks are centered, but various private fireworks displays take place throughout the entire city. Partygoers in Germany often toast the New Year with a glass of sparkling wine.
Performing arts
Berlin is home to 44 theaters and stages. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849–50 and has operated almost continuously since then. The Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz was built in 1913–14, though the company had been founded in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 and moved to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm in 1981. With a seating capacity of 1,895 and a stage floor of , the Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin Mitte is the largest show palace in Europe. For Berlin's independent dance and theatre scene, venues such as the Sophiensäle in Mitte and the three houses of the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Kreuzberg are important. Most productions there are also accessible to an English-speaking audience. Some of the dance and theatre groups that also work internationally (Gob Squad, Rimini Protokoll) are based there, as well as festivals such as the international festival Dance in August.
Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden opened in 1742 and is the oldest of the three. Its musical director is Daniel Barenboim. The Komische Oper has traditionally specialized in operettas and is also at Unter den Linden. The Deutsche Oper opened in 1912 in Charlottenburg.
The city's main venue for musical theater performances are the Theater am Potsdamer Platz and Theater des Westens (built in 1895). Contemporary dance can be seen at the Radialsystem V. The Tempodrom is host to concerts and circus-inspired entertainment. It also houses a multi-sensory spa experience. The Admiralspalast in Mitte has a vibrant program of variety and music events.
There are seven symphony orchestras in Berlin. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the preeminent orchestras in the world; it is housed in the Berliner Philharmonie near Potsdamer Platz on a street named for the orchestra's longest-serving conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Simon Rattle was its principal conductor from 1999 to 2018, a position now held by Kirill Petrenko. The Konzerthausorchester Berlin was founded in 1952 as the orchestra for East Berlin. Christoph Eschenbach is its principal conductor. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt presents exhibitions dealing with intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences. The Kookaburra and the Quatsch Comedy Club are known for satire and comedy shows. In 2018, the New York Times described Berlin as "arguably the world capital of underground electronic music".
Cuisine
The cuisine and culinary offerings of Berlin vary greatly. 23 restaurants in Berlin have been awarded one or more Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide of 2021, which ranks the city at the top for the number of restaurants having this distinction in Germany. Berlin is well known for its offerings of vegetarian and vegan cuisine and is home to an innovative entrepreneurial food scene promoting cosmopolitan flavors, local and sustainable ingredients, pop-up street food markets, supper clubs, as well as food festivals, such as Berlin Food Week.
Many local foods originated from north German culinary traditions and include rustic and hearty dishes with pork, goose, fish, peas, beans, cucumbers, or potatoes. Typical Berliner fare include popular street food like the Currywurst (which gained popularity with postwar construction workers rebuilding the city), Buletten and the Berliner donut, known in Berlin as . German bakeries offering a variety of breads and pastries are widespread. One of Europe's largest delicatessen markets is found at the KaDeWe, and among the world's largest chocolate stores is Rausch.
Berlin is also home to a diverse gastronomy scene reflecting the immigrant history of the city. Turkish and Arab immigrants brought their culinary traditions to the city, such as the lahmajoun and falafel, which have become common fast food staples. The modern fast-food version of the doner kebab sandwich which evolved in Berlin in the 1970s, has since become a favorite dish in Germany and elsewhere in the world. Asian cuisine like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Korean, and Japanese restaurants, as well as Spanish tapas bars, Italian, and Greek cuisine, can be found in many parts of the city.
Recreation
Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the older of two zoos in the city, was founded in 1844. It is the most visited zoo in Europe and presents the most diverse range of species in the world. It was the home of the captive-born celebrity polar bear Knut. The city's other zoo, Tierpark Friedrichsfelde, was founded in 1955.
Berlin's Botanischer Garten includes the Botanic Museum Berlin. With an area of and around 22,000 different plant species, it is one of the largest and most diverse collections of botanical life in the world. Other gardens in the city include the Britzer Garten, and the Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World) in Marzahn.
The Tiergarten park in Mitte, with landscape design by Peter Joseph Lenné, is one of Berlin's largest and most popular parks. In Kreuzberg, the Viktoriapark provides a viewing point over the southern part of inner-city Berlin. Treptower Park, beside the Spree in Treptow, features a large Soviet War Memorial. The Volkspark in Friedrichshain, which opened in 1848, is the oldest park in the city, with monuments, a summer outdoor cinema and several sports areas. Tempelhofer Feld, the site of the former city airport, is the world's largest inner-city open space.
