Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; ; May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist. His music forms a large part of the Great American Songbook. Berlin received numerous honors including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, and a Tony Award. He also received Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald R. Ford in 1977. Journalist Walter Cronkite stated he "helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives".

Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights,   and became known as the composer of numerous international hits, starting with 1911's "Alexander's Ragtime Band". He also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway.  For much of his career, Berlin could not read sheet music, and was such a limited piano player that he could only play in the key of F-sharp; he used his custom piano equipped with a transposing lever when he needed to play in keys other than F-sharp. He was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his stated aim being to "reach the heart of the average American," whom he saw as the "real soul of the country".

He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him famous before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Blue Skies", "Easter Parade", "Puttin' on the Ritz", "Cheek to Cheek", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)", and "There's No Business Like Show Business".
His Broadway musical This Is The Army (1942) was adapted into the 1943 film of the same name.

Berlin's songs have reached the top of the charts 25 times and have been extensively re-recorded by numerous singers. Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101. Composer Douglas Moore sets Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters, and includes him instead with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg, as a "great American minstrel"—someone who has "caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what we believe."  Composer George Gershwin called him "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived", and composer Jerome Kern concluded that "Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music."

Early life

Jewish immigrant

Life in Russia
Berlin was born Israel Beilin on May 11, 1888, in the Russian Empire. Although his family came from the shtetl of Tolochin (; today Talachyn, , in Belarus), Berlin later learned that he was probably born in Tyumen, Siberia, where his father, an itinerant cantor, had taken his family. He was one of eight children of Moses (1848–1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).

From Tyumen, the family returned to Tolochin, and from there, they travelled to Antwerp and left the old continent aboard the SS Rhynland from the Red Star Line. On September 14, 1893, the family arrived at Ellis Island in New York City. When they arrived, Israel was put in a pen with his brother and five sisters until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into the city. After the family's naturalization, the name "Beilin" was changed to "Baline".

According to biographer Laurence Bergreen, as an adult Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years in Russia except for one: "he was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground. By daylight the house was in ashes."  As an adult, Berlin said he was unaware of being raised in abject poverty since he knew no other life.

The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, escaping discrimination, poverty and brutal pogroms. Other such families included those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Jack Yellen, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM), and the Warner brothers.

Settling in New York City

After their arrival in New York City, the Baline family lived briefly in a basement flat on Monroe Street, and then moved to a three-room tenement at 330 Cherry Street. His father, unable to find comparable work as a cantor in New York, took a job at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side to support his family. He died a few years later when Irving was thirteen years old.

With only a few years of schooling, eight-year-old Irving began helping to support his family. He became a newspaper boy, hawking The Evening Journal. One day while delivering newspapers, according to Berlin's biographer and friend, Alexander Woollcott, he stopped to look at a ship departing for China and became so entranced that he did not see a swinging crane, which knocked him into the river. When he was fished out after going down for the third time, he was still holding in his clenched fist the five pennies he earned that day.

His mother took a job as a midwife, and three of his sisters worked wrapping cigars, common for immigrant girls. His older brother worked in a sweatshop assembling shirts. Each evening, when the family came home from their day's work, Bergreen writes, "they would deposit the coins they had earned that day into Lena's outspread apron."

Music historian Philip Furia writes that when "Izzy" began to sell newspapers in the Bowery, he was exposed to the music and sounds coming from saloons and restaurants that lined the crowded streets. Young Berlin sang some of the songs he heard while selling papers, and people would toss him some coins.  He confessed to his mother one evening that his newest ambition in life was to become a singing waiter in a saloon. From this he stepped up to work as a song plugger and singing waiter in cafes and restaurants in the downtown areas of New York City. His first lyric, written with a café pianist, earned him a royalty of thirty-seven cents.

However, before Berlin was fourteen his meager income was still adding less than his sisters' to the family's budget, which made him feel worthless. He then decided to leave home and join the city's ragged army of other young immigrants. He lived in the Bowery, taking up residence in one of the lodging houses that sheltered the thousands of other homeless boys in the Lower East Side. Bergreen describes them as being uncharitable living quarters, "Dickensian in their meanness, filth, and insensitivity to ordinary human beings."

Early jobs

Having left school around the age of thirteen, Berlin had few survival skills and realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only ability was acquired from his father's vocation as a singer, and he joined with several other youngsters who went to saloons on the Bowery and sang to customers. Itinerant young singers like them were common on the Lower East Side. Berlin would sing a few of the popular ballads he heard on the street, hoping people would pitch him a few pennies. From these seamy surroundings, he became streetwise, with real and lasting education. Music was his only source of income, and he picked up the language and culture of the ghetto lifestyle.

Berlin learned what kind of songs appealed to audiences, writes Bergreen: "well-known tunes expressing simple sentiments were the most reliable." He soon began plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in Union Square and, in 1906, when he was 18, got a job as a singing waiter at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown. Besides serving drinks, he sang made-up "blue" parodies of hit songs to the delight of customers.

Biographer Charles Hamm writes that in Berlin's free time after hours, he taught himself to play the piano. Never having had lessons, after the bar closed for the night, young Berlin would sit at a piano in the back and begin improvising tunes. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", written in collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist Mike Nicholson, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights. The sheet music to the published song presented his name as "I. Berlin".

Berlin continued writing and playing music at Pelham Cafe and developing an early style. He liked the words to other people's songs but sometimes the rhythms were "kind of boggy," and he might change them. One night he delivered some hits composed by his friend George M. Cohan, another kid who was getting known on Broadway with his own songs. When Berlin ended with Cohan's "Yankee Doodle Boy", notes Whitcomb, "everybody in the joint applauded the feisty little fellow."

Recognition as songwriter
Max Winslow (c. 1883–1942), a staff member at music publisher Harry Von Tilzer Company, noticed Berlin's singing on many occasions and became so taken with his talent that he tried to get him a job with his firm. Von Tilzer said that Max claimed to have "discovered a great kid," and raved about him so much that Von Tilzer hired Berlin.

In 1908, when he was 20, Berlin took a new job at a saloon named Jimmy Kelly's in the Union Square neighborhood. There, he was able to collaborate with other young songwriters, such as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi, and George A. Whiting. In 1909, the year of the premiere of Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot, he got another big break as a staff lyricist with the Ted Snyder Company.

Installed as a staff lyricist with a leading Tin Pan Alley music publishing house, Berlin quickly established himself as one of that frantic industry's top writers of words to other composer's melodies. By 1910 he was already in demand and even appeared in a Shubert Broadway revue performing his own songs. It was purely by chance that Berlin started composing music to the words of his songs. A lyric he had submitted to a publisher was thought to be complete with music. Not wishing to lose the sale, Berlin quickly wrote a melody. It was accepted and published. The success of this first effort opened the door to his career as a composer of music as well as lyrics. In 1910, Berlin wrote a hit that solidly established him as one of Tin Pan Alley's leading composers. Alexander's Ragtime Band not only popularized the vogue for "ragtime," but later inspired a major motion picture.

Songwriting career

Before 1920

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911)

Berlin rose as a songwriter in Tin Pan Alley and on Broadway. In 1911, Emma Carus introduced his first world-famous hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", followed by a performance from Berlin himself at the Friars' Frolic of 1911. He became an instant celebrity, and the featured performer later that year at Oscar Hammerstein's vaudeville house, where he introduced dozens of other songs. The New York Telegraph described how two hundred of his street friends came to see "their boy" onstage: "All the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his coat while tears ran down his cheeks—in a vaudeville house!"

Richard Corliss, in a Time profile of Berlin, described "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as a march, not a rag, "its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and "Swanee River". The tune revived the ragtime fervor that Scott Joplin had begun a decade earlier, and made Berlin a songwriting star. From its first and subsequent releases, the song was near the top of the charts as others sang it: Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937; no. 1 by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; Johnny Mercer in 1945; Al Jolson, in 1947 and Nellie Lutcher in 1948. Add Ray Charles's big-band version in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in just under a half century.

Initially the song was not recognized as a hit, however; Broadway producer Jesse Lasky was uncertain about using it, although he did include it in his "Follies" show. It was performed as an instrumental but did not impress audiences, and was soon dropped from the show's score. Berlin regarded it as a failure. He then wrote lyrics to the score, played it again in another Broadway Review, and this time Variety news weekly called it "the musical sensation of the decade". Composer George Gershwin, foreseeing its influence, said it was "the first real American musical work," adding, "Berlin had shown us the way; it was now easier to attain our ideal."

Sparking a national dance craze

Berlin was "flabbergasted" by the sudden international popularity of the song, and wondered why it became a sudden hit. He decided it was partly because the lyrics, "silly though it was, was fundamentally right...[and] the melody... started the heels and shoulders of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking." In 1913, Berlin was featured in the London revue Hello Ragtime, where he introduced "That International Rag", a song he had written for the occasion.

Watch Your Step
Furia writes that the international success of "Alexander's Ragtime Band"  gave ragtime "new life and sparked a national dance craze". Two dancers who expressed that craze were Vernon and Irene Castle. In 1914, Berlin wrote a ragtime revue, Watch Your Step, which starred the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical revue became Berlin's first complete score with songs that "radiated musical and lyrical sophistication". Berlin's songs signified modernism, and they signified the cultural struggle between Victorian gentility and the "purveyors of liberation, indulgence, and leisure," says Furia. The song "Play a Simple Melody" became the first of his famous "double" songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed against one another.

