All Quiet on the Western Front (original German title: Im Westen nichts Neues, literally: "Nothing New on the Western Front") is a famous book by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. It was first published in 1929.

Plot
It is about a German soldier named Paul Bäumer as he fights together with his classmates in World War I. Troops are changed every couple of weeks; they are either sent to the front line or a few miles back. At the beginning, Baumer and his fellow soldiers are very full and satisfied because a very heavy bombardment killed off half of the company.

A number of soldiers and Baumer are injured one night, and all are taken to the local hospital. In there, when a nurse gives Baumer a temperature gauge, he uses a light and makes his temperature seem much higher than it really is. This is so he can go into critical care with his friends. While there, the nurses sing a hymn, which annoys the men. Baumer throws and breaks a bottle to make them shut the door.

One night, Baumer and his friends find two live pigs. They put together a feast. Baumer cooks some kind of cakes. They smoke cigarettes and drink coffee from the officer's dump and then roast the pigs. The meal is very good, but the pig meat sticks to their bowels and makes them go to the bathroom all night.

As the war draws to its end in 1918, the Germans are suffering. The food is bad and the men must keep going to the bathroom. The Americans have joined the war and are pushing back all of the ground that the Germans gained. During this time, many of Baumer's classmates die.

At the end of the novel, Baumer dies. The day was so quiet that the field commander described the day as "all quiet on the Western Front."

Response
The book sold 2.9 million copies in 50 languages in eighteen months. It is published by Ballantine Books in 1929. This book and its sequel, The Road Back, were banned and burned in Nazi Germany. The film version won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930.

1929 books

All Quiet on the Western Front


The Redridge Steel Dam is a steel dam across the Salmon Trout River in Redridge, Houghton County, Michigan. Completed in 1901, it is a flat slab buttress dam constructed of steel, a relatively rare material for construction of dams, which are typically made of earthenworks, concrete, or masonry. Most sources indicate that it was one of only three such dams constructed in the United States, the other two being the Ashfork-Bainbridge Steel Dam (1898, Arizona) and the Hauser Lake Dam (1907, Montana), the last of which failed within a year of construction.

History
In 1894, prior to the construction of the steel dam, the Atlantic Mining Company built a timber crib dam across the Salmon Trout River. The dam created a reservoir which supplied water to the Atlantic stamp mill which extracted copper from ore-bearing rock. With the growth of the Atlantic stamp mill and the construction of the Baltic Mining Company mill nearby, this reservoir proved to be insufficient, and in 1901 the steel dam was built. It was designed by J. F. Jackson and built by the Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company. The old timber crib dam remained in place, submerged, upstream of the steel dam. A system of spillways, sluices (or launders as they are referred to in contemporary texts), and pipes brought water downhill to the stamp mills. The dam itself measures 74 ft (23 m) high at its center and extends for a length of 1,006 ft (307 m) across the river. Access to the reservoir was shared by the Atlantic and Baltic mines, which had a common board of directors.

The dam operated for several decades, until the mines closed. After that time, the dam was no longer maintained. On Easter morning of 1941, the spillway behind the dam broke, causing a flood. There was little damage to the steel part of the dam, but with the mining operations stopped, the dam owners had the spillway valves opened. However, there were still incidents of overtopping, and the Copper Range Company (successor to Atlantic Mine Company and owner of the dam) had large holes cut in it in 1979 so that it would not retain water. This lowered the level of the reservoir, revealing the earlier timber dam.

Ownership of the dam was transferred to Stanton Township in 1992. Fears that the timber dam might fail and Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality considering the dam a "significant hazard" forced the township to consider renovating the dam in 2001. Five options were proposed for a long-term fix for the dam. These options ranged from repairing the steel and wooden dams for $311,000 to restoring/reconstructing the entire structure for over a million dollars. Stanton Township could not afford to do any of the proposed options, so another option was sought out. A short-term fix was found to make the dam safer. The upper 13 feet of the wooden structure was removed in 2004 to bring the water level down and relieve some of the pressure. A more permanent repair is still needed. A recent study by a team of students from Michigan Technological University determined that both dams are likely to remain safe for the foreseeable future.

Construction information
Steel dams use relatively thin steel plates in contact with the water body, with a framework of steel behind them transmitting the load to the ground. The plates are slanted upwards in the direction of water flow, so that the weight of the water puts compressive forces on the girders holding the plates up. This transmits force to the ground without the bending moment that a vertical wall of plates would engender. It was believed at the time that these dams could be constructed faster and more cheaply than masonry dams.

Geography and site information

Redridge is in Houghton County, one of the more rugged counties in Michigan, and access to the dam site is relatively challenging, although there is a history of Michigan Technological University students making pilgrimages to the site, especially those interested in industrial archaeology.

Historic designations
National Register of Historic Places, listed April 2, 1992
Michigan Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, designated in 1985

See also
 Hauser Dam: a steel dam in Montana

Notes

External links

 Redridge site map, the steel dam is marked "new dam"

Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation:

A Brief History of Steel Dams by Hubert Chanson
Redridge page at Copper Range Historical Society site
Industrial Heritage of Redridge Michigan by Robert Goniea
Dam Ruins - an exploration of the Redridge Dams as they appear today

Further reading

 One of few sources to mention steel dams, this book says there are 3 extant in the U.S. and gives some info.
Copper Country Trail appendix listing historic Copper Country places

Dams in Michigan
Dams on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan
Buildings and structures in Houghton County, Michigan
Dams completed in 1901
United States local public utility dams
Historic American Engineering Record in Michigan
Steel dams
National Register of Historic Places in Houghton County, Michigan

Redridge Steel Dam


Bryce Dane Soderberg (born April 10, 1980) is a Canadian musician and songwriter, best known as the bassist and vocalist for American rock band Lifehouse.

Early life
Soderberg was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and raised outside Victoria in the Municipality of Sooke.  He started playing bass at a young age and developed his musicianship mostly in his basement with his brothers. He graduated from St. Michaels University School then after attending two years of College in Quebec, Canada, he moved to Los Angeles, California when he was 19 to pursue a professional career in music. In 2002, he joined Elektra recording artists AM Radio,  under the management of Rivers Cuomo. After Elektra Records folded, AM Radio disbanded. During this time, as a vocalist/songwriter he performed with The Celebrities, and Tomorrow And Everyday After. In August 2004, Soderberg joined Lifehouse after a recommendation from former member Sean Woolstenhulme.

Lifehouse
After joining Lifehouse, Soderberg and his bandmates toured and released the self-titled Lifehouse, the band's third album. They released the single "You and Me".  Between touring, Lifehouse released their fourth album, Who We Are and Smoke And Mirrors.  Soderberg sings lead and co-wrote the track "Wrecking Ball" on Smoke and Mirrors. He also shares lead vocals on the song "Here Tomorrow and Gone Today".

Soderberg plays Rickenbacker and Fender basses through Ampeg SVT Classic Heads and 8x10 cabs.

He also performs as the lead vocals for the song "Bridges" on some live performances.

KOMOX
Along with members Pelle Hillström and Kris Persson, Soderberg has an alternative side project based in Los Angeles called KOMOX. They released Dreaming Awake, Vol 1. during the week of January 3, 2016. A reworked version of Soderberg's song Stardust, co-written with Hillström for the KOMOX project, appears on Lifehouse's 2015 album Out of the Wasteland.

References

1980 births
Canadian expatriate musicians in the United States
Canadian people of Swedish descent
Canadian Christians
Canadian rock bass guitarists
Lifehouse (band) members
Living people
Musicians from Victoria, British Columbia
Guitarists from Los Angeles
American male bass guitarists
21st-century Canadian bass guitarists
Alternative rock bass guitarists
21st-century Canadian male singers

Bryce Soderberg


Dodgeball is a sport played by throwing soft balls, or hard rubber balls, at people in a square court. The goal is to be the last one to be hit with the ball. Players may only throw balls at people who are not on their own team. If a player is hit by the ball,he or she should go to the outside of the court to the other team. From the outside, players throw the ball at players still on the inside.

Dodgeball is often played in elementary schools in physical education classes. Many school children play this game. In recent years, many adults who played it as children have formed adult leagues and clubs. Also, some schools have banned it (this means that made it against the rules to play it), because players can get hurt when playing the game. Tournaments are sometimes held in schools.

Dodgeball, because of its recent popularity, inspired a film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, and a game show, Extreme Dodgeball.

Team sports

Dodgeball


Bypass can have several meanings.  It always means: going round something in order to avoid it.

Bypass can also mean:

Bypass (computing), in computing, avoiding security features in hacking, or changing what one does in troubleshooting
Bypass (effect), in effects units, a switch that allows sound processing to be "turned off" to get a "dry", unprocessed sound output
Bypass (road), road or highway that goes round a town or village
Bypass (surgical), creating an alternate route for blood flow or food (e.g. a heart bypass)
Bypass surgery, specific types of surgical bypass
Bypass (telecommunications) can mean many things
Bypass (valve), in diving, a valve in rebreathers to bypass the flow rate control valve
Bypass duct, passage in turbofan aircraft engines that allows airflow to bypass the engine core
Bleach bypass, in film processing, an optical effect reducing saturation, increasing contrast, and giving a pastel look

Bypass


Julian A. Scott (February 14, 1846 – July 4, 1901), was born in Johnson, Vermont, and served as a Union Army drummer during the American Civil War, where he received America's highest military decoration the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Lee's Mills. He was also an American painter and Civil War artist.

