SMS  was the lead ship of the  of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy.  was built by the Imperial Dockyard at Kiel, launched on 22 March 1911 and commissioned on 1 August 1912. The ship was equipped with ten  guns in five twin turrets, and had a top speed of .  was assigned to III Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of World War I.

In 1913,  and her sister  conducted a cruise to South America and South Africa. The ship participated in most of the major fleet operations during the war. She fought at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, during which she was hit twice and suffered negligible damage. The ship was also present during Operation Albion in the Baltic Sea in September and October 1917, and at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917.

During peace negotiations after the end of the war in 1918, she was interned with other ships of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow. On 21 June 1919 the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. The wreck was raised in 1929 and broken up in Rosyth in 1930.

Design

The ship was  long overall and displaced a maximum of  at full load. She had a beam of  and a draft of  forward and  aft.  was powered by three sets of Parsons turbines, supplied with steam by sixteen coal-fired water-tube boilers. The powerplant produced a top speed of . She carried  of coal, which enabled a maximum range of  at a cruising speed of .

 was armed with a main battery of ten 30.5 cm SK L/50 guns in five twin turrets. The ship dispensed with the inefficient hexagonal arrangement of previous German battleships; instead, three of the five turrets were mounted on the centerline, with two of them arranged in a superfiring pair aft. The other two turrets were placed en echelon amidships, so that both could fire on the broadside. The ship was also armed with a secondary battery of fourteen  SK L/45 guns in casemates amidships. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried eight  SK L/45 guns in casemates. The ship was also armed with four 8.8 cm L/45 anti-aircraft guns. The ship's armament was rounded out by five  torpedo tubes, all mounted in the ship's hull; one was in the bow, and the other four were on the broadside.

Her main armored belt was  thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by  of KCA on the sides and faces. s conning tower was heavily armored, with  sides.

Service history
Ordered under the contract name  as a replacement for the obsolete coastal defense ship ,  was laid down at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel in September 1909. The hull was completed by 22 March 1911, when the ship was launched; this date was specifically chosen, as it was the birthday of  (Emperor) Wilhelm I. His grandson,  Wilhelm II, attended the launching ceremony, where German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg gave a speech while  (Empress) Augusta Victoria christened the ship. Fitting-out work then began, which was completed by the end of July 1912. On 1 August, the ship was commissioned for sea trials. These were concluded by 7 December; the following day  joined the fleet as the flagship of V Division. Her crew consisted largely of men who had been transferred from the recently decommissioned battleships  and .

After joining the active fleet in December 1912,  was stationed in Kiel. The ship then conducted individual training. In February 1913,  was transferred to Wilhelmshaven, along with her sister ship . She then took part in several training exercises with the rest of the High Seas Fleet. These included maneuvers in the North Sea in March and April, artillery drills in the Baltic at the end of the month, and further fleet maneuvers in May. In June,  took part in the Kiel Week regatta. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III inspected the ship. The annual summer cruise to Norway was conducted in July and August, followed immediately by the autumn maneuvers in August and September. In September 1913, Captain Adolf von Trotha became the ship's commanding officer, a post he held until January 1916.

 was selected to participate in a long-distance cruise to test the reliability of the new turbine propulsion system. The ship was joined by her sister  and the light cruiser  in a special "Detached Division". The trio departed Germany on 9 December 1913 and proceeded to the German colonies in western Africa. The ships visited Lomé in Togoland, Duala and Victoria in Kamerun, and Swakopmund in German South-West Africa. From Africa, the ships sailed to St. Helena and then on to Rio de Janeiro, arriving on 15 February 1914.  was detached to visit Buenos Aires, Argentina before returning to meet the two battleships in Montevideo, Uruguay. The three ships sailed south around Cape Horn and then north to Valparaiso, Chile, arriving on 2 April and remaining for over a week.

On 11 April, the ships departed Valparaiso for the long journey back to Germany. On the return trip, the ships visited several more ports, including Bahía Blanca, Argentina, before returning to Rio de Janeiro. On 16 May the ships left Rio de Janeiro for the Atlantic leg of the journey; they stopped in Cape Verde, Madeira, and Vigo, Spain while en route to Germany. , , and  arrived in Kiel on 17 June 1914. In the course of the voyage, the ships traveled some . A week later, on 24 June, the Detached Division was dissolved and  returned to III Squadron.  then participated in squadron exercises in July.  joined the High Seas Fleet for its annual summer cruise to Norway in July 1914, about two weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. As a result of rising international tensions, the cruise was cut short and the German fleet was back in Wilhelmshaven by 29 July. At midnight on 4 August, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.

World War I

The High Seas Fleet, including , conducted a number of sweeps and advances into the North Sea. The first occurred on 2–3 November 1914, though no British forces were encountered. Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet, adopted a strategy in which the battlecruisers of Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group raided British coastal towns to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914 was the first such operation. On the evening of 15 December, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including  and her four sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within  of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battlefleet back toward Germany.

Following the loss of  at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, the Kaiser removed Ingenohl from his post on 2 February. Admiral Hugo von Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet. Pohl conducted a series of fleet advances in 1915 in which  took part; in the first one on 29–30 March, the fleet steamed out to the north of Terschelling and return without incident. Another followed on 17–18 April, where  and the rest of the fleet covered a mining operation by II Scouting Group. Three days later, on 21–22 April, the High Seas Fleet advanced towards the Dogger Bank, though again failed to meet any British forces.  was in dock in Kiel for periodic maintenance during the operation on 17–18 May, but she was back with the fleet for the sortie on 29–30 May, during which the fleet advanced as far as Schiermonnikoog before being forced to turn back by inclement weather. On 10 August, the fleet steamed to the north of Helgoland to cover the return of the auxiliary cruiser . A month later, on 11–12 September, the fleet covered another mine-laying operation off the Swarte Bank. The last operation of the year, conducted on 23–24 October, was an advance without result in the direction of Horns Reef.

On 12 January 1916, Admiral Reinhard Scheer replaced Pohl as the fleet commander.  was present during the fleet advance on 5–7 March, though this too ended without action. While in port in Kiel, the old pre-dreadnought  accidentally collided with , though neither ship was seriously damaged. Scheer continued the series of fleet operations practiced by his predecessors; the fleet conducted sweeps of the North Sea on 26 March, 2–3 April, and 21–22 April. The battlecruisers conducted another raid on the English coast on 24–25 April, during which  and the rest of the fleet provided distant support. Scheer planned another raid for mid-May, but the battlecruiser  had struck a mine during the previous raid and the repair work forced the operation to be pushed back until the end of the month.

Battle of Jutland

Almost immediately after the Lowestoft raid, Scheer began planning another foray into the North Sea. He had initially intended to launch the operation in mid-May, by which time the mine damage to  was scheduled to be repaired—Scheer was unwilling to embark on a major raid without his battlecruiser forces at full strength. On 9 May, however, several battleships developed problems with their engines, which delayed the operation further, to 23 May. On 22 May,  was still not fully repaired, and the operation was again postponed, this time to 29 May. At noon on 29 May, the repairs to  were finally completed, and the ship returned to I Scouting Group. The plan called for Hipper's battlecruisers to steam north to the Skagerrak, with the intention of luring out a portion of the British fleet so it could be destroyed by Scheer's waiting battleships.

 and the rest of III Battle Squadron were the leading unit of the High Seas Fleet; the four s led the line. , the flagship of  H. Nordmann, was directly astern of the four s. I Battle Squadron, composed of the eight - and s, followed III Squadron, with the six elderly pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron bringing up the rear. Hipper's five battlecruisers left the Jade estuary at 02:00 on 31 May; Scheer, with the High Seas Fleet, followed an hour and a half later.

Shortly before 16:00 CET, the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group encountered the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, under the command of David Beatty. The opposing ships began an artillery duel that saw the destruction of , shortly after 17:00, and , less than half an hour later. By this time, the German battlecruisers were steaming south in order to draw the British ships towards the main body of the High Seas Fleet. At 17:30, s crew spotted both I Scouting Group and the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron approaching. The German battlecruisers were steaming to starboard, while the British ships steamed to port. At 17:45, Scheer ordered a two-point turn to port to bring his ships closer to the British battlecruisers, and a minute later at 17:46, the order to open fire was given.

Between 17:48 and 17:52, , , , and all eight battleships of I Squadron opened fire on several ships of the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron; , , and  engaged , though only  managed to score a hit on the cruiser. In the span of eight minutes,  fired eleven salvos at Southampton without success. The 2nd LCS then moved back out of range, having largely escaped unscathed. At 17:58, Scheer ordered the fleet to maximum speed; the greater speed of the s caused the distance between  and  to rapidly increase. At 18:05, Southampton again came into range, and  opened fire.  fired four salvos at a range of , though again without scoring any hits. After three minutes of firing, s guns again fell silent.

Starting at 18:10,  began firing on the 5th Battle Squadron battleship ; in the span of 25 minutes,  fired 27 salvos at an average range of . The British destroyers  and , which had been disabled earlier in the engagement, lay directly in the path of the advancing High Seas Fleet. Shortly before 18:30,  and her three sister ships opened fire on Nomad with their secondary batteries. The hail of 15-cm shells smothered the ship; a fire was started and one shell detonated the ship's forward ammunition magazine. Nomad sank stern first at 18:30. Nestor was meanwhile destroyed by the battleships of I Squadron.

Shortly after 19:00, the German cruiser  had become disabled by a shell from the British battlecruiser ; Rear Admiral Behncke in  attempted to maneuver III Squadron to cover the stricken cruiser. Simultaneously, the British 3rd and 4th Light Cruiser Squadrons began a torpedo attack on the German line; while advancing to torpedo range, they smothered  with fire from their main guns. The eight III Squadron battleships fired on the British cruisers, but even sustained fire from the battleships' main guns failed to drive off the British cruisers. The armored cruisers , , and  joined in the attack on the crippled . Between 19:14 and 19:17,  and several other battleships and battlecruisers opened fire on Defence and Warrior. Defence was struck by several heavy caliber shells from the German dreadnoughts. One salvo penetrated the ship's ammunition magazines and, in a massive explosion, destroyed the cruiser.