Variety called Watch Your Step the "first syncopated musical", where the "sets and the girls were gorgeous". Berlin was then 26, and the success of the show was riding on his name alone. Variety said the show was a "terrific hit" from its opening night. It compared Berlin's newfound status as a composer with that of the Times building: "That youthful marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in Watch Your Step, firstly that he is not alone a rag composer, and that he is one of the greatest lyric writers America has ever produced."

Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Berlin's family was forced to leave, flung itself into "the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania". For example, Prince Felix Yusupov, a recent Oxford undergraduate of Russian noble lineage and heir to the largest estate in Russia, was described by his dance partner as "wriggling around the ballroom like a demented worm, screaming for 'more ragtime and more champagne.

Simple and romantic ballads

Some of the songs Berlin created came out of his own sadness. For instance, in 1912 he married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz. She died six months later of typhoid fever contracted during their honeymoon in Havana. The song he wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You", was his first ballad. It was an immediate popular hit and sold more than a million copies.

He began to realize that ragtime was not a good musical style for serious romantic expression, and over the next few years adapted his style by writing more love songs. In 1915 he wrote the hit "I Love a Piano", a comical and erotic ragtime love song.

By 1918 he had written hundreds of songs, mostly topical, which enjoyed brief popularity. Many of the songs were for the new dances then appearing, such as the grizzly bear, chicken walk, or foxtrot. After a Hawaiian dance craze began, he wrote "That Hula-Hula", and then did a string of Southern songs, such as "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam". During this period, he was creating a few new songs every week, including songs aimed at the various immigrant cultures arriving from Europe. On one occasion, Berlin, whose face was still not known, was on a train trip and decided to entertain the fellow passengers with some music. They asked him how he knew so many hit songs, and Berlin modestly replied, "I wrote them."

An important song that Berlin wrote during his transition from writing ragtime to lyrical ballads was "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", which became one of Berlin's "first big guns", says historian Alec Wilder. The song was written for Ziegfeld's Follies of 1919 and became the musical's lead song. Its popularity was so great that it later became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and the theme song in the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.  Wilder puts it on the same level as Jerome Kern's "pure melodies", and in comparison with Berlin's earlier music, says it is "extraordinary that such a development in style and sophistication should have taken place in a single year".

World War I
On April 1, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would enter World War I, Berlin felt that Tin Pan Alley should do its duty and support the war with inspirational songs. Berlin wrote the song "For Your Country and My Country", stating that "we must speak with the sword not the pen to show our appreciation to America for opening up her heart and welcoming every immigrant group." He also co-wrote a song aimed at ending ethnic conflict, "Let's All Be Americans Now".

Yip Yip Yaphank

In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the United States Army, and his induction became headline news, with one paper headline reading, "Army Takes Berlin!" But the Army wanted Berlin, now aged 30, to do what he knew best: write songs. While stationed with the 152nd Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, he then composed an all-soldier musical revue titled Yip Yip Yaphank, written as a patriotic tribute to the United States Army. The show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of hits, including "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", which Berlin performed himself.

The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, he would introduce 20 years later: "God Bless America".

1920 to 1940

Berlin returned to Tin Pan Alley after the war and in 1921 created a partnership with Sam Harris to build the Music Box Theater. He maintained an interest in the theater throughout his life, and even in his last years was known to call the Shubert Organization, his partner, to check on the receipts. In its early years, the theater was a showcase for revues by Berlin. As theater owner, producer and composer, he looked after every detail of his shows, from the costumes and sets to the casting and musical arrangements.

According to Berlin biographer David Leopold, the theater, located at 239 West 45th St., was the only Broadway house built to accommodate the works of a songwriter. It was the home of Berlin's Music Box Revue from 1921 to 1925 and As Thousands Cheer in 1933 and today includes an exhibition devoted to Berlin in the lobby.

Various hit songs by Berlin
By 1926, Berlin had written the scores to two editions of the Ziegfeld Follies and four annual editions of his Music Box Revue. These shows spanned the years of 1921–1926, premiering songs such as "Say It With Music", "Everybody Step", and "Pack Up Your Things and Go to the Devil". Life magazine called Berlin the "Lullaby Kid", noting that "couples at country-club dances grew misty-eyed when the band went into 'Always', because they were positive that Berlin had written it just for them. When they quarreled and parted in the bitter-sweetness of the 1920s, it was Berlin who gave eloquence to their heartbreak by way of 'What'll I Do' and 'Remember' and 'All Alone'".

"What'll I Do?" (1924)
This ballad of love and longing was a hit record for Paul Whiteman and had several other successful recordings in 1924. Twenty-four years later, the song went to no. 22 for Nat King Cole and no. 23 for Frank Sinatra.

"Always" (1925)
Written when he fell in love with Ellin Mackay, who later became his wife. The song became a hit twice (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen) in its first incarnation. There were four more hit versions in 1944–45. In 1959, Sammy Turner took the song to no. 2 on the R&B chart. It became Patsy Cline's postmortem anthem and hit no. 18 on the country chart in 1980, 17 years after her death, and a tribute musical called "Always... Patsy Cline", played a two-year Nashville run that ended in 1995. Leonard Cohen included a cover of this song on his 1992 release The Future (Leonard Cohen album).

"Blue Skies" (1926)
Written after his first daughter's birth, he distilled his feelings about being married and a father for the first time: "Blue days, all of them gone; nothing but blue skies, from now on." The song was introduced by Belle Baker in Betsy, a Ziegfeld production. It became a hit recording for Ben Selvin and one of several Berlin hits in 1927. It was performed by Al Jolson in the first feature sound film, The Jazz Singer, that same year. In 1946, it returned to the top 10 on the charts with Count Basie and Benny Goodman. In 1978, Willie Nelson made the song a no. 1 country hit, 52 years after it was written.

"Puttin' On the Ritz" (1928)
An instant standard with one of Berlin's most "intricately syncopated choruses", this song is associated with Fred Astaire, who sang and danced to it in the 1946 film Blue Skies. The song was written in 1928 with a separate set of lyrics and was introduced by Harry Richman in a 1930 film of the same name. In 1939, Clark Gable sang it in the movie Idiot's Delight. In 1974 it was featured in the movie Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks, and was a no. 4 hit for synth-pop artist Taco in 1983. In 2012 it was used for a flash mob wedding event in Moscow.

"Marie" (1929)
This waltz-time song was a hit for Rudy Vallée in 1929, and in 1937, updated to a four-quarter-time swing arrangement, was a top hit for Tommy Dorsey. It was on the charts at no. 13 in 1953 for The Four Tunes and at no. 15 for the Bachelors in 1965, 36 years after its first appearance.

"Say It Isn't So" (1932)
Rudy Vallée performed it on his radio show, and the song was a hit for George Olsen, Connee Boswell (she was still known as Connie), and Ozzie Nelson's band. Aretha Franklin produced a single of the song in 1963, 31 years later. Furia notes that when Vallée first introduced the song on his radio show, the "song not only became an overnight hit, it saved Vallée's marriage: The Vallées had planned to get a divorce, but after Vallée sang Berlin's romantic lyrics on the air, "both he and his wife dissolved in tears" and decided to stay together.

"I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" (1937)
Performed by Dick Powell in the 1937 film On the Avenue. Later it had four top-12 versions, including by Billie Holiday and Les Brown, who took it to no. 1.

"God Bless America" (1938)

The song was written by Berlin twenty years earlier, but he filed it away until 1938 when Kate Smith needed a patriotic song to mark the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day, celebrating the end of World War I. Its release near the end of the Depression, which had by then gone on for nine years, enshrined a "strain of official patriotism intertwined with a religious faith that runs deep in the American psyche," stated The New York Times.

Berlin's daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, states that the song was actually "very personal" for her father, and was intended as an expression of his deep gratitude to the nation for merely "allowing" him, an immigrant raised in poverty, to become a successful songwriter. "To me," said Berlin, "'God Bless America' was not just a song but an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am." The Economist magazine writes that "Berlin was producing a deep-felt paean to the country that had given him what he would have said was everything."

It quickly became a second national anthem after America entered World War II a few years later. Over the decades it has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties. In 1954, Berlin received a special Congressional Gold Medal from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing the song.

The song was heard after September 11, 2001, as U.S. senators and congressmen stood on the capitol steps and sang it after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It is often played by sports teams such as major league baseball. The Philadelphia Flyers hockey team started playing it before crucial contests. When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team pulled off the "greatest upset in sports history," referred to as the "Miracle on Ice", the players spontaneously sang it as Americans were overcome by patriotism.

