Southern gospel music is a genre of Christian music. Its name comes from its origins in the southeastern United States. Its lyrics are written to express either personal or a communal faith regarding biblical teachings and Christian life, as well as (in terms of the varying music styles) to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music. Sometimes known as "quartet music" for its traditional "four men and a piano" set up, southern gospel has evolved over the years into a popular form of music across the United States and overseas, especially among baby boomers and those living in the Southern United States. Like other forms of music, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of southern gospel varies according to the cultural and social context. It is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace.

Origins
The date of southern gospel's establishment, as a distinct genre, is generally considered to be 1910. The year the first professional quartet was formed for the purpose of selling songbooks for the James D. Vaughan Music Publishing Company in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Nonetheless, the style of the music itself had existed for at least 35 years prior—although the traditional wisdom that southern gospel was "invented" in the 1870s by circuit preacher Everett Beverly is spurious.

The existence of the genre prior to 1910 is evident in the work of Charles Davis Tillman (1861–1943), who popularized "The Old Time Religion", wrote "Life's Railway to Heaven" and published 22 songbooks. Some of the genre's roots can be found in the publishing work and "normal schools" or singing schools of Aldine S. Kieffer and Ephraim Ruebush. Southern gospel was promoted by traveling singing school teachers, quartets, and shape note music publishing companies such as the A. J. Showalter Company (1879) and the Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company.

Over time, southern gospel came to be an eclectic musical form with groups singing traditional hymns, a capella (jazz-style singing with no instruments) songs, country, bluegrass, spirituals, and "convention songs". Because it grew out of the musical traditions of white musicians from the American South, the name Southern gospel was used to differentiate it from the black gospel tradition.

Convention songs typically have contrasting homophonic and contrapuntal sections. In the homophonic sections, the four parts sing the same words and rhythms. In the contrapuntal sections, each group member has a unique lyric and rhythm. These songs are called "convention songs" because various conventions were organized across the United States for the purpose of getting together regularly and singing songs in this style. Convention songs were employed by training centers like the Stamps-Baxter School Of Music as a way to teach quartet members how to concentrate on singing their own part. Examples of convention songs include "Heavenly Parade", "I'm Living In Canaan Now", "Give the World a Smile", and "Heaven's Jubilee".

Early performers
Southern gospel is sometimes called "quartet music" by fans because of the originally all-male, tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet makeup. Early quartets were typically either a cappella or accompanied only by piano or guitar, and in some cases a piano and banjo in areas that were influenced by bluegrass music such as Appalachia. Over time, full bands were added and even later, pre-recorded accompaniments (soundtracks) were introduced.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, southern gospel drew much of its creative energy from the holiness movement churches that arose throughout the south. Early gospel artists such as The Speer Family, The Stamps Quartet, The Blackwood Family, and The Lefevre Trio achieved wide popularity through their recordings and radio performances in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. On October 20, 1927, The Stamps Quartet recorded its early hit "Give The World A Smile" for RCA Victor, which become the Quartet's theme song. The Stamps Quartet was heard on the radio throughout Texas and the South. A handful of groups were considered pioneers in southern gospel music for a series of "firsts." The Blackwood Brothers, with James Blackwood and J.D. Sumner became the first group to travel in a bus, which is on display at the Southern Gospel Museum and Hall of Fame at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Sumner also was instrumental in creating the National Quartet Convention, an annual music festival where many groups, both known and well known perform for a week. The Speer Family was known for bringing blended groups to mainstream popularity where both male and female performers toured together. The best known group of the 1950s and 1960s was the Statesmen Quartet, which set the trend for broad appeal of the all-male quartets that would develop years later. The Statesmen were known for their showmanship and introduction of jazz, ragtime, and even some early rock and roll. Elements into their music and their stage appearance with trendy suits and wide audience appeal and were known for their signature song, "Happy Rhythm" (Rockin and a'Rollin).

Gaither Homecoming series
Traditional southern gospel music underwent a tremendous surge in popularity during the 1990s thanks to the efforts of Bill and Gloria Gaither and their Gaither Homecoming tours and videos, which began as a reunion of many of the best known and loved SGM individuals in 1991. Thanks in part to the Homecoming series, southern gospel music now has fans across the United States and in a number of foreign countries like Ireland and Australia.

1990s and beyond
By the 1990s, the "old-timey" quartet-style music began to develop to include more soloists and duos. Although still mostly popular in the Southeast and Southwest, it has a nationwide and even international audience. The music remains "more country than city, more down-home than pretentious".

In 2005, The Radio Book, a broadcast yearbook published by M Street Publications, reported 285 radio stations in the U.S. with a primary format designation as "southern gospel," including 175 AM stations and 110 FM stations. In fact, southern gospel was the 9th most popular format for AM stations and the 21st most popular for FM. Southern gospel radio promoters routinely service more than a thousand radio stations which play at least some southern gospel music each week. Recent years have also seen the advent of a number of internet-only southern gospel "radio" stations.

Two popular satellite stations that feature southern gospel are channel 34 on XM Satellite Radio and Channel 65 (changed from 67). On Sirius Satellite Radio. Both play the same feed entitled, "enLighten on SiriusXm". Enlighten plays southern gospel and has several featured programs which air weekly including Paul Heil's Gospel Greats and Bill Gaither's Homecoming Radio.

Over the last decades, a newer version of southern gospel has grown in popularity.  This style is called progressive southern gospel and is characterized by a blend of traditional southern gospel, bluegrass, modern country, contemporary Christian and pop music elements. Progressive southern gospel generally features artists who push their voices to produce a sound with an edge to it. The traditional style southern gospel singers employ a more classical singing style.

Lyrically, most progressive southern gospel songs are patterned after traditional southern gospel in that they maintain a clear evangelistic and/or testimonial slant. Southern gospel purists view lyrical content and the underlying musical style as the key determining factors for applying the southern gospel label to a song.

Although there are some exceptions, most southern gospel songs would not be classified as Praise and Worship. Few southern gospel songs are sung "to" God as opposed to "about" God. On the other hand, southern gospel lyrics are typically overt in their  Christian message unlike Contemporary Christian music (CCM) which sometimes has had "double entendre" lyrics, which could be interpreted as being about a devout love for God or an earthly love for a man or woman.

Media
Becoming popular through songbooks, such as those published by R. E. Winsett of Dayton, Tennessee, southern gospel was and is one of the few genres to use recordings, radio, and television technologies from the very beginning for the advancements of promoting the genre.

One of the longest-running print magazines for southern gospel music has been the Singing News. They started in the early 1970s supplying radio airplay charts and conducting annual fan based awards. They also supply popular topic forums for southern gospel fans to meet and discuss the genre. The move to internet services has brought along companies such as SoGospelNews.com which has become a noted e-zine forum for southern gospel and has remained a supporter for the past twelve years. It too contains the music charts with forums and chat rooms available to the fans.

Internet Radio has broadened the southern gospel music fan base by using computer technologies and continual streaming. Some of these media outlets are: Sunlite Radio which features many of the southern gospel programs likewise heard on traditional radio. This list includes The Gospel Greats with Paul Heil, which recently celebrated 30 years on the air, Southern Gospel USA, a weekly half-hour countdown show hosted by Gary Wilson, Classic radio programs such as The Old Gospel Ship and Heaven's Jubilee with Jim Loudermilk. Another online station is "The Gospel Station."

References

Further reading
Beary, Shirley L. "The Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company: A Continuing Tradition, 1926–1976." D.M.A. dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1977.
Brobston, Stanley. "A Brief History of White Southern Gospel Music." Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 1977.
Downey, James C. "The Music of American Revivalism." Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane University, 1968.
Collins, Mike and Gaither, Bill. "Hold On: The Authorized Biography of the Greenes, America's Southern Gospel Trio" Woodland Press LLC, 2004. .
Eskew, Harry. "Shape-Note Hymnody in the Shenandoah Valley, 1816–60." Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane University, 1966.
Fleming, Jo Lee. "James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher." S.M.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, VA), 1972.
Goff, James R. Jr. Close Harmony: A History Of Southern Gospel. University Of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Graves, Michael P. and Fillingim, David. "More than Precious Memories: The Rhetoric of Southern Gospel Music" Mercer University Press, 2004. .
Harrison, Douglas. Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music. Urbana Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Harrison, Douglas. "Why Southern Gospel Music Matters."  Journal of Religion and American Culture. 18.1 (2008) pp. 27–58.