Potsdam is on the southwestern periphery of Berlin. The city was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser, until 1918. The area around Potsdam in particular Sanssouci is known for a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks. The Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin are the largest World Heritage Site in Germany.
Berlin is also well known for its numerous cafés, street musicians, beach bars along the Spree River, flea markets, boutique shops and pop-up stores, which are a source for recreation and leisure.
Sports
Berlin has established a high-profile as a host city of major international sporting events. The city hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics and was the host city for the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. The World Athletics Championships was held in the Olympiastadion in 2009 and 2025. The city hosted the Basketball Euroleague Final Four in 2009 and 2016. and was one of the hosts of the FIBA EuroBasket 2015. In 2015 Berlin became the venue for the UEFA Champions League Final.
Berlin will host the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games. This will be the first time Germany has ever hosted the Special Olympics World Games.
The annual Berlin Marathon a course that holds the most top-10 world record runs and the ISTAF are well-established athletic events in the city. The Mellowpark in Köpenick is one of the biggest skate and BMX parks in Europe. A Fan Fest at Brandenburg Gate, which attracts several hundred-thousand spectators, has become popular during international football competitions, like the UEFA European Championship.
In 2013 around 600,000 Berliners were registered in one of the more than 2,300 sport and fitness clubs. The city of Berlin operates more than 60 public indoor and outdoor swimming pools. Berlin is the largest Olympic training center in Germany. About 500 top athletes (15% of all German top athletes) are based there. Forty-seven elite athletes participated in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Berliners would achieve seven gold, twelve silver and three bronze medals.
Several professional clubs representing the most important spectator team sports in Germany have their base in Berlin. The oldest and most popular first division team based in Berlin is the football club Hertha BSC. The team represented Berlin as a founding member of the Bundesliga in 1963. Other professional team sport clubs include:
See also
List of fiction set in Berlin
List of honorary citizens of Berlin
List of people from Berlin
List of songs about Berlin
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Daum, Andreas. Kennedy in Berlin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, .
External links
berlin.de – official website
Berlin 1916 – detailed historical city maps of pre-1916 Berlin
German state capitals
Capitals in Europe
City-states
Members of the Hanseatic League
Populated places established in the 13th century
Turkish communities outside Turkey
1230s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire
1237 establishments in Europe
States of Germany
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Benjamin Lee Whorf (; April 24, 1897 – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer who is famous for proposing the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis." He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea, named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity. However, the concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt.
Whorf initially pursued chemical engineering but developed an interest in linguistics, particularly Biblical Hebrew and indigenous Mesoamerican languages. His groundbreaking work on the Nahuatl language earned him recognition, and he received a grant to study it further in Mexico. He presented influential papers on Nahuatl upon his return. Whorf later studied linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale University while working as a fire prevention engineer.
During his time at Yale, Whorf worked on describing the Hopi language and made notable claims about its perception of time. He also conducted research on the Uto-Aztecan languages, publishing influential papers. In 1938, he substituted for Sapir, teaching a seminar on American Indian linguistics. Whorf's contributions extended beyond linguistic relativity; he wrote a grammar sketch of Hopi, studied Nahuatl dialects, proposed a deciphering of Maya hieroglyphic writing, and contributed to Uto-Aztecan reconstruction.
After Whorf's death from cancer in 1941, his linguist friends curated his manuscripts and promoted his ideas regarding language, culture, and cognition. However, in the 1960s, his views fell out of favor due to criticisms claiming his ideas were untestable and poorly formulated. In recent decades, interest in Whorf's work has resurged, with scholars reevaluating his ideas and engaging in a more in-depth understanding of his theories. The field of linguistic relativity remains an active area of research in psycholinguistics and linguistic anthropology, generating ongoing debates between relativism and universalism. Whorf's contributions to linguistics, such as the allophone and the cryptotype, have been widely accepted.
Biography
Early life
The son of Harry Church Whorf and Sarah Edna Lee Whorf, Benjamin Lee Whorf was born on April 24, 1897, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Harry Church Whorf was an artist, intellectual, and designer – first working as a commercial artist and later as a dramatist. Whorf had two younger brothers, John and Richard, who both went on to become notable artists. John became an internationally renowned painter and illustrator; Richard was an actor in films such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and later an Emmy-nominated television director of such shows as The Beverly Hillbillies. Whorf was the intellectual of the three and started conducting chemical experiments with his father's photographic equipment at a young age. He was also an avid reader, interested in botany, astrology, and Middle American prehistory. He read William H. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico several times. At the age of 17, he began keeping a copious diary in which he recorded his thoughts and dreams.