Other songs
Though most of his works for the Broadway stage took the form of revues—collections of songs with no unifying plot—he did write a number of book shows. The Cocoanuts (1929) was a light comedy with a cast featuring, among others, the Marx Brothers. Face the Music (1932) was a political satire with a book by Moss Hart, and Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician obviously based on the exploits of Huey Long. As Thousands Cheer (1933) was a revue, also with book by Moss Hart, with a theme: each number was presented as an item in a newspaper, some of them touching on issues of the day. The show yielded a succession of hit songs, including "Easter Parade" sung by Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb, "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather forecast), "Harlem on My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about racial violence inspired by a newspaper headline about a lynching, sung by Ethel Waters. She once said about the song, "If one song can tell the whole tragic history of a race, 'Supper Time' was that song. In singing it I was telling my comfortable, well-fed, well-dressed listeners about my people...those who had been slaves and those who were now downtrodden and oppressed."

1941 to 1962

World War II patriotism—"This is the Army" (1943)

Berlin loved his country, and wrote many songs reflecting his patriotism. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau requested a song to inspire Americans to buy war bonds, for which he wrote "Any Bonds Today?" He assigned all royalties to the United States Treasury Department. He then wrote songs for various government agencies and likewise assigned all profits to them: "Angels of Mercy" for the American Red Cross; "Arms for the Love of America", for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department; and "I Paid My Income Tax Today", again to Treasury.

When the United States joined World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Berlin immediately began composing a number of patriotic songs. His most notable and valuable contribution to the war effort was a stage show he wrote called "This Is The Army". It was taken to Broadway and then on to Washington, D.C. (where President Franklin D. Roosevelt attended). It was eventually shown at military bases throughout the world, including London, North Africa, Italy, Middle East, and Pacific countries, sometimes in close proximity to battle zones. Berlin wrote nearly three dozen songs for the show which contained a cast of 300 men. He supervised the production and traveled with it, always singing "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". The show kept him away from his family for three and a half years, during which time he took neither salary nor expenses, and turned over all profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund.

The play was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1943, directed by Michael Curtiz, co-starring Joan Leslie and Ronald Reagan, who was then an army lieutenant. Kate Smith also sang "God Bless America" in the film with a backdrop showing families anxious over the coming war. The show became a hit movie and a morale-boosting road show that toured the battlefronts of Europe. The shows and movie combined raised more than $10 million for the Army, and in recognition of his contributions to troop morale, Berlin was awarded the Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman. His daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, who was 15 when she was at the opening-night performance of "This is the Army" on Broadway, remembered that when her father, who normally shunned the spotlight, appeared in the second act in soldier's garb to sing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", he was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted 10 minutes. She adds that he was in his mid-50s at the time, and later declared those years with the show were the "most thrilling time of his life".

Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
The grueling tours Berlin did performing "This Is The Army" left him exhausted, but when his longtime close friend Jerome Kern, who was the composer for Annie Get Your Gun, died suddenly, producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II persuaded Berlin to take over composing the score.

Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music and lyrics were written by Berlin, with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields, and directed by Joshua Logan. At first Berlin refused to take on the job, claiming that he knew nothing about "hillbilly music", but the show ran for 1,147 performances and became his most successful score and biggest box office success. It is said that the showstopper song "There's No Business Like Show Business" was almost left out of the show altogether because Berlin mistakenly thought that Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't like it. However, it became the "ultimate uptempo show tune".

On the origin of another of the play's leading songs, Logan described how he and Hammerstein privately discussed wanting another duet between Annie and Frank. Berlin overheard their conversation, and although the show was to go into rehearsal within days, he wrote the song "Anything You Can Do" a few hours later.

One reviewer commented about the play's score, that "its tough wisecracking lyrics are as tersely all-knowing as its melody, which is nailed down in brassy syncopated lines that have been copied—but never equaled in sheer melodic memorability—by hundreds of theater composers ever since." Singer and musicologist Susannah McCorkle writes that the score "meant more to me than ever, now that I knew that he wrote it after a grueling world tour and years of separation from his wife and daughters." Historian and composer Alec Wilder says that the perfection of the score, when compared to his earlier works, was "a profound shock".

Apparently the "creative spurt" in which Berlin turned out several songs for the score in a single weekend was an anomaly. According to his daughter, he usually "sweated blood" to write his songs. Annie Get Your Gun is considered to be Berlin's best musical theatre score not only because of the number of hits it contains, but because its songs successfully combine character and plot development. The song "There's No Business Like Show Business" became "Ethel Merman's trademark".

Final shows
Berlin's next show, Miss Liberty (1949), was disappointing, but Call Me Madam (1950), starring Ethel Merman as Sally Adams, a Washington, D.C., socialite, loosely based on the famous Washington hostess Perle Mesta, fared better, giving him his second-greatest success. Berlin made two attempts to write a musical about his friend, the colorful Addison Mizner, and Addison's con-man brother Wilson. The first was the uncompleted The Last Resorts (1952); a manuscript of Act I is in the Library of Congress. Wise Guy (1956) was completed but never produced, although songs have been published and recorded on The Unsung Irving Berlin (1995). After a failed attempt at retirement, in 1962, at the age of 74, he returned to Broadway  with Mr. President. Although it ran for eight months, (with the premiere attended by President John F. Kennedy), it was not one of his successful plays.

Afterwards, Berlin officially announced his retirement and spent his remaining years in New York. He did, however, write one new song, "An Old-Fashioned Wedding", for the 1966 Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman. Though he lived 23 more years, this would be one of Berlin's final published compositions.

Berlin maintained a low profile through the last decades of his life, almost never appearing in public after the late 1960s, even for events held in his honor. However, he continued to maintain control of his songs through his own music publishing company, which remained in operation for the rest of his life.

Film scores

1920s–1950s
In 1927, his song "Blue Skies", was featured in the first feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson. Later, movies such as Top Hat (1935) became the first of a series of distinctive film musicals by Berlin starring performers Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, and Alice Faye. Top Hat featured a brand new score, as did several more, including Follow the Fleet (1936), On the Avenue (1937), Carefree (1938), and Second Fiddle (1939). Starting with Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), he often blended new songs with existing ones from his catalog. He continued this process with the films Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946) and Easter Parade (1948), with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954).

"White Christmas" (1942)
The 1942 film Holiday Inn introduced "White Christmas", one of the most recorded songs in history. First sung in the film by Bing Crosby (along with Marjorie Reynolds, whose voice was dubbed by Martha Mears), it has sold over 50 million records and stayed no. 1 on the pop and R&B charts for 10 weeks. Crosby's version is the best-selling single of all time. Music critic Stephen Holden credits this partly to the fact that "the song also evokes a primal nostalgia—a pure childlike longing for roots, home and childhood—that goes way beyond the greeting imagery."

Richard Corliss also notes that the song was even more significant having been released soon after America entered World War II: [it] "connected with... GIs in their first winter away from home. To them it voiced the ache of separation and the wistfulness they felt for the girl back home, for the innocence of youth...." Poet Carl Sandburg wrote, "We have learned to be a little sad and a little lonesome without being sickly about it. This feeling is caught in the song of a thousand jukeboxes and tune whistled in streets and homes. "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. When we sing that we don't hate anybody. And there are things we love that we're going to have sometimes if the breaks are not too bad against us. Way down under this latest hit of his, Irving Berlin catches us where we love peace."

"White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original Song, one of seven Oscar nominations he received during his career. In subsequent years, it was re-recorded and became a top-10 seller for numerous artists: Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Ernest Tubb, The Ravens and The Drifters. It would also be the last time a Berlin song went to no. 1 upon its release.

Berlin is the only Academy Award presenter and Academy Award winner to open the "envelope" and read his or her own name (for "White Christmas"). This result was so awkward for Berlin (since he had to present the Oscar to himself) that the Academy changed the rules of protocol the following year to prevent this situation from arising again.

Talking about Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", composer–lyricist Garrison Hintz stated that although songwriting can be a complicated process, its final result should sound simple. Considering the fact that "White Christmas" has only eight sentences in the entire song, lyrically Mr. Berlin achieved all that was necessary to eventually sell over 100 million copies and capture the hearts of the American public at the same time.

Songwriting methods
According to Saul Bornstein (a.k.a. Sol Bourne, Saul Bourne), Berlin's publishing company manager, "It was a ritual for Berlin to write a complete song, words and music, every day." Berlin said that he "did not believe in inspiration," and felt that although he might be gifted in certain areas, his most successful compositions were the "result of work". He said that he did most of his work under pressure. He would typically begin writing after dinner and continue until 4 or 5 in the morning. "Each day I would attend rehearsals," he said, "and at night write another song and bring it down the next day."

Not always certain about his own writing abilities, he once asked a songwriter friend, Victor Herbert, whether he should study composition. "You have a natural gift for words and music," Mr. Herbert told him. "Learning theory might help you a little, but it could cramp your style." Berlin took his advice. Herbert later became a moving force behind the creation of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 1914, Berlin joined him as a charter member of the organization that has protected the royalties of composers and writers ever since. In 1920, Irving Berlin became a member of SACEM, the French Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers.

In later years, Berlin emphasized his conviction, saying that "it's the lyrics that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what makes it last." He played almost entirely in the key of F sharp so that he could stay on the black keys and owned three transposing pianos so as to change keys by moving a lever. Though Berlin eventually learned how to produce written music, he never changed his method of dictating songs to a "musical secretary".