Family

Julian Scott was the fourth child, of eight, born to Charles Scott (born 1815), a clockmaker, and his wife Lucy Kellum (1821 - 26 April 1855). Julian's siblings were Cleora (born 1841), Lucian (1843 - 19 July 1894), Alice (1844 – 1846), Julia (born 1847), Charlie (born 1849), H. Percy (born 1851) and George (26 April 1855 - 27 December 1863). Lucy Scott died in childbirth and Charles Scott remarried, in 1860, to Susan Pollard.

During the American Civil War, Julian's elder brother, Lucian, served with the 4th Regiment of the U.S. Artillery, was wounded at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, was taken prisoner in December 1864, and almost died at Libby Prison of starvation. Julian's younger brother, Charlie, enlisted at age 13 and became a bugler. After the war, Charlie moved to Missouri, then to Boston, where he became a physician. His brother, Percy, became an attorney in Illinois.

Scott married and had one daughter but, later, he and his wife separated.

Biography
Scott received his early education at the Lamoille Academy, known today as Johnson State College where the main gallery is named in his memory. Scott continued his studies, graduating from the National Academy of Design in New York and subsequently studied under Emmanuel Leutze until 1868. During the Civil War, Scott enlisted in the 3rd Vermont Infantry on June 1, 1861, at the age of 15 as a fifer and, in February 1865, received the Medal of Honor for rescuing wounded soldiers while under enemy fire during the Battle at Lee's Mills, Virginia.

When the war was over, he traveled to Paris and Stuttgart to continue his education. Scott's 1872 masterwork, the Battle of Cedar Creek, is located at the Vermont State House. The painting illustrates the contributions of his home state of Vermont in the American Civil War and is significant for its absence of glorification of war and instead shows the suffering and human sacrifice associated with war. Scott traveled west as part of a census party, painting Native Americans in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Many of his works from this expedition now hang in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Art.

Scott was interred in Hillside Cemetery located in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Notable paintings
"Rear-Guard at White Oak Swamp" (1869–1870);
"Battle of Golding's Farm" (1871);
"Battle of Cedar Creek" (1871–1872);
"Surrender of a Confederate Soldier", Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection (1873);
"The Recall" (1872)
"On Board the Hartford" (1874);
"Old Records" (1875);
"Duel of Burr and Hamilton" (1876);
"Reserves awaiting Orders" (1877);
"In the Cornfield at Antietam" (1879);
"Charge at Petersburg" (1882);
"The War is Over" (1885);
"The Blue and the Gray" (1886);
"The Death Of General Sedgwick" (1887);
"Portrait of George B. McClellan" (1888).
"Encampment" (1884),  (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Encampment_VA.jpg)

Gallery

Medal of Honor citation

Rank and Organization:
Drummer, Company E, 3d Vermont Infantry. Place and date. At Lees Mills, Va., April 16, 1862. Entered service at. Johnson, Vt. Birth: Johnson, Vt. Date of issue: February 1865.

Citation:
Crossed the creek under a terrific fire of musketry several times to assist in bringing off the wounded.

See also

List of Medal of Honor recipients
List of American Civil War Medal of Honor recipients: Q–S

References

Further reading
 Titterton, Robert J. (1997). Julian Scott: artist of the Civil War and native America: with 97 illustrations. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co.

External sources

Native paths: American Indian art from the collection of Charles and Valerie Diker, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Julian Scott (cat. no. 1-3)

Union Army soldiers
American war artists
19th-century war artists
Vermont culture
United States Army Medal of Honor recipients
1846 births
1901 deaths
People of Vermont in the American Civil War
Vermont Brigade
Johnson State College alumni
People from Lamoille County, Vermont
American Civil War recipients of the Medal of Honor
Painters from Vermont
Burials at Hillside Cemetery (Scotch Plains, New Jersey)
19th-century American painters
19th-century American male artists
American male painters

Julian Scott


Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there since 1683 and is made up of varying Spanish and Mexican origins, including criollos, Mestizos, Indigenous Californian peoples, and small numbers of Mulatos. Alongside the Tejanos of Texas and Neomexicanos of New Mexico and Colorado, Californios are part of the larger Spanish-American/Mexican-American/Hispano community of the United States, which has inhabited the American Southwest and the West Coast since the 16th century. Some may also identify as Chicanos, a term that came about in the 1960s.

The term Californio (historical, regional Spanish for 'Californian') was originally applied by and to the Spanish-speaking residents of Las Californias during the periods of Spanish California and Mexican California, between 1683 and 1848. The first Californios were the children of the early Spanish military expeditions into northern reaches of the Californias. They established the presidios of California and subsequently enabled the foundation of the California mission system.

Later, the primary cultural focus of the Californio population became the Vaquero tradition practiced by the landed gentry, who received large land grants and created the Rancho system. In the 1820s-40s, American and European settlers increasingly migrated to Mexican California. Many married Californio women and became Mexican citizens, learning Spanish and often converting to Catholicism, the state religion. They are often also considered Californios, for their adherence to Californio language and culture.

In 2017 there were 11.9 million Hispanic/Mexican American/Hispanos in California (30% of California's population). They make up the largest group of the 15.2 million California Hispanics, who total 40% of California's population. 2004 studies estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 have ancestry descended from the Spanish and Mexican eras of California.

Definitions

The term "Californio" has different meanings depending on the author or source. According to the Real Academia Española, a Californio is a person native to California. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Californio as both a native or resident of this state and a specific ethnic group: the Spanish settlers and their descendants in California.

Authors such as Douglas Monroy, Damian Bacich or Covadonga Lamar Prieto, among others, define Californios as exclusively applying to Alta California residents and their descendants.

Historians Hunt Janin and Ursula Carlson consider a Californio to be any settler who migrated to Alta California and their descendants; and also non-Hispanic immigrants who intermarried with Hispanics and integrated into the Californio culture during the Mexican era, and their descendants.

Calisphere and author Ferol Egan restrict the meaning of Californio to the Californian elite who acquired land during the Spanish and Mexican periods and their descendants.

Leonard Pitt considers a Californio to be any Spanish-speaking person born in California. Writer Jose Antonio Burciaga considers Californios to be any Hispanic living in California, even if they have lived there temporarily. Burciaga, in a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, points to such examples as Cesar Chavez, Luisa Moreno and Bert Corona.

Although sources differ on some elements of classification, they have consensus that Californio includes at a minimum, Hispanic people with origins in Alta California.

History

Early colonization

In 1769, Gaspar de Portolá and less than two hundred men, on expedition founded the Presidio of San Diego (military post). On July 16, Franciscan friars Junípero Serra, Juan Viscaino and Fernando Parron raised and 'blessed a cross', establishing the first mission in upper Las Californias, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Colonists began arriving in 1774.

Monterey, California was established in 1770 by Father Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolà (first governor of Las Californias province (1767–1770), explorer and founder of San Diego and Monterey). Monterey was settled with two friars and about 40 men and served as the capital of California from 1777 to 1849. The nearby Carmel Mission, in Carmel, California was moved there after a year in Monterey to keep the mission and its Mission Indians away from the Monterey Presidio soldiers. It was the headquarters of the original Alta California province missions headed by Father-President Junípero Serra from 1770 until his death in 1784—he is buried there. Monterey was originally the only port of entry for all taxable goods in California. All ships were supposed to clear through Monterey and pay the roughly 42% tariff (customs duties on imported goods before trading anywhere else in Alta California). The oldest governmental building in the state is the Monterey Custom House and California's Historic Landmark Number One. The Californian, California's oldest newspaper, was first published in Monterey on August 15, 1846, after the city's occupation by the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron on July 7, 1846.

Late in 1775, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza led an overland expedition over the Gila River trail he had discovered in 1774 to bring colonists from Sonora New Spain (Mexico) to California to settle two missions, one presidio, and one pueblo (town). Anza led 240 friars, soldiers and colonists with their families. They started out with 695 horses and mules and 385 Texas Longhorn bulls and cows—starting the cattle and horse industry in California. About 600 horses and mules and 300 cattle survived the trip. In 1776 about 200 leather-jacketed soldiers, Friars, and colonists with their families moved to what was called Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) to start building a mission and a presidio there. The leather jackets the soldiers wore consisted of several layers of hardened leather and were strong enough body armor to usually stop an Indian arrow. In California the cattle and horses had few enemies and plentiful grass in all but drought years and essentially grew and multiplied as feral animals—doubling roughly every two years. They partially displaced the Tule Elk and pronghorn antelope who had lived there in large herds previously.

Anza selected the sites of the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asís in what is now San Francisco; on his way back to Monterey, he sited Mission Santa Clara de Asís and the pueblo San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley but did not initially leave settlers to settle them. Mission San Francisco de Asís (or Mission Dolores), the sixth Spanish mission, was founded on June 29, 1776, by Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and Father Francisco Palóu (a companion of Junípero Serra).