Career in fire prevention
Whorf graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918 with a degree in chemical engineering where his academic performance was of average quality. In 1920, he married Celia Inez Peckham, who became the mother of his three children, Raymond Ben, Robert Peckham and Celia Lee. Around the same time he began work as a fire prevention engineer (an inspector) for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. He was particularly good at the job and was highly commended by his employers. His job required him to travel to production facilities throughout New England to be inspected. One anecdote describes him arriving at a chemical plant in which he was denied access by the director because he would not allow anyone to see the production procedure which was a trade secret. Having been told what the plant produced, Whorf wrote a chemical formula on a piece of paper, saying to the director: "I think this is what you're doing". The surprised director asked Whorf how he knew about the secret procedure, and he simply answered: "You couldn't do it in any other way."
Whorf helped to attract new customers to the Fire Insurance Company; they favored his thorough inspections and recommendations. Another famous anecdote from his job was used by Whorf to argue that language use affects habitual behavior. Whorf described a workplace in which full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another; he said that because of flammable vapor the "empty" drums were more dangerous than those that were full, although workers handled them less carefully to the point that they smoked in the room with "empty" drums, but not in the room with full ones. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapor-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the "empty drums".
Early interest in religion and language
Whorf was a spiritual man throughout his lifetime although what religion he followed has been the subject of debate. As a young man, he produced a manuscript titled "Why I have discarded evolution", causing some scholars to describe him as a devout Methodist, who was impressed with fundamentalism, and perhaps supportive of creationism. However, throughout his life Whorf's main religious interest was theosophy, a nonsectarian organization based on Buddhist and Hindu teachings that promotes the view of the world as an interconnected whole and the unity and brotherhood of humankind "without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color". Some scholars have argued that the conflict between spiritual and scientific inclinations has been a driving force in Whorf's intellectual development, particularly in the attraction by ideas of linguistic relativity. Whorf said that "of all groups of people with whom I have come in contact, Theosophical people seem the most capable of becoming excited about ideas—new ideas."
Around 1924, Whorf first became interested in linguistics. Originally, he analyzed Biblical texts, seeking to uncover hidden layers of meaning. Inspired by the esoteric work La langue hebraïque restituée by Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, he began a semantic and grammatical analysis of Biblical Hebrew. Whorf's early manuscripts on Hebrew and Maya have been described as exhibiting a considerable degree of mysticism, as he sought to uncover esoteric meanings of glyphs and letters.
Early studies in Mesoamerican linguistics
Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library (now Hartford Public Library). This library had an extensive collection of materials about Native American linguistics and folklore, originally collected by James Hammond Trumbull. It was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with the young boy, John B. Carroll, who later went on to study psychology under B. F. Skinner, and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as Language, Thought and Reality . The collection rekindled Whorf's interest in Mesoamerican antiquity. He began studying the Nahuatl language in 1925, and later, beginning in 1928, he studied the collections of Maya hieroglyphic texts. Quickly becoming conversant with the materials, he began a scholarly dialog with Mesoamericanists such as Alfred Tozzer, the Maya archaeologist at Harvard University, and Herbert Spinden of the Brooklyn Museum.
In 1928, he first presented a paper at the International Congress of Americanists in which he presented his translation of a Nahuatl document held at the Peabody Museum at Harvard. He also began to study the comparative linguistics of the Uto-Aztecan language family, which Edward Sapir had recently demonstrated to be a linguistic family. In addition to Nahuatl, Whorf studied the Piman and Tepecano languages, while in close correspondence with linguist J. Alden Mason.
Field studies in Mexico
Because of the promise shown by his work on Uto-Aztecan, Tozzer and Spinden advised Whorf to apply for a grant with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to support his research. Whorf considered using the money to travel to Mexico to procure Aztec manuscripts for the Watkinson library, but Tozzer suggested he spend the time in Mexico documenting modern Nahuatl dialects. In his application Whorf proposed to establish the oligosynthetic nature of the Nahuatl language. Before leaving Whorf presented the paper "Stem series in Maya" at the Linguistic Society of America conference, in which he argued that in the Mayan languages syllables carry symbolic content. The SSRC awarded Whorf the grant and in 1930 he traveled to Mexico City, where Professor Robert H. Barlow put him in contact with several speakers of Nahuatl to serve as his informants. The outcome of the trip to Mexico was Whorf's sketch of Milpa Alta Nahuatl, published only after his death, and an article on a series of Aztec pictograms found at the Tepozteco monument at Tepoztlán, Morelos in which he noted similarities in form and meaning between Aztec and Maya day signs.