As a result, Wilder says that many admirers of the music of Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter were unlikely to consider Berlin's work in the same category because they forgot or never realized that Berlin wrote many popular tunes, such as "Soft Lights and Sweet Music", "Supper Time", and "Cheek to Cheek". Some are even more confused because he also wrote more romantic melodies, such as "What'll I Do?" and "Always". Wilder adds that "in his lyrics as in his melodies, Berlin reveals a constant awareness of the world around him: the pulse of the times, the society in which his is functioning. There is nothing of the hothouse about his work, urban though it may be."

Music styles

Composer Jerome Kern recognized that the essence of Irving Berlin's lyrics was his "faith in the American vernacular" and was so profound that his best-known songs "seem indivisible from the country's history and self-image". Kern, along with George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Cole Porter, brought together Afro-American, Latin American, rural pop, and European operetta.

Berlin, however, did not follow that method. Instead, says music critic Stephen Holden, Berlin's songs were always simple, "exquisitely crafted street songs whose diction feels so natural that one scarcely notices the craft....they seem to flow straight out of the rhythms and inflections of everyday speech." It led composer George Gershwin to claim that he learned from Berlin that ragtime, which later became jazz, "was the only musical idiom in existence that could aptly express America".

Among Berlin's contemporaries was Cole Porter, whose music style was often considered more "witty, sophisticated, [and] dirty," according to musicologist Susannah McCorkle. Of the five top songwriters, only Porter and Berlin wrote both their own words and music. However, she notes that Porter, unlike Berlin, was a Yale-educated and wealthy Midwesterner whose songs were not successful until he was in his thirties. She notes further that it was "Berlin [who] got Porter the show that launched his career."

Personal life

Marriages

In February 1912, after a brief whirlwind courtship, he married 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz of Buffalo, New York, the sister of one of Berlin's collaborators, E. Ray Goetz. During their honeymoon in Havana, she contracted typhoid fever, and doctors were unable to treat her illness when she returned to New York. She died July 17 of that year. Left with writer's block for months after Goetz's death, he eventually wrote his first ballad, "When I Lost You", to express his grief.

Years later in the 1920s, he fell in love with young author and heiress Ellin Mackay. Because Berlin was Jewish and she was a Catholic of Irish descent, their life was followed in every possible detail by the press, which found the romance of an immigrant from the Lower East Side and a young heiress a good story. Mackay's father, Clarence Mackay, the socially prominent head of the Postal Telegraph Cable Company, objected to their marriage.

They had met in 1924, and her father opposed the match from the start. He went so far as to send her off to Europe to find other suitors and forget Berlin. However, Berlin wooed her with letters and songs over the airwaves such as "Remember" and "All Alone", and she wrote him daily. Biographer Philip Furia writes that newspapers rumored they were engaged before she returned from Europe, and some Broadway shows even performed skits of the "lovelorn songwriter". After her return, she and Berlin were besieged by the press, which followed them everywhere. Variety reported that her father vowed that their marriage "would only happen 'over my dead body.'" As a result, they decided to elope and were married in a simple civil ceremony at the Municipal Building away from media attention.

The wedding news made the front page of The New York Times. The marriage took her father by surprise, and he was stunned upon reading about it. The bride's mother, however, who was at the time divorced from Mackay, wanted her daughter to follow the dictates of her own heart. Berlin had gone to her mother's home before the wedding and had obtained her blessing.

There followed reports that the bride's father disowned his daughter because of the marriage. In response, Berlin gave the rights to "Always", a song still played at weddings, to her as a wedding present. Ellin was thereby guaranteed a steady income regardless of what might happen with the marriage. For nearly three years Mackay refused to speak to the Berlins, but they reconciled after the death of the Berlins' son, Irving Berlin Jr., on Christmas Day 1928, less than one month after he was born.

Their marriage remained a love affair and they were inseparable until she died in July 1988 at the age of 85. They had four children during their 63 years of marriage: Mary Ellin Barrett in 1926, Irving Berlin Jr., who died in infancy in 1928, Linda Louise Emmet in 1932, and Elizabeth Irving Peters in 1936.

Lifestyle
In 1916, in the earlier phase of Berlin's career, producer and composer George M. Cohan, during a toast to the young Berlin at a Friar's Club dinner in his honor, said, "The thing I like about Irvie is that although he has moved up-town and made lots of money, it hasn't turned his head. He hasn't forgotten his friends, he doesn't wear funny clothes, and you will find his watch and his handkerchief in his pockets, where they belong."

Furia says that throughout Berlin's life he often returned on foot to his old neighborhoods in Union Square, Chinatown, and the Bowery. He never forgot those childhood years when he "slept under tenement steps, ate scraps, and wore secondhand clothes," and described those years as hard but good. "Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life," he said. He used to visit The Music Box Theater, which he founded and which still stands at 239 West 45th St. From 1947 to 1989, Berlin's home in New York City was 17 Beekman Place.

George Frazier of Life magazine found Berlin to be "intensely nervous," with a habit of tapping his listener with his index finger to emphasize a point, and continually pressing his hair down in back" and "picking up any stray crumbs left on a table after a meal". While listening, "he leans forward tensely, with his hands clasped below his knees like a prizefighter waiting in his corner for the bell.... For a man who has known so much glory," writes Frazier, "Berlin has somehow managed to retain the enthusiasm of a novice."

Berlin's daughter wrote in her memoir that her father was a loving, if workaholic, family man who was "basically an upbeat person, with down periods". In his final decades he retreated from public life. As such, he did not attend the televised 100th birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall. Her parents liked to celebrate every single holiday with their children, and "They seemed to understand the importance, particularly in childhood, of the special day, the same every year, the special stories, foods, and decorations and that special sense of well-being that accompanies a holiday." Although he did comment to his daughter about her mother's lavish Christmas spending, "I gave up trying to get your mother to economize. It was easier just to make more money."

Berlin voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. He supported the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower, and his song "I Like Ike" featured prominently in the Eisenhower campaign. In his later years he also became more conservative in his views on music. According to his daughter, "He was consumed by patriotism." He often said, "I owe all my success to my adopted country" and once rejected his lawyers' advice of investing in tax shelters, insisting, "I want to pay taxes. I love this country."

Berlin was a Freemason, and was a member of Munn Lodge no. 190, New York City, the Scottish Rite Valley of New York City, and Mecca Shrine Temple.

Berlin was a noted member of The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Berlin was a staunch advocate of civil rights. Berlin was honored in 1944 by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for "advancing the aims of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict". His 1943 production "This Is The Army", was the first integrated division army unit in the United States. In 1949, the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) honored him as one of the twelve "most outstanding Americans of Jewish faith". While he was ethnically and culturally Jewish, he was religiously agnostic. Berlin's Civil Rights Movement support also made him a target of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who continuously investigated him for years.

Death

Berlin died in his sleep at his 17 Beekman Place town house in Manhattan on September 22, 1989, of a heart attack and other natural causes at the age of 101. He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

On the evening following the announcement of his death, the marquee lights of Broadway playhouses were dimmed before curtain time in his memory. President George H. W. Bush said Berlin was "a legendary man whose words and music will help define the history of our nation". Just minutes before the President's statement was released, he joined a crowd of thousands to sing Berlin's "God Bless America" at a luncheon in Boston. Former President Ronald Reagan, who costarred in Berlin's 1943 musical This Is the Army, said, "Nancy and I are deeply saddened by the death of a wonderfully talented man whose musical genius delighted and stirred millions and will live on forever."

Morton Gould, the composer and conductor who was president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), of which Berlin was a founder, said, "What to me is fascinating about this unique genius is that he touched so many people in so many age groups over so many years. He sounded our deepest feelings—happiness, sadness, celebration, loneliness." Ginger Rogers, who danced to Berlin tunes with Fred Astaire, told The Associated Press upon hearing of his death that working with Berlin had been "like heaven".

Legacy and influence

The New York Times, after his death in 1989, wrote, "Irving Berlin set the tone and the tempo for the tunes America played and sang and danced to for much of the 20th century."  An immigrant from Russia, his life became the "classic rags-to-riches story that he never forgot could have happened only in America". During his career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs and was a legend by the time he turned 30. He went on to write the scores for 20 original Broadway shows and 15 original Hollywood films, with his songs nominated for Academy Awards on eight occasions. Music historian Susannah McCorkle writes that "in scope, quantity, and quality his work was amazing." Others, such as Broadway musician Anne Phillips, says simply that "the man is an American institution."

During his six-decade career, from 1907 to 1966, he produced sheet music, Broadway shows, recordings, and scores played on radio, in films and on television, and his tunes continue to evoke powerful emotions for millions around the world. He wrote songs like "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Cheek to Cheek", "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Blue Skies" and "Puttin' On the Ritz". Some of his songs have become holiday anthems, such as "Easter Parade", "White Christmas" and "Happy Holiday". "White Christmas" alone sold over 50 million records, the top single selling song in recording history, won an ASCAP and an Academy Award, and is one of the most frequently played songs ever written.