On November 29, 1777, El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe (The Town of Saint Joseph of Guadalupe now called simply San Jose) was founded by José Joaquín Moraga on the first pueblo-town not associated with a mission or a military post (presidio) in Alta California. The original San Jose settlers were part of the original group of 200 settlers and soldiers that had originally settled in Yerba Buena (San Francisco). Mission Santa Clara, founded in 1777, was the eighth mission founded and closest mission to San Jose. Mission Santa Clara was  from the original San Jose pueblo site in neighboring Santa Clara. Mission San José was not founded until 1797, about  north of San Jose in what is now Fremont.

The Los Angeles Pobladores ("villagers") is the name given to the 44 original Sonorans—22 adults and 22 children—who settled the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781. The pobladores were agricultural families from Sonora, Mexico. They were the last settlers to use the Anza trail as the Quechans (Yumas) closed the trail for the next 40 years shortly after they had passed over it. Almost none of the settlers was españoles (Spanish); the rest had casta (caste) designations such as mestizo, indio, and negro. Some classifications were changed in the California Census of 1790, as often happened in colonial Spanish America.

The settlers and escort soldiers who founded the towns of San José de Guadalupe, Yerba Buena (San Francisco), Monterey, San Diego and La Reina de Los Ángeles were primarily mestizo and of mixed Negro and Native American ancestry from the province of Sonora y Sinaloa in Mexico. Recruiters in Mexico of the Fernando Rivera y Moncada expedition and other expeditions later, who were charged with founding an agricultural community in Alta California, had a difficult time persuading people to emigrate to such an isolated outpost with no agriculture, no towns, no stores or developments of almost any kind. The majority of settlers were recruited from the northwestern parts of Mexico. The only tentative link with Mexico was via ship after the Quechans (Yumas) closed the Colorado River's Yuma Crossing in 1781. For the next 40 years, an average of only 2.5 ships per year visited California with 13 years showing no recorded ships arriving.

In Californio society, casta (caste) designations carried more weight than they did in older communities of central Mexico. One similar concept was the gente de razón, a term literally meaning "people of reason". It designated peoples who were culturally Hispanic (that is, they were not living in traditional Native American communities) and had adopted Christianity. This served to distinguish the Mexican Indio settlers and converted Californian Indios from the barbaro (barbarian) Californian Native Americans, who had not converted or become part of the Hispanic towns. California's Governor Pío Pico was criticized for his alleged descent from mestizo and mulato (mulatto) settlers.

Later years of Mexican rule

In the 1830s, the newly formed Mexican government was experiencing difficulties, having gone through several revolts, wars, and internal conflicts and a seemingly never-ending string of Mexican Presidents. One of the problems in Mexico was the large amount of land controlled by the Catholic Church (estimated then at about one-third of all settled property), which was continually granted property by many landowners when they died and controlled property supposedly held in trust for the Native Americans. This land, as it gradually accumulated, was seldom sold, as it cost nothing to keep, but could be rented out to gain additional income for the Catholic Church to pay its priests, friars, bishops, and other expenses. The Catholic Church was the largest and richest landowner in Mexico and its provinces. In California the situation was even more pronounced, as the Franciscan friars held over 90% of all settled property, supposedly in trust for the mission Indians.

In 1834, secularization laws that voided the mission control of lands in the northern settlements under Mexican rule were enacted. The missions directed thousands of Indians in herding livestock, growing crops and orchards, weaving cloth, etc. for the missions, presidios, and pueblo (town) dwellers. The mission lands and herds formerly controlled by the missions were usually distributed to the settlers around each mission. Since most had almost no money, the land was distributed or granted free or at very little cost to friends and families of the government officials (or those who paid the highest bribes).

The Californio Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, for example, was reputed to be the richest man in California before the California Gold Rush. Vallejo oversaw the secularization of Mission San Francisco Solano and the distributions of its roughly . He founded the towns of Sonoma and Petaluma, California, owned Mare Island and the future town site of Benicia, California, and was granted the  Rancho Petaluma, the  Rancho Suscol and other properties by Governor José Figueroa in 1834 and later. Vallejo's younger brother, Jose Manuel Salvador Vallejo (1813–1876), was granted the  Rancho Napa and other additional grants known as Salvador's Ranch. Over the hills of Mariano Vallejo's estate of Petaluma roamed ten thousand cattle, four to six thousand horses, and many thousands of sheep. He occupied a home on the plaza at Sonoma, where he entertained all who came with hospitality; few travelers of note came to California without visiting him. At Petaluma he had a great ranch house called La Hacienda. About 1849 on his home farm called Lachryma Montis (Tear of the Mountain), he built a modern frame house where he spent the later years of his life.

Vallejo tried to get the California State Capital moved permanently to Benicia, California on land he sold to the state government in December, 1851. It was named Benicia for the General's wife, Francisca Benicia Carillo de Vallejo. The General intended that the prospective city be named "Francisca" after his wife, but this name was dropped when the city of Yerba Buena changed its name to "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Benicia was the third site selected to serve as the California state capital, and its newly constructed city hall was California's capitol from February 11, 1853, to February 25, 1854. Vallejo gave the Rancho Suscol to his oldest daughter, Epifania Guadalupe Vallejo, on April 3, 1851, as a wedding present when she married U.S. Army General John H. Frisbie. It is unknown what he gave as a wedding present when his two daughters Natalia and Jovita married the brothers, Attila Haraszthy and Agoston Haraszthy, on the same day—June 1, 1863.

In some cases particular mission land and livestock were split into parcels and then distributed by drawing lots. In nearly all cases the Indians got very little of the mission land or livestock. Whether any of the proceeds of these sales made their way back to Mexico City is unknown. These lands had been worked by settlers and the much larger settlements of local Native American Kumeyaay peoples on the missions for several generations in some cases. When the missions were secularized or dismantled and the Indians did not have to live under continued friar and military control, they were left essentially to survive on their own. Many of the Native Americans reverted to their former tribal existence and left the missions, while others found they could get room and board and some clothing by working for the large ranches that took over the former mission lands and livestock. Many natives who had learned to ride horses and knew a smattering of Spanish were recruited to become vaqueros (cowboys or cattle herders) that worked the cattle and horses on the large ranchos and did other work. Some of these rancho owners and their hired hands would make up the bulk of the few hundred Californios fighting in the brief Mexican–American War conflicts in California. Some of the Californios and California Native Americans fought on the side of the U.S. settlers during the conflict, with some joining John Frémont's California Battalion.

U.S. conquest of California

Prior to the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, the Californios forced the Mexican appointed governor, Manuel Micheltorena, to flee back to Mexico with most of his troops. Pío Pico, a Californio, was the governor of California during the conflict.

The Pacific Squadron, the United States Naval force stationed in the Pacific was instrumental in the capture of Alta California after war was declared on April 24, 1846. The U.S. Navy with its force of 350–400 U.S. Marines and "bluejacket" sailors on board several U.S. Naval ships near California were essentially the only significant United States military force on the Pacific Coast in the early months of the Mexican–American War. The Royal Navy Pacific Station ships in the Pacific had more men and were more heavily armed than the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron, but did not have orders to help or hinder the occupation of California. New orders would have taken almost two years to get back to the British ships. The Marines were stationed aboard each ship to assist in ship-to-ship combat, as snipers in the rigging, and to defend against boarders. They could also be detached for use as armed infantry. In addition, there were some "bluejacket" sailors on each ship that could be detached for shore duty as artillery crews and infantry, leaving the ship functional though short handed. The artillery used were often small naval cannon converted to land use. The Pacific Squadron had orders, in the event of war with Mexico, to seize the ports in Mexican California and elsewhere along the Pacific Coast.

The only other United States military force in California at the time was a small exploratory expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel John C. Frémont, made up of 30 topographical, surveying, etc. army troops and about 25 men hired as guides and hunters. The Frémont expedition had been dispatched to California, in 1845, from the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers.

Rumors that the Californio government in California was planning to arrest and deport many of the new residents as they had in 1844 led to a degree of uncertainty. On June 14, 1846, thirty-three settlers in Sonoma Valley took preemptive action and captured the small Californio garrison of Sonoma, California without firing a shot and raised a homemade flag with a bear and star (the "Bear Flag") to symbolize their taking control. The words "California Republic" appeared on the flag but were never officially adopted by the insurgents. The present flag of California is based on the original "Bear Flag".

Their capture of the small garrison in Sonoma was later called the "Bear Flag Revolt". The Republic's only commander-in-chief was William B. Ide, whose command lasted 25 days. On June 23, 1846, Frémont arrived from the future state of Oregon's border with about 30 soldiers and 30 scouts and hunters and took command of the "Republic" in the name of the United States. Frémont began to recruit a militia from among the new settlers living around Sutter's Fort to join with his forces. Many of these settlers had just arrived over the California Trail and many more would continue to arrive after July 1846 when they got to California. The Donner Party were the last travelers on the trail in late 1846 when they were caught by early snow while they were trying to get across the Sierra Nevada.

Under orders from John D. Sloat, Commodore of the Pacific Squadron, the U.S. Marines and some of the bluejacket sailors from the U.S. Navy sailing ships  with the  and  captured the Alta California capital city of Monterey, California on July 7, 1846. The only shots fired were salutes by the U.S. Navy ships in the harbor to the U.S. flag now flying over Monterey. Two days later on July 9, , under Captain John S. Montgomery, landed 70 Marines and bluejacket sailors at Clark's Point in San Francisco Bay and captured Yerba Buena (now named San Francisco) without firing a shot.