As Warrior limped away to the west, the s of the 5th Battle Squadron joined the Grand Fleet as it entered the battle from the north. However,  was forced to haul out of line to the south, towards the oncoming German fleet. Warspite came under intense fire from the approaching German battleships;  scored a hit on Warspite that damaged her steering gear and forced her to steam in a circle, out of control. After completing two full circles and sustaining 13 heavy hits, Warspite came back under control and rejoined the squadron. However, by 20:00 the steering gear had again failed, so the ship was forced to withdraw from the engagement.

By 20:15, the German fleet had faced the Grand Fleet for a second time and was forced to turn away; in doing so, the order of the German line was reversed.  was now the fifth ship from the rear of the German line, ahead of only the four -class battleships.  was hit twice in quick succession by heavy-caliber shells, at 20:23 and three minutes later. The Common Pointed, Capped, shells came from the  guns of . One shell penetrated the upper deck and landed in a hammock stowage compartment below the No. 7 casemate; the shell failed to explode and instead broke up on impact, starting a small fire that was quickly put out. The other shell probably exploded outside the ship.

Shortly before 21:30, , , and  spotted British light forces approaching. The German ships opened fire at a range of around  with both their main and secondary armament. The light cruiser  was badly damaged, which forced the British ships to withdraw. At around 23:30, the German fleet reorganized into the night cruising formation.  was the twelfth ship, in the center of the 24-ship line.

After a series of night engagements between the leading battleships and British destroyers, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British light forces and reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June. The German fleet reached Wilhelmshaven a few hours later; the I Squadron battleships took up defensive positions in the outer roadstead and , , , and  stood ready just outside the entrance to Wilhelmshaven. The remainder of the battleships and battlecruisers entered Wilhelmshaven, where those that were still in fighting condition replenished their stocks of coal and ammunition. The two shell hits suffered by  had been largely ineffectual, wounding only one crewmember.

Subsequent operations
On 18 August, Admiral Scheer attempted a repeat of the 31 May operation; the two serviceable German battlecruisers— and —supported by three dreadnoughts, were to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. The rest of the fleet, including , would trail behind and provide cover. The British were aware of the German plans and sortied the Grand Fleet to meet them, leading to the action of 19 August 1916. By 14:35, Admiral Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and, unwilling to engage the whole of the Grand Fleet just eleven weeks after the decidedly close call at Jutland, turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.

Another fleet advance followed on 18–20 October, though it ended without encountering any British units. Two weeks later, on 4 November,  took part in an expedition to the western coast of Denmark to assist two U-boats— and —that had become stranded there. On 1 December, the High Seas Fleet was reorganized;  and her sisters were transferred to the newly created IV Battle Squadron, with  as the flagship. In 1917, the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was reinstated; the surface units of the German navy were therefore tasked with covering the departures and arrivals of the U-boats. As a result,  spent most of the year on picket duty in the German Bight. In May 1917,  went into the dock for periodic maintenance.

Operation Albion

In early September 1917, following the German Army's conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the Navy decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. The  (the Navy High Command) planned an operation to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe peninsula. On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon islands; the primary naval component was organized into a Special Unit, which comprised the flagship, , along with IV Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. IV Squadron was composed of V and VI Divisions. V Division included the four -class ships, and was by this time augmented with the new battleship . VI Division consisted of the five -class battleships. Along with 9 light cruisers, 3 torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and 6 zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men. Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts  and , the armored cruisers , , and , 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. The garrison on Ösel numbered some 14,000 men.

On 24 September,  left Kiel, bound for the Putziger Wiek, where she rendezvoused with several other battleships. From there, the ship went to Libau, which she reached on 10 October. Two days later, on the morning of 12 October, , joined by her sisters  and , opened fire on the Russian shore batteries at Cape Hundsort. On 14 October  engaged the Russian destroyer  and disabled the ship's engine with a single hit.  was captured and taken in tow, but she quickly foundered.  then bombarded Russian positions on Cape Toffri on 16 October.

By 20 October, the fighting on the islands was winding down; Moon, Ösel, and Dagö were in German possession. The previous day, the  had ordered the cessation of naval actions and the return of the dreadnoughts to the High Seas Fleet as soon as possible. On 31 October  and the rest of the Special Unit were detached from the operation and sent back to Kiel, which they reached by 2 November.  was back in the North Sea on 7 November.

Final operations
 and  were assigned to security duty in the Bight on 17 November; they were tasked with providing support to II Scouting Group (II SG) and several minesweepers. Two British light cruisers,  and , attacked the minesweepers and II SG in the Second Battle of Helgoland Bight.  and her sister intervened and hit one of the light cruisers. The two ships briefly engaged the battlecruiser , but neither side scored any hits and the German commander failed to press the attack.

On 2 February 1918, the light cruiser  struck a mine;  was among those ships that sortied to escort the damaged cruiser back to port. The ship was also present during the fleet advance on 23–24 April. The operation was intended to intercept a heavily escorted British convoy to Norway on 23–25 April, though the operation was canceled when the battlecruiser  suffered mechanical damage. In the final months of the war, Captain Hermann Bauer took command of the ship; his period in command lasted from August to November.

 was to have taken part in a final fleet action days before the Armistice, an operation which envisioned the bulk of the High Seas Fleet sortieing from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet. In order to retain a better bargaining position for Germany, Admirals Hipper and Scheer intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, whatever the cost to the fleet. Consequently, on 29 October 1918, the order was given to depart from Wilhelmshaven to consolidate the fleet in the Jade roadstead, with the intention of departing the following morning. However, starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on  mutinied. The unrest spread to other battleships, which forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation.

Fate

Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of their fleet ships were interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter. Prior to the departure of the German fleet, Admiral Adolf von Trotha made clear to Reuter that he could not allow the Allies to seize the ships, under any conditions. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser , which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. The massive flotilla consisted of some 370 British, American, and French warships. Once the ships were interned, their guns were disabled through the removal of their breech blocks. The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Versailles Treaty.

A copy of The Times informed Reuter that the Armistice was to expire at noon on 21 June 1919, the deadline by which Germany was to have signed the peace treaty. Reuter came to the conclusion that the British intended to seize the German ships after the Armistice expired. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships.  sank at 13:24; the ship was raised in 1929 and broken up for scrap in Rosyth starting in 1930.

Notes

Footnotes

Citations

References

Further reading

Kaiser-class battleships
1911 ships
World War I battleships of Germany
Ships built in Kiel
World War I warships scuttled at Scapa Flow
Maritime incidents in 1919

SMS Kaiser (1911)


Dracula: Origin is a point-and-click adventure game for the PC based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Released by Frogwares in 2008, it follows the company's catalogue of adventure games such as the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series.

The game follows Professor Abraham Van Helsing as the protagonist through a unique take on the origin of Dracula. His adventures span several locations, such as London, Egypt, Austria and Transylvania, through puzzles and logic problems, individually interacting with over 40 characters.

Plot
The plot follows the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with some variation in characters and plot detail.

At first a zealot of Christendom, Voivod Dracula forsakes his faith at the loss of his unrequited love, who opts to commit suicide rather than give in to him. As his embitterment boils, Dracula begins to delve heavily into demonic practice. Unsatisfied with mortality, he drinks the blood of a rival in a pact with the Devil, placing upon himself the curse that transforms him into the first vampire. In exchange for immortal powers, Dracula becomes a servant of the Devil, bent on the destruction of humanity, finding his only solace in feeding upon human blood and seeking revenge for his lover's death: He feels partly responsible for being unable to save her.

Upon learning of an antediluvian manuscript detailing a strange rite alleged to return souls from the dead, Dracula seeks to revive his former lover's soul. Johnathan Harker, a disciple of Van Helsing, sets out to combat the terror of Dracula's power. He sends a letter to his professor detailing Dracula's intention regarding the manuscript and his plan to resurrect his lover's soul into the body of Johnathan's fiancée, Mina Murray, chosen for her remarkable resemblance to his lover. Johnathan's letter arrives but Johnathan does not return, implying that he succumbed to Dracula's power.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the protagonist, embarks to defeat Dracula before he finds the manuscript and abducts the body of Mina, traveling throughout Europe to do so. He begins with a London cemetery he believes Dracula to be occupying. His adventures take him to the streets and tombs of Cairo, the salons of Vienna's aristocracy and a Rococo library that leads him on the trail to a secretive damned monastery to stop the evil plots being concocted there. The vampire hunter then finds his way to Transylvania, to the famous castle of Dracula, to complete his task.

Gameplay
The game is played through the third-person eyes of Van Helsing, in a point-and-click style. Using collected objects and puzzles, the player advances through the story interacting with characters to go through the adventure.

The game has a progressive help system, providing players stuck on puzzles with increasingly detailed clues to help them advance.

Characters
Count Dracula: The main antagonist of the game is a young looking, attractive, religious vampire, rendered immortal by a pact with demonic forces. Suffering the abandonment of his suicidal former love, Dracula has become godless and heartless, powerful but pitiful. He seeks retribution for his pain against the human race.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing: A famous Dutch teacher at the University of Medicine in London. Known more for his involvement in supernatural study and vampire hunting, he bravely takes it upon himself to end the terror of Dracula.

Mina Murray: Jonathan Harker's fiancée and a student and friend of Professor Van Helsing. Pure and good, she embodies the essence of Dracula's lost love, succumbing to his power and doomed to be stripped of her soul for her bodily vessel.

Dr. Seward: A young doctor and another contact and friend of Van Helsing. He aids Mina at her sickbed, striving to free her from the demonic grip of Dracula that has weakened her so.