Terrell, Bob. The Music Men: The Story of Professional Gospel Quartet Singing in America. B. Terrell, 1990. .

External links

 Souther Gospel Music Association (https://www.sgma.org)

Gospel music genres

Southern gospel


Karl Duncker (Leipzig, 2 February 1903  23 February 1940) was a German psychologist.

Until 1935 he was a student and assistant of the founders of Gestalt psychology in Berlin: Max Wertheimer,  Wolfgang Köhler and  Kurt Koffka.
In 1935, exiled by the Nazis, he got an assistantship at Cambridge University with Frederic Bartlett. Later he emigrated to the USA where he was again an assistant of Köhler's at Swarthmore College. He committed suicide in 1940 at 37 years of age. He had been suffering from depression for some time and had received professional treatment.

Achievements

Duncker coined the term functional fixedness in visual perception and problem solving. This describes the difficulties arising from a part of a problem which normally has a fixed function. In the problem, the fixed function must be changed to reach the perception or solution.

In his "candle problem" the situation was defined by the objects: a box of candles, a box of thumb-tacks and a book of matches. The task was to fix the candles on the wall without any additional elements. The difficulty of this problem arises from the functional fixedness of the candle box. It is a container in the problem but must be used as a shelf in the solution.

Other examples of this type of problem are:

 an electromagnet must be used as part of a pendulum
 a branch of a tree must be used as a tool
 a brick must be used a paper weight
 another meaning of a word must be found that is different from the meaning within the context of the sentence

References

Duncker, Karl 1945. On problem solving. APA Psychological Monographs 58

1903 births
1940 deaths
German psychologists
People who committed suicide

Karl Duncker


USS R-17 (SS-94) was an R-class coastal and harbor defense submarine of the United States Navy.

Construction and commissioning
R-17′s keel was laid down by the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, California, on 5 May 1917.  She was launched on 24 December 1917 sponsored by Miss Bertha F. Dew, and commissioned on 17 August 1918 with Lieutenant Commander William R. Munroe in command.

Service history

1919–1931
Commissioned toward the end of World War I, R-17 operated briefly off the California coast, then patrolled off the Panama Canal Zone, returning to California in December 1918. In March 1919, she arrived at San Francisco, California, for overhaul, after which she moved west to Pearl Harbor. Departing the West Coast 17 June, she arrived in Hawaii on 25 June and for the next 11½ years operated with fleet units and tested equipment being developed for submarines.

The submarine, given hull classification symbol SS-94 in July 1920, departed Pearl Harbor 12 December 1930, called at San Diego, California, thence continued on to the East Coast for inactivation. Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 9 February 1931, she was decommissioned 15 May and berthed at League Island until after the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

1941–1946
Recommissioned at New London, 25 March 1941, R-17 headed south on 14 May, patrolled in the Virgin Islands during June; off the Canal Zone in July, August, and September; then, in October, returned to New London. For the next four months she conducted training exercises.

On 9 March 1942, she was decommissioned and transferred to the United Kingdom under the lend-lease agreement. Commissioned in the Royal Navy as HMS P.512, she was employed at Bermuda as a training ship for the Royal Canadian Navy until 6 September 1944 when she was returned to the U.S. Navy at Philadelphia. Retained for use as a target ship until after the end of the war in Europe, R-17 was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 22 June 1945.  She was sold, 16 November 1945, to the North American Smelting Company in Philadelphia, for scrapping.

References

External links

R-17 (SS-94)
World War I submarines of the United States
World War II submarines of the United States
Ships built in San Francisco
1917 ships
Ships transferred from the United States Navy to the Royal Navy
United States R-class submarines of the Royal Navy
World War II submarines of the United Kingdom

USS R-17


A rotary evaporator (or rotavap) is  commonly used in chemical laboratories to remove solvents by evaporation.

The liquid is put in a round-bottomed flask and placed in the device. The rotavap spins and heats the flask and reduces the pressure inside by creating a vacuum. The vacuum makes the liquid evaporate at a low temperature than normal. The liquid becomes a gas and is collected by cooling it so it condenses into another flask.

If there are substances dissolved in the liquid they will be left behind in when it evaporates. If water with salt dissolved in it is evaporated, then pure water and dry salt will be separated. Scientists use rotary evaporators to remove the liquid a solid is dissolved in.

Rotary evaporators are often quicker to use than evaporating basins. They can be used for distillations.

References

Laboratory equipment
ja:エバポレーター#ロータリーエバポレーター
Chemical processes

Rotary evaporator


A scholarship is financial help (money) given to someone who wants to study. Scholarships can be given by schools or by universities or colleges or any other institution where people can study or where research needs to be done.  It is similar to a bursary.

There are very many kinds of scholarships.  Some scholarships will cover all the tuition fees (money that the student needs to pay to study), others may just help towards the tuition fees.  Some scholarships may include money for other things such as food and accommodation.

Sometimes the students are expected to do something in return for having a scholarship.  They may, for example, be expected to do some particular work after they finish their studies, or they may need to help the institution in some way.  Quite often the amount of money a student gets will depend on how much money the family has.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women says that scholarship must be equally given for girls without discrimination.

Related pages
Choral scholar
Right to education

Note

Education

Scholarship


Flaying is a form of torture, mutilation, and execution.  It is the act of stripping the skin and flesh from the bones.  Flaying an enemy while alive is an ancient practice.  Accounts attribute the practice to the ancient Assyrians, who were said to flay the skin from a captured enemy or rebellious ruler and nail it to the wall of his city, as warning to all who would defy their power.  Searing or cutting the flesh from the body was sometimes used as part of the public execution of traitors in medieval Europe.  A similar mode of execution was used as late as the early 18th century in France; one such episode is graphically recounted in the opening chapter of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1979).

Torture
Punishments

Flaying


The Resurrection Casket is a BBC Books original novel written by Justin Richards and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was published on 13 April 2006 alongside The Stone Rose and The Feast of the Drowned. It features the Tenth Doctor and Rose.

Synopsis
On a shadowy planet called Starfall, where no modern technology works, the Doctor and Rose become involved in a quest for a lost treasure that belonged to Hamlek Glint — the Resurrection Casket, supposedly the key to eternal life. But the TARDIS has stopped working too...

Plot

The TARDIS is forced to land after being affected by an effect similar to an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse). Outside the Doctor and Rose find a normal looking town. The Doctor informs Rose that they cannot re-enter the TARDIS until she can repair her systems. They then set off to find out what is producing the constant pulses and stop it. At the docks are steam powered spaceships. They go to the pub to get more information.

The bartender is a young girl with half of her body replaced by steam-powered robotics. A boy of about ten talking to her, and when the Doctor introduces himself and Rose, the girl gives her name as Silver Sally and the boy's name as Jimm. Jimm and Sally tell them about the zeg. It is a zone of electromagnetic gravitation that interferes with anything containing an electronic circuit. It goes as far as the Outreaches, where a lot of ships get stuck. People still come because they hope to find Hamlek Glint's lost treasure. The planet itself is owned by Drel McCavity, who is a collector of Hamlek Glint artifacts. Jimm's uncle is the biggest collector though.

Jimm's uncle arrives and invites the Doctor and Rose to come visit and hear about Hamlek Glint (the pirate).

The Doctor and Rose return to the docks to see about getting passage off planet for themselves and the TARDIS, but have no luck. While they are there, a body is found. The Doctor uses his psychic paper to pass himself off as an investigator, and begins to ask questions about the body. It is a man they had seen at the pub, who has a small bit of folded paper with a smudge of ink that looks vaguely like a figure. The Doctor says it's what space sailors call a Black Shadow.