On July 11, the Royal Navy sloop  entered San Francisco Bay, causing Montgomery to man his defenses. The large British ship, 2,600 tons with a crew of 600, man-of-war , flagship under Sir George S. Seymour, also arrived at about this time outside Monterey Harbor. Both British ships observed, but did not enter the conflict.

Shortly after July 9, when it became clear the US Navy was taking action, the short-lived Bear Flag Republic was converted into a United States military occupation and the Bear Flag was replaced by the U.S. flag. Commodore Robert F. Stockton took over as the senior U.S. military commander in California in late July 1846 and asked Frémont's force of California militia and his 60 men to form the California Battalion with U.S. Army pay and ranks with Fremont in command. The California "Republic" disbanded and William Ide enlisted in the California Battalion, when it was established in late July 1846, as a private.

The first job given to the California Battalion and was to assist in the capture of San Diego and Pueblo de Los Angeles. On July 26, 1846, Lieutenant Colonel Frémont's California Battalion of about 160 boarded the sloop , under the command of Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont, and sailed for San Diego. They landed July 29, 1846, and a detachment of Marines and blue-jackets, followed shortly by Frémont's California Battalion from Cyane, landed and took possession of the town without firing a shot. Leaving about 40 men to garrison San Diego, Fremont continued on to Los Angeles where on August 13, with the Navy band playing and colors flying, the combined forces of Stockton and Frémont entered Pueblo de Los Angeles, without a man killed nor shot fired. U.S. Marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, Frémont's second in command, was appointed military commander of Los Angeles with an inadequate force from 30 to 50 California Battalion troops stationed there to keep the peace.

In Pueblo de Los Angeles, the largest city in California with about 3,000 residents, things might have remained peaceful, except that Major Gillespie placed the town under martial law, greatly angering some of the Californios. On September 23, 1846, about 200 Californios under Californio General José María Flores staged a revolt, the Siege of Los Angeles, and exchanged shots with the Americans in their quarters at the Government House. Gillespie and his men withdrew from their headquarters in town to Fort Hill which, unfortunately, had no water. Gillespie was caught in a trap, badly outnumbered by the besiegers. John Brown, an American, called by the Californios Juan Flaco, meaning "Lean John", succeeded in breaking through the Californio lines and riding by horseback to San Francisco Bay (a distance of almost ) in an amazing 52 hours where he delivered to Stockton a dispatch from Gillespie notifying him of the situation. Gillespie, on September 30, finally accepted the Californio terms and departed for San Pedro with his forces, weapons, flags and two cannon (the others were spiked and left behind). Gillespie's men were accompanied by the exchanged American prisoners and several non-Californio residents.

It would take about four months of intermittent sparing before Gillespie could again raise the same American flag originally flown over Los Angeles. Los Angeles was retaken without a fight on January 10, 1847. Following their defeat at the Battle of La Mesa, the Californio government signed the Treaty of Cahuenga, which ended the war in California on January 13, 1847. The main Californio military force, known as the Californio lancers, was disbanded. On January 16, 1847, Commodore Stockton appointed Frémont military governor of U.S. territorial California.

Some Californios fought on both sides of the conflict (U.S. and Mexico). The battlefield memorials attest to the heroic fight and loss on both sides.

Californio battles

Most towns in California surrendered without a shot being fired on either side. What little fighting that did occur usually involved small groups of disaffected Californios and small groups of soldiers, marines or militia.
 1846
 Battle of Dominguez Rancho, October 9, 1846. José Antonio Carrillo, near Los Angeles, leads Californio forces against 350 marines and sailors who retreated.
 Battle of San Pasqual, 6 December 1846. US Cavalry General Stephen Kearny's dragoons, after a grueling journey across New Mexico and the Mojave Desert, cross into California with about 100 men and are joined by Kit Carson's 20 scouts and about 40 men under Gillespie north of San Diego. In a poorly thought out and uncoordinated attack with wet powder and worn out mules Kearny loses about 19 of his men in a fight with about 150 Californio lancers led by Andrés Pico—brother of Pio Pico. Californio casualties are unknown. By the time reinforcements came from U.S. forces in San Diego, the Californio forces were already gone.
 Temecula Massacre, December 1846. Californios and Cahuilla Indians combine to wipe out a party of Pauma Band Luiseño Indians responsible for a massacre of eleven Californios, near Temecula.
 1847
 January 5, 1847. Frémont near the San Buenaventura Mission, with about 400 men and six field pieces, disperses a force of 60–70 Californio Lancers.
 Battle of Rio San Gabriel, January 8, 1847. Stephen Kearny and Stockton's combined force of about 600 men (about a battalion equivalent) defeat the roughly 160-man Californio Lancer force near Los Angeles. Casualties are about one man on each side.
 Battle of La Mesa, January 9, 1847. Kearny and Robert F. Stockton's combined US forces defeat the Californios in the final battle in California, at present day Montebello, east of Los Angeles. Casualties are about one man on each side.

In late December, 1846, while Fremont was in Santa Barbara, Bernarda Ruíz de Rodriguez, a wealthy educated woman of influence and town matriarch, asked to speak with him. She advised him that a generous peace would be to his political advantage. Fremont later wrote of this 2-hour meeting, "I found that her object was to use her influence to put an end to the war, and to do so upon such just and friendly terms of compromise as would make the peace acceptable and enduring". The next day, Bernarda accompanied Fremont south.

On January 11, 1847, General Jose Maria Flores turned over his command to Andrés Pico and fled. On January 12, Bernarda went alone to Pico's camp and told him of the peace agreement she and Fremont had forged. Fremont and two of Pico's officers agreed to the terms for a surrender, and Jose Antonio Carrillo penned Articles of Capitulation in both English and Spanish. The first seven articles were almost entirely from Ruiz's suggestions. The story of Bernarda Ruiz is based largely on two short paragraphs and a footnote in Fremont's memoirs, first published in 1887. Many aspects of the story cannot be verified in primary source materials.

On January 13, at a deserted rancho at the north end of Cahuenga Pass (modern-day North Hollywood), John Fremont, Andres Pico and six others signed the Articles of Capitulation, which became known as the Treaty of Cahuenga. Fighting ceased, thus ending the war in California.

Californios after U.S. annexation

In 1848, Congress set up a Board of Land Commissioners to determine the validity of Mexican land grants in California. California Senator William M. Gwin presented a bill that, when approved by the Senate and the House on March 3, 1851, became the California Land Act of 1851. It stated that unless grantees presented evidence supporting their title within two years, the property would automatically pass back into the public domain. Rancho owners cited the articles VIII and X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, wherein it guaranteed full protection of all property rights for Mexican citizens—with an unspecified time limit.

Many ranch owners with their thousands of acres and large herds of cattle, sheep and horses went on to live prosperous lives under U.S. rule. Former commander of the California Lancers Andrés Pico became a U.S. citizen after his return to California and acquired the Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando ranch which makes up large part of what is present day Los Angeles. He went on to become a California State Assemblyman and later a California State Senator. His brother former governor of Alta California (under Mexican rule) Pío Pico also became a U.S. citizen and a prominent ranch owner/businessman in California after the war.

Many others were not so fortunate as droughts decimated their herds in the early 1860s and they could not pay back the high cost mortgages (poorly understood by the mostly illiterate ranchers) they had taken out to improve their lifestyle and subsequently lost much or all of their property when they could not be repaid.

Californios did not disappear. Some people in the area still have strong identities as Californios. Thousands of people who are descended from the Californios have well-documented genealogies of their families.

The developing agricultural economy of California allowed many Californios to continue living in pueblos alongside Native peoples and other Mexicans well into the 20th century. These settlements grew into modern California cities, including Santa Ana, San Diego, San Fernando, San Jose, Monterey, Los Alamitos, San Juan Capistrano, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Arvin, Mariposa, Hemet and Indio.

From the 1850s until the 1960s, the Hispanics (of Spanish, Mexican and regional Native American origins) lived in relative autonomy. They practiced a degree of social racial segregation by custom, while maintaining Spanish-language newspapers, entertainment, schools, bars, and clubs. Cultural practices were often tied to local churches and mutual aid societies. At some point in the early 20th century, the official recordkeepers (census takers, city records, etc.) began grouping together all Californios, Mexicanos, and Native (Indio) peoples with Spanish surnames under the terms "Spanish", "Mexican", and sometimes, "colored"; some Californios even intermarried with Mexican Americans (those whose ancestors were refugees escaping the Mexican Revolution in 1910).

Alexander V. King has estimated that there were between 300,000 and 500,000 descendants of Californios in 2004.

California Gold Rush

In 1848, gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma, California. This discovery was made only nine days before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, which turned over California to the United States as a result of the Mexican–American War.

From the end of 1849 to the end of 1852, the population in California increased from 107,000 to 264,000 due to the California Gold Rush. In early 1849, approximately 6,000 Mexicans, many of whom were Californios who remained after the United States had annexed the territory, were prospecting for gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Although the territory they were in had up until recently been Mexican land, Californios and other Mexicans very quickly became the minorities and were seen as the foreigners. Once the Gold Rush had truly started in 1849, the campsites were segregated by nationality, further establishing the fact that "Americans" had taken the title as the majority ethnicity in Northern California. Because the Californio "foreigners" so quickly became a minority, their claims to land protected under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were ignored when miners overran their land and squatted. Any protests by Californios were quickly put down by hastily formed Euro-American militias, so any legal protection provided by the new California legislature was ineffective when the threat of violence and lynchings loomed. Even if Californios were able to win their land back in court, often lawyer's fees cost large sums of land that left them with a fraction of their former wealth.