In 1938, "God Bless America" became the unofficial national anthem of the United States, and on September 11, 2001, members of the House of Representatives stood on the steps of the Capitol and solemnly sang "God Bless America" together. The song again became popular shortly after 9/11, when Celine Dion recorded it as the title track of a 9/11 benefit album. The following year, the Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of Berlin. By then, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of New York had received more than $10 million in royalties from "God Bless America" as a result of Berlin's donation of royalties. According to music historian Gary Giddins, "No other songwriter has written as many anthems... No one else has written as many pop songs, period... [H]is gift for economy, directness, and slang, presents Berlin as an obsessive, often despairing commentator on the passing scene."

In 1934, Time put him on its cover and inside hailed "this itinerant son of a Russian cantor" as "an American institution". And again, in 1943, the same magazine described his songs as follows:

They possess a permanence not generally associated with Tin Pan Alley products and it is more than remotely possible that in days to come Berlin will be looked upon as the Stephen Foster of the 20th century.

At various times, his songs were also rallying cries for different causes: He produced musical editorials supporting Al Smith and Dwight Eisenhower as presidential candidates, he wrote songs opposing Prohibition, defending the gold standard, calming the wounds of the Great Depression, and helping the war against Hitler, and in 1950 he wrote an anthem for the state of Israel. Biographer David Leopold adds that "We all know his songs... they are all part of who we are."

Berlin inadvertently influenced American law when his publishing group sued Mad Magazine for copyright infringement in 1961. The humor magazine had published a collection of parody lyrics which it said could be "sung to the tune of" many popular songs. Berlin objected, and Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc. would ultimately become a landmark case. Mad prevailed at every stage. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled largely in favor of Mad in 1963, but Judge Charles Metzner decided that two of the 25 disputed parodies - "Always" (sung to the tune of "Always") and "There's No Business Like No Business" (sung to the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business") - would require a trial because they relied on the same verbal hooks ("always" and "business") as the originals.

The music publishers pressed on. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals not only upheld the pro-Mad decision in regard to the 23 songs, it adopted an approach that was broad enough to strip the publishers of their limited victory regarding the remaining two songs. Writing a unanimous opinion for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Circuit Judge Irving Kaufman observed, "We doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter." The publishers again appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, allowing the decision to stand. The precedent-setting 1964 ruling established the rights of parodists and satirists to mimic the meter of popular songs.

At his 100th-birthday celebration in May 1988, violinist Isaac Stern said, "The career of Irving Berlin and American music were intertwined forever—American music was born at his piano," while songwriter Sammy Cahn pointed out: "If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable... [Y]ou couldn't have a holiday without his permission." Composer Douglas Moore added:

It's a rare gift which sets Irving Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters. It is a gift which qualifies him, along with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg, as a great American minstrel. He has caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what we believe.

ASCAP's records show that 25 of Berlin's songs reached the top of the charts and were re-recorded by dozens of famous singers over the years, such as Eddie Fisher, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Diana Ross, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1924, when Berlin was 36, his biography, The Story of Irving Berlin, was being written by Alexander Woollcott. In a letter to Woollcott, Jerome Kern offered what one writer said "may be the last word" on the significance of Irving Berlin:

Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music. Emotionally, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time and, in turn, gives these impressions back to the world—simplified, clarified and glorified.

Composer George Gershwin (1898–1937) also tried to describe the importance of Berlin's compositions:

I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert. But apart from his genuine talent for song-writing, Irving Berlin has had a greater influence upon American music than any other one man. It was Irving Berlin who was the very first to have created a real, inherent American music.... Irving Berlin was the first to free the American song from the nauseating sentimentality which had previously characterized it, and by introducing and perfecting ragtime he had actually given us the first germ of an American musical idiom; he had sown the first seeds of an American music.

His songs have been rerecorded by numerous singers including The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, Tiny Tim, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Cher, Diana Ross, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan, Ruth Etting, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, Rudy Vallée, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Doris Day, Harry Nilsson, Jerry Garcia, Taco, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Ella Fitzgerald, Michael Buble, Lady Gaga, and Christina Aguilera.

Awards and honors
Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1943 for "White Christmas" in Holiday Inn.
US Army Medal of Merit from General George Marshall at the direction of President Harry S. Truman.
Tony Award in 1951 for Best Score for the musical Call Me Madam.
Congressional Gold Medal in 1954 from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for contributing many patriotic songs, including "God Bless America".
 Special Tony Award in 1963.
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1968.
Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, which "celebrated its First annual Induction and Awards Ceremony in New York City".
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 by President Gerald Ford. The citation reads, in part: "Musician, Composer, Humanitarian, And Patriot, Irving Berlin Has Captured The Fondest Dreams And Deepest Emotions Of The American People In The Form Of Popular Music."
Lawrence Langner Tony Award in 1978.
Medal of Liberty during centennial celebrations for the Statue of Liberty in 1986.
100th-birthday celebration concert was for the benefit of Carnegie Hall and ASCAP on May 11, 1988.
Jewish-American Hall of Fame in 1988.
Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 1, 1994.
American Theater Hall of Fame.

Musical scores
The following list includes scores mostly produced by Berlin. Although some of the plays using his songs were later adapted to films, the list will not include the film unless he was the primary composer.

Stage

Watch Your Step (1914)
Stop! Look! Listen! (1915)
The Century Girl (1916)
Yip Yip Yaphank (1918)
Ziegfeld Follies (1919)
Ziegfeld Follies (1920)
Music Box Revue (1921)
Music Box Revue (1922)
Music Box Revue (1923)
Music Box Revue (1924)
The Cocoanuts (1925)
Ziegfeld Follies (1927)

Face the Music (1932)
As Thousands Cheer (1933)
Louisiana Purchase (1940)
This Is The Army (1942)
Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
Miss Liberty (1949)
Call Me Madam (1950)
Mr. President (1962)
White Christmas (2004 post-mortem production)
Top Hat (2012 post-mortem production)
Holiday Inn (2016 post-mortem production)

Film scores

The Cocoanuts (1929) *
Hallelujah (1929)
Puttin' On the Ritz (1930)
Mammy (1930)
Reaching for the Moon (1930)
Top Hat (1935)
Follow the Fleet (1936)
On the Avenue (1937)
Carefree (1938)
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Second Fiddle (1939)
Holiday Inn (1942)
This Is the Army (1943) *
Blue Skies (1946)
Easter Parade (1948)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950) *
Call Me Madam (1953) *
There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
White Christmas (1954)
*Denotes films originally written for the stage

Song lists

Notes

References

Sources

Hamm, Charles, editor (1994). Early Songs, 1907–1914. Music of the United States of America (MUSA) volume 2. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions.

Magee, Jeffrey (2012). Irving Berlin's American Musical Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. .

Sears, Benjamin, editor (2012). The Irving Berlin Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. .

External links

Official Irving Berlin Website
Irving Berlin Collection at the Library of Congress
Papers of Irving Berlin, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

Irving Berlin recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.

Irving Berlin at FBI Records: The Vault
Irving Berlin collection of non-commercial sound recordings, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Irving Berlin at Music of the United States of America (MUSA)

1888 births
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Irving Berlin


Andre Gunder Frank (February 24, 1929 – April 25, 2005) was a German-American sociologist and economic historian who promoted dependency theory after 1970 and world-systems theory after 1984. He employed some Marxian concepts on political economy, but rejected Marx's stages of history, and economic history generally.

Biography
Frank was born in Germany to, pacifist writer Leonhard Frank and his second wife Elena Maqenne Penswehr. His family fled the country when the Nazis came to power. Frank received schooling in several places in Switzerland, where his family settled, until they emigrated to the United States in 1941. Frank's undergraduate studies were at Swarthmore College, founded as a Quaker college from which he gained an Economics degree in 1950. He earned his PhD in economics in 1957 at the University of Chicago. His doctorate was a study of Soviet agriculture entitled Growth and Productivity in Ukrainian Agriculture from 1928 to 1955. Ironically, his dissertation supervisor was Milton Friedman, a man whose laissez faire approach to economics Frank would later harshly criticize.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Frank taught at American universities. In 1962 he moved to Latin America, inaugurating a remarkable period of travel that confirmed his peripatetic tendencies. His most notable work during this time was his stint as Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of Chile, where he was involved in reforms under the socialist government of Salvador Allende. After Allende's government was toppled by a coup d'état in 1973, Frank fled to Europe, where he occupied a series of university positions. From 1981 until his retirement in 1994 he was professor in developmental economy at the University of Amsterdam.

He was married to Marta Fuentes, with whom he wrote several studies about social movements, and with Marta he had two sons. Marta died in Amsterdam in June 1993. His second wife was sociologist Nancy Howell, a friend for forty years: while married to her, they lived in Toronto. Frank died in 2005 of complications related to his cancer while under the care of his third wife, Alison Candela.

Works and ideas
During his career, Frank taught and did research in departments of anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, political science, and sociology. He worked at nine universities in North America, three in Latin America, and five in Europe. He gave countless lectures and seminars at dozens of universities and other institutions all around the world in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch. Frank wrote widely on the economic, social and political history and contemporary development of the world system, the industrially developed countries, and especially of the Third World and Latin America. He produced over 1,000 publications in 30 languages. His last major article, "East and West", appeared in the volume: "Dar al Islam. The Mediterranean, the World System and the Wider Europe: The "Cultural Enlargement" of the EU and Europe's Identity" edited by Peter Herrmann (University College Cork) and Arno Tausch (Innsbruck University), published by Nova Science Publishers, New York.