At Yale
Although Whorf had been entirely an autodidact in linguistic theory and field methodology up to this point, he had already made a name for himself in Mesoamerican linguistics. Whorf had met Sapir, the leading US linguist of the day, at professional conferences, and in 1931 Sapir came to Yale from the University of Chicago to take a position as Professor of Anthropology. Alfred Tozzer sent Sapir a copy of Whorf's paper on "Nahuatl tones and saltillo". Sapir replied stating that it "should by all means be published"; however, it was not until 1993 that it was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen.
Whorf took Sapir's first course at Yale on "American Indian Linguistics". He enrolled in a program of graduate studies, nominally working towards a PhD in linguistics, but he never actually attempted to obtain a degree, satisfying himself with participating in the intellectual community around Sapir. At Yale, Whorf joined the circle of Sapir's students that included such luminaries as Morris Swadesh, Mary Haas, Harry Hoijer, G. L. Trager and Charles F. Voegelin. Whorf took on a central role among Sapir's students and was well respected.
Sapir had a profound influence on Whorf's thinking. Sapir's earliest writings had espoused views of the relation between thought and language stemming from the Humboldtian tradition he acquired through Franz Boas, which regarded language as the historical embodiment of volksgeist, or ethnic world view. But Sapir had since become influenced by a current of logical positivism, such as that of Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, particularly through Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning, from which he adopted the view that natural language potentially obscures, rather than facilitates, the mind to perceive and describe the world as it really is. In this view, proper perception could only be accomplished through formal logics. During his stay at Yale, Whorf acquired this current of thought partly from Sapir and partly through his own readings of Russell and Ogden and Richards. As Whorf became more influenced by positivist science he also distanced himself from some approaches to language and meaning that he saw as lacking in rigor and insight. One of these was Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski's General semantics, which was espoused in the US by Stuart Chase. Chase admired Whorf's work and frequently sought out a reluctant Whorf, who considered Chase to be "utterly incompetent by training and background to handle such a subject." Ironically, Chase would later write the foreword for Carroll's collection of Whorf's writings.
Work on Hopi and descriptive linguistics
Sapir also encouraged Whorf to continue his work on the historical and descriptive linguistics of Uto-Aztecan. Whorf published several articles on that topic in this period, some of them with G. L. Trager, who had become his close friend. Whorf took a special interest in the Hopi language and started working with Ernest Naquayouma, a speaker of Hopi from Toreva village living in Manhattan, New York. Whorf credited Naquayouma as the source of most of his information on the Hopi language, although in 1938 he took a short field trip to the village of Mishongnovi, on the Second Mesa of the Hopi Reservation in Arizona.
In 1936, Whorf was appointed honorary research fellow in anthropology at Yale, and he was invited by Franz Boas to serve on the committee of the Society of American Linguistics (later Linguistic Society of America). In 1937, Yale awarded him the Sterling Fellowship. He was a lecturer in anthropology from 1937 through 1938, replacing Sapir, who was gravely ill. Whorf gave graduate level lectures on "Problems of American Indian Linguistics". In 1938 with Trager's assistance he elaborated a report on the progress of linguistic research at the department of anthropology at Yale. The report includes some of Whorf's influential contributions to linguistic theory, such as the concept of the allophone and of covert grammatical categories. has argued, that in this report Whorf's linguistic theories exist in a condensed form, and that it was mainly through this report that Whorf exerted influence on the discipline of descriptive linguistics.
Final years
In late 1938, Whorf's own health declined. After an operation for cancer, he fell into an unproductive period. He was also deeply affected by Sapir's death in early 1939. It was in the writings of his last two years that he laid out the research program of linguistic relativity. His 1939 memorial article for Sapir, "The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language", in particular has been taken to be Whorf's definitive statement of the issue, and is his most frequently quoted piece.
In his last year Whorf also published three articles in the MIT Technology Review titled "Science and Linguistics", "Linguistics as an Exact Science" and "Language and Logic". He was also invited to contribute an article to a theosophical journal, Theosophist, published in Madras, India, for which he wrote "Language, Mind and Reality". In these final pieces, he offered a critique of Western science in which he suggested that non-European languages often referred to physical phenomena in ways that more directly reflected aspects of reality than many European languages, and that science ought to pay attention to the effects of linguistic categorization in its efforts to describe the physical world. He particularly criticized the Indo-European languages for promoting a mistaken essentialist world view, which had been disproved by advances in the sciences, whereas he suggested that other languages dedicated more attention to processes and dynamics rather than stable essences. Whorf argued that paying attention to how other physical phenomena are described in the study of linguistics could make valuable contributions to science by pointing out the ways in which certain assumptions about reality are implicit in the structure of language itself, and how language guides the attention of speakers towards certain phenomena in the world which risk becoming overemphasized while leaving other phenomena at risk of being overlooked.