Herodotus of Judah: A Coptic priest and healer in Cairo, Egypt. Possesses the knowledge but, due to his old age, not the ability required to release the curse Dracula has put upon Mina.

Jada: A beautiful, deadly disciple of Dracula, devoted to serve and protect her master.

Igor: Dracula's coachman in Transylvania. Of demonic will and ill intent, he is another devotee of Dracula, sharing his contempt for humans and carrying out Dracula's menial, dirty bidding.

Reception

Dracula: Origin received above-average reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. PC Format complimented the game's atmosphere and mood. GameRevolution was more negative to the game.

Sequel
Frogwares developed a sequel, Dracula: Love Kills, Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure, released in June 2011.

The plot of the game sends players to the Queen of Vampires who emerges from the ashes of history, seeking to destroy the world of humans and rule over its ruins. Count Dracula (as the protagonist this time) awakens, weakened and stripped of his powers after years of healing from his last battle with Dr. Van Helsing. He cannot face his evil rival, the Queen, on his own. To save the world, an uneasy alliance must be formed between the Prince of Darkness and his archenemy, Van Helsing.

Gameplay is designed for 6 hours + bonus content. The game features over 40 locations, easy and hard modes, challenging puzzles, optional tutorial, interactive map, achievements, etc. During the game, the player encounters assassins of the Queen of Vampires getting the choice of either biting them and turning them into vampires or sparing them. These certain actions will have consequences as who will accompany Dracula during the bonus gameplay; it also influences the overall ending depending on Dracula's previous behavior.

References

External links
 Official website

2008 video games
2000s horror video games
Adventure games
Embracer Group franchises
Focus Entertainment games
Frogwares games
Single-player video games
The Adventure Company games
Video games based on Dracula
Video games developed in Ukraine
Video games set in castles
Windows games
Windows-only games

Dracula: Origin


is a series of console role-playing video games and other supplementary media created by Sega. The series debuted in 1987 on the Master System with Phantasy Star, and continues into the present with Phantasy Star Online 2 and other extensions of the Phantasy Star Online sub-series. Each of the games in the series features a science fantasy setting featuring a cross-genre combination of magic and technology.

The first four games in the series are set in or related to the fictional planetary system of Algol, and are single-player turn-based role-playing games. Later games in the series are chiefly action role-playing games, and some contain massively multiplayer online game elements. There are currently four distinct Phantasy Star subseries, each set in their own universe. Cameos or nods to other subseries may appear, and there are concepts and terminology shared across them, similarly to Suikoden, Breath of Fire, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Original series

The original series takes place in the Algol Solar System, which consists of four planets: Palma, a fertile agricultural world; Motavia, a desert planet; Dezoris, an ice planet; and the mysterious Rykros, whose elongated orbit brings it within visible range only once every thousand years. Players travel to all four planets throughout the series, interacting with each unique set of inhabitants and discovering the secrets to the solar system's genesis, which is irrevocably tied to an ancient conflict.

 Phantasy Star was the first installment of the series, released for the Master System in Japan on December 20, 1987, and then in the United States and Europe in 1988. It introduced players to the planets, races, and lore of the series. The game follows the adventures of Alis Landale, a young woman from Palma. After Alis's brother Nero is killed by the formerly benevolent government of King Lassic, Alis embarks upon a quest for revenge. She is joined in her rebellion by a muskcat named Myau, a warrior named Odin, and a wizard named Noah. Together, the group defeats Lassic, but discover that he was only being controlled by the malevolent entity Darkfalz. Alis and her companions defeat Darkfalz and restore peace to Algol. It is then revealed that Alis was the lost princess to Algol's monarchy, and is given the option to accept her birthright.
 Phantasy Star II, released in March 1989, marked the series' transition to the Sega Genesis. It benefited from an upgrade in graphics and in the scope of its quest, as it's more than twice the size of its predecessor. It tells the story of Rolf, a government agent from the town of Paseo on Motavia. In this new setting, 1,000 years after Phantasy Star, Motavia is no longer a desert world, but has been mostly converted into one lush with vegetation and animal life, thanks to a system-wide computer network known as Mother Brain. However, malfunctions throughout the network are resulting in all sorts of catastrophes, from climate change to the appearance of mutant plant and animal life called biomonsters. Rolf changes from an agent of the government to a rebel fated to end Mother Brain's reign over the system. He is joined by a colorful cast of characters, all of whom have their own stakes in the conflict. Beset by the biomonsters at first and government-deployed robots afterward, Rolf and his allies eventually must fight both Dark Force, the enemy from 1,000 years ago, and the Mother Brain.
 Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom, released for the Mega Drive in 1990 and on the Genesis in 1991, was a departure from the previous games in that the different worlds were no longer the different planets of the Algol system. The game revolves around two feuding factions, the Orakians and the Layans, who have been engaged in bitter conflict since their founders disappeared 1,000 years earlier; the factions assume their founders were bitter enemies who fought each other. Unique to Phantasy Star III was a storyline that spanned three generations, starting with Rhys, an Orakian, and continues through two more generations, with the player controlling Rhys's son and grandchildren. At the end of each generation, the player determines the next main character by choosing which of the women encountered during the adventure the characters will marry. Rhys and his children eventually discover the true nature of the world and the conflict - that the seven 'worlds' were actually subsections of the colony ship Alisa III sent into deep space after the destruction of Palm. Somehow Dark Force was able to accompany the fleeing colonists and work to turn them against each other; Rhys' grandchild or grandchildren defeat Dark Force to restore peace to Alisa III.
 Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium was released for the Mega Drive in Japan in November 1993, in the United States in February 1995, and in Europe in December 1995. Building on its predecessors, it added a number of new features, such as pre-programmable combat maneuvers called "Macros", combination attacks between two or more characters and manga-style panel illustrations for major cutscenes. It was also the first game in the series to have in-depth character interaction and development. Taking place 1,000 years after Phantasy Star II, Phantasy Star IV returns to the Algol Solar System, which has been in a precipitous decline after the destruction of Mother Brain, an event known as the Great Collapse. The people struggle to survive against an unforgiving climate and a resurgence of biomonsters. Among them are Chaz Ashley and his mentor Alys Brangwin, hunters who make a living performing various tasks for clients: from protecting citizens from monster attacks to investigating strange events. As seemingly random occurrences all tie back into the system-wide crisis, Chaz and the allies he meets during his quest must fulfill the series promise of fighting back the re-emergence of darkness. However, in this, the end of the original series, players will not only face off against the incarnation of evil, but penetrate to its very source, to rescue Algol once and for all from a bleak fate.

Compilations and remakes of the original series
 Phantasy Star Collection is a compilation of the four games from the original series, released in 1998 only in Japan on the Sega Saturn, as part of the Sega Ages series. It also includes full motion videos of the original television commercials for the games and 215 pieces of official art. A Game Boy Advance version, produced by Digital Eclipse, was released for international audiences in 2002. This version omits Phantasy Star IV, the full motion videos, and the art gallery. Three of the four games were released again on the PlayStation 2 as part of the Sega Genesis Collection, and all four appeared on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. This compilation includes special features such as behind-the-scenes information, and the ability to save the game anywhere.
  is an enhanced remake of Phantasy Star, released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, as Volume 1 of the Sega Ages series. It features newly designed graphics, arranged versions of music from the original game soundtrack, and fleshed out dialogue which results in both character development and a richer story.
  was released in 2005, also for the PlayStation 2, and is an enhanced remake of Phantasy Star II, and is volume 17 of the Sega Ages series. It mirrors the events of the original game while adding character development and fleshing out the story in more detail. It features enhanced graphics, a revised combat system, and a re-arranged soundtrack.
 Phantasy Star Complete Collection () was released in 2008, only in Japan for the PlayStation 2 and in 2012 as a download for the PlayStation 3 on the PlayStation Network. It's volume 32 of the Sega Ages series. It contained the original Master System game, as well as the three games published for the Mega Drive, and the text adventures published through Sega Meganet. Note that the collection consists of the original games, not the enhanced versions mentioned above.

Spin-offs to the original series
 , released in 1992 for the Game Gear, is a spin-off of the original Phantasy Star and takes place on a colony known as Copto, founded by the heroine Alis Landale. In this new setting, Alis is once again called upon to battle evil, now in the form of a being known as Kaburon, which she is able to seal away. The majority of the game then follows the adventures of new characters, Minina and Alec, some 400 years later until they reunite with Alis, who had been in cryogenic sleep in a vigil against Kaburon's return. After Copto is saved, the game foreshadows the reemergence of evil back in Algol in Phantasy Star II.
 Phantasy Star Adventure is a first-person puzzle adventure game released in 1992 for the Game Gear prior to Phantasy Star Gaiden. Taking place at the same time as Phantasy Star II, it puts the players in the shoes of an agent of Paseo. He receives a letter from friend and scientist, Ken Miller, who is studying on the ice planet Dezolis and invites him to see an important new invention. Once there, the player learns that Ken and his device are missing, initiating an investigation.
 Phantasy Star II Text Adventures were a series of eight text adventure video games available to users of Sega Meganet, a modem for the Sega Mega Drive in Japan, and later released as part of a compilation on Sega CD. Each of the games takes place shortly before Phantasy Star II, documenting the backgrounds of its characters, and explaining what brings them to the town Paseo where they eventually team up to investigate the pervasive troubles of the Algol Solar System.