His work in the 1990s focused on world history. He returned to his analysis of global political economy in the new millennium inspired by a lecture he gave at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga). In 2006 SSE Riga received Andre Gunder Frank's personal library collection and set-up the Andre Gunder Frank Memorial Library in his honor, with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Frank was a prolific author, writing 40 books. He published widely on political economy, economic history, international relations, historical sociology, and world history. Perhaps his most notable work is Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Published in 1967, it was one of the formative texts in dependency theory. In his later career he produced works such as ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age and, with Barry Gills, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand. Frank's theories center on the idea that a nation's economic strength, largely determined by historical circumstances—especially geography—dictates its global power. He is also well known for suggesting that purely export oriented solutions to development create imbalances detrimental to poor countries. Frank has made significant contributions to the world-systems theory (which, according to him, should be rather called the World System one). He has argued that a World System was formed no later than in the 4th millennium BC; his argument contrasts sharply with the scholarly majority who posit beginnings in the "long 16th century" (a position held, for example, by Immanuel Wallerstein). Frank also insisted that the idea of numerous "world-systems" did not make much sense (indeed, if there are many "world-systems" in the world, then they simply do not deserve to be called "world-systems"), and we should rather speak about one single World System.

In one of his last essays, Frank made arguments about the looming global economic crisis of 2008.

Selected publications

Books
 (1966) The Development of Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press.
 (1967) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Monthly Review Press.
 (1969) Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. Monthly Review Press.
 (1971) Lumpenburguesía : Lumpendesarrollo. México : Era.  (Spanish)
 (1972) Lumpenbourgeoisie, Lumpendevelopment. Monthly Review Press. (tr. Marion Davis Berdecio)
 (1975) On Capitalist Underdevelopment. Bombay: Oxford University Press.
 (1976) Economic Genocide in Chile. Equilibrium on the point of a bayonet. Nottingham, UK: Spokesman.
 (1978) World Accumulation, 1492–1789. Monthly Review Press.
 (1978) Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press.
 (1979) Mexican Agriculture 1521-1630: Transformation of the Mode of Production. Cambridge University Press.
 (1980) Crisis: In the World Economy. New York: Holmes & Meier.
 (1981) Crisis: In the Third World. New York: Holmes & Meier.
 (1981) Reflections on the World Economic Crisis. Monthly Review Press.
 (1982) Dynamics of Global Crisis, with S. Amin, G. Arrighi and I. Wallerstein. Monthly Review Press.
 (1983) The European Challenge. Nottingham, UK: Spokesman.
 (1984) Critique and Anti-Critique. New York: Praeger.
 (1996) The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? with Barry K. Gills, Routledge.
 (1998) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 (2013) ReOrienting the 19th Century: Global Economy in the Continuing Asian Age, with Robert A. Denemark, Paradigm Publishers.

Journal articles
 (1958) "General Productivity in Soviet Agriculture and Industry," Journal of Political Economy
 (1958) "Goal Ambiguity and Conflicting Standards: An approach to the study of organization," Human Organization
 (1977) "Long Live Transideological Enterprise: the socialist economies in the capitalist international division of labor," Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center
 (1989) "Ten Theses on Social Movements," with M. Fuentes, World Development
 (1990) "Theoretical Introduction to Five Thousand Years of World System History," Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center
 (1992) "Third World War: A Political Economy of the Gulf War and New World Order," Third World Quarterly 13(2).
 (1994) "Is Real World Socialism Possible?," Democracy & Nature, Vol.2, No.3, pp. 152–175

Book chapters
 (1990) "Civil Democracy, Social Movements in World History," with M. Fuentes. In Amin et al., Transforming the Revolution.
 (1990) "Revolution in Eastern Europe: Lessons for democratic socialist movements (and socialists)." In Tabb, ed., Future of Socialism.
 (1992) "The Underdevelopment of Development," with M.F. Frank. In Savoie, D.J. and I. Brecher, eds., Equity and Efficiency in Economic Development. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
 (2001) "The Global Economy, AD 1400-1800: Comparisons and Relations." In Suneja, V., ed., Understanding Business: Markets. A Multidimensional Approach to the Market Economy. London: Routledge.

See also
 History of globalization
 James Morris Blaut
 Samir Amin
 John M. Hobson
 World-systems theory

References

Notes

Further reading

 Chew, Sing C. & Robert Denemark, eds. 1996. The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
 Duchesne, Ricardo, "Between Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism: Debating A.G. Frank's Re-Orient," Science & Society, Vol. 65, No. 4, 2001/2002, pp. 428–463
 Wallerstein, Immanuel, "Remembering Andre Gunder Frank," History Workshop Journal, Volume 61, Number 1, 2006, pp. 305–306(2), Oxford University Press
 Gills, Barry, "In Memoriam: Andre Gunder Frank (24 February 1929 to 23 April 2005)," Globalizations, Volume 2, Number 1, May 2005, pp. 1–4(4), Routledge
 Alberto Castrillón M, "In memoriam. André Gunder Frank (1929-2005)," Revista de Economía Institucional, Vol. 7 (2005) 273-278
 Gregory Shank, "In Memoriam: Remembering Andre Gunder Frank (February 24, 1929, to April 23, 2005)," Social Justice, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2005). Retrieved 30.12.2017.

External links
 Andre Gunder Frank website
 David Landes; Andre Gunder Frank; Economic History Debate on C-SPAN2 (Northeastern University World History Center, 1998-12-02)
 Theotonio dos Santos, André Gunder Frank (1929-2005) , Monthly Review, May 2005.
 Andre Gunder Frank, The Times, May 25, 2005
 Andre Gunder Frank (1929-2005)
 Andre Gunder Frank : 'Prophet in the Wilderness' (1929 -2005)
 Jeff Sommers, "The Contradictions of a Contrarian: Andre Gunder Frank", Social Justice, Vol.32, No.2 (2005).
 Andre Gunder Frank Audio Collection at the International Institute of Social History

1929 births
2005 deaths
Academics of the University of East Anglia
Deaths from cancer in Luxembourg
Dependency theorists
Economic historians
German economists
German male writers
German sociologists
Imperialism studies
Marxian economists
Marxist theorists
Marxist writers
Latin Americanists
Swarthmore College alumni
Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam
University of Chicago alumni
Academic staff of the University of Chile
World historians
World system scholars
Writers about globalization

Andre Gunder Frank


Dental floss is a special type of thread. It is used for cleaning spaces between teeth which cannot be reached by toothbrushes. It is important to floss before brushing teeth and to floss at least once a day.  Tooth brushing will not clean food that is packed between teeth. This 'food packing' can lead to unhealthy teeth and gums. Bacteria grow in this 'packed food' between teeth. These bacteria cause the surface of teeth (enamel) to break down. Then the teeth and gums and sometimes even the jaw can become seriously diseased.

These bacteria that come from the food on the teeth and between the teeth are called "plaque" or "bacterial plaque" and also can cause the gums to become less healthy. "Gingivitis" which means gum disease is one type of disease that flossing helps to prevent. Very serious diseases can start on the teeth and move to the bone of the jaw, damaging the jaw badly. Flossing your teeth reduces the danger of these serious diseases of the jaw bone. These hard-to-cure jaw bone diseases are called "periodontal disease".

Food that is trapped between the teeth can be uncomfortable and even cause pain. Some food is hard, for example meat, apple. Ground meat is soft and so is apple sauce. Chicken and turkey meat are hard and full of fibres and very often get trapped between the teeth. When hard food is trapped between the teeth it can cause discomfort and sometimes pain. When hard food is pressed by the teeth against the gum it can cause pain. Some people use toothpicks to try to remove trapped food from between the teeth and other people use dental floss to do this.

Dental floss can do most things that a toothpick can do but dental floss is much thinner than a toothpick and can thus get to places that most toothpicks cannot reach. So floss presumably does a better job at getting bits of food out from between the teeth, relieving discomfort and pain quicker.

When a person first starts flossing, bleeding can happen. This is normal and happens because teeth and gums that are not flossed are less healthy. It will stop as the teeth and gums get healthier with flossing.

Hygiene
Dentistry

Dental floss


The Eucharist, also called holy communion, the sacrament, or the Lord's supper, is a kind of religious ritual in many Christian churches. It started when Jesus Christ told his followers to eat bread (His body) and drink wine (His blood) in memory of him, at the Last Supper.

In the Roman Catholic Church
According to the Roman Catholic Church, the Eucharist is the true presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. During a Mass, through the act of transubstantiation, the bread and wine offered change, and are no longer bread and wine.  They become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The bread and wine do not change appearance, but they are the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which Catholics in good standing (not in the state of mortal sin) come and receive Christ—they consume Him.  This follows what was said by Christ "Eat my Body and Drink my Blood" (John ch.6). Most Protestant denominations believe that this was meant as a symbol, while the Catholic Church bases its beliefs on the tradition handed down through the church.

First century St. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the beloved disciple John, in speaking of "the heretics plaguing the church" in their day, wrote:  "They abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ" (Smyrnaeans, 7).