Working conditions

Many Latino miners were experienced due to learning a "dry-digging" technique in the Mexican mining state of Sonora. Their early success drew praise and respect from Euro-American miners, they eventually became jealous and used threats and violence to force Mexican workers out of their plots and into less lucrative ones. In addition to these informal forms of discrimination, Anglo miners also worked to establish Jim Crow-like laws to prevent Latinos from mining altogether. In 1851, mob violence as well as the Foreign Miners' Tax discussed below forced between five thousand and fifteen thousand foreigners out of work in just a few months.

According to Antonio F. Coronel's accounts, there was systematic race-influenced violence conducted by Americans to force out Californios and other Latinos. One account tells of a Frenchman and "un español" being lynched for supposed theft in 1848. Despite offers by Californios to replace the reported amount of gold stolen, they were still hanged. In addition, later in the Gold Rush, Coronel and his group found a rich vein of gold on the American River. When Euro-Americans caught wind of this, the invaded the claim armed and insisted it was their plot, forcing out Colonel and ending his mining career. Accounts like these show the harsh and violent living and working conditions that Californios were faced with during the Gold Rush. Discriminatory and racist treatment and laws as well as being so vastly outnumbered forced them out of their native lands despite assurances by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that they could remain.

Foreign Miners' Tax

In response to the Mexican resistance to the American population, white miners called for something to be done about the "Sonoran" miner "problem". In response, in 1850, the Californian government introduced a tax on foreign miners who were working plots, called the Foreign Miners' Tax Law. The claimed purpose of the tax was to fund the government's efforts to protect the foreign workers. There are conflicting reports on the amount of the tax ranging from $20 to $30 per month.

This extremely high tax forced all but the most successful Latinos to stop mining as they were unable to obtain enough gold to make mining profitable. This left only the most successful of the Mexican prospectors, who ironically were the ones who drew the most ire from the Euro-American miners initially. By 1851, when the tax law was repealed, approximately two-thirds of the Latinos and Californios that had been living and working in mining areas had been driven out by the tax. After repealing the $20 or $30 per month tax, the California legislature instituted a much more reasonable $3 per month tax in 1852.

Californio society and customs

Government

In the Spanish period, Alta California ("Upper California") was nominally controlled by a governor appointed by the Spanish government. The governors of California were at first appointed by the Viceroy (nominally under the control of the Spanish Crown).

After 1821 and Mexican independence, there were approximately 40 Mexican Presidents from 1821 to 1846. Their administrations appointed the governor. The  costs of the minimal Alta California government were paid mainly from revenues of the roughly 40–100% import tariff collected at the entry port of Monterey.

The other center of Spanish power in Alta California was the Franciscan friars. As heads of 21 missions, they often resisted the powers of the governors.<ref name="Encyclopedia mexican">Werner, Michael S., Editor; Concise Encyclopedia of Mexico; Women's Status and Occupation". pp. 886–898; Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers; </ref> None of the Franciscan friars was a Californio, and their influence rapidly waned after Mexico secularized the missions in the 1830s.

The instability of the Mexican government (especially in its early years), Alta California's geographic isolation, the growing ability of Alta California's residents, including immigrants, to gain success; and an increase in the Californio population created a schism with the national government. As Spanish and Mexican period immigrants were surpassed in number by residents who had little affinity with the national government, the political and social environment enabled disagreement with the central government to form. Governors had little material support from the distant capital, Mexico City, and generally had to deal with Alta Californians themselves. Mexico-born governor Manuel Victoria was forced to flee in 1831, after losing a fight against a local uprising at the Battle of Cahuenga Pass.

As Californios increasingly assumed positions of power in the Alta California government (including that of governor), rivalries emerged between northern and southern regions. Several times, Californio leaders attempted to break away from Mexico, most notably Juan Bautista Alvarado in 1836. Southern regional leaders, led by Pio Pico, made several attempts of their own to relocate the capital from Monterey to the more populated Los Angeles.

 Foreigners
The independent minded Californios were also influenced by increasing numbers of immigrant foreigners (mostly English and French, English-speaking Americans being grouped with the "English", or Anglos) who entered the district. They assimilated with the Californios, becoming Mexican citizens and gaining land either independently granted to them or through marriage to Californio women. They also began to be active in local politics.

For example, American Abel Stearns was an ally of the Californio José Antonio Carrillo in the 1831 Victoria incident, yet sided with the southern Californians against the Californio would-be governor Alvarado in 1836. Alvarado recruited a company of riflemen from Tennessee, many of them former trappers who had settled in the Monterey Bay area. The company was led by another American, Isaac Graham. When the Americans refused to fight against fellow Americans, Alvarado was forced to negotiate a settlement.

 Ethnicity

Californios included the descendants of agricultural settlers and retired escort soldiers deployed from what is modern-day Mexico. Most were of mixed ethnicities, usually Mestizo (Spanish and Native American) or mixed African and Amerindian backgrounds.

Despite the depictions of popular American 20th-century TV shows such as Zorro, few Californios were of "pure" Spanish (Peninsular or Criollo) ancestry. Persons who were most likely to be native-born Spanish or of Spanish ancestry were Franciscan priests, and career government officials and military officers who had limited assignments in California.

According to mission records (marriage, baptisms, and burials) and Presidio roster listings, several "leather-jacket" soldiers (soldados de cuero), operating as escorts, mission guards, and other military duty personnel were described as europeo (i.e., born in Europe), while most civilian settlers were classified as of mixed origins (coyote, mulatto, etc.). The current term mestizo was rarely used in mission records: more common terms were indio, europeo, mulato, coyote, castizo, and other caste terms.

An example of European-born soldiers are the twenty-five from Lieutenant Pedro Fages detachment of Catalan Volunteers. Most of the soldiers on the Portola-Serra expedition of 1769 and the de Anza expeditions of 1774 and 1775 were recruited from Spanish Army infantry regiments then stationed in Mexico. Many were assigned to garrison the presidios, and retired at the end of their ten-year enlistments. Numerous veterans settled in California. Because of the demographic bias in this period toward men among the Spanish, some men who stayed in California married native Californian women who had converted to Christianity at the missions.

 Women in Californio society

The social life of Californio society was extremely important in both politics and business, and women played an important part in these interactions. They helped facilitate such interactions for their husbands, and therefore themselves, in order to advance in the social and political power in  Californio society. Men sought women with high social skills, as they understood the power women could have on family and social dealings.

In movies and television accounts of this period have portrayed women as romanticized, characterized by their beauty and fun-loving nature. They have also been shown as raised to be very sheltered and protected.

As women played a key role in the development of Alta California, they continued in this role as it changed from a Mexican territory to a United States possession. As foreign, non-Spanish speaking men moved into California, those who wished to join the upper echelons of the established social hierarchy began to use marriage with women of established Californio families as a way to join the elite. Intermarriages between Californios and foreigners had been common during the time of Mexican rule and these increased after the 1848 American annexation and Gold Rush in California. Such marriages combined the cultures of American settlers and merchants with that of the declining Californio society. As Americans increased in number, however, they pushed out Californios from power in California.

 Family and education

The family was characteristically patriarchal; sons were expected to defer to fathers for all their lives. Women had full rights of property ownership and control unless she was married or had a living father; the males had almost complete control of all family members. Individual families of means paid to have their children educated, with by priests or private tutors. Few early immigrants knew how to read or write, so only a few hundred inhabitants could.

 Settlement
The Spanish colonial government, and later, Mexican officials encouraged through recruitment civilians from the northern and western provinces of Mexico such as Sonora. This was not well received by Californios, and was one of the factors leading to revolt against Mexican rule. Sonorans came to California despite the area's isolation and the lack of central government support. Many of the soldiers' wives considered California to be a cultural wasteland and a hardship assignment.

An incentive for the soldiers that remained in California after service was the opportunity to receive a land grant that probably was not possible elsewhere. This made most of California's early settlers military retirees with a few civilian settlers from Mexico. Since it was a frontier society, the initial rancho housing was characterized as rude and crude—little more than mud huts with thatched roofs. As the rancho owners prospered these residences could be upgraded to more substantial adobe structures with tiled roofs. Some buildings took advantage of local tar pits (La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles) in an attempt to waterproof roofs. Restoration of these Today, often suffer from a perception that results in a grander representation than if they had been constructed during the Californio period.

 Ranchos

In practice nearly all mission property and livestock became about 455 large Ranchos of California granted by the Californio authorities. The Californio rancho owners claimed about  averaging about  each. This land was nearly all originally mission land within about  of the coast. The Mexican-era land grants by law were provisional for five years in order for the terms of the law to reasonably be fulfilled. The boundaries of these ranchos were not established as they came to be in later times predominately based on what could be understood as figurative boundaries. They were based on just where another granted owner considered the end of their land, lands or vegetation landmarks. Conflict was bound to occur when these land grants were reviewed under United States control. Title to some grants under United States control were rejected based on questionable documents especially when with predated documents, that could have been created post-United States occupancy in January 1847.Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History, Second Ed., McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, p. 159.