Posthumous reception and legacy
At Whorf's death, his friend G. L. Trager was appointed as curator of his unpublished manuscripts. Some of them were published in the years after his death by another of Whorf's friends, Harry Hoijer. In the decade following, Trager and particularly Hoijer did much to popularize Whorf's ideas about linguistic relativity, and it was Hoijer who coined the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" at a 1954 conference. Trager then published an article titled "The systematization of the Whorf hypothesis", which contributed to the idea that Whorf had proposed a hypothesis that should be the basis for a program of empirical research. Hoijer also published studies of Indigenous languages and cultures of the American South West in which Whorf found correspondences between cultural patterns and linguistic ones. The term, even though technically a misnomer, went on to become the most widely known label for Whorf's ideas. According to John A. Lucy, "Whorf's work in linguistics was and still is recognized as being of superb professional quality by linguists".
Universalism and anti-Whorfianism
Whorf's work began to fall out of favor less than a decade after his death, and he was subjected to severe criticism from scholars of language, culture and psychology. In 1953 and 1954, psychologists Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg criticized Whorf for his reliance on anecdotal evidence, formulating a hypothesis to scientifically test his ideas, which they limited to an examination of a causal relation between grammatical or lexical structure and cognition or perception. Whorf himself did not advocate a straight causality between language and thought; instead he wrote that "Language and culture had grown up together"; that both were mutually shaped by the other. Hence, has argued that because the aim of the formulation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was to test simple causation, it failed to test Whorf's ideas from the outset.
Focusing on color terminology, with easily discernible differences between perception and vocabulary, Brown and Lenneberg published in 1954 a study of Zuni color terms that slightly support a weak effect of semantic categorization of color terms on color perception. In doing so they began a line of empirical studies that investigated the principle of linguistic relativity.
Empirical testing of the Whorfian hypothesis declined in the 1960s to 1980s as Noam Chomsky began to redefine linguistics and much of psychology in formal universalist terms. Several studies from that period refuted Whorf's hypothesis, demonstrating that linguistic diversity is a surface veneer that masks underlying universal cognitive principles. Many studies were highly critical and disparaging in their language, ridiculing Whorf's analyses and examples or his lack of an academic degree. Throughout the 1980s, most mentions of Whorf or of the Sapir–Whorf hypotheses continued to be disparaging, and led to a widespread view that Whorf's ideas had been proven wrong. Because Whorf was treated so severely in the scholarship during those decades, he has been described as "one of the prime whipping boys of introductory texts to linguistics". With the advent of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics in the late 1980s, some linguists sought to rehabilitate Whorf's reputation, as scholarship began to question whether earlier critiques of Whorf were justified.
By the 1960s, analytical philosophers also became aware of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and philosophers such as Max Black and Donald Davidson published scathing critiques of Whorf's strong relativist viewpoints. Black characterized Whorf's ideas about metaphysics as demonstrating "amateurish crudity". According to Black and Davidson, Whorf's viewpoint and the concept of linguistic relativity meant that translation between languages with different conceptual schemes would be impossible. Recent assessments such as those by Leavitt and Lee, however, consider Black and Davidson's interpretation to be based on an inaccurate characterization of Whorf's viewpoint, and even rather absurd given the time he spent trying to translate between different conceptual schemes. In their view, the critiques are based on a lack of familiarity with Whorf's writings; according to these recent Whorf scholars a more accurate description of his viewpoint is that he thought translation to be possible, but only through careful attention to the subtle differences between conceptual schemes.
Eric Lenneberg, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker have also criticized Whorf for failing to be sufficiently clear in his formulation of how language influences thought, and for failing to provide real evidence to support his assumptions. Generally Whorf's arguments took the form of examples that were anecdotal or speculative, and functioned as attempts to show how "exotic" grammatical traits were connected to what were considered equally exotic worlds of thought. Even Whorf's defenders admitted that his writing style was often convoluted and couched in neologisms – attributed to his awareness of language use, and his reluctance to use terminology that might have pre-existing connotations. argues that Whorf was mesmerized by the foreignness of indigenous languages, and exaggerated and idealized them. According to Lakoff, Whorf's tendency to exoticize data must be judged in the historical context: Whorf and the other Boasians wrote at a time in which racism and jingoism were predominant, and when it was unthinkable to many that "savages" had redeeming qualities, or that their languages were comparable in complexity to those of Europe. For this alone Lakoff argues, Whorf can be considered to be "Not just a pioneer in linguistics, but a pioneer as a human being".