Phantasy Star Online
Phantasy Star Online is a series of online role-playing games originally released for Dreamcast in 2000, and continuing on the Xbox, GameCube, and Microsoft Windows. Phantasy Star Online started a new adventure, centering on the plight of a colony of spaceships called Pioneer 2, in another star system. Players fight through a number of levels spread over four distinct areas, finally facing off against Dark Falz, a nod to the original series. In addition to the main story, players can also take the Hunter's Guild sidequests, which explores the lives of Pioneer 2's citizens, and further delve into the backstory behind the game. In the tradition of MMORPGs, these sidequests reward players with Meseta, the chance to explore the stories behind Pioneer 2's NPC residents, and the opportunity to obtain special weapons.
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II was not a simple port of the Dreamcast game (only Episode I). It included a brand new episode not available in the original Dreamcast version (PSO Episode II is not to be mistaken with PSO Version 2 available for the Dreamcast). The game was released for the GameCube and Xbox in 2002, and introduced several new features, such as multiplayer split-screen mode, three new character classes, game rebalancing, reduced experience point requirements, class recalibration, and five newly explorable areas.
Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution, released only for the GameCube, marked yet another departure from series establishments, featuring a card based play style. Taking place twenty-one years after Episode I and Episode II, follows the people of Pioneer 2 as they continue their settlement on the planet Ragol. The government, amid inner strife, seeks to use a mysterious substance discovered on the planet, known as the germ, to power the newly developed Compressed Alternate Reality Data (C.A.R.D.) technology. Players take on the roles of both agents appointed by the government to explore, research, and capture the rebel elements, or the Arkz, rebel elements themselves trying to intercept and destroy the government's plans for the exploitation of the planet.
Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst was released exclusively for Microsoft Windows in 2004. At first, it was largely a PC port of Episode I & II, plus some new items and features. The following year, an expansion pack titled Episode IV was released, featuring new areas to explore. With the closure of Blue Burst servers in 2010, this online-only version of the game and its expansion cannot be played except on unofficial private servers hosted by fans. All other games in the series do not require an internet connection and can still be played normally.
Phantasy Star Zero is a third-person action RPG developed by Sonic Team exclusively for the Nintendo DS. The game was released in Japan on December 25, 2008, and in North America on November 10, 2009, and has been released in Europe on February 12, 2010. It is a distant sequel to the previous Phantasy Star Online titles, featuring similar gameplay, but was created from the ground up as a Nintendo DS title.

Phantasy Star Universe
Phantasy Star Universe is an action role-playing game by Sega's Sonic Team for the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox 360. It more closely follows the series' new direction as set by Phantasy Star Online, mostly played in a persistent online network mode, but unlike its predecessor, featured a more robust single-player story mode. The game is set in the Gurhal Star System, which consists of three planets, each with its own unique culture and inhabitants. After the "Final Conflict", a war ending 100 years ago, a union was formed between the three planets, leading to the establishment of the Allied Army. During a celebration of the peace accord, a meteor shower facilitates the invasion of the three planets by SEED – a race of strange monsters. The game revolves around Ethan Waber, a member of an elite soldier force called the GUARDIANS, which must rally against the new threat.
Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus is an expansion pack for the main Universe game. In addition to numerous new enemies, items, and areas, it features a new "Episode 2" and "Episode 3" that take place directly after the events of the original Universe (which is essentially "Episode 1").
Phantasy Star Portable is an action RPG released for the PlayStation Portable in 2008. It is a continuation of the Universe story, taking place shortly after the end of the above-mentioned "Episode 3".
Phantasy Star Portable 2 is an action RPG for the PlayStation Portable in 2009. It takes place some time after Portable, with new and old Universe characters rising up against a new threat.
Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity is an updated re-release for Portable 2 featuring the original Phantasy Star Portable 2 campaign ("Episode 1") alongside a new Infinity campaign ("Episode 2"). While an unofficial English translation exists, the game was never released outside of Japan.

With the closure of Phantasy Star Universe servers in 2012, the online-only "Episode 3" can no longer be played at all, and "Episode 2" cannot be played on the Xbox 360 or PC versions. However, Episode 2 is still available through the PlayStation 2 version of Ambition of the Illuminus, which does not require a connection to the Universe servers to play.

Phantasy Star Online 2

Phantasy Star Online 2 is an action RPG, and the "current" Phantasy Star title. Despite its name, it has no direct ties to Phantasy Star Online any more than the Universe series does. It was first released for Microsoft Windows on July 4, 2012, and later PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. A Nintendo Switch version was also released on April 4, 2018. On April 14, 2020, the game launched on Xbox One in North America and therefore was the first time it was released outside Asia. Like the previous games, there are numerous "Episodes" of play areas, enemies, and items; Online 2 is currently in "Episode 6".
Phantasy Star Online 2 es is an action RPG for iOS and Android mobile devices. It is a "companion app" for Online 2, as well as a unique game with its own ongoing plot. Data is shared between the two games, and the same player characters are used to play both games.
Phantasy Star Nova is a third-person action RPG developed by tri-Ace exclusively for the PlayStation Vita, released on November 27, 2014, in Japan. It is set in the same universe as other Online 2 titles, and features very similar gameplay to Online 2, but the narrative is not directly related to the events occurring in other games. The game's setting involves the crash landing of an Arks Special Planetary Exploration ship on the planet Machia, and the crew's attempts at survival.
 is free-to-play Japanese role-playing game that was released to mobile devices on November 27, 2018, to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary. Unlike other recent Phantasy Star titles, Idola is a turn-based RPG. It is related to Online 2, but even less so than Nova, as it appears to take place in an alternate dimension that certain characters from the other Online 2 titles have entered.
Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis is a major update to the original game Phantasy Star Online 2 released on June 9, 2021. SEGA have publicly announced that the players would be able to keep their current account as well as characters cosmetics, outfits, etc. Unfortunately, game progress such as levels, equipments, meseta (in-game currency) will not be able to transfer over to PSO2:NGS. According to official announcement, the update will include an overhaul of the original game engine, and hugely improve the game graphics.

Common elements
The plot, setting, and themes of the Phantasy Star series vary dramatically from the franchise's early installments to the multiplayer titles of today. Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star II, and Phantasy Star IV all deal with the concept of evil as a living, sentient entity that takes an active interest in galactic events.

A being known as "Dark Force" or "Dark Falz" (depending on the game) plagues the Algol planetary system every thousand years, resulting in mass destruction and loss of life. It begins its campaign of terror in subtle ways, usually subverting others to its will. Only once its pawn has either been eliminated or is no longer useful does Dark Force ever reveal itself. With each incarnation of Dark Force, a group of protectors arise to suppress it, ushering in a period of recovery and prosperity for the Algol system. This cycle of complacency and destruction continues every millennium. In Phantasy Star IV, the source of this being appears, known as the Profound Darkness.

The original series takes place in the Algol system, with three major planets: Palma, Motavia, and Dezolis. Palma is destroyed during the events of Phantasy Star II, when the prison satellite Gaira crashes into the planet. Several colony ships fled from the disaster, and one of those ships, the Alisa III, is the setting of Phantasy Star III. Other locations within the series include several artificial satellites and Rykros, a planet with an extremely elongated orbit. Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe take place in different planetary systems.

Fictional races that re-occur in the series include sentient androids created by humans, called CASTs in the spin-off series and portable games, and Newmans, previously called Numans, elf-like humanoids created by genetically engineering DNA from humans and other, genetically engineered "biomonsters".

History
The original Phantasy Star was released for the Master System in Japan on December 20, 1987. It was one of the earliest cartridges to include battery backed RAM for saving game positions. The game featured 3D maze-like dungeons, which players traversed in a first-person mode. Phantasy Star, along with Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy, distinguished itself as a pioneer of what came to be defined as console role-playing. The first four games take place in the same universe, as opposed to many RPG series such as Final Fantasy, wherein successive game settings are unrelated, or, at most, superficially related. Each major Phantasy Star game adds onto the series' overall story, culminating in Phantasy Star IV which ties all of the series' plot elements together.

Both Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe are their own series based on the original Phantasy Star games. They continue the theme of a persistent game universe, but are set in different planetary systems than the original games.

There is a small misconception that Phantasy Star was created to rival Final Fantasy, due to their similar titles. This is highly unlikely, as the first entries of both series were released within two days of each other.

Reception and legacy
Games in the Phantasy Star franchise have overall been well received by critics. The original four games in the series are typically regarded as classics for the RPG genre. Upon its initial release, the series was praised for its unique futuristic setting, something that had not been done yet in the genre. In 1996, the series was ranked as the 72nd top game of all time by Next Generation, even as "there really isn't anything especially innovative here - the titles just have good, solid gameplay."

Phantasy Star is recognized as featuring one of the first female lead characters, Alis Landale, alongside Samus Aran of Metroid. It was also one of the first RPGs to feature animated monster encounters, and to allow inter-planetary travel between three planets. The game was inducted into the GameSpy Hall of Fame in 2000. James Fudge of GameSpy said of the game that "everything about Phantasy Star was uncommon, fun, and strange."

Phantasy Star II was considered one of the best role-playing games of its time, and is regarded as "a game of many firsts" according to Nintendo Power. It is regarded by many as the forerunner for certain aspects of role-playing video games, such as an epic, dramatic, character-driven storyline dealing with serious themes and subject matter, and a strategy-based battle system. The game's strong characterization, and use of self-discovery as a motivating factor for the characters and the player, was a major departure from previous RPGs and had a major influence on subsequent RPGs such as the Final Fantasy series.

Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom featured an innovative and original branching storyline, which spans three generations of characters and can be altered depending on which character the protagonist of each generation marries, leading to four possible endings. Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium introduced the use of pre-programmable combat manoeuvers called 'macros', a means of setting up the player's party AI to deliver custom attack combos.

Nintendo Power'''s staff has praised the original games, saying that Phantasy Star "was the first RPG to break out of the Dragon Quest / Dungeons & Dragons mold of generic Arthurian fantasy by introducing sci-fi elements. Among its many other accomplishments were the inclusion of characters with actual personalities, the introduction of event scenes, and the presentation of pseudo-3-D dungeons that were a technical marvel at the time." IGN writer Jeremy Conrad stated that "anyone who played video games through the 8 and 16-bit eras would know that name [Phantasy Star]" and called the first four main series games "epic".