The Doctor says that the man was a friend of Drel McCavity, and that someone should tell him, and then volunteers to do it. He asks Rose to track down the man's friends and warn them. At McCavity's there is a gallery full of display cases of Hamlek Glint artifacts. McCavity shows him many of them, then sees the Doctor out, giving him a business card with an invitation to make an appointment later.

Rose locates Edd and Bonny, and learns that they recently sold McCavity some fake Glint artifacts, even though they'd had genuine stuff ten years ago. As she is talking to them, she suddenly realizes they are not alone. A huge shaggy shape with red eyes apologizes, then kills both Edd and Bonny.

The Doctor goes to Bobb's home. It is filled with Glint artifacts, including a photo of the crew, who were all robots except for Glint himself, and the cabin boy Robbie. Bobb says that no one knows what happened to Robbie, but that the robots were all sold for scrap. Glint set sail for Starfall, and was never seen again.

Rose arrives, and is given a tour of Bobb's collection. Part of it is a replica of Glint's Lost Treasure. The Resurrection Casket is supposed to be his greatest find, able to heal hurts, and bring the dead back to life. The Doctor takes Rose over to the photograph, and asks what she thinks of the shadow in the background. She says it looks like the monster that attacked Edd and Bonny. The doorbell rings again, and Jimm runs off to answer it. The Doctor starts digging in his pockets for paper and finds a folded slip that shows the Black Shadow when unfolded. They hear Jimm scream and the monster from earlier goes after the Doctor.

The Doctor runs toward Bobb's exhibition area. After a lot of dodging around, the monster catches him. The Doctor asks how he knows who he's supposed to kill, and the monster replies that he gets a name and description, along with knowing where the parchment is. The Doctor says that he doesn't have a name, so the monster has the wrong person. Confused, Kevin (the monster) lets him go.

They all talk after Kevin leaves, and decide that he is forced to do what someone wishes because that person knows how to use an object that belonged to Glint. The Doctor says the next step is to find Glint's ship, and that he knows how to do it. They just need someone to fund it, and Drel McCavity is probably the person to ask.

After some discussion and questions, McCavity agrees, but says that he is coming along. The Doctor says he needs some equipment that is 'locked up safely in a big blue box.' Rose and the Doctor stop at the pub, and Silver Sally says she can find them a robot crew, and she wants to come along. Jimm is very upset when he is told that he cannot come.

The TARDIS is loaded into the ship's forward escape pod. McCavity brings a bodyguard named Dugg and a wooden chest. The other crew is made up of three robots - Kenny, King, and Jonesy. After sailing for three days, the Doctor gets impatient waiting for the TARDIS to open, and fixes the ship's engines to hurry things along. The TARDIS finally opens, but isn't ready to leave yet. However, the Doctor is able to use it to figure out where Glint's ship is.

Rose visits Sally and overhears her talking to one of the robots. Rose is horrified to realize that Sally is actually a robot, and that she and the other three are all surviving members of Glint's crew. She hears footsteps, and hurries to hide in a cupboard. She gets out, opens the door further down, and sees Jimm curled into a small ball. Sally comes out, and Rose tries to be casual as she leaves, and then runs down to tell the Doctor. He tells Dugg to barricade the door. Sally threatens them from the other side, and gives them a few minutes to decide what to do. The Doctor creates a diversion quickly, and they let Sally and the other robots come in with Jimm.

The Doctor's diversion starts to work, and he makes up a story about what it is, saying that he'll fix it, just put everyone else into the escape pod, with the clamps locked. While they are in the pod waiting for the Doctor, Jimm wakes up. Then they hear the clamps release and the door open, and the Doctor comes in. He gets the controls working, and then realizes that the TARDIS is in the other escape pod.

They navigate the escape pod to the zeg, find Glint's ship, dock, and go on board. McCavity has Dugg bring his wooden chest. They find the treasure room, and go inside. It is empty, except for a large polished black casket the size and shape of a coffin with pipes and wires laid into the lid. It's the Resurrection Casket, and the Doctor tells them not to open it.

As they are discussing the fact that the treasure is gone, a voice comes from the doorway. It's Kevin, who tells them that he lives here, and they all realize that McCavity is the one who 'employs' him, by using the medallion he's wearing, then they hear a loud clang and realize the ship is docking.

With Kevin's help, they decide to move to the games room. They bring the Resurrection Casket with them, to keep it from falling into the robots' hands. Dugg tries to lift it, but he needs help, so Kevin takes it. They use the snooker table to block the door, and then pile other items on top, including the Resurrection Casket and McCavity's chest.

Just as they finish, the door shudders, and the robots are on the other side. Everyone is talking about opening the Casket, and the Doctor keeps telling them no, that it doesn't do what they think it does. McCavity insists that it can bring people back from the dead, and as they argue, the door knocks his chest to the floor, where it bursts open. Out spills a skeleton and the remains of a red dress. McCavity had killed his wife out of jealousy, and wants to use the Resurrection Casket to bring her back.

McCavity has a marked piece of parchment in his hand, and threatens to give it to Rose or Jimm, so that the Doctor will use the Casket, but ends up sneaking it to the Doctor instead. Just as the robots break into the room, the Doctor starts running from Kevin, but Kevin hides behind the sofa.

Rose yells at Dugg to take the Casket out, while she and Jimm try to delay the robots. Dugg is looking for a place to hide the casket, so he can go back and help Rose and Jimm, when Kevin takes it from him. Dugg goes back and takes over the defense, telling Rose and Jimm to run.

McCavity attacks the Doctor with a sword, but the Doctor avoids him and ends up in the main engine room. McCavity catches up, and the Doctor grabs an axe to defend himself. McCavity is interrupted by Kevin, who says this is his job. Rose and Jimm catch up, and McCavity is convinced to call Kevin off.

The Doctor has each of them sealed into an engineering locker, and Kevin takes them outside the ship to the secondary control room. The Doctor has them turn everything back on that was shut down when the ship entered the zeg, and then they go back to their own ship. They leave a Black Shadow parchment behind, and the Doctor tricks one of the robots into picking it up.

The steam powered ship starts to move, dragging Glint's ship deeper into the zeg with it. The Doctor directs everyone to the forward escape pod, and the systems on the pirate ship start to explode. As it comes apart, McCavity again demands that the Resurrection Casket be opened, and when the Doctor refuses, sets Kevin on him again.

While the Doctor and Kevin dodge each other around the TARDIS, Sally appears in the airlock. Rose opens the inner airlock door and lets her in. The Doctor shakes hands with Jimm, then with Kevin, and then Jimm launches himself at McCavity, taking the medallion in the process. The Doctor uses his psychic paper to make McCavity think he still has the Black Shadow, and then Kevin goes after McCavity, who now has the Black Shadow in his pocket. McCavity opens the Resurrection Casket, and it is empty. As Kevin reaches for him, he falls into it and the lid closes.

Over by the airlock door, Sally has Rose by the throat. Rose tricks her and escapes, and then the Doctor holds her captive with the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor explains that Uncle Bobb was Robbie the cabin boy, Jimm is Hamlek Glint, and the model of the Lost Treasure is actually the real thing.

They put Sally in an escape pod, but she tries to catch them and manages to get herself killed. Jimm gives Kevin the medallion, which sets him free. They open the Resurrection Casket, and find a baby Drel McCavity. Uncle Bobb finds Jimm before he gets back to Starfall, and the Doctor and Rose leave in the TARDIS before the zeg can cause problems for them again.

Continuity
The Doctor mentions that something might be the origin of the genie myth, but he doesn't know for sure. This places the story before the book The Stone Rose, where the origin of the genie myth is discovered.
Kronkburgers (from "The Long Game") and a banana (from "The Doctor Dances" and "The Girl in the Fireplace") make an appearance.
The 'fighting hand' reference is to "The Christmas Invasion".