After agriculture, cattle, sheep and horses were established by the California Missions, friars, soldiers and Mission Indians, the rancho owners dismissed the friars and the soldiers and took over the mission lands and livestock starting in 1834—the Mission Indians were left to survive however they could. The rancho owners tried to live in a grand style they perceived of the wealthy hidalgos in Spain. They expected the non-rancho owning population to support this lifestyle. Nearly all males rode to where ever they were going at nearly all times making them excellent riders. They indulged in many fiestas, fandangos, rodeos and roundups as the rancho owners often went from rancho to rancho on a large horse bound party circuit. Weddings, christenings, and funerals were all "celebrated" with large gatherings.

Before Mexican independence in 1821, 20 "Spanish" land grants had been issued (at little or no cost) in all of Alta California; many to "a few friends and family of the Alta California governors". The 1824 Mexican General Colonization Law established rules for petitioning for land grants in California; and by 1828, the rules for establishing land grants were codified in the Mexican Reglamento (Regulation). The Acts sought to break the monopoly of the Catholic Franciscan missions and possibly entice increased Mexican settlement.

When the missions were secularized in 1834–1836 mission property and livestock were supposed to be mostly allocated to the Mission Indians. Historical research shows that the majority of rancho grants were given to retired non-commissioned soldiers. The largest grants to Nieto, Sepúlveda, Domínguez, Yorba, Ávila, Grijalva, and other founding families were examples of this practice.

Many of the foreign residents also became rancho grantees. Some were "Californios by marriage" like Stearns (who was naturalized in Mexico before moving north) and the Englishman William Hartnell. Others married Californios but never became Mexican citizens. Rancho ownership was possible for these men because, under Spanish/Mexican law, married women could independently hold title to property. In the Santa Cruz area, three Californio daughters of the inválido José Joaquín Castro (1768–1838) married foreigners yet still received grants to Rancho Soquel, Rancho San Agustin and Rancho Refugio.

 Taxation
Since the government depended on import tariffs (also called Custom duties and ad-valorem taxes) for its income there was virtually no property tax. Under Spanish/Mexican rule, all landowners were expected to the diezmo, a compulsory tithe to the Catholic Church of one tenth of the fruits of agriculture and animal husbandry, business profits or salaries. Priest salaries and mission expenses were paid out of this money and/or collected goods.

The mandatory Diezmo ended with the secularization of the missions, greatly reducing rancho taxes until the U.S. takeover. Today's state property tax system makes large self-supporting cattle ranches uneconomical in most cases.

 Horses in Californio culture

Horses were plentiful and often left, after being broken in, to wander around with a rope around their necks for easy capture. It was not unusual for a rider to use one horse until it was exhausted, before switching its bridle to another horse—letting the first horse free to wander. Horse ownership for all except a few exceptional animals were almost community property. Horses were so common and of so little use that they were often destroyed to keep them from eating the grass needed by the cattle. California Indians later developed a taste for horse flesh as food and helped keep the number of horses under control. An unusual use for horses was found in shucking wheat or barley. The wheat and its stems were cut from the gain fields by Indians bearing sickles. The grain with its stems still attached was transported to the harvesting area by solid wheeled ox-cart (nearly the only wheeled transport in California) and put into a circular packed earth corral. A herd of horses was then driven into the same corral or "threshing field". By keeping the horses moving around the corral their hoofs would, in time, separate the wheat or barley from the chaff. Later the horses would be allowed to escape and the wheat and chaff were collected and then separated by tossing it into the air on a windy day so as to let the wind carry the chaff away. Presumably the wheat was washed before use to remove some of the dirt.

 Indigenous Californian workforce

For these very few rancho owners and their families, this was the Californio's Golden Age, although for all the others much different. Much of the agriculture, vineyards and orchards established by the Missions were allowed to deteriorate as the rapidly declining mission Indigenous Californian population went from over 80,000 in 1800 to only a few thousand by 1846. Fewer Native Americans meant less food was required and the Franciscan Friars and soldiers supporting the missions disappeared after 1834 when the missions were abolished (secularized). After the Friars and soldiers disappeared, many of the Native Americans deserted the missions and returned to their tribes or found work elsewhere. The new ranchos often gave work to some of the former mission Native Americans. The "Savage tribes" worked for room, board and clothing (and no pay). The former mission Indians performed the majority of the work herding cattle, planting and harvesting the ranchos' crops. The slowly increasing ranchos and Pueblos at Los Angeles, San Diego, Monterey, Santa Cruz, San Jose and Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) mostly only grew enough food to eat and to trade. The exceptions were the cattle and horses growing wild on unfenced range land. Originally owned by the missions they were killed for their hides and tallow.

 Traditional food and materials

Beef was a common constituent of most Californio meals and since it couldn't be kept long in the days before refrigeration, beef was often slaughtered to get a few steaks or cuts of meat. The property and yards around the ranchos were marked by the large number of dead cow heads, horns or other animal parts. Cow hides were kept later for trading purposes with Yankee or British traders who started showing up once or twice a year after 1825. Beef, wheat bread products, corn, several types of beans, peas and several types of squash were common meal items with wine and olive oil used when they could be found.

The mestizo population probably subsisted mostly on what they were used to: corn or maize, beans, and squash with some beef donated by the rancho owners. What the average Native Americans ate is unknown since they were in transition from a hunter gatherer society to agriculturalists. Formerly, many lived at least part of the year on ground acorns, fish, seeds, wild game, etc. It is known that many of the ranchers complained about 'Indians' stealing their cattle and horses to eat.

Leather, one of the most common materials available, was used for many products, including saddles, chaps, whips, window and door coverings, riatas (leather braided rope), trousers, hats, stools, chairs, bed frames, etc. Leather was even used for leather armor where soldiers' jackets were made from several layers of hardened leather sewn together. This stiff leather jacket was sufficient to stop most Indian arrows and worked well when fighting the Indians.

 Trade

From about 1769 to 1824 California averaged about 2.5 ships per year with 13 years showing no ships coming to California. These ships brought a few new settlers and supplies for the pueblos and Missions. Under the Spanish colonial government rules, trade was actively discouraged with non-Spanish ships. The few non-Native American people living in California had almost nothing to trade—the missions and pueblos were subsidized by the Spanish government. The occasional Spanish ships that did show up were usually requested by Californios and had Royal permission to go to California—bureaucracy in action. Prior to 1824, when the newly independent Mexico liberalized the trade rules and allowed trade with non-Mexican ships, the occasional trading ship or U.S. whaler that put into a California port to trade, get fresh water, replenish their firewood and obtain fresh meat and vegetables became more common. The average number of ships from 1825 to 1845 jumped to twenty-five ships per year versus the 2.5 ships per year common for the prior fifty years.

The rancho society had few resources except large herds of Longhorn cattle which grew well in California. The ranchos produced the largest cowhide (called California Greenbacks) and tallow business in North America by killing and skinning their cattle and cutting off the fat. The cowhides were staked out to dry and the tallow was put in large cowhide bags. The rest of the animal was left to rot or feed the California grizzly bears that were common in California. With something to trade, and needing everything from nails, needles and almost anything made of metal to fancy thread and cloth that could be sewn into fancy cloaks or ladies' dresses, etc., they started trading with merchant ships from Boston, Massachusetts, Britain and other trading ports in Europe and the East Coast of the United States. The trip from Boston, New York City, or Liverpool, England averaged over 200 days one way. Trading ships and the occasional whaler put into San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, San Pedro, San Buenaventura (Ventura), Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco) after stopping and paying the import tariff of 50–100% at the entry port of Monterey, California. These tariffs or custom fees paid for the Alta California government. The classic book Two Years Before the Mast (originally published 1840) by Richard Henry Dana Jr. gives a good first-hand account of a two-year sailing ship sea trading voyage to Alta California which he took in 1834–1835. Dana mentions that they also took back a large shipment of California longhorn horns. Horns were used to make a large number of items during this period.

California was not alone in using the import duty to pay for its government as the U.S. import tariffs at this time were also the way the United States paid for most of its Federal Government. A U.S. average tariff (also called custom duties and ad valorem taxes) of about 25% raised about 89% of all Federal income in 1850.