Many of the series' games, including Online Episodes I & II and Phantasy Star Zero, have generally favorable scores on Metacritic. Phantasy Star Online in particular is recognized as one of the most "revolutionary new games" of the past decade, for its impact in taking "consoles online" and defining "small-scale multiplayer RPGs," paving the way for larger-scale MMORPG efforts such as Final Fantasy XI, setting the template for small-scale online RPGs such as Capcom's Monster Hunter series and some of the later Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games, and giving rise to "an entire pantheon of multiplayer dungeon crawlers that continue to dominate the Japanese sales charts." More generally, Phantasy Star Online made "both online gaming and the concept of fee-based services a reality for consoles," paving the way for the online gaming services later provided by all three of the seventh-generation consoles. Phantasy Star Online 2 became a commercial success for Sega as it has made over 900 million dollars since its release in 2012.

 Other media
 Game books
 Phantasy Star 1, Phantasy Star 2 and Phantasy Star 3, was adapted by Game Book, title Futabasha Adventure series, authored by Futabasha on 1989–1990 in Japan.

 Manga
 Phantasy Star is one of the video games based in the manga titled Game Gag 1P Comic Sega-hen in November 1997 in Japan, published by Shinseisha.
 Phantasy Star Online 2 Episode 0 is a manga based on the video game of same name, published by Kadokawa and artist by Kiyu Kibako, and released by Manga on 2017 in Japan.

 Other books
 The Phantasy Star Compendium is a specialty book published by Sega in late 1995, filled with production art, game development details, and expanded information on the characters, worlds, and lore of the original series. It purported to establish a clear connection between all four games, and elaborate further on the full story of the Algol Solar System. Among the connections it established were identifying Laya and Orakio of Phantasy Star III as rebel leaders in a complex and political struggle between the royal family of Algol, including Alis Landale, and infiltrators from Earth who had taken control of Algol as of Phantasy Star II. Consistent with the series, all paths from the conflict still lead back to Dark Force and its progenitor, the Profound Darkness. As a retroactive effort, the details revealed in the compendium may not have reflected the original intentions for the series, and as such met with resistance from long-time series fans for over-complicating the storyline.

 Drama
 The Phantasy Star Memorial Drama, released in 1995 by Softbank, is a CD featuring music and dialogue to tell a new story about the characters of Phantasy Star IV. Set three years prior to the game's events, it involves Rune Walsh helping Chaz Ashley recall sealed memories of his days as a petty thief. The story revolves around an artificial intelligence called Gene, which in the wake of the Great Collapse, is convinced that humanity is to blame for Algol's troubles, and initiates a number of plans to eliminate them. It also features the "spiritual" return of Nei from Phantasy Star II in a new character of the same name, who helps Chaz stop Gene's sinister ambitions.

 Anime
Two anime series have been created around the Phantasy Star Online 2 world: Phantasy Star Online 2: The Animation, a prequel to that game's "Episode 4" storyline; and Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle'', a retelling of the events of the first three "Episodes" of the game (known as the "Oracle" arc in the game).

Notes

References

Fiction set around Algol
Sega Games franchises
Role-playing video games
Science fantasy video games
Video games developed in Japan
Video game franchises introduced in 1987

Phantasy Star


The Rover Company was a British bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer before it began the manufacture of motor cars.  Rover was established in 1878 by John Kemp Starley in Coventry to produce bicycles. The company developed and produced the Rover Imperial motorcycle in November 1902. Between 1903 and 1924, Rover produced more than 10,000 motorcycles.

History
In June 1896 John Starley formed the Rover Cycle Co. Ltd. in Coventry. Starley had become successful making 'safety bicycles' and used the money to import some of the early Peugeot motorcycles from France in 1899 for experimental development. His first project was to fit an engine onto one of his Rover bicycles. However, Starley died early in October 1901 aged 46 and the business was taken over by entrepreneur Harry Lawson.

The company began to develop and produced the Rover Imperial motorcycle in November 1902. This was a 3.5 hp diamond-framed motorcycle with the engine in the centre and 'springer' front forks, an improvement ahead of its time. This first Rover motorcycle had innovative features such as a spray carburettor, a bottom-bracket engine, and mechanically operated valves. Featuring a strong frame with double front down tubes and a good quality finish, over a thousand Rover motorcycles were sold in 1904. The following year, however, Rover stopped motorcycle production to concentrate on their 'safety bicycle'. In 1910, designer John Greenwood was commissioned to develop a new 3.5 hp 500cc engine with spring-loaded tappets, a Bosch magneto, and a Brown and Barlow carburettor. This new model, also featuring an innovative inverted tooth drive chain and "Druid" spring forks, was launched at the 1910 Olympia show, and over 500 models were sold.

Racing success
In 1913, a 'TT' model was launched with a shorter wheelbase and sports handlebars. The 'works team' of Dudley Noble and Chris Newsome had some success with this model and won the works team award.

Production after the First World War

Rover supplied 499cc single cylinder motorcycles to the Russian Army during the First World War. When the war ended, the company began to focus on car production, yet Rover still produced motorcycles with 248cc and 348cc Rover overhead valve engines and J.A.P. engines, including a 676cc V-Twin. In 1924, Rover led the way with the unit construction of the engine and gearbox on a new lightweight 250cc motorcycle. This had lights on the front and rear as well as a new design of internal expanding brakes.  Following poor sales, Rover ceased to produce both bicycles and motorcycles. Between 1903 and 1924 Rover had produced more than 10,000 motorcycles.

See also
List of motorcycles of the 1910s
List of motorcycles of the 1920s

References

External links

Defunct cycle manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Defunct motorcycle manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Coventry motor companies
Rover Company
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1882
Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1924
1882 establishments in England
1924 disestablishments in England
British companies established in 1882
British companies disestablished in 1924

Rover (motorcycles)


Havana Province, (Spanish - Provincia de la Habana), Cuba, is a former provinces of Cuba. On January 1, 2011 it was split into two new provinces - Artemisa Province and Mayabeque Province.

The capital city of Havana is a separate province, surrounded by the province of Havana. It had 711 066 people in the 2002 census. The largest city is the city of Artemisa with a population of 75,000 in 2003. The second largest city is Güines (70,000).

Havana Province had borders with the city of Havana, Pinar del Rio, and Matanzas. It has coasts in the south and north and has dozens of towns and a few small cities which rank between the 20 and 40 largest of the island.

The southern coast of the province has many swamps and wetlands.

Most of the province's farms raise cattle and grow food, mostly potatos and fruit. Unlike much of Cuba, sugar and tobacco play only a small role in the province's economy. There is also much industrialization in the province, with many electricity plants and sugar mills.

References

Provinces of Cuba
2010 disestablishments in North America

La Habana Province (1976–2010)


Prioritization is an action that arranges items or activities in order of importance.

Priority may refer specifically to:

Law
 Priority or right of way on the road, see Traffic § Priority (right of way)
 Priority signs, a traffic sign that specifies which route has the right of way
 Priority date, a concept of establishing waiting times in the immigration process by United States Department of State
 Priority right, a time-limited right, triggered by the first filing of an application for a patent
 Subordination (finance), the order of priorities in claims for ownership or interest in various assets

Music
 Priority (Pointer Sisters album)
 Priority (Imperials album), 1980
 Priorities, the debut album by Bedfordshire-based rock band Don Broco
"Priority", a song by Jolin Tsai from the 2004 album Castle
"Priority", a song by SM Town from the 2022 album 2022 Winter SM Town: SMCU Palace
 Priority Records, a record label started in 1985 and acquired by Capitol Records

Science and technology
 Scheduling priority, the way computing processes are assigned priorities in a run queue
 Priority, a tag or attribute of a requirement in software or systems engineering
Priority of the scientific names of organisms, including:
 Principle of priority, the principle that the oldest available name for a biological taxon is the valid one
 In botanical nomenclature
 In zoological nomenclature
 Priority number, given to each functional group in IUPAC organic nomenclature
 Scientific priority, the priority of scientific ideas

Other uses
 Priority (fencing), a scoring criterion in the sport of fencing
 Priority level, the priority of emergency communications
 Priority mail, a service of the US Postal Service

See also
 Preemption (disambiguation)
 Preference

Priority


The Abzu (Cuneiform:  , ZU.AB; Sumerian: abzu; Akkadian: apsû) cried engur an aw, (Cuneiform:, LAGAB×HAL; Sumerie: engur; Akkadian: engurru) leeterally, ab='ocean' zu='tae ken'  or 'deep' wis the name for fresh watter frae unnergrund aquifers that wis gien a releegious quality in Sumerian an Akkadian meethologie.  Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, an ither sources o fresh watter wur thocht tae draw their watter frae the abzu.

In Sumerie cultur

In the ceety Eridu, Enki's temple wis kent as E2-abzu (hoose o the cosmic watters) an wis locatit at the edge o a swamp, an abzu.  Certain tanks o holy watter in Babylonian an Assirie temple courtyards wur cried abzu (apsû).  Teepical in releegious washin, these tanks wur similar tae the washin puils o Islamic mosques, or the baptismal font in Christian kirks.

In Sumerian cosmologie

The Sumerian god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian leid) wis believit tae hae livit in the abzu syne afore human beins wur creatit.  His wife Damgalnuna, his mither Nammu, his advisor Isimud an a variety o subservient creaturs, such as the gatekeeper Lahmu, livit in the abzu an aw.