References to popular culture

Elvis (who is also mentioned in "The Christmas Invasion", "The Idiot's Lantern" and "42") is the name of one of the robots.
The story is a loose science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island, with the Doctor taking the role of Dr Livesey, and Rose sharing the Jim Hawkins part with a young boy named Jimm.

Audio book
An abridged audio book version of The Resurrection Casket read by David Tennant was released in July 2006 by BBC Audiobooks (.) Also included was an interview with the author by David Darlington.

A promotional version, released without music and in a paper sleeve, was included free in the Radio Times (April 22–29, 2008).

See also

Whoniverse

External links

The Cloister Library - The Resurrection Casket

2006 British novels
2006 science fiction novels
Tenth Doctor novels
Novels by Justin Richards
Treasure Island
Novels set on fictional planets

The Resurrection Casket


The ultraviolet catastrophe is the name given to a conflict between theory and the observation in classical physics.

An ideal blackbody at thermal equilibrium emits radiation in all frequency ranges. It emits more energy as the frequency increases. By calculating the total amount of radiated energy, it can be shown that a blackbody would release an infinite amount of energy. This contradicted the principles of conservation of energy and showed a new model was needed for the behaviour of blackbodies.

This happened around the end of the nineteenth century. It was one of the things that led to the invention of quantum mechanics. Theorists like Max Planck solved the problem with the quantum theory in which energy leaves the body in distinct packets called quanta rather than in continuous waves. The quantum theory accurately predicted the energy of the radiation that is observed.

Physics

Ultraviolet catastrophe


Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is a 1999 American comedy spy movie. It was directed by Jay Roach and was produced by Jan Blenkin, John S. Lyons, Eric McLeod, Demi Moore, and Mike Myers. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was released on June 11, 1999. The title of the movie is a play on the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. It is the second movie in the Austin Powers series. It is the sequel to the 1997 movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. A sequel was released in 2002 titled Austin Powers in Goldmember.

The movie gained mixed reviews from critics and holds a 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie gained around US$310 million in worldwide ticket sales. The movie was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Makeup at the 72nd Academy Awards but it lost to Topsy-Turvy.

Plot
The setting is London, England. This is an action movie with comedy. Austin Powers (Mike Myers) is a British man trying to save the world from Dr. Evil (Mike Myers). He is a spy for the government but he finds it difficult to save the world from Dr. Evil.

Many characters use British English.

Cast
 Mike Myers as Austin Powers, Dr. Evil, Fat Bastard
 Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell
 Michael York as Basil Exposition
 Robert Wagner as Number 2
 Rob Lowe as Young Number 2
 Mindy Sterling as Frau Farbissina
 Seth Green as Scott Evil
 Verne Troyer as Mini-Me
 Elizabeth Hurley as Vanessa Kensington
 Gia Carides as Robin Spitz-Swallows
 Will Ferrell as Mustafa
 Oliver Muirhead as British Colonel
 Clint Howard as Johnson Ritter
 Kristen Johnston as Ivana Humpalot
 Jeff Garlin as Cyclops
 Michael McDonald as NATO Soldier
 Burt Bacharach as Himself
 Elvis Costello as Himself
 Jerry Springer as Himself (cameo)
 Steve Wilkos as Himself (cameo)
 Rebecca Romijn as Herself
 Woody Harrelson as Himself
 Charles Napier as Commander Gilmour
 Tim Robbins as The President
 Mitch Rouse as Himself (uncredited)
 Tony Jay as Voice of Narrator (uncredited)
 Willie Nelson as Himself

References

Other websites

1999 comedy movies

1990s sequel movies
1990s sex comedy movies
1990s spy movies
American parody movies
American sequel movies
American sex comedy movies
American spy movies
Austin Powers
English-language movies
Histrionic personality disorder in fiction
Movies set in London
Movies set in Seattle
Movies set in the 1960s
Movies set in the 1990s
Movies produced by Mike Myers
Screenplays by Michael McCullers
Screenplays by Mike Myers
Spy comedy movies
Time travel movies

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me


The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country.

Founded in 1982, the Gallery is named after Arthur M. Sackler, who donated approximately 1,000 objects and $4 million to the building of the museum. Located on the south side of the National Mall, and being physically connected to the Freer Gallery of Art, 96% of the museum is located underground below the Enid A. Haupt Garden.

In 2018 the gallery was the target of protesters accusing the Sackler family of being a key contributor to the opioid epidemic in the United States.

History

Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ōhira visited the Freer Gallery of Art in 1979. During his visit, he announced that Japan would donate $1 million to the Smithsonian in order to assist in the building of an annex to the Freer to display Asian art. That same year, the United States Senate approved the Smithsonian Institution's request for $500,000 to build museums for Asian and African art on June 6. In June, 1980, the Smithsonian removed the South Quadrangle Project from their fiscal plan. The project resurfaced in 1981, and on December 23 Congress approved $960,000 for the new complex. It was the first time that federal funds were contributed to a project as unrestricted.

In 1982, Arthur M. Sackler donated around 1,000 Asian artworks and objects to the Smithsonian Institution. The collection was valued at $50 million. Along with the object donation, Sackler also provided $4 million to build a facility to house the objects, thus founding the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The quadrangle construction began on June 22, 1982. An additional $36.5 million was appropriated to continue the project in October. Groundbreaking took place on June 21, 1983, with participation by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, then Vice President George H. W. Bush and Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley.  On February 21, 1984, Milo C. Beach was declared scholarly director of the Sackler Gallery.

The gallery opened on September 28, 1987. Arthur Sackler died four months before the opening. In honor of the quadrangle complex's opening, Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry declared the day "Smithsonian Institution Day." Starting in October, Milo C. Beach served as acting director of both the Sackler and the Freer. In November 1988, he became director of both.

In March 2002, scholar in Islamic art Julian Raby was appointed director of the combined galleries. In 2006, J. Keith Wilson became the assistant director and curator of Chinese art.

In January, 2012, the Sackler celebrated the 30th anniversary of its founding with a gift of $5 million from Sackler's widow.

Architecture

The Gallery is located in the Quadrangle Complex behind the Smithsonian Institution Castle. It shares the complex with the National Museum of African Art and the S. Dillon Ripley Center. The complex, which is 96% underground and covers , was designed by Jean Paul Carlhian, with the goal of connecting various underground buildings. Geometric forms, influenced by the Smithsonian Castle, the Arts and Industries Building and the Freer Gallery of Art, were used in the design, as was pink and gray granite representative of the color of those buildings. The Sackler Gallery is next to the Freer Gallery of Art. It is decorated with designs inspired by Islamic art. A  granite pavilion was built in the Enid A. Haupt Victorian Garden to serve as an entrance to the facility. A fountain, shaped like a diamond, is located on the third and lowest floor, which can be viewed from the two upper levels. Construction of a tunnel between the Freer and Sackler was begun in early 1987 and completed in 1989. The sections of the Gallery open to the public cover .

Gallery

Exhibitions

Exhibitions at the Gallery focus around Asian art and culture. In 1992, two exhibitions opened showcasing loaned and permanent collection objects: "Metalwork and Ceramics from Ancient Iran" and "Buddhist and Jain Sculpture from South Asia." Both exhibitions followed renovations. The following year, "Contemporary Porcelain from Japan," showcased 30 works by 30 Japanese artists, donated by the Japan Foundation. The first exhibition on Korean art took place in 1994, "Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor and Simplicity." An exhibition about scholarly research and provenance called "A Mughal Hunt" was held in 1994. It showcased the research behind newly acquired Mughal Empire paintings. That same year, "A Basketmaker of Rural Japan," was held. The exhibition showcased the work of Hiroshima Kazou and included works primarily on loan from the National Museum of Natural History.

In 1996, the Sackler hosted the oldest sculptures to be found in Western Asia. The sculptures, found in 1974 outside of Amman, Jordan, were sent to Washington, D.C., for research and conservation. The exhibition, "Preserving Ancient Statues From Jordan," exhibited eight pieces dating from 6500 to 7000 B.C. "King of the World: A Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle", in 1997, exhibited the "Padshahnama" Mughal manuscript owned by the British Royal Family.