 Notable people

The Californio population was 10,000 in 1845, estimated.
 Rosario E. Aguilar
 José Antonio Aguirre (early Californian)
 Pedro de Alberni
 Juan Bautista Alvarado, governor
 José María Alviso, grantee of Rancho Milpitas, Alcalde of San José
 Concepción Argüello
 Luis Antonio Arguello
 José Darío Argüello
 Santiago Arguello
 Santiago E. Arguello
 Avila family of California
 Arcadia Bandini, businesswoman and co-founder of Santa Monica, California
 Juan Bandini
 Berreyesa family, various early settlers holding land grants (between them, José de los Reyes Berreyesa)
 Diego de Borica
 Dionisio Botiller
 José Raimundo Carrillo
 José Antonio Carrillo
 María Ygnacia López de Carrillo, founder of Santa Rosa, California
 Guillermo Castro (soldier)
 José Castro, general of the Mexican army in Alta California
 Víctor Castro
 Gil Cisneros – His great-grandmother was born in Los Angeles in the early 19th century.
 Eulogio F. de Celis
 Joseph Chiles
 Antonio F. Coronel
 Ygnacio Coronel
 Leonardo Cota
 Pancho Daniel, bandit leader of "las Manillas"
 Manuel Dominguez
 Narciso Durán
 José María de Echeandía
 José Antonio Estudillo
 José Joaquín Estudillo
 José María Estudillo
 Jose Vicente Feliz
 José Figueroa
 José María Flores
 Juan Flores, bandit, member of "las Manillas"
 Myrtle Gonzalez, silent-era movie actress, descendant of Californios
 José de la Guerra y Noriega
 Angustias de la Guerra Ord
 Antonio Maria de la Guerra
 Pablo de la Guerra
 Francisco Guerrero (politician)
 Nicolás Gutiérrez
 Francisco de Haro
 William Edward Petty Hartnell, also known as Don Guillermo Arnel José Joaquin Jimeno
 Fermín Lasuén
 Robert Livermore, namesake of Livermore, California
 José del Carmen Lugo
 Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné
 Juan María Marrón
 Juan Prado Mesa
 Manuel Micheltorena
 Juana Briones de Miranda
 Esteban Munras – (1798–1850) was a 19th-century Spanish artist, probably best known for the vibrantly-colored frescoes that adorn the chapel interior at Mission San Miguel Arcángel in California.
 Joaquin Murrieta originally from Sonora
 Manuel Nieto
 Romualdo Pacheco, 12th Governor of California
 Luís María Peralta, Peralta Adobe in San Jose, recipient of the Rancho San Antonio (Peralta) land grant in the San Francisco East Bay
 Ignacio Peralta
 Andrés Pico
 José Maria Pico
 Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, only Afro-Californio to govern the province, and namesake of Pico Rivera, California.
 Salomon Pico, ranchero, soldier, bandit leader during the early years of the California Gold Rush.
 Luis Manuel Quintero
 Manuel Requena
 Juan Francisco Reyes (soldier)
 Louis Robidoux, namesake of Mount Rubidoux, held Rancho Jurupa and Rancho San Jacinto y San Gorgonio
 José Antonio Roméu
 José González Rubio – (1804–1875) Roman Catholic friar prominent in the early history of California.
 Francisco María Ruiz
 José de la Cruz Sánchez – (1799–1878) was the eleventh Alcalde of San Francisco in 1845.
 Francisco Sanchez (politician)
 Tomas Avila Sanchez
 Vicente de Santa Maria
 Vicente Francisco de Sarría
 José Francisco de Paula Señan
 Francisco Xavier Sepulveda
 Juan Jose Sepulveda
 Francisco Sepulveda
 Ygnacio del Valle
 Ysabel del Valle
 Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the namesake of Vallejo, California, founder of Sonoma, California, husband of Francisca Benicia Carrillo Vallejo
 Francisca Benicia Carrillo Vallejo, the namesake of Benicia, California and wife of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo
 Tiburcio Vasquez, bandit
 Jose Maria Verdugo, recipient of Rancho San Rafael land grant
 Manuel Victoria
 Bernardo Yorba, major land grant recipient, namesake of Yorba Linda, California
 Jose Antonio Yorba, major land grant recipient

 Other notable people in Alta California
 José Romo de Vivar (settler in Arizona)
 José Joaquín Moraga (born in Arizona)
 José Francisco Ortega (founder of large Californio family)
 José de Urrea (born in Arizona)

 In literature
 Richard Henry Dana Jr., recounted aspects of Californio culture which he saw during his 1834 visit as a sailor in Two Years Before the Mast.
 Joseph Chapman, a land realtor noted as the first Yankee to reside in the old Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1831, described Southern California as a paradise yet to be developed. He mentions a civilization of Spanish-speaking colonists, "Californios", who thrived in the pueblos, the missions, and ranchos.
 Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don, a novel set in 1880s California, depicts a very wealthy Californio family's legal struggles with immigrant squatters on their land. The novel was based on the legal struggles of General Mariano G. Vallejo, a friend of the author. The novel depicts the legal process by which Californios were often "relieved" of their land. This process was long (most Californios spent up to 15 years defending their grants before the courts), and the legal fees were enough to make many Californios landless. Californios resented having to pay land taxes to United States officials, because the principle of paying taxes for land ownership did not exist in Mexican law. In some cases Californios had little available capital, because their economy had operated on a barter system; they often lost land because of the inability to pay the taxes. They could not compete economically with the European and Anglo-American immigrants who arrived in the region with large amounts of cash.
 Alejandro Murguía (1949-) speaks of growing up in the 20th century playing in the ruins of Missions and his family history as Californios in The medicine of memory : a Mexica clan in California.
 John Saul's 1985 horror novel Brain Child features a backstory heavily involving Californio settlers and their descendents.

A portrayal of Californio culture is depicted in the novel Ramona (1884), written by Helen Hunt Jackson.

The fictional character of Zorro has become the most identifiable Californio due to novels, short stories, motion pictures and the 1950s television series. The historical facts of the era are sometimes lost in the story-telling.

 See also

 Culture, race and ethnicity
 Floridanos
 Hispanics
 Isleños (Louisiana)
 Neomexicano
 Spanish American
 Tejano

 History and government
 History of California
 History of California before 1900
 Provincias Internas
 California Republic
 Conquest of California

 References

 Bibliography

 Beebe, Rose Marie and Robert M. Senkewicz (2001). Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535–1846. Berkeley: Heyday Books. .
 Beebe, Rose Marie and Robert M. Senkewicz (2006). Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815–1848. Berkeley: Heyday Books, The Bancroft Library and the University of California.
 Bouvier, Virginia Marie (2001). Women and the Conquest of California, 1542–1840: Codes of Silence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
 Casas, María Raquél (2007). Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820–1880. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
 Chávez-García, Miroslava (2004). Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
 Gostin, Ted (2001). Southern California Vital Records, Volume 1: Los Angeles County 1850–1859. Los Angeles: Generations Press.
 Haas, Lisbeth (1995). Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936, Berkeley: University of California.
 Heidenreich, Linda (2007). "This Land was Mexican Once": Histories of Resistance from Northern California. University of Texas Press.
 Hugues, Charles (1975). "The decline of the Californios: The Case of San Diego, 1846–1856", The Journal of San Diego History, Summer 1975, Volume 21, Number 3
 Hurtado, Albert L. (1999). Intimate Frontiers : Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California. Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press.
 Mason, William Marvin (1998). The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of California, Menlo Park, California: Ballena Press.
 Monroy, Douglas. Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. University of California Press 1993.
 Osio, Antonio Maria; Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz (1996) The History of Alta California : A Memoir of Mexican California. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
 PBS (2006). The Gold Rush. PBS.
 Pitt, Leonard and Ramón A. Guttiérrez (1998). Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890 (New edition), Berkeley: University of California Press.
 Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo; Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita (2001). Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Houston: Atre Publico Press.
 Sánchez, Rosaura (1995). Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
 The editors of Time-Life Books (1976). The Spanish West. New York: Time-Life Books.
 Thomas, Adrianna (2009). Latino and Asian Americans in the California Gold Rush. Columbia University Academic Commons.
 Umbeck, John (1977). The California Gold Rush: A Study of Emerging Property Rights. Academic Press, Inc.

 External links

 Archival collections
 Guide to the Amador, Yorba, López, and Cota families correspondence. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
 Guide to the Orange County Californio Families Portrait Photograph Album. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

 Other
 Californios, a People and a Culture, a personal website
 Pitti, José; Antonia Castaneda and Carlos Cortes (1988). "A History of Mexican Americans in California" , in Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California''. California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation.
 A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War, Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, University of Texas at Arlington

Mexican California
People from New Spain
People of the colonial Southwest of North America
1820s in Alta California
1830s in Alta California
1840s in Alta California
The Californias
Cultural history of California
Hispanic and Latino American history of California

Californios


Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is one of the most important results of twentieth century physics. It relates to measurements of sub-atomic particles. Certain pairs of measurements such as (a) where a particle is and (b) where it is going (its position and momentum) cannot be precisely pinned down.p96

Albert Einstein thought that such a quantum theory could give us only a partial description of nature.p99 He thought that Heisenberg's discovery showed that human knowledge is limited, but he also thought that nature is absolute. That is, he thought that there is no "uncertainty" in nature, and that the uncertainty exists only in our knowledge about it. However, many other scientists disagree with Einstein.

Heisenberg's idea is that if something like an electron were shot into a big box with a certain speed and in a certain direction, then it would be possible to calculate a fairly accurate idea of what its path would be like in the future. However, if the box were made smaller then we would have a more certain idea of where it was located, and because of that we would have to have a less certain idea of how it was traveling. American physicist Brian Greene gave the analogy of a moth which flies placidly around in a large closet but who flies frantically back and forth and up and down when placed in a glass jar.p114 Another interesting uncertainty phenomenon, which makes possible many electronic devices, is called quantum tunneling. In our everyday life, people cannot move through walls. However, electrons can move through solid walls.p115 In the animation to the right, you can see a faint white puff on the right side of the wall after a big puff hits the wall from the left. That dim spot of light represents the photon or other atomic particle which tunnels through the wall.

The error in position (x) times the minimum range of error in momentum (p) is, at a minimum, equal's to about equal to half of the Reduced Planck's constant.