As a deity

Abzu (apsû)  is depictit as a deity anerlie in the Babylonie creation epic, the Enûma Elish, taken frae the librar o Assurbanipal (c 630 BCE) but which is aboot 500 years aulder.  In this story, he wis a primal bein made o fresh watter an a lover tae anither primal deity, Tiamat, who wis a creatur o salt watter. The Enuma Elish begins:When abuin the heivens did no yet exist nor the yird belaw, Apsu the freshwatter ocean wis thare, the first, the begetter, an Tiamat, the saltwatter sea, she who bore them aw; they wur still mixin their watters, an nae pastur laund haed yet been formit, nor even a reed marsh...

See an aw
Auncient Mesopotamie
Abyzou
Eridu

Notes

References
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, 1992. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an illustrated dictionary, s.v. "abzu, apsû". ISBN 0-292-70794-0

Mesopotamie meethologie
Sea an river gods
Sumer

Abzu


Hacking Democracy is a 2006 Emmy nominated documentary film broadcast on HBO and created by producer / directors Russell Michaels and Simon Ardizzone, with producer Robert Carrillo Cohen, and executive producers Sarah Teale, Sian Edwards & Earl Katz. Filmed over three years it documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with 'e-voting' (electronic voting) systems that occurred during the 2000 and 2004 elections in the United States, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems, exposing previously unknown backdoors in the Diebold trade secret computer software. The film culminates dramatically in the on-camera hacking of the in-use / working Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida - the same computer voting system which has been used in actual American elections across thirty-three states, and which still counts tens of millions of America's votes today.

In 2007 Hacking Democracy was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism – Long Form.

Demonstrated flaws
The documentary follows Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne, director and associate director for nonprofit election watchdog group Black Box Voting, as they attempt to discover the extent to which it would be possible to alter results on the electronic voting machines of Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions). Andy Stephenson, an employee of Black Box Voting from July–December 2004, assisted with comparisons of audit documents in Volusia County and obtained a secret videotape of Harris interviewing a voting machine testing lab. Kathleen Wynne captured live video of Harris finding voting machine records in a Volusia County trash bag, and captured video of Cuyahoga County, Ohio elections workers admitting that the initial 3% recount ballots had not been randomly selected during the 2004 presidential election. Harris and Wynne then embarked on a series of five voting machine hack tests with Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson and Harri Hursti in 2005 and 2006.  During the course of the documentary, multiple methods of tampering with the votes are shown.

The first is through editing the database file that contains the voting totals.  This file is a standard Microsoft Access database, and can be opened by normal means outside of the encompassing voting program without a password. Some jurisdictions have disabled Microsoft Access, making it more difficult to alter the database, but this protection was shown to be bypassed by Dr. Herbert Hugh Thompson through a Visual Basic program which searched for a string of text and edited the file through external means. However, alterations of the results in either of these fashions would be caught if a vigilant elections official compared the results with voting machine tapes.

Another hacking technique was demonstrated through hacking the actual computer code used in the Diebold Accu-Vote memory cards. This method was discovered by Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti and is known as "the Hursti Hack". In this hack, Harri Hursti rigged the Diebold optical scan voting system to make the wrong candidate win by adding negative (minus) votes to one race. This resulted in that race having votes literally subtracted from its vote total. These methods were tested by the Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, on the actual Diebold optical scan voting system used by Tallahassee, Florida in all their prior elections. This method demonstrated, contrary to a previous Diebold statement, that a person attempting to rig the votes of a precinct would need access to only the memory card, not the optical scan voting system or tabulation software. This method, when cross-checked between the optical scan voting system and tabulation software, perfectly mimics a legitimate result, and further makes the voting machine produce a false zero-vote print-out, falsely confirming that the memory card has no votes inside it before voting begins. Following this historic hack Ion Sancho stated: "If I had not known what was behind this I would have certified this election as a true count of the votes."

Reaction
Even though no one from Diebold Election Systems admitted to having seen the film, Diebold President David Byrd suggested that Hacking Democracy was "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting", and demanded that it not be aired. His criticism was based on an earlier film made by the same three filmmakers. However, HBO refused to remove it from their schedules. In addition Diebold wrote a letter to HBO referring to the famous vote changing 'Hursti Hack' featured in the film, claiming that "Harri Hursti is shown attacking a Diebold machine in Florida. But his attack proved later to be a complete sham." This statement by Diebold was proven to be wholly wrong by independent computer scientists at UC Berkeley who investigated the Hursti Hack.

California's Secretary of State commissioned a Special Report by scientists at UC Berkeley to investigate the Hursti Hack. Page 2 of their report states:

Harri Hursti's attack does work: Mr. Hursti's attack on the AV-OS is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server.

One of Diebold's objections to the film was that it failed to mention that Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins computer science professor and vocal Diebold critic, may have a conflict of interest. Rubin at one point owned stock options in VoteHere, which sells auditing software and systems for voting machines. However, Rubin disposed of his stock options and withdrew from the VoteHere advisory board in August 2003, and says he had not had any meaningful contact since joining over two years before, except occasionally receiving press clippings.

DVD release and online movie
The film was released on DVD on March 20, 2007. It includes deleted scenes, a trailer and director biographies.

Hacking Democracy was published for online viewing on Amazon Instant Video on 30 September 2016. Also the film is available to view on Vimeo On Demand.

The Sequel

In March 2020, HBO and Hacking Democracy directors / producers Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale released the follow-up film, Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections.  In 2021 this sequel was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary. The film was also produced by Michael Hirschorn and Jessica Antonini.

The film reveals the hacking attack on the presidential election in 2016, through the exclusive on-camera interview with the hacker known as CyberZeist. CyberZeist penetrated the Alaska Division Of Elections' state vote tabulation computer system on 6 and 7 November 2016, and on election day, 8 November 2016.  CyberZeist successfully achieved this attack only weeks after the Alaska Division Of Elections admitted that Russian hackers had attempted to carry out a comparable attack.

The film's world famous elections cybersecurity expert, Harri Hursti, discovered that most hackers install a range of software that will be hidden in multiple components of a computer, so that even wiping the hard drive will not remove the hackers' access. CyberZeist told him, "I'll go under their radar even if they are 24/7 monitoring it [the vote-counting server]." When reviewing the hack on the Alaska Division of Elections' servers, Hursti discovered that CyberZeist could read or write any file, including system files: In other words, CyberZeist could have planted vote-stealing software that might still be there, waiting for a command to activate. As Hursti showed in Kill Chain, threat-actors might not even be looking to change results in an election, but to sabotage democracy and bring the process into disrepute.

See also
 2004 United States election voting controversies
 Electoral fraud: Tampering with electronic voting systems
 Black Box Voting

References

External links
  – official website and live streaming movie & DVD
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 1 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels published on YouTube by Al Jazeera English but blocked from USA IP addresses
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 2 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels published on YouTube by Al Jazeera English but blocked from USA IP addresses
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 1 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels published on Dailymotion by Al Jazeera English but blocked from USA IP addresses
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 2 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels published on Dailymotion by Al Jazeera English but blocked from USA IP addresses
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 1 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels republished on YouTube by HotLatestNews
 People & Power - Protecting Democracy - 14 Oct 08 - Part 2 follow-up by Hacking Democracy creators Simon Ardizzone & Russell Michaels republished on YouTube by HotLatestNews
 Program info at HBO
 Black Box Voting

 Ars's How to Steal an Election by Hacking
 Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
 Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy: Diebold Hacking video
County Seeks to Mend Electronic Voting Problems - Daily Californian
Prof Helps Get Voting Machines In State Decertified - Stanford Daily

Reviews
In the Land of 'Every Vote Counts,' Uncertainty on Whether It's Counted Correctly - New York Times
"Hacking Democracy" Review of the HBO documentary - Salon.com
Hacks, Lies & Videotape, Brad Friedman's review of HBO's 'Hacking Democracy' - Computerworld
Diebold slams HBO Hacking Democracy documentary, The Register
Empire Magazine's review ****
Bring Democracy Home, CBS News
, CNET News
Electronic Voting Fraud - Science Friday (National Public Radio)
'Hacking' casts doubt on security of ballots - Boston Globe
Voter-Turnout Efforts Go Into High Gear - Wall Street Journal
Meanwhile A Deeper Danger Than The Pandemic - Forbes.com review of Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections

Documentary films about elections in the United States
Electronic voting
Electoral fraud in the United States
Documentary films about technology
Diebold
Works about computer hacking
2000s English-language films
2000s American films

Hacking Democracy


A road is a piece of land which connects two or more places. Usually, a road has been made easy to travel on, for example by removing trees and stones so the ground is more level. Although many roads are made of gravel and dirt, some are paved with concrete or bricks or stones.

People have been making roads for a long time. Roman roads in Britain and the Inca road system are famous. Transport by boats on waterways was usually easier and faster than transport by road. In the industrial revolution, the railway was invented. A railway is a special type of road, using railway tracks. Roads are now usually made for wheeled vehicles, like cars, to travel on.

When traffic congestion becomes a frequent problem, the road may be made wider or other roads built.

Road building and care is usually paid for by taxes.  Some roads are toll roads, where people pay to use the road.

Other kinds of road

 Bicycle path
 Tracks
 Trails
 Freeways
 Highways

Basic English 850 words

Road


Jacob Milgrom (February 1, 1923 – June 5, 2010) was a prominent American Jewish Bible scholar and Conservative rabbi.  Milgrom's major contribution to biblical research was in the field of cult and worship.  Although he accepted the documentary hypothesis, contrary to the classical bible critics, he traced a direct line of development from the Priestly Code (P), to the Holiness Code (H), to the cultic innovations of Ezekiel, to the cultic writings of the Dead Sea sect and finally to Jewish law (halacha) of the Mishnah and Talmud.  Best known for his comprehensive Torah commentaries and work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he also published extensively on the Book of Ezekiel.

Biography
Jacob Milgrom  was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1923. He studied at Brooklyn College and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. In 1948, he married Jo Berman, also a biblical scholar. They had four children.

Academic career
Jacob Milgrom spent most of his career at the University of California, Berkeley, where he headed the Department of Near Eastern Studies. He was known for his research on Biblical purity laws and on the book of Leviticus.