The Shahnama was on display in early 2011 in an exhibition curated by Islamic curator Massumeh Farhad, titled "Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings." Photography was the focus of a fall 2011 exhibition focusing on a collection of photographs of Empress Dowager Cixi, taken by a diplomat's son, Yu Xunling. The photographs were acquired by the Smithsonian after Xunling's sister, Der Ling died in 1944 and a dealer sold the collection of 36 photographic plates. The Sackler exhibited only six objects in its December, 2011 exhibition "Ancient Iranian Ceramics." The exhibit showcased pieces that are some 3,000 years old.

In 2011, the Sackler indefinitely postponed an exhibition of artifacts from the Belitung shipwreck owing to possible collecting violations by the commercial organization which acquired the objects. The exhibition was originally planned by the government of Singapore, which bought the objects for $32 million from a treasure hunting company.

The Gallery has also curated and hosted exhibitions about the Mesopotamian art collection of the Louvre, the paintings of Chang Dai-chien, and photographs of orientalism and colonialism in India. Contemporary artists exhibited have included Hai Bo and Ai Weiwei.

The Gallery also has a number rotating/temporary exhibits, which include:
 Yoga: The Art of Transformation (ending January 26, 2014)
 Chigusa and the Art of Tea (opening February 22, 2014)
 Kiyochika: Master of the Night, an exhibition showcasing Japanese artist Kobayashi Kiyochika (opening March 29, 2014)
 An American in London: Whistler and the Thames, an exhibition showcasing the work of American artist James McNeill Whistler (opening May 3, 2014)

A full list of all past, current, and future exhibitions can be found on the Freer|Sackler exhibitions page.

Collections

Aside from Sackler's original donation of objects, the Gallery also holds other collections. General holdings at the Gallery include Chinese, Indian, Korean and Japanese paintings, photography, contemporary ceramics from China, 19th- and 20th-century Japanese prints, contemporary Japanese pottery, and other related Asian arts.

Sackler Collection

The founding collection, consisting of approximately 1,000 objects, was donated by gallery namesake, Arthur M. Sackler in 1987. The Sackler collection consists of ancient and contemporary pieces, ranging from Near Eastern metalware and ceramics, South and Southeast Asian sculpture, Chinese jade and bronze pieces, and Chinese lacquerware and paintings.

Vever Collection

In 1986 the Sackler acquired the Vever Collection, a collection of Persian and Islamic paintings and manuscripts collected by jeweler Henri Vever. Collected between 1900 and 1943, the Vever Collection features one of the finest groupings of Persian books. Upon acquisition, Glenn Lowry and Milo Beach were the first scholars in forty years to see the objects.

Conservation
The Department of Conservation and Scientific Research for both the Freer and Sackler Galleries was established as the first Smithsonian facility devoted to the use of scientific methods for the study of works of art and remains one of the few facilities in the United States that specializes in the conservation of Asian paintings.

Care of the collections began before the museums came into existence as Charles Lang Freer, the founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, hired Japanese painting restorers to care for his works and to prepare them for their eventual home as part of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1932, the Freer Gallery of Art hired a full-time Japanese restorer and established the East Asian Painting Conservation Studio. The Technical Laboratory, and the first use of scientific methods for the study of art at the Smithsonian Institution, started in 1951 when the chemist Rutherford J. Gettens moved from the Fogg Museum at Harvard University to the Freer. The East Asian Painting Conservation Studio and the Technical Laboratory merged in 1990 to form the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research.

Among the conservation projects that the Sackler Gallery has undertaken was a 2009 project where conservators used laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to explore the "fingerprints" of ancient Chinese gold objects from the Gallery.

Scholarship
The Sackler presents lectures and symposia to the public with the Freer has copublished the art historical journal Artibus Asiae with the Museum Rietberg in Zurich since 1991.

The Freer and Sackler, along with the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies in Kyoto, Japan, presents the Shimada Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of East Asian art.  The award was established in 1992 in honor of Professor Shimada Shujiro, by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and by The Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies in Kyoto, Japan. In addition, the Sackler is able to exchange objects with other institutions (which the adjacent Freer Gallery of Art is prohibited from).  Several fellowships are also available to support graduate students and visiting scholars, including the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Anne Van Biema Fellowship (Japanese Visual Arts), Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF) Fellowship (Persian art), Lunder Fellowship, J. S. Lee Memorial Fellowship (Chinese Art), Smithsonian Institution Fellowship, and the Freer Fellowship.

Outreach

The Sackler has hosted a variety of celebrations and ongoing events revolving around Asian art and culture. In 1989, the Gallery hosted its first series of events, a two-month-long celebration of Persian art and culture sponsored in collaboration with the Foundation for Iranian Studies. Musician Dariush Dolat-shahi performed and workshops, lectures and other performances took place. Events often coincide with the theme of exhibitions. In 2011, Azar Nafisi and Dick Davis discussed the role of women in the Shahnameh in conjunction with an exhibition on the 1,000-year-old Persian poem.

Initiatives

Together, alongside the Freer and the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Studies of Kyoto, the Sackler created the Shimada Prize. The biannual $10,000 prize awards scholars of East Asian art. In 2011, the Sackler and the Freer received a major gift from donor Jahangir Amuzegar. The gift created two endowments, one for a yearly celebration of the Persian holiday of Nowruz and another to build a collection of and celebrate contemporary Iranian art. It was the largest Persian focused gift to be given to the Sackler and Freer and one of the largest Asian art donations ever given to the Smithsonian.

References

Further reading
Lawton, Thomas. Asian Art in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery: The Inaugural Gift. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan (1987).
McClelland, David. "5,000 Years Of Chinese Jade: Featuring Selections From The National Museum Of History, Taiwan, And The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution." Library Journal 137.7 (2012): 81. Academic Search Complete. Web. May 11, 2012.

External links

Virtual tour of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery provided by Google Arts & Culture

National Mall
Members of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington
Art museums and galleries in Washington, D.C.
Asian-American culture in Washington, D.C.
Asian art museums in the United States
Smithsonian Institution museums
1987 establishments in Washington, D.C.
Art museums established in 1987
Museums of Ancient Near East in the United States
Sackler family
Southwest Federal Center

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery


Soest (pronounced ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the capital of the Soest district.

Geography
Soest is along the Hellweg road, about 50 kilometres east of Dortmund and about  west of Paderborn.

Neighbouring places
 Bad Sassendorf
 Ense
 Lippetal
 Möhnesee
 Werl
 Welver

History
Due to the fertile soil the area around Soest was used long before 836 when the village is first mentioned in the Dagobertsche Schenkung, although the origin of this document is historically unknown. But there is no doubt that Soest has been lived in for a long time; excavations in the last two decades have uncovered signs of people living in Soest more than 4000 years ago. In the 11th and 12th century Soest grew a lot, making it one of the biggest cities in Westphalia with some 10,000 citizens. It was also an important member of the Hanseatic League until 1609.

A self-confident Soest from 1444 to 1449 freed itself from the Bishop of Cologne, who controlled Westphalia (the so-called Soester Fehde). Being no longer capital of Westphalia, the city aligned itself with the Duke of Cleves. This was a Pyrrhic victory, however; the city had shown itself strong enough to defy the powerful Archbishop of Cologne, but lost much of its trade: the "freed" town was two-thirds surrounded by territories with other rulers. When the last Duke of Cleves died in 1609 that dukedom was taken by Brandenburg and after a short siege Soest was added into it. During and after the Thirty Years' War, Soest lossed a lot of people and influence; at the lowest point in 1756 it had only 3,600 citizens.

With the start of the Soest district in 1817 its influence slowly rose. However, the industrialization of the Ruhr area did not reach Soest, which continued to be a small city.