Today many followers of universalist schools of thought continue to oppose the idea of linguistic relativity, seeing it as unsound or even ridiculous. For example, Steven Pinker argues in his book The Language Instinct that thought exists prior to language and independently of it, a view also espoused by philosophers of language such as Jerry Fodor, John Locke and Plato. In this interpretation, language is inconsequential to human thought because humans do not think in "natural" language, i.e. any language used for communication. Rather, we think in a meta-language that precedes natural language, which Pinker following Fodor calls "mentalese." Pinker attacks what he calls "Whorf's radical position", declaring, "the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make." Scholars of a more "relativist" bent such as John A. Lucy and Stephen C. Levinson have criticized Pinker for misrepresenting Whorf's views and arguing against strawmen.
Resurgence of Whorfianism
Linguistic relativity studies have experienced a resurgence since the 1990s, and a series of favorable experimental results have brought Whorfianism back into favor, especially in cultural psychology and linguistic anthropology. The first study directing positive attention towards Whorf's relativist position was George Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things", in which he argued that Whorf had been on the right track in his focus on differences in grammatical and lexical categories as a source of differences in conceptualization. In 1992 psychologist John A. Lucy published two books on the topic, one analyzing the intellectual genealogy of the hypothesis, arguing that previous studies had failed to appreciate the subtleties of Whorf's thinking; they had been unable to formulate a research agenda that would actually test Whorf's claims. Lucy proposed a new research design so that the hypothesis of linguistic relativity could be tested empirically, and to avoid the pitfalls of earlier studies which Lucy claimed had tended to presuppose the universality of the categories they were studying. His second book was an empirical study of the relation between grammatical categories and cognition in the Yucatec Maya language of Mexico.
In 1996 Penny Lee's reappraisal of Whorf's writings was published, reinstating Whorf as a serious and capable thinker. Lee argued that previous explorations of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis had largely ignored Whorf's actual writings, and consequently asked questions very unlike those Whorf had asked. Also in that year a volume, "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" edited by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson gathered a range of researchers working in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology to bring renewed attention to the issue of how Whorf's theories could be updated, and a subsequent review of the new direction of the linguistic relativity paradigm cemented the development. Since then considerable empirical research into linguistic relativity has been carried out, especially at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics with scholarship motivating two edited volumes of linguistic relativity studies, and in American Institutions by scholars such as Lera Boroditsky and Dedre Gentner.
In turn universalist scholars frequently dismiss as "dull" or "boring", positive findings of influence of linguistic categories on thought or behavior, which are often subtle rather than spectacular, suggesting that Whorf's excitement about linguistic relativity had promised more spectacular findings than it was able to provide.
Whorf's views have been compared to those of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, both of whom considered language to have important bearing on thought and reasoning. His hypotheses have also been compared to the views of psychologists such as Lev Vygotsky, whose social constructivism considers the cognitive development of children to be mediated by the social use of language. Vygotsky shared Whorf's interest in gestalt psychology, and he also read Sapir's works. Others have seen similarities between Whorf's work and the ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who read Whorf and whose approach to textual meaning was similarly holistic and relativistic. Whorf's ideas have also been interpreted as a radical critique of positivist science.
Work
Linguistic relativity
Whorf is best known as the main proponent of what he called the principle of linguistic relativity, but which is often known as "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", named for him and Edward Sapir. Whorf never stated the principle in the form of a hypothesis, and the idea that linguistic categories influence perception and cognition was shared by many other scholars before him. But because Whorf, in his articles, gave specific examples of how he saw the grammatical categories of specific languages related to conceptual and behavioral patterns, he pointed towards an empirical research program that has been taken up by subsequent scholars, and which is often called "Sapir–Whorf studies".