From the second century, St. Justin Martyr wrote:
"This food we call Eucharist, which no one is allowed to share except the one who believes that our teaching is true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and so lives as Christ has handed down. For we do not receive these as common bread and common drink; but just as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise we have learned that the food over which thanks has been given by the prayer of the word which comes from him, and by which our blood and flesh are nourished through a change, is the Flesh and Blood of the same incarnate Jesus" (The First Apology).

In other churches

In most Protestant churches, not including Lutheranism, the sacrament of communion involves eating small wafers or Matzos and drinking wine or grape juice, and not believing that it is the actual body and blood of Jesus, but as a very important symbolic observance, and fulfillment of what Christ commanded. Some churches offer it daily, some weekly, some monthly, and some a few times a year.

Unlike the Catholic teaching, Lutherans teach that the bread and wine is Jesus' body and blood, but is bread and wine also (consubstantiation).

In the Latter Day Saints or "Mormon" Church, followers eat small pieces of bread and drink water. They believe that this is a symbol of the body and blood of Jesus, and they call it the Sacrament. They also believe that it helps them to make the promises of baptism all over again.

Related pages
Transubstantiation

Sacraments
Christian terminology

Eucharist


A stone is a piece of rock. It is a mass of hard, compacted mineral. The word is often used to mean a small piece of rock.

The word "stone" also refers to natural rock as a material, especially a building material. Natural stones used as building material include granite, marble and sandstone. Manufactured, artificial products, such as concrete or clay bricks, are not stone.

Stone takes a while to heat up, and stays hot for a while. It does not conduct electricity well

Stone was one of the first materials used to make tools and buildings. It is a very sturdy material. It is less affected by weather than wood or brick. Depending on the type of rock, stone weathers away much more slowly. A stone in the river is reshaped by the water and sediment flowing around it.

Stones can be used as primitive weapons. A person can throw it at an enemy or animal, or use it to cause more damage in hand-to-hand combat.

A stone is larger than a grain of sand, gravel or pebbles. A boulder is a large rock or stone.

Related pages
 Precious stone
 Stone Age

Basic English 850 words
Natural materials

Stone


The Temple of Jupiter, Capitolium, or Temple of the Capitoline Triad was a temple in the Roman city of Pompeii in Italy. At the beginning this temple was dedicated to Jupiter alone, it was built in the mid 2nd century BC at the same time as the temple of Apollo was being worked on - this was the era at which Roman influence over Pompeii was at its height and so Roman Jupiter beat out the Greek Apollo and Jupiter(, Juno, and Minerva) in towns newly taken over by the Romans.  This was also true for Pompeii, where the Temple of Jupiter that was already there was enlarged and made more Roman when the Romans took over.

Pompeii was taken over by the Romans beginning in 310 BC.  It was still allowed to mostly run itself, however, until the Italic Revolt against Rome at the beginning of the 1st century BC.

The building style of the town was largely borrowed from the Greeks, but Roman rule would soon lead to changes in this style.  As opposed to the previous Samnite rulers of Pompeii, the Romans thought that the building style was very important in religious as well as everyday life. Pompeii was changed into a much more public and open place.  Public buildings and spaces would eventually be able to be found all over the city.

The temple had been built in 150 BC to be a very noticeable part of the forum, and it became Pompeii's main temple after Rome took over. The inside of the temple housed the main room of the temple, which held the statues of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and which only the priests were allowed to enter.

In 62 an earthquake shook the city of Pompeii, destroying much of the Temple of Jupiter.  After this, the much smaller Temple of Jupiter Meilichios became the main place of worship to Jupiter and his group of three (triad).  The first Temple of Jupiter was still waiting to be fixed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79, burying the town of Pompeii under lava and ash.  The hollow temple can still be seen in Pompeii today. also in pompeii the had intercourse (sex) on the porch that indicated wealth.

References

"Jupiter."  Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire.  Matthew Bunson.  Facts on File, Inc., 1994.  Page 221.
"Pompeii."  The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Third Edition Revised.  Edited by Simon Hornblower and Anton Spawforth.  Oxford University Press, 2003.  Pages 1214-1215.
Description and Analysis of Roman Cities - Pompeii
Temples of Pompeii, including photographs of excavated temples
Temples and Buildings of Pompeii, including rough map of Pompeii
Photograph and Mapped Location of Temple of Jupiter, Pompeii
More photographed views of Temple of Jupiter, Pompeii

Temple of Jupiter (Pompeii)


A paid or incentivized survey is a type of survey where person for filling out the details will get some reward.
Usual prizes will be small amount of money, simple reward like pen or cup, or entry in to competition to win something.

Details
Web-based survey have come a long way, from 1980s where first email surveys were conducted to 1990s when initial web-based surveys were introduced. There were almost $500 million spent on web-based surveys in 2002, and According to Inside Research this number climbed up to about $960 million in 2004.

But despite the advances in survey research, there are still many short comings and problems, such as declining response rates, limited online data bases, mistrust about survey uses (true research versus selling), survey length, issues concerning privacy and security, internet surveys being looked at as spam by some etc.

Most of Online Surveys that are real will not pay cash, but instead give vouchers or prizes.
Online or Internet surveys are very useful for many companies. People get rewarded for answering questions about a product, a company or any questions that will help the company to work better.

Many companies pay people to take a survey, but some are for free.

In era of digital surveys there is many fraud cases where user will be not paid after completing one. Some ways of avoiding fraud sites is to check them on MyWot, review sites or by simply checking their reviews on forums.

It is getting more popular to fill surveys to get access to website or valuable content.

Another popular form of surveys that has recently emerged are daily surveys. Daily survey panels allow their members to participate in surveys everyday. The user is taken through a router where they can keep trying to qualify until a survey is found that matches their demographics. Daily surveys pay less than most paid surveys, but the opportunity to qualify is much greater and payouts are usually cash instead of prizes.

Businesses spend $18.7 billion worldwide on market research, as reported by CASRO.

References

Marketing
Research

Paid survey


Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (, ; November 5, 1878 – March 3, 1927) was a Ukrainian writer and playwright, and a major proponent of the literary style known as naturalism. He was the great-grandson of Tadeusz Kościuszko and father of Boris Artzybasheff, who emigrated to the United States and became famous as an illustrator. Following the Russian Revolution, in 1923 Artsybashev emigrated to Poland, where he died in 1927.

Biography

Early life

Artsybashev was born in khutir Dubroslavivka, Okhtyrka county, Government of Kharkov (currently Sumy Oblast, Ukraine). His father was a small landowner and a former officer. His mother, who was Polish, died of tuberculosis when he was only three years old. His other ethnic roots included French, Georgian and Tatar. He attended school in Okhtyrka until the age of 16. From 1895 to 1897 he was an office worker. He studied at the Kharkov School of Drawing and Art (1897–98). During this time he lived in poverty, and was often unable to buy art supplies. In 1897 he attempted suicide. In 1898 he married Anna Vasilyevna Kobushko, with whom he had his son Boris. The couple separated in 1900.

Career
In 1898 he relocated to Saint Petersburg, where he worked as a freelance journalist, and published humorous stories. In 1901 he was expelled from the city for taking part in a demonstration.
He wrote his first important work of fiction, the story Pasha Tumanov in 1901, but was unable to publish it until 1905 due to its being banned by the censor.

He considered his novel The Death of Ivan Lande (1904) to be his best work, but his major success was the novel Sanin (1907), which scandalized his Russian readers and was prohibited in many countries. He wrote Sanin in 1903, but was unable to publish it until 1907, again due to censorship. The protagonist of the novel ignores all social conventions and specializes in seducing virgin country girls. In one notorious scene, a girl tries to wash embarrassing white stains off her dress after sexual intercourse with Sanin, an incident omitted from the 1914 English version. The novel was written under the influence of the philosophy of Max Stirner, and was meant to expound the principles of Individualist anarchism.

Artsybashev said the following in regard to his development as a writer:
"My development was very strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy, although I never shared his views on non-resistance to evil. As an artist he overpowered me, and I found it difficult not to model my work on his. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and to a certain extent Anton Chekhov, played almost as great a part, and Victor Hugo and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were constantly before my eyes. These five names are those of my teachers and literary masters."

In a 1913 interview he gave his views on literature:
"Common sense, consistency, argumentation, a clear and concrete idea of one's subject that constitutes the plot of the work, a thoughtful evaluation of the phenomena introduced in the novel, clarity and concreteness—these are the things I demand of a literary work."

He made this comment concerning Friedrich Nietzsche:
"It is often thought here (in Russia) that Nietzsche exercised a great influence over me. This surprises me, for the simple reason that I have never read Nietzsche. This brilliant thinker is out of sympathy with me, both in his ideas and in the bombastic form of his works, and I have never got beyond the beginnings of his books. Max Stirner is to me much nearer and more comprehensible."

Later life

Artsybashev moved to Moscow in 1912. In 1917–18 he published his anti-Bolshevik work Notes of a Writer. In 1923 he emigrated to Poland as an optant (his mother was Polish), where he edited the newspaper For Liberty! (За свободу!). He was an irreconcilable enemy of the Bolshevik regime, and Soviet critics dubbed the novels of his followers saninstvo and artsybashevchina (both terms are considered derogatory). He died in Warsaw on March 3, 1927, from tuberculosis and was buried at the Orthodox Cemetery in Warsaw.