From about 1953 to 1971 there was a big garrison of Canadian soldiers and their families stationed at Soest (with the Canadian camps just east of the city in Bad Sassendorf) as well as Werl and Hemer-Iserlohn and Deilinghofen to the south west.  There were also many Belgian Kasernes in Soest itself.

From 1971-1993 the old Canadian properties, such as the Married Quarters along Hiddingser Weg, south of the B-1, were used by British military and families.  Upon the closing out of Belgian and British army facilities many of these military facilities either became used for civilian purposes or were not used again/destroyed. The old Married Quarters area was changed to civilian housing.  The old CANEX (formerly MLS) (the Canadian Army's food and clothing store for dependent families) was changed to a NAAFI under the British and was finally demolished in 2006.

St Patroclus's Cathedral
In 960, Bruno I, Archbishop of Cologne moved St Patroclus's relics from Troyes and buried them in 964 at St Patroclus's Cathedral in Soest, where he is still today honoured.

The Cathedral is a beautiful example of early medieval "Romanesque" architecture fashioned from the local greenish sandstone. Its big squared bell tower or steeple can be seen for many kilometers, rising up out of the city centre of the old city and a landmark of the Soester Boerde.

Coat of arms
The coat of arms shows a key, which is the symbol for Saint Peter, the patron of Cologne. The coat was not changed even after Soest no longer fell within the jurisdiction of Cologne.

Twin towns
        Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales
       Guérard, Seine-et-Marne, France
      Herzberg, Brandenburg, Germany
  Kampen, Overijssel, Netherlands
      Sárospatak, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Hungary
  Soest, Utrecht, Netherlands
       Strzelce Opolskie, Opole Voivodeship, Poland
       Visby, Gotland, Sweden

References

Other websites

 Official site
 Articles about "Aldegrever and the Protestant Reformation in Soest" / virtual exhibition "Iconoclastic Controversy and sensual pleasure - Heinrich Aldegrever"  with introductory texts and about 170 commented copperplate engravings

Towns in North Rhine-Westphalia
Soest (district)

Soest, Germany


The poetry of Abraham Lincoln has been an interesting source into Lincoln's psyche. In addition to two complete, narrative poems, Lincoln wrote several small verses throughout his life and possibly a poem in the form of a suicide note.

"My Childhood-Home I See Again"

In 1846, Lincoln completed the composition of one of his most serious poems, which dealt with his emotions upon visiting his childhood home. It is divided into two cantos. The first section was mailed to Lincoln's friend and fellow politician, Andrew Johnston, on April 18, 1846. The second was mailed on September 6, 1846.  On May 5, 1847, Johnston published both cantos in the Quincy Whig and titled it as "The Return." The first canto was dubbed "Part I – Reflection," and the second, "Part II – The Maniac."

"The Bear Hunt"

When Johnston asked permission to publish "My Childhood-Home I See Again," Lincoln offered to have the third canto published along with it. The third section was included in his February 25, 1847 letter. Johnston did not feel that the final canto fit with the rest of the poem so he did not publish it. The third section is known as a separate piece titled "The Bear Hunt."
A transcript of entire poem can be found here.

"The Suicide's Soliloquy"

One of the more interesting poems attributed to Lincoln is "The Suicide's Soliloquy." It was found in the August 25, 1838 issue of the Sangamo Journal  of Springfield, Illinois by Richard Lawrence Miller in 1997. After studying the text and concluding that the poem was composed by Lincoln, he announced his discovery in a 2004 newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Lincoln scholars are still split on the authenticity of the poem. The poem is in the form of a suicide note, written by a man about to kill himself on the banks of the Sangamo River.  Lincoln's well known depression gives some scholars cause to believe that he would write such a poem, even if he personally had no intentions to commit suicide. Miller states that the poem fits the meter, syntax, diction, and tone of Lincoln's other works.

Lincoln had expressed suicidal thoughts to his friend Joshua Speed on two separate occasions at the ages of twenty-six and thirty-one. Speed had told Lincoln's biographer, William Herndon, that Lincoln had published a poem in 1838. Going off information from Herndon's research, it was concluded that the poem was published in the summer of 1841, coinciding with the time of Lincoln's "fatal first of January" breakdown.

Short Verses

Around the time when Lincoln was fifteen or seventeen, he wrote a few short poems in his arithmetic book but they are not very substantial:

Abraham Lincoln is my nam[e]
And with my pen I wrote the same
I wrote in both hast and speed
and left it here for fools to read

After his compositions of 1846, Lincoln continued to write poetry. Such poems include the short piece dedicated to Linnie Haggard, daughter of the owner of a hotel where Lincoln stayed in Winchester, Illinois, dated September 30, 1858:

To Linnie—
A sweet plaintive song did I hear,
And I fancied that she was the singer—
May emotions as pure, as that song set a-stir
Be the worst that the future shall bring her.

References

External links

American poems
Poetry by Abraham Lincoln

Poetry of Abraham Lincoln


In cryptography, a product cipher is a popular type of stream ciphers that works by executing in sequence a number of simple transformations such as substitution, permutation, and modular arithmetic.

Product ciphers usually consist of iterations of several rounds of the same algorithm. Individual rounds themselves are not secure. However, it is hoped that a sufficiently long chain of rounds loads the cipher with sufficient confusion and diffusion properties to make it resistant to cryptanalysis.

A product cipher that uses only substitutions and permutations is called a SP-network. Feistel ciphers are another important class of product ciphers.

Cryptography

Product cipher


The apostrophe is a punctuation mark used in writing. It is a diacritic (a mark used with letters).

In English, it has two jobs:
 To show where one or more letters have been left out, as in the abbreviation (contraction) of do not to don't.
 To show the possessive case, as in the cat's whiskers.

Examples

Its versus it's
The most common grammatical mistake in written English is to put it's where its is correct.

Its: a possessive adjective and pronoun of the personal pronoun it.
The cat chased its tail. (correct)
The tyre lost it's grip. (wrong)

It's: a contraction of the verbal phrase it is or it has.
It's mine. (correct; check: It is mine)
It's been here. (correct; check: It has been here)
The cat chased it's tail. (wrong; cannot be expanded to it is)

The same applies to yours, theirs and ours because these are also possessive adjectives of personal pronouns.
The colour is ours.
That book is hers (or his).
Theirs was the responsibility.

Possession
Apostrophes are also used to show something belongs to someone (or something). Again, correct uses can be expanded:
 Mike's car. (correct; the car that belongs to Mike)
 The dog's ball. (correct; the ball that belongs to the dog)
Those dog's are large. (wrong; here "dogs" is a plural word)

The intrusive apostrophe
Comes in plurals which don't (do not) need it. Do not put an apostrophe in word ending in s, such as a plural. Put an apostrophe, or 's, at the end of the word instead.
Mr. Jones' hat or Mr. Jones's hat. (both correct)
Both of my parents' birthdays. (correct)
CD's and DVD's (wrong; not possessive. See "Plural" section below)
Apple's and pear's (wrong; not possessive)

Writing dialogue or titles
Apostrophes are also used when other words are shortened, as in slang:
Go get 'em tiger! or Li'l Bow Bow.
This is just a version of the abbreviation function.

Plural
To make a word that doesn't (does not) usually exist as a plural into a plural, an apostrophe is occasionally used. See these examples:
 How many A's did you get this year? Here it is wrong because it is not needed.
 The poll received many yes's and very few no's. Here it is sensible because without it the words 'yess' and 'nos' look quite peculiar. However, you may find 'yeses' and 'noes' are appropriate as plurals. General rule: if an apostrophe is not needed, do not use it.

References

Punctuation
Grammar

Apostrophe


EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the first electronic computers. Unlike the computer before it, the ENIAC, EDVAC operated in binary and was able to store programs.

Functionally, EDVAC was a binary serial computer with automatic addition, subtraction, multiplication, programmed division and automatic checking with a capacity of 1,000 44-bit words. EDVAC's average addition time was 864 microseconds and its average multiplication time was 2,900 microseconds.