Sources of influence on Whorf's thinking
Whorf and Sapir both drew explicitly on Albert Einstein's principle of general relativity; hence linguistic relativity refers to the concept of grammatical and semantic categories of a specific language providing a frame of reference as a medium through which observations are made. Following an original observation by Boas, Sapir demonstrated that speakers of a given language perceive sounds that are acoustically different as the same, if the sound comes from the underlying phoneme and does not contribute to changes in semantic meaning. Furthermore, speakers of languages are attentive to sounds, particularly if the same two sounds come from different phonemes. Such differentiation is an example of how various observational frames of reference leads to different patterns of attention and perception.
Whorf was also influenced by gestalt psychology, believing that languages require their speakers to describe the same events as different gestalt constructions, which he called "isolates from experience". An example is how the action of cleaning a gun is different in English and Shawnee: English focuses on the instrumental relation between two objects and the purpose of the action (removing dirt); whereas the Shawnee language focuses on the movement—using an arm to create a dry space in a hole. The event described is the same, but the attention in terms of figure and ground are different.
Degree of influence of language on thought
If read superficially, some of Whorf's statements lend themselves to the interpretation that he supported linguistic determinism. For example, in an often-quoted passage Whorf writes:
The statements about the obligatory nature of the terms of language have been taken to suggest that Whorf meant that language completely determined the scope of possible conceptualizations. However neo-Whorfians argue that here Whorf is writing about the terms in which we speak of the world, not the terms in which we think of it. Whorf noted that to communicate thoughts and experiences with members of a speech community speakers must use the linguistic categories of their shared language, which requires moulding experiences into the shape of language to speak them—a process called "thinking for speaking". This interpretation is supported by Whorf's subsequent statement that "No individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality, but is constrained by certain modes of interpretation even when he thinks himself most free". Similarly the statement that observers are led to different pictures of the universe has been understood as an argument that different conceptualizations are incommensurable making translation between different conceptual and linguistic systems impossible. Neo-Whorfians argue this to be a misreading since throughout his work one of his main points was that such systems could be "calibrated" and thereby be made commensurable, but only when we become aware of the differences in conceptual schemes through linguistic analysis.
Hopi time
Whorf's study of Hopi time has been the most widely discussed and criticized example of linguistic relativity. In his analysis he argues that there is a relation between how the Hopi people conceptualize time, how they speak of temporal relations, and the grammar of the Hopi language. Whorf's most elaborate argument for the existence of linguistic relativity was based on what he saw as a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi. He argued that the Hopi language, in contrast to English and other SAE languages, does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct countable instances, like "three days" or "five years", but rather as a single process. Because of this difference, the language lacks nouns that refer to units of time. He proposed that the Hopi view of time was fundamental in all aspects of their culture and furthermore explained certain patterns of behavior. In his 1939 memorial essay to Sapir he wrote that "... the Hopi language is seen to contain no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time', or to past, present, or future..."
Linguist Ekkehart Malotki challenged Whorf's analyses of Hopi temporal expressions and concepts with numerous examples how the Hopi language refers to time. Malotki argues that in the Hopi language the system of tenses consists of future and non-future and that the single difference between the three-tense system of European languages and the Hopi system, is that the latter combines past and present to form a single category.
Malotki's critique was widely cited as the final piece of evidence in refuting Whorf's ideas and his concept of linguistic relativity while other scholars defended the analysis of Hopi, arguing that Whorf's claim was not that Hopi lacked words or categories to describe temporality, but that the Hopi concept of time is altogether different from that of English speakers. Whorf described the Hopi categories of tense, noting that time is not divided into past, present and future, as is common in European languages, but rather a single tense refers to both present and past while another refers to events that have not yet happened and may or may not happen in the future. He also described a large array of stems that he called "tensors" which describes aspects of temporality, but without referring to countable units of time as in English and most European languages.
Contributions to linguistic theory
Whorf's distinction between "overt" (phenotypical) and "covert" (cryptotypical) grammatical categories has become widely influential in linguistics and anthropology. British linguist Michael Halliday wrote about Whorf's notion of the "cryptotype", and the conception of "how grammar models reality", that it would "eventually turn out to be among the major contributions of twentieth century linguistics".