After retiring in 1994, Milgrom and his wife Jo immigrated to Israel. He died in Jerusalem in June 2010.

Published works

Books
Studies in Levitical Terminology. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970. .
Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology. E.J. Brill, 1983. .
Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1995. .
The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. .
Leviticus 1-16. New York: Anchor Bible, 1998. .
Leviticus 17–22. New York: Anchor Bible, 2000. .
Leviticus 23–27. New York: Anchor Bible, 2000. .
Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004. .
Ezekiel's Hope: A Commentary on Ezekiel 38 - 48, with Daniel I. Block. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012. .

Articles
"The Biblical Diet Laws as an Ethical System." Interpretation. (July 1963).
"The Alleged Wave–Offering in Israel and in the Ancient Near East." Israel Exploration Journal. 22 (1972): 33–38.
"Atonement in the OT," "Atonement, Day of," "Encroachment," "First fruits, OT," "First-born," "Heave offering," "Leviticus," "Repentance in the OT," "Sacrifices and Offerings, OT," "Sanctification," and "Wave offering." In The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Supp. vol., 78–83, 264–65, 336–38, 391–92, 541–45, 736–38, 763–71, 782–84, 944–46. Nashville, Tenn: Abingdon, 1976. .
"The Temple Scroll." Biblical Archaeologist. 41 (3) (Sep. 1978): 105–120.
"The Case of the Suspected Adulteress, Numbers 5:11–31: Redaction and Meaning." In The Creation of Sacred Literature. Edited by Richard E. Friedman, 69–75. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1981. .
"The Levitic Town: An Exercise in Realistic Planning." In Essays in Honour of Yigael Yadin". Edited by Géza Vermes and Jacob Neusner. Totowa, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun and Co., 1983. .
"Magic, Monotheism, and the Sin of Moses." In The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Studies in Honor of George E. Mendenhall. Edited by H. B. Huffmon, F.A. Spina, A.R.W. Green, 251–265. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983. .
"Of Hems and Tassels: Rank, authority and holiness were expressed in antiquity by fringes on garments." Biblical Archaeology Review. 9 (3) (May/June 1983).
"Challenge to Sun-Worship Interpretation of Temple Scroll's Gilded Staircase." Biblical Archaeology Review. 11 (1) (Jan./Feb. 1985).
"The Chieftain's Gifts: Numbers, Chapter 7," Hebrew Annual Review. 9 (1985): 221–225.
"'You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother's Milk': An archaeological myth destroyed." Bible Review. 1 (3) (Fall 1985): 48–55.
"Ethics and Ritual: The Foundations of the Biblical Dietary Laws." In Religion and Law: Biblical, Jewish, and Islamic Perspectives, 159–91. Edited by E.B. Firmage. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1989. .
"Seeing the Ethical Within the Ritual: Israel's priests spoke in rituals, not in words. Their basic values are in the main ethical, and are ensconced in the rituals prescribed in the priestly texts of the Pentateuch." Bible Review. 8 (4) (Aug. 1992).
"Food and Faith: The Ethical Foundations of the Biblical Diet Laws: The Bible has worked out a system of restrictions whereby humans may satiate their lust for animal flesh and not be dehumanized. These laws teach reverence for life." Bible Review. 8 (6) (Dec. 1992).
"The Priestly 'Picture of Dorian Gray': Ancient Israel's priests would be aghast at the moral pollution of the earth: the brazen slaughter of thousands, millions dying of hunger, while the free world silently changes the channel." Bible Review. 9 (2) (Apr. 1993).
"Sweet Land and Liberty: Whether real or utopian, the laws in Leviticus seem to be a more sensitive safeguard against pauperization than we, here and now, have devised." Bible Review. 9 (4) (Aug. 1993).
"Does the Bible Prohibit Homosexuality? The biblical prohibition is addressed only to Israel. It is incorrect to apply it on a universal scale." Bible Review. 9 (6) (Dec. 1993).
"How Not to Read the Bible: I am not for homosexuality, but I am for homosexuals. When the Bible is distorted to make God their enemy I must speak out to set the record straight." Bible Review. 10 (2) (Apr. 1994).
"An Amputated Bible, Peradventure? The publishing house of Simon and Schuster has come up with a radical solution to the problem of "boring" passages in the Bible: Eliminate them." Bible Review. 10 (4) (Aug. 1994).
"Sex and Wisdom: What the Garden of Eden Story Is Saying: There is a plain, unambiguous meaning to the story: It is about sexual awareness and the creativity of which that is a part." Bible Review. 10 (6) (Dec. 1994).
"Bible Versus Babel: Why did God tell Abraham to leave Mesopotamia, the most advanced civilization of its time, for the backwater region of Canaan?" Bible Review. 11 (2) (Apr. 1995).
"The Most Basic Law in the Bible: It is easy to 'love' the war-ravaged Bosnians, the AIDS-stricken Zaireans or the bereaved of Oklahoma City. But what of the strangers in our midst, the vagrants on our sidewalks?" Bible Review. 11 (4) (Aug. 1994).
"'The Alien in Your Midst': Every nation has its ger: the permanent resident. The Torah commands us, first, not to oppress the ger, and then to befriend and love him." Bible Review. 11 (6) (Dec. 1995).
"Lex Talionis and the Rabbis: The Talmud reflects an uneasy rabbinic conscience toward the ancient law of talion, 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth.'" Bible Review. 12 (2) (Apr. 1996).
"A Husband's Pride, A Mob's Prejudice: The public ordeal undergone by a suspected adulteress in Numbers 5 was meant not to humiliate her but to protect her." Bible Review. 12 (4) (Aug. 1996).
"Shifting Borders: The Whole Land of Israel." Moment. (Aug. 1996): 52.
"Albert Schweitzer: Doctor, Musician, Theologian." Bible Review. 12 (5) (Oct. 1996).
"The Water Libation in the Festival of Booths: Nonbiblical rites, though originating in popular worship and rooted in magical practice, were ultimately assimilated into Israel's official monotheism." Bible Review. 12 (6) (Dec. 1996).
"Jubilee: A Rallying Cry for Today's Oppressed: The laws of the Jubilee year offer a blueprint for bridging the gap between the have and have-not nations." Bible Review. 13 (2) (Apr. 1997).
"The Blood Taboo: Blood should not be ingested because it contains life. Whoever does so is guilty of murder." Bible Review. 13 (4) (Aug. 1997).
"The Vow and the 'Popular Religious Groups' of Ancient Israel: A Philological and Sociological Inquiry." Journal of the American Oriental Society. 118 (4) (Oct. 1, 1998): 592.
"The Truth of Mosaic Origins." In Mincha: Festgabe Fur Rolf Rendtorff Zum 75. Geburtstag.'' Edited by E. Blum. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000.

References

1923 births
2010 deaths
American Conservative rabbis
Jewish biblical scholars
American biblical scholars
Old Testament scholars
Judaic scholars
University of California, Berkeley faculty
Brooklyn College alumni
Jewish Theological Seminary of America alumni
20th-century Jewish biblical scholars
20th-century American rabbis
American emigrants to Israel
21st-century American rabbis

Jacob Milgrom


The Rivonia Trial was a trial that took place in South Africa between 1963 and 1964. Ten leaders of the African National Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system. This trial was held after the police raid on the MK base in Rivonia, where documents related to the 10 accused men were found. One of the men was the future President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. After the trial, Mandela was taken to jail in Robben Island.

The chief prosecutor was Dr. Percy Yutar, deputy attorney-general of the Transvaal.

The presiding judge was Dr. Quartus de Wet, judge-president of the Transvaal.

Arrests

Among the arrested were:

 Nelson Mandela
 Walter Sisulu
 Govan Mbeki
 Raymond Mhlaba
 Andrew Mlangeni
 Elias Motsoaledi, trade union and ANC member
 Ahmed Kathrada
 Denis Goldberg, a Cape Town engineer and leader of the Congress of Democrats
 Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein, architect and member of the South African Communist Party (SACP)
 Bob Hepple
 Arthur Goldreich
 Harold Wolpe, prominent attorney and activist
 James "Jimmy" Kantor, brother-in-law of Harold Wolpe

Most of the Rivonia defendants were to be convicted, and in turn sentenced to life imprisonment.

Other websites
 "The Rivonia Trial " - article by Sunder Katwala from The Observer, dated Sunday, 11 February 2001
 ANC history
 On the trail of Mandela's handgun
 Rivonia Unmasked The prosecutor's account of the Rivonia Trial.
 Historical Papers of the Rivonia Trial, Digital Collection at the University of the Witwatersrand.
 Rivonia Trial Images

1963
1964 in Africa
Nelson Mandela
20th century in South Africa

Rivonia Trial


Emil Leon Post (; February 11, 1897 – April 21, 1954) was an American mathematician and logician. He is best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory.

Life
Post was born in Augustów, Suwałki Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland) into a Polish-Jewish family that immigrated to New York City in May 1904. His parents were Arnold and Pearl Post.

Post had been interested in astronomy, but at the age of twelve lost his left arm in a car accident. This loss was a significant obstacle to being a professional astronomer, leading to his decision to pursue mathematics rather than astronomy.

Post attended the Townsend Harris High School and continued on to graduate from City College of New York in 1917 with a B.S. in mathematics.

After completing his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1920 at Columbia University, supervised by Cassius Jackson Keyser, he did a post-doctorate at Princeton University in the 1920–1921 academic year. Post then became a high school mathematics teacher in New York City.

Post married Gertrude Singer in 1929, with whom he had a daughter, Phyllis Post Goodman (1932–1995). Post spent at most three hours a day on research on the advice of his doctor in order to avoid manic attacks, which he had been experiencing since his year at Princeton.