By 1960, EDVAC was running over 20 hours a day with error-free run time averaging eight hours. EDVAC ran until 1961 when it was replaced by BRLESC. During its operational life it proved to be reliable and productive for its time.

Historical computers

EDVAC


J.C. Lodge, (born June Carol Lodge, 1 December 1958, London, England), is a British-Jamaican reggae singer, fine artist and teacher. Her breakthrough hit "Someone Loves You, Honey" became the best-selling single of 1982 in the Netherlands. Lodge is also an accomplished painter, having exhibited in Kingston art galleries, and has acted in several theatre productions.

Music career
British born to a Jamaican father and British mother, J.C. Lodge was taken to Jamaica as a child. There, the Beatles fan soon became immersed in R&B and reggae, and sang along to everything she heard.

Toward the end of high school, a relationship with Errol O'Meally led her further along her music path. He was a budding songwriter, and used her voice to present some of his material to Joe Gibbs' Recording Studio. Both the songs and the singer were well received, and J.C. was asked to record Charley Pride's hit "Someone Loves You, Honey" in 1980. The reggae version of the country and western tune topped the Jamaican charts, and earned the singer gold and platinum discs in the Netherlands. In fact, it was the No. 1 top-selling single of 1982 over there. While the record was a big hit, it bankrupted Gibbs as he had failed to pay royalties to the songwriter. An album of the same name, featuring the deejay talents of Prince Mohamed was released in 1982.

Lodge followed this with 1985's Revealed album, before signing to Gussie Clarke's Music Works label, and releasing I Believe in You and Selfish Lover albums. "Telephone Love", recorded for Clarke in 1988, was the first dancehall reggae track to cross over in the R&B and hip-hop markets in the United States, topping the urban charts in New York City and other cities, and earning her a deal with the Warner Bros.-owned Tommy Boy label, although the association would be limited to the Tropic of Love album and "Home is Where the Hurt Is" single, which gave her her highest US chart placing, reaching number 45 in the R&B chart.

Lodge's albums mostly consisted of reggae, but some with R&B and pop material, too, usually written by O'Meally or J.C.. Producers like Joe Gibbs, Willie Lindo, Gussie Clarke, Errol O'Meally and Neil Fraser (a.k.a. Mad Professor), created product which garnered for J.C. several hits and prestigious awards across the world.

Lodge's other songs also include "More Than I Can Say" and "Make It Up." She sang a duet with Tiger on "Love Me, Baby" and with Shabba Ranks on "Telephone Love."

In 2001, she returned to her native England, and recorded Reggae Country for Jet Star, an album of covers of American country songs. She studied for a teaching degree and combined work as a schoolteacher with her music career.

Sing 'n' Learn
J.C. Lodge has been inspired since the birth of her daughter in 1994, to write original children's songs. She released two cassette albums called "Sing 'n' Learn". Ranging from simple counting and spelling for the littlest ones to manners and environmental awareness for pre-teens, Lodge created a variety of rhythms and styles to appeal to kids everywhere. These cassettes were so well received in Jamaica that the Ministry of Education ordered a copy for every Basic School on the island.

In 2000, Lodge was invited by Jamaican National Broadcasting Association TVJ to produce a 13-part children's television series, based on the cassette albums. A critically acclaimed and popular success, the show got awarded by the Press Association of Jamaica and also the Caribbean Broadcasting Union.

Discography

Albums
 Someone Loves You Honey (1982) (Netherlands No. 5) Ariola/BMG Records
 Revealed (1985) RAS
 I Believe in You (1987) Greensleeves
 Selfish Lover (1990) VP
 Home is Where The Hurt Is (1991)
 Tropic of Love (1992) Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. Records
 To the Max (1993) RAS/Sanctuary
 Special Request (1995) RAS/Sanctuary
 Love for All Seasons (1996) Ariwa
 RAS Portraits: J.C. Lodge (1997) RAS/Sanctuary (compilation)
 Let Love Inside (2001) Mercury/IDJMG/Universal Records
 Reggae Country (2002) Jet Star
 Reggae Country 2 (2003) Jet Star
 This Is Crucial Reggae (2004) RAS/Sanctuary (compilation)
 Storybook revisited – Telephone Love (2021)

Singles (selection)
 "Someone Loves You Honey" (1982) (Belgium No. 1 / Germany No. 25 / Netherlands No. 1 / Netherlands No. 1 end of the year chart)
 "More Than I Can Say" (1982) (Belgium No. 10 / Germany No. 72 / Netherlands No. 6)
 "Don't Stop Me" (1982)
 "Kiss and Say Goodbye" (1984)
 "Give My Husband a Message" (1985)
 "Telephone Love" (1988) (USA R&B No. 95) – Shabba Ranks featuring J.C. Lodge
 "Home Is Where the Hurt Is" (1991) (USA R&B No. 45)
 "Come Again" (1992)
 "Love Transfusion" (2012)
 "Comfort Zone" (2013)

References

External links

 Dutch Top 100 – End of Year List 1982
 official website Sing 'n' Learn
 J.C. Lodge at Discogs
 June Lodge at Discogs

1958 births
Living people
20th-century Black British women singers
British reggae musicians
20th-century Jamaican women singers
Jamaican reggae singers
Tommy Boy Records artists
Mercury Records artists
21st-century Black British women singers
VP Records artists
Greensleeves Records artists

J.C. Lodge


Passenger name record is the name for a set of data in a database, which contains the path a passenger travelling with one or more airlines takes. In some cases, groups of people travelling together are stored in the same passenger name record. Passenger details often contain more information than that which is strictly necessary. Additional information stored includes the gender of the passenger, if the passenger is part of a frequent flyer programme, details about the ticket, or if the passenger has special meal requirements - for example vegetarian.

International PNR Sharing Agreements

European Union to United States
United States–European Union Agreement on Passenger Name Records.

European Union to Australia
On January 16, 2004, the Article 29 Working Party released their Opinion 1/2004 (WP85) on the level of PNR protection ensured in Australia for the transmission of Passenger Name Record data from airlines.
Customs applies a general policy of non retention for these data. For those 0.05% to 0.1% of passengers who are referred to Customs for further evaluation, the airline PNR data are temporarily retained, but not stored, pending resolution of the border evaluation. After resolution, their PNR data are erased from the PC of the Customs PAU officer concerned and are not entered into Australian databases.

In 2010 the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security was split in two.  The resulting bodies were the Directorate-General for Justice (European Commission) and the Directorate-General for Home Affairs (European Commission).

On the 4th of May 2011, Stefano Manservisi, Director-General at the Directorate-General for Home Affairs (European Commission) wrote to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) with regards to a PNR sharing agreement with Australia, a close ally of the US and signatory to the UKUSA Agreement on signals intelligence.

The EDPS responded on the 5th of May in Letter 0420 D845:
I am writing to you in reply to your letter of 4 May concerning the two draft Proposals for Council Decisions on (i) the conclusion and (ii) the signature of the Agreement between the European Union and Australia on the processing and transfer of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data by air carriers to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service.
We understand that the consultation of the EDPS takes place in the context of a fast track procedure. However, we regret that the time available for us to analyse the Proposal is reduced to a single day. Such a deadline precludes the EDPS from being able to exercise its competences in an appropriate way, even in the context of a file which we have been closely following since 2007.

European Union to Canada
The Article 29 Working Party document Opinion 1/2005 on the level of protection ensured in Canada for the transmission of Passenger Name Record and Advance Passenger Information from airlines (WP 103), 19 January 2005, offers information on the nature of PNR agreements with Canada.

India
In India PNR is used by Indian Railway as Passenger Name Record Usually Travelers need it to check their confirmation of their seats. It is a 10 Digit Number which has to be entered on website for checking PNR Status.

Related pages
 Passenger manifest

References

Transport
Databases

Passenger name record


Thomas de Vallgornera (born in Catalonia about 1595; died 15 September 1665) was a Spanish Dominican theologian and ascetical writer.