Furthermore, Whorf introduced the concept of the allophone, a word that describes positional phonetic variants of a single superordinate phoneme; in doing so he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory. The term was popularized by G. 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. Whorf considered allophones to be another example of linguistic relativity. The principle of allophony describes how acoustically different sounds can be treated as reflections of a single phoneme in a language. This sometimes makes the different sound appear similar to native speakers of the language, even to the point that they are unable to distinguish them auditorily without special training. Whorf wrote that: "[allophones] are also relativistic. Objectively, acoustically, and physiologically the allophones of [a] phoneme may be extremely unlike, hence the impossibility of determining what is what. You always have to keep the observer in the picture. What linguistic pattern makes like is like, and what it makes unlike is unlike".(Whorf, 1940)
Central to Whorf's inquiries was the approach later described as metalinguistics by G. L. Trager, who in 1950 published four of Whorf's essays as "Four articles on Metalinguistics". Whorf was crucially interested in the ways in which speakers come to be aware of the language that they use, and become able to describe and analyze language using language itself to do so. Whorf saw that the ability to arrive at progressively more accurate descriptions of the world hinged partly on the ability to construct a metalanguage to describe how language affects experience, and thus to have the ability to calibrate different conceptual schemes. Whorf's endeavors have since been taken up in the development of the study of metalinguistics and metalinguistic awareness, first by Michael Silverstein who published a radical and influential rereading of Whorf in 1979 and subsequently in the field of linguistic anthropology.
Studies of Uto-Aztecan languages
Whorf conducted important work on the Uto-Aztecan languages, which Sapir had conclusively demonstrated as a valid language family in 1915. Working first on Nahuatl, Tepecano, Tohono O'odham he established familiarity with the language group before he met Sapir in 1928. During Whorf's time at Yale he published several articles on Uto-Aztecan linguistics, such as "Notes on the Tübatulabal language". In 1935 he published "The Comparative Linguistics of Uto-Aztecan", and a review of Kroeber's survey of Uto-Aztecan linguistics. Whorf's work served to further cement the foundations of the comparative Uto-Aztecan studies.
The first Native American language Whorf studied was the Uto-Aztecan language Nahuatl which he studied first from colonial grammars and documents, and later became the subject of his first field work experience in 1930. Based on his studies of Classical Nahuatl Whorf argued that Nahuatl was an oligosynthetic language, a typological category that he invented. In Mexico working with native speakers, he studied the dialects of Milpa Alta and Tepoztlán. His grammar sketch of the Milpa Alta dialect of Nahuatl was not published during his lifetime, but it was published posthumously by Harry Hoijer and became quite influential and used as the basic description of "Modern Nahuatl" by many scholars. The description of the dialect is quite condensed and in some places difficult to understand because of Whorf's propensity of inventing his own unique terminology for grammatical concepts, but the work has generally been considered to be technically advanced. He also produced an analysis of the prosody of these dialects which he related to the history of the glottal stop and vowel length in Nahuan languages. This work was prepared for publication by Lyle Campbell and Frances Karttunen in 1993, who also considered it a valuable description of the two endangered dialects, and the only one of its kind to include detailed phonetic analysis of supra-segmental phenomena.
In Uto-Aztecan linguistics one of Whorf's achievements was to determine the reason the Nahuatl language has the phoneme , not found in the other languages of the family. The existence of in Nahuatl had puzzled previous linguists and caused Sapir to reconstruct a phoneme for proto-Uto-Aztecan based only on evidence from Aztecan. In a 1937 paper published in the journal American Anthropologist, Whorf argued that the phoneme resulted from some of the Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change from the original * to in the position before *. This sound law is known as "Whorf's law", considered valid although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has since been developed.
Also in 1937, Whorf and his friend G. L. Trager, published a paper in which they elaborated on the Azteco-Tanoan language family, proposed originally by Sapir as a family comprising the Uto-Aztecan and the Kiowa-Tanoan languages—(the Tewa and Kiowa languages).
Maya epigraphy
In a series of published and unpublished studies in the 1930s, Whorf argued that Mayan writing was to some extent phonetic. While his work on deciphering the Maya script gained some support from Alfred Tozzer at Harvard, the main authority on Ancient Maya culture, J. E. S. Thompson, strongly rejected Whorf's ideas, saying that Mayan writing lacked a phonetic component and is therefore impossible to decipher based on a linguistic analysis. Whorf argued that it was exactly the reluctance to apply linguistic analysis of Maya languages that had held the decipherment back. Whorf sought for cues to phonetic values within the elements of the specific signs, and never realized that the system was logo-syllabic. Although Whorf's approach to understanding the Maya script is now known to have been misguided, his central claim that the script was phonetic and should be deciphered as such was vindicated by Yuri Knorozov's syllabic decipherment of Mayan writing in the 1950s.
Notes
Commentary notes
References
Sources
External links
B. L. Whorf, .
Benjamin Lee Whorf Papers (MS 822). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
What Whorf Really Said – Evaluation of Pinker's (1994) critique of Whorf, by Nick Yee
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