In 1936, he was appointed to the mathematics department at the City College of New York. He died in 1954 of a heart attack following electroshock treatment for depression; he was 57.

Early work
In his doctoral thesis, later shortened and published as "Introduction to a General Theory of Elementary Propositions" (1921), Post proved, among other things, that the propositional calculus of Principia Mathematica was complete: all tautologies are theorems, given the Principia axioms and the rules of substitution and modus ponens. Post also devised truth tables independently of C. S. Peirce and Ludwig Wittgenstein and put them to good mathematical use.  Jean van Heijenoort's well-known source book on mathematical logic (1966) reprinted Post's classic 1921 article setting out these results.

While at Princeton, Post came very close to discovering the incompleteness of Principia Mathematica, which Kurt Gödel proved in 1931. Post initially failed to publish his ideas as he believed he needed a 'complete analysis' for them to be accepted. As Post said in a postcard to Gödel in 1938:

I would have discovered Gödel's theorem in 1921—if I had been Gödel.

Recursion theory
In 1936, Post developed, independently of Alan Turing, a mathematical model of computation that was  essentially equivalent to the Turing machine model. Intending this as the first of a series of models of equivalent power but increasing complexity, he titled his paper Formulation 1. This model is sometimes called "Post's machine" or a Post–Turing machine, but is not to be confused with Post's tag machines or other special kinds of Post canonical system, a computational model using string rewriting and developed by Post in the 1920s but first published in 1943.  Post's rewrite technique is now ubiquitous in programming language specification and design, and so with Church's lambda calculus is a salient influence of classical modern logic on practical computing. Post devised a method of 'auxiliary symbols' by which he could canonically represent any Post-generative language, and indeed any computable function or set at all.

Correspondence systems were introduced by Post in 1946 to give simple examples of undecidability. He showed that the Post correspondence problem (PCP) of satisfying their constraints is, in general, undecidable. The undecidability of the correspondence problem turned out to be exactly what was needed to obtain undecidability results in the theory of formal languages.

In an influential address to the American Mathematical Society in 1944, he raised the question of the existence of an uncomputable recursively enumerable set whose Turing degree is less than that of the halting problem. This question, which became known as Post's problem, stimulated much research. It was solved in the affirmative in the 1950s by the introduction of the powerful priority method in computability theory.

Polyadic groups
Post made a fundamental and still-influential contribution to the theory of polyadic, or n-ary, groups in a long paper published in 1940.  His major theorem showed that a polyadic group is the iterated multiplication of elements of a normal subgroup of a group, such that the quotient group is cyclic of order n − 1.  He also demonstrated that a polyadic group operation on a set can be expressed in terms of a group operation on the same set.  The paper contains many other important results.

Selected papers

  Introduces the important concept of many-one reduction.

See also
Arithmetical hierarchy
Functional completeness
List of multiple discoveries
List of pioneers in computer science

Notes

References

Neary, Turlough (2015), "Undecidability in binary tag systems and the post correspondence problem for five pairs of words", International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), pages 649–661, 2015.

Further reading

Dedicated to Emil Post and contains special material on Post. This includes "Post's Relation to the Cryptology and Cryptographists of his Era: ... Steven Brams, the noted game theorist and political scientist, has remarked to us that the life and legacy of Emil Post represents one aspect of New York intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century that is very much in need of deeper exploration. The authors hope that this paper serves to further this pursuit". (pp. 842–843)

Reprints several papers by Post.

A biographical essay.

Much material on Emil Post from his first-hand recollections.

A biographical article.

External links
 Emil Leon Post Papers 1927-1991, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1897 births
1954 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
American amputees
American logicians
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
City College of New York faculty
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Computability theorists
Emigrants from Congress Poland to the United States
Mathematicians from New York (state)
People from Augustów
People with bipolar disorder
Townsend Harris High School alumni

Emil Leon Post


Smoking is a treatment for food, to make it last longer. It is mainly used for meat and fish. The food which is either cured or salted is exposed to the smoke of a fire. This will reduce the amount of water by between ten and forty percent. It also changes the texture and adds flavour. It is not one of the most effective ways of adding any preservation

Food preservation

Smoking (cooking)


"Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art" is a love sonnet by John Keats.

Background
It is unclear when Keats first drafted "Bright Star"; his biographers suggest different dates. Andrew Motion suggests it was begun in October 1819. Robert Gittings states that Keats began the poem in April 1818 – before he met his beloved Fanny Brawne – and he later revised it for her. Colvin believed it to have been in the last week of February 1819, immediately after their informal engagement.

The final version of the sonnet was copied into a volume of The Poetical Works of William Shakespeare, opposite Shakespeare's poem, A Lover's Complaint. The book had been given to Keats in 1819 by John Hamilton Reynolds. Joseph Severn maintained that the last draft was transcribed into the book in late September 1820 while they were aboard the ship Maria Crowther, travelling to Rome, from where the very sick Keats would never return. The book also contains one sonnet by his friend Reynolds and one by Severn. Keats probably gave the book to Joseph Severn in January 1821 before his death in February, aged 25. Severn believed that it was Keats's last poem and that it had been composed especially for him.

The poem came to be forever associated with the "Bright Star" Fanny Brawne – with whom Keats became infatuated. Gittings says it was given as "a declaration of his love."

It was officially published in 1838 in The Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal, 17 years after Keats's death.

The text

Addressed to a star (perhaps Polaris, around which the heavens appear to wheel), the sonnet expresses the poet's wish to be as constant as the star while he presses against his sleeping love. The use of the star imagery is unusual in that Keats dismisses many of its more apparent qualities, focusing on the star's steadfast and passively watchful nature. In the first recorded draft (copied by Charles Brown and dated to early 1819), the poet loves unto death; by the final version, death is an alternative to (ephemeral) love.

The poem is punctuated as a single sentence and uses the rhyme form of the Shakespearean sonnet (ABABCDCDEFEFGG) with the customary volta, or turn in the train of thought, occurring after the octave.

In popular culture
In Alexander Theroux's 1981 novel Darconville's Cat the poem is discussed by the protagonist when teaching his English class.

The 2009 biopic on Keats's life starring Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, focused on the final three years of his life and his relationship with Fanny Brawne. It was named Bright Star after this poem, which is recited multiple times in the film.

In the Covert Affairs episode "Speed of Life" (Season 3, Episode 4) the character Simon Fischer admits to Annie Walker that the tattoo on his upper left shoulder blade of Ursa Minor was inspired by John Keats's poem. Although she asks him, Simon doesn't tell her who in his life was his bright star or the reason behind getting the tattoo. This tattoo is the symbol used by Jai Wilcox to mark Simon Fischer's dossier within the CIA.

In the DC Comics event series Heroes in Crisis issue #6 by writer Tom King and artist Clay Mann, Gnarrk recites the poem on a full page showing him lying over his mammoth under a clear beautiful sky.

References

Bibliography
 Colvin, Sidney. John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame (London: Macmillan, 1917)
 Lancashire, Ian. 'John Keats: Bright Star', Representative Poetry Online (Toronto: University, 2003). Retrieved July 27, 2005.

External links

British poems
Poetry by John Keats
1838 poems
Love poems
Love stories


In hand-to-hand combat, in martial arts and sports, a kick is a blow with the foot, the knee or the leg. It is used in combat as an attack. Generally, the kicks are slower than the punches although stronger than the blows with hands.

The kicks are a fundamental part in many martial arts. The examples are: wushu, karate, kickboxing, tangsudo or taekwondo; whereas other arts do not use any kick, as it is in the case of judo or of boxing. Other martial arts can use kicks, although they limit them to attacks to the legs and to the lower parts of the body of the opponent.

There exists a great number of kicks, and a lot of them have typical names for each one. Frequently the same movement has different names in different martial arts. This is obvious especially when comparisons are done between western arts and oriental arts.

Example in kickboxing

Usual kicks
 Front kick: hips facing the target. It is in "penetrating" form, in "pushing" form (Push kick, Pushing kick) or in "snapping" form (Front snap kick).
 Side kick or lateral kick: hips directed sideways to the target - It is in "penetrating" form.
 Semicircular kick: also roundhouse kick of 45 degrees. Kick of the category of the techniques named circular kicks. They are performed with the hips facing the target from a pendulum movement of the lower member all around of the hip (movement of closing of the thigh on the trunk) which can be combined a live extension of the knee. To the image of the roundhouse kicks, takes into consideration usually the side targets of the body.
 Roundhouse kick or circular kick: in low line or low kick , of middle height (level of the trunk) or middle kick and in high line (level of the head) or high kick.
 Hook kick: hips facing the target or directed sideways to the target.
 Back kick: hips with back towards the target.
 Sweeping: kick of sweeping only on the boxing shoe (or the foot). Main forms: spoon sweeping or hook sweeping. There exist the turning sweepings (type "roundhouse kick") and spinning (type spinning hook kick).

(1) The front kicks and side kicks, in "penetrating" form, on the lower member are entitled between the professionals especially for certain titles, but not in all the lands.

(2) There exist numerous hybrid kicks, such as the "side-front" que the "side kick" with the hips rather frontal what allows an instant connection of the techniques of fist much useful in active defense

Less practised kicks
Category of the straight-legged kicks, called stick kick:
 Crescent kick: hips facing the target.
 Descending kick (hammer kick or axe kick): carried with the heel.

Spinning and jumping kicks
 Spinning hook kick.
 Spinning side kick.
 Spinning back kick.
 Jumping front kick.
 Jumping roundhouse kick.
 Jumping side kick.
 Jumping back kick.
(*) Certain techniques can be spinning and jumping at the same time.

Other websites
 www.kajukenbo.info (Kicking Philosophies and Techniques)
 Kinematic analysis of crescent kick in taekwondo
 World amateur sport Kickboxing Organization (W.A.S.K.O. )  - & kickboxing
 various kick techniques

Basic English 850 words
Sports

Kick