Confusion with observer effect
Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a somewhat similar effect in physics, called the observer effect. This says that measurements of some systems cannot be made without affecting the systems. Heisenberg offered such an observer effect at the quantum level as a physical "explanation" of quantum uncertainty.

However, it is now clear that the uncertainty principle is a property of all wave-like systems. It arises in quantum mechanics simply due to the matter wave nature of all quantum objects. Thus, the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology. "Measurement" does not mean just a process in which a physicist-observer takes part, but rather <u/l>any interaction between classical and quantum objects regardless of any observer</u/l>.

The idea of indeterminacy

The uncertainty principle came from Werner Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. Max Planck  already knew that the energy of a unit of light is proportional to the frequency of that unit of light (), and that its amount of energy can be expressed in familiar terms such as the joule by using a proportionality constant. The constant he gave the world is now called the Planck constant and is represented by the letter h.  When matrices are used to express quantum mechanics, frequently two matrices have to be multiplied to get a third matrix that gives the answer the physicist is trying to find. But multiplying a matrix such as P (for momentum) by a matrix such as X (for position) gives a different answer matrix from the one you get when you multiply X by P. The result of multiplying P by X and X by P and then comparing them always involves the Planck constant as a factor. The number used to write the Planck constant will always depend on the system of measurement in use. (With a certain system of measurement, its numerical value is one.) The slope of the line in the diagram to the right that shows the ratio of frequency to energy will also depend on the system of measurement chosen.

The following diagrams show what happens when we try to measure both location and momentum.

The practical result of this mathematical discovery is that when a physicist makes position more clear then momentum becomes less clear, and that when the physicist makes momentum more clear then position becomes less clear. Heisenberg said that things are "indeterminate," and other people liked to say that they were "uncertain." But the mathematics shows that it is the things in the world that are indeterminate or "fuzzy," and not that it is just that humans are uncertain about what is going on.

Putting indeterminacy into mathematical form
Here we will show the first equation that gave the basic idea later shown in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Heisenberg's groundbreaking paper of 1925 does not use and does not even mention matrices. Heisenberg's great success was the "scheme which was capable in principle of determining uniquely the relevant physical qualities (transition frequencies and amplitudes)" of hydrogen radiation.

After Heisenberg wrote his breakthrough paper, he gave it to one of his teachers to fix up and went on a vacation. Max Born was puzzled by the equations and the non-commuting equations that even Heisenberg thought were a problem. After several days Born realized that these equations were directions for writing out matrices. Matrices were new and strange, even for mathematicians of that time, but how to do math with them was already clearly known. He and a few others worked everything out in matrix form before Heisenberg came back from his time off, and within a few months the new quantum mechanics in matrix form gave them the basis for another paper.

Max Born saw that when the matrices that represent pq and qp were calculated they would not be equal. Heisenberg had already seen the same thing in terms of his original way of writing things out, and Heisenberg may have guessed what was almost immediately obvious to Born—that the difference between the answer matrices for pq and for qp would always involve two factors that came out of Heisenberg's original math: Planck's constant h and i, which is the square root of negative one.  So the very idea of what Heisenberg preferred to call the "indeterminacy principle" (usually known as the uncertainty principle) was hiding in Heisenberg's original equations.

Heisenberg had been looking at changes that happen in an atom when an electron changes its energy level and so gets closer to the center of its atom or gets farther from its center, and, especially, situations in which an electron falls to a lower energy state in two steps. Max Born explained how he took Heisenberg's strange "recipe" for finding the product, C, of some change in an atom from energy level n to energy level n-b, which involved taking the sum of multiplying one change in something called A (which could be, for instance, the frequency of some photon) produced by a change of energy of an electron in the atom between energy state n and energy state n-a) by a succeeding change in something called B (which could be, for instance, the amplitude of a change) produced by another change in energy state from n-a to n-b):

and discovered something ground breaking:
By consideration of ...examples...[Heisenberg] found this rule.... This was in the summer of 1925. Heisenberg...took leave of absence...and handed over his paper to me for publication....

Heisenberg's rule of multiplication left me no peace, and after a week of intensive thought and trial, I suddenly remembered an algebraic theory....Such quadratic arrays are quite familiar to mathematicians and are called matrices, in association with a definite rule of multiplication. I applied this rule to Heisenberg's quantum condition and found that it agreed for the diagonal elements. It was easy to guess what the remaining elements must be, namely, null; and immediately there stood before me the strange formula

  [The symbol Q is the matrix for displacement, P is the matrix for momentum, i stands for the square root of negative one, and h is Planck's constant.]

Later on, Heisenberg put his discovery into another mathematical form:

(The special symbol  is called "h-bar,"  or 'reduced Planks constant', is equal to .)

The math is a way of describing things that happen in the real world. You might imagine that it would be easy to get both the exact position of something and its exact mass, path, and speed at the same time. However, in reality you have to do two things to get your answer. If you are measuring the position and momentum of a bullet that is stuck in a cliff of a great mountain somewhere, it is a simple matter. The mountain does not appear to be going anywhere, and neither is the bullet. So its position is known and its velocity is 0, so its momentum is also 0. But if the bullet is somewhere between a gun and a target, it will be difficult to get its position at any given time. The best we may be able to do is to take its picture using a camera with a very fast shutter. But a single squeeze of the shutter would give you only one thing, the bullet's position at time t. To get the momentum we might put a block of paraffin in the bullet's way and measure how the block of paraffin moved when it stopped the bullet. Or, if we knew the bullet's mass, we might take a sequence of two pictures, compute the velocity by knowing the difference between the two positions of the bullet and the time between its two appearances. However we do it, we need to measure mass and position and time between appearances. We end up making at least two measurements to get to x and p. In that case we have to choose which measurement to make first, and which to make second. It seems to make no difference which order our measurements are made in. Measuring the bullet's mass and then measuring its positions twice, or measuring the bullet's positions twice and then recovering the bullet and measuring its mass would not make any difference, would it? After all, we have not done anything to the bullet when we weigh it or when we make photographs of it.

On the very small scale when we are measuring something like an electron, however, each measurement does something to it. If we measure position first, then we change its momemtum in the process. If we measure the electron's momentum first, then we change its position in the process. Our hope would be to measure one of them and then measure the other before anything changed, but our measuring itself makes a change, and the best we can hope to do is to reduce to a minimum the energy we contribute to the electron by measuring it. That minimum amount of energy has the Planck constant as one of its factors.

Uncertainty goes beyond matrix math

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was found in the earliest equations of the "new" quantum physics, and the theory was given by using matrix math. However, the uncertainty principle is a fact about nature, and it shows up in other ways of talking about quantum physics such as the equations made by Erwin Schrödinger.

Indeterminacy in nature, not uncertainty of humans

There have been two very different ways of looking at what Heisenberg discovered: Some people think that things that happen in nature are "determinate," that is, things happen by a definite rule and if we could know everything we need to know we could always say what will happen next. Other people think that things that happen in nature are guided only by probability, and we can know only how things will behave on the average—but we know that very precisely.

The physicist John Stewart Bell discovered a way to prove that the first way cannot be correct. His work is called Bell's theorem or Bell's Inequality.

Popular culture

The expression "quantum leap" or "quantum jump" has been taken to mean some great and transformative change, and it is often used in hyperbolic expressions by politicians and mass media sales campaigns. In quantum mechanics it is used to describe the transition of an electron from one orbit around the nucleus of an atom to any other orbit, higher or lower.

Sometimes the word "quantum" is used in the names of commercial products and businesses. For instance, Briggs and Stratton manufactures many kinds of small gasoline motors for lawn mowers, rotary tillers, and other such small machines. One of their model names is "Quantum."

Because the uncertainty principle tells us that certain measurements at the atomic level cannot be made without disturbing other measurements, some individuals use this idea to describe instances in the human world where the activity of an observer changes the thing that is being watched. An anthropologist may go to some far away place to learn how people live there, but the fact that a strange person from the outside world is there watching them may change the ways that those people act.

Things that people do while observing things that change what is being observed are cases of the Observer effect. Some things that people do cause changes on the very small level of atoms and are cases of uncertainty or indeterminacy as first described by Heisenberg. The uncertainty principle shows that there is always a limit to how small we can make certain pairs of measurements such as position and speed or trajectory and momentum. The observer effect says that sometimes what people do in observing things, e.g., learning about an ant colony by digging it up with garden tools, can have big effects that change what they were trying to learn about.

References

Quantum mechanics

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle


Base can mean:
as a noun:
In mathematics:
Base (mathematics), or radix, the number of digits in a numeral system, e.g. base 10
Base (geometry), the bottom of a triangle.
In sport:
Base (baseball), the 3 canvas bags and home plate
In architecture:
The bottom of a building or other structure
A part of some types of column, below the shaft
A pedestal, supporting a statue or other item
A defined area that contains shelter, equipment, and resources:
a place which helps people live in a hostile environment, such as a Moon base or a base in Antarctica
a Military base, which provides shelter, military equipment and personnel
Other uses:
In a transistor, the base is the controlling connection to the junction.
Islamic Extremist group Al-Qaeda is literally translated into English as 'The Base.'
Base (chemistry), the "opposite" of acid, sometimes known as an alkali

as a verb
Made from the ideas of... Developed from... First known as...
In sport:
BASE jumping - jumping with a parachute from a fixed place like the top of a building or a bridge

Base