English translations
The Millionaire, Ivan Lande, and Nina, (stories/short novels), B.W. Huebsch, NY, 1915. from Archive.org
The Revolutionist, (story), from Best Russian Short Stories, Boni and Liveright, 1917. from Archive.org
Tales of the Revolution, (stories/short novels), B.W. Huebsch, NY, 1917. from Archive.org
The Jew, (story), from The Shield, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1917. from Archive.org
War, (play), Grant Richards LTD, London, 1918. from Archive.org
Breaking Point, (novel), B.W. Huebsch, NY, 1920. from Archive.org
Sanin, (novel). from Gutenberg.org

References

External links

 Encyclopædia Britannica on Artsybashev
 Article at online-literature.com
 Works of Artsybashev - in Russian

1878 births
1927 deaths
People from Sumy Oblast
Novelists from the Russian Empire
Dramatists and playwrights from the Russian Empire
Short story writers from the Russian Empire
Journalists from the Russian Empire
White Russian emigrants to Poland
Non-fiction writers from the Russian Empire
Newspaper editors from the Russian Empire
People from the Russian Empire of French descent
People from the Russian Empire of Tatar descent
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in Poland
Russian people of Tatar descent

Mikhail Artsybashev


Walter Stacy Keach, Jr. (born June 2, 1941 in Savannah, Georgia) is an American television, voice, stage, narrator, and movie actor. He is mostly known for his dramatic roles and guest star appearances. Keach is also known for his role as Ken in Titus. Keach is a Golden Globe Award winning actor.

Keach was born in Savannah, Georgia on June 2, 1941 to Mary Cain (née Peckham) and to Walter Stacy Keach. Keach was married four times. First to Kathryn Baker from 1964 until they divorced. Second to Marilyn Aiken from 1975 until they divorced. Thirdly to Jill Donahue from 1981 until they divorced 1986. He has been married to Malgosia Tomassi since 1986.

References

Other websites

Stacy Keach - official website

1941 births
Living people
Actors from Georgia (U.S. state)
American movie actors
American television actors
American voice actors
American stage actors
Golden Globe Award winning actors
People from Savannah, Georgia

Stacy Keach


A gigabyte (GB), sometimes abbreviated as a gig, is a unit of measurement in computers and similar electronic devices. At first it meant exactly 1 billion bytes, usually referring to the number of bytes in a computer hard drive. Its meaning gradually changed over time, so that today it is often used to mean 1,073,741,824 (230) bytes, especially when referring to the random access memory (RAM) of a modern computer. Now international standards bodies say a gigabyte should only be used to mean exactly 1 billion bytes, and that gibibyte is a better name for 1,073,741,824 bytes. In everyday use, people use gigabyte to mean 1,073,741,824 bytes when talking about computer memory and 1,000,000,000 bytes when talking about computer disk space.

One thousand gigabytes make one terabyte.

Uses
This measurement is often used when measuring the capacity of computer memory, hard drives, or other storage devices.

Units of information

Gigabyte


The , or NEDO, is Japan's largest public management organization promoting research and development as well as deployment of industrial, energy and environmental technologies. In 2003, NEDO was reorganized as an Independent Administrative Institution. NEDO has approximately 1,000 personnel and domestic offices in Hokkaido, Kansai, and Kyushu and international offices in Washington D.C., Silicon Valley (California), Paris, Beijing, Bangkok, Jakarta and New Delhi. Its budget for fiscal year 2009 was 234,700,000,000 yen (approximately $2.6 billion), the vast majority of which was provided by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Its head office is located just outside Tokyo in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

NEDO has a number of projects in the United States, notably a smart grid and alternative energy project with two research laboratories in New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).  In March 2010, NEDO and the laboratories signed agreements in which NEDO will fund a smart grid research facility at LANL and smart house demonstration projects in both Los Alamos and Albuquerque, New Mexico.  NEDO is investing $30 million (U.S.) on the projects for a four-year period.

History
October 1, 1980 - In response to the energy crises of 1973 and 1978, the New Energy and Development Organization is established under the Law Concerning the Promotion of the Development and Introduction of Alternative Energy to develop fossil fuel alternative energy technologies in order to stabilize world energy supplies and reduce Japan's dependency on imported energy sources.
October 1, 1988 - Reorganized and scope of activities is expanded to include the research and development of industrial technologies. Name is changed to New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (acronym remains NEDO).
October 1, 2003 NEDO becomes an Independent Administrative Institution
2005 - NEDO Pavilion at Expo 2005, shares the results of many NEDO funded and managed R&D projects, including solar photovoltaic, fuel cell and robotic technology.
2010- NEDO and Hokkaido University developed a motor using magnets which are commonly used in electronics parts to lessen the burden of utilizing rare earth minerals.
On march 19th 2017 a memorandum of understanding was signed to build a large-scale hybrid battery system demonstration project in Germany. The project aims to stabilize the distribution grid, and thereby control the electric power supply and demand balance, by charging and discharging storage batteries, and to establish a new business model for electricity trading using the battery system.

See also

New Sunshine Project

References

External links
Official site
Official site in English

Trade associations based in Japan
Robotics in Japan
Science and technology in Japan
Energy policy
Energy in Japan


In music, the tonic note is the first note in a diatonic scale. It is the tonal centre, or the tone on which the music sounds finished. The triad, or chord, based on the tonic note, is the tonic chord. All other notes in a piece of music use the tonic note as a reference point. Musical scales are named after the tonic note. For example, the tonic of a scale of C, is the note C. The tonic is always numbered as one, or in traditional music theory as I (using Roman numerals).

Music theory

Tonic (music)


Lovesexy is the tenth studio album by Prince. It was released on May 10, 1988. Three singles were released from the album. In July 1988 Prince started the Lovesexy Tour to promote the album. Prince is naked on the cover of the album. Some stores would not sell the album because of this and if they did they would cover it up in a black sleeve. The album went straight to number one in the UK.

1988 albums
Funk albums
Prince (musician)
R&B albums

Lovesexy


A laser pointer (or laser pen) is a small device that shines a low-powered laser light. The pointer is usually powered by a battery. It contains a laser diode that emits a very narrow laser beam of visible light. When pointed at an object, it shines a small bright spot of colored light. The pointer is held in a hand. It is used to highlight something of interest. Power is restricted in most jurisdictions not to exceed 5 milliwatts.

Light
Machines

Laser pointer


Animals that are active during the day are called diurnal. They hunt or feed during the day and sleep during the night. Nocturnal animals do it the other way round.

Scientists sometimes use the word crepuscular to describe nocturnal  animals that are not active when it is very dark at night; they are mostly active near dawn, dusk, and sometimes when the moon makes a lot of light.

Zoology

Diurnal


A microprocessor is an electronic component that is used by a computer to do its work. It is a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit chip containing millions of very small components including transistors, resistors, and diodes that work together. Some microprocessors in the 20th century required several chips. Microprocessors help to do everything from controlling elevators to searching the Web. Everything a computer does is described by instructions of computer programs, and microprocessors carry out these instructions many millions of times a second.

Microprocessors were invented in the 1970s for use in embedded systems.  The majority are still used that way, in such things as mobile phones, cars, military weapons, and home appliances.  Some microprocessors are microcontrollers, so small and inexpensive that they are used to control very simple products like flashlights and greeting cards that play music when opened.  A few especially powerful microprocessors are used in personal computers.

Microprocessor operation
Like other central processing units, microprocessors use three steps commonly called Fetch, Decode, and Execute. In the Fetch step, an instruction is copied from the computer memory into the microprocessor. In the Decode step, the microprocessor figures out what operation the instruction is meant to do. In the Execute step, this operation is performed.  Different computers can have different instruction sets.

Facts and figures
 Transistors in a microprocessor can be less than one micrometer wide—one millionth of a meter. By comparison, a single hair can be over 100 micrometers wide.
 The transistors are mostly MOSFETs
 Modern microprocessors run billions of instructions every second.
 Microprocessors are made from silicon, quartz, metals, and other chemicals.
 From start to finish, it takes about 2 months to make a microprocessor.
 Microprocessors are classified by the size of their data bus or address bus. They are also grouped into CISC and RISC types.

Brief history
 1823	Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius discovers silicon (Si), which today is the basic component of electronics.
 1903	Nikola Tesla patents electrical logic circuits called "gates" or "switches".
 1947	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invent the first transistor at the Bell Laboratories on December 23, 1947.
 1956	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on the transistor.
 1958	The first integrated circuits are developed by Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby.
 1960	IBM develops the first automatic mass-production facility for transistors in New York.
 1971  Intel 4004, first commercially available microprocessor .

References

Other page
Moore's law

Electronic components
Microprocessor design

Microprocessor


White asbestos, also called chrysotile asbestos or serpentine asbestos, is one of the six types of asbestos. About 95% of asbestos found in buildings is white asbestos. It is considered by experts to be less dangerous than the other types of asbestos, but it is still a major health hazard and exposure can cause cancer and asbestosis.

References

Asbestos

White asbestos