Life
He was a member of the convent of Barcelona, and for some time, while Catalonia was subject to the French, was its vicar-general, about 1642.

Works
His principal work is a mystical theology first published at Barcelona in 1662 under the title Mystica theologia D. Thomae, utriusque theologiae scolasticae et mysticae principis, etc.

Three years later, 1665, a new and augmented edition appeared. The second edition exceeded the first by eighty-five pages. The work having become rare and difficult to obtain, a new edition was brought out by the Dominican Father Berthier at Turin, 1890. It contains the text of the original edition of 1662 in the body of the work, and the editions which appeared in the edition of 1665 in the form of added notes are given in an appendix.

The doctrine of the book is the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, of which the author writes in his prologue:

"The mystical doctrine of St. Thomas is of such great authority, precisely because it is founded on Scholastic doctrine, that it can scarcely be expressed in words. That mystic doctrine which is not repugnant to the principles of scholastic doctrine has a firm foundation, and therefore readers who study mystical theology in St. Thomas find it firm and well-established; on the contrary, those who read it in other books which treat of mystical matters alone, without any teacher or guide, under the appearance of devotion in somewhat severe words, absorb material for errors."

Besides his Mystical Theology Vallgornera is the author of a book on the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, De Rosario B. Marix Virginis, which appeared at Barcelona about 1662. It consists of pious meditations.

External links
Catholic Encyclopedia article

1665 deaths
Spanish Dominicans
17th-century Spanish Roman Catholic theologians
Year of birth uncertain

Thomas de Vallgornera


Pre-production is the time before making a movie, play, or other performance when all the things that will be needed to make it are prepared.

In the movie industry, pre-production usually only starts when the script is ready, the studio has agreed to make it and money has been made available.  By this time, a project will almost always have a movie, a producer, cast members and a production team.

Movie production

Pre-production


Malcolm Purcell McLean (November 14, 1913 – May 25, 2001) was an American businessman who invented the modern intermodal shipping container, which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century. Containerization led to a significant reduction in the cost of freight transportation by eliminating the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, and also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft, and cut inventory costs by shortening transit time. Containerization is a major driver of globalization.

Early life
McLean was born in Maxton, North Carolina in 1913. His first name was originally spelled Malcolm, though he used Malcom later in life.

In 1935, when he finished high school at Winston-Salem, his family did not have enough money  to send him to college, but there was enough for Malcolm to buy a used truck.

The same year, McLean, his sister, Clara, and his brother, Jim, founded McLean Trucking Co. Based in Red Springs, North Carolina, McLean Trucking started hauling empty tobacco barrels, with Malcolm as one of the drivers.

Containerization
The idea of transporting trucks on ships was put into practice before World War II. In 1926, regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d'Or,  by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway began. For transporting passengers' baggage, four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and "CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL" in France.

In the early 1950s, McLean decided to use the containers commercially. By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company's trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York. It soon became apparent that  "trailerships", as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. The original concept was modified into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or "box" ship. At the time, U.S. regulations would not allow a trucking company to own a shipping line.

McLean secured a bank loan for $22 million and, in January 1956, bought two World War II T-2 tankers, which he converted to carry containers on and under deck. McLean oversaw the construction of wooden shelter decks, known as Mechano decking. This was a common practice in World War II for the carriage of oversized cargo, such as aircraft.  It took several months to refit the ships, construct containers to carry on and below the vessels' decks and design trailer chassis to allow removable containers.

On April 26, 1956, with 100 invited dignitaries on hand, one of the converted tankers, the SS Ideal-X (informally dubbed the "SS Maxton" after McLean's hometown in North Carolina), was loaded and sailed from  the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, New Jersey, for the Port of Houston, Texas, carrying 58  Trailer Vans, later called containers, along with a regular load of liquid tank cargo.  As the Ideal-X left the Port of Newark, Freddy Fields, a top official of the International Longshoremen's Association, was asked what he thought of the newly fitted container ship.  Fields replied, "I'd like to sink that son of a bitch."  McLean flew to Houston to be on hand when the ship safely docked.

In 1956, most cargoes were loaded and unloaded by hand by longshore workers.  Hand-loading a ship cost $5.86 a ton at that time.  Using containers, it cost only 16 cents a ton to load a ship, 36-fold savings. Containerization also greatly reduced the time to load and unload ships.  McLean knew "A ship earns money only when she's at sea", and based his business on that efficiency.

In April 1957, the first container ship, the Gateway City, began regular service between New York, Florida, and Texas. During the summer of 1958 McLean Industries, still using the name Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation, inaugurated container service between the U.S. mainland and San Juan, Puerto Rico with the vessel Fairland. The name was officially changed from Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corporation to Sea-Land Service, Inc. in April 1960. McLean's operation was profitable by 1961 and he kept adding routes and buying bigger ships.

In August 1963, McLean opened a new  port facility in Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal to handle even more container traffic.  The development of the container market was slow until the late 1960s. Many ports did not have the cranes to lift containers on and off ships, and change was slow in an industry steeped in tradition.  Moreover, unions resisted an idea that threatened their livelihood.

In April 1966, Sea-Land commenced service between New York and Rotterdam, Netherlands; Bremen, Germany; and Grangemouth, Scotland.

In 1967, Sea-Land was invited by the U.S. government to start a container service to South Vietnam. The service to Vietnam produced 40% of the company's revenue in 1968/69.

In late 1968, commercial container ship service was inaugurated from the Far East to the United States. This service was expanded to Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1969, and to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines in 1971.

To achieve reductions in labor and dock servicing time, McLean followed Roy Fruehauf's lead and became vigilant about standardization. His efforts to increase efficiency resulted in standardized container designs that were awarded patent protection. McLean made his patents available by issuing a royalty-free lease to the International Organization for Standardization.

By the end of the 1960s, Sea-Land Industries had 27,000 trailer-type containers, manufactured by Fruehauf, 36 trailer ships and access to over 30 port cities.

As the advantages to McLean's container system became apparent, competitors quickly adapted. They built bigger ships, larger gantry cranes and more sophisticated containers. Sea-Land needed cash to stay competitive.  McLean turned to Reynolds Tobacco Company, a company he knew from his trucking company days when his trucks transported Reynolds cigarettes across the United States.  In January 1969, Reynolds agreed to buy Sea-Land for $530 million in cash and stock.  McLean made $160 million personally and got a seat on the company's board.  To carry out the purchase, Reynolds formed a holding company, named R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., which bought Sea-Land in May 1969.  That same year, Sea-Land ordered five of the largest, fastest container ships in the world - SL-7 class vessels.

Under Reynolds, Sea-Land's profits were intermittent.  By the end of 1974, Reynolds had put more than $1 billion into Sea-Land, building huge terminals in New Jersey and Hong Kong and adding to its fleet of container ships.

Sea-Land's biggest expense was fuel, so in 1970, RJR bought the American Independent Oil Co., better known as Aminoil, for $56 million.  RJR put millions into oil exploration, trying to get Aminoil large enough to compete in the world exploration market.

In 1974, R.J. Reynolds Industries had its best year. Sea-Land's earnings increased nearly 10 times, to $145 million. Aminoil's earnings soared to $86.3 million.  Dun & Bradstreet, the financial-ratings firm, named RJR one of its five best-managed companies in America.  But in 1975, Sea-Land's earnings dropped sharply, along with Aminoil's.  McLean relinquished his Reynolds board seat in 1977 and cut ties with the company.

In June 1984, R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc. spun off Sea-Land Corporation to shareholders, as an independent, publicly held company, with stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Sea-Land achieved the highest revenues and earnings in its 28-year history.

In September 1986, Sea-Land Corporation merged with CSA Acquisition Corp., a subsidiary of CSX Corporation. Sea-Land Corporation common stock was exchanged for $28 per share, cash.

Sea-Land's international services were sold to Maersk in 1999, and the combined company was named Maersk Sealand, which, in 2006, became known simply as Maersk Line.

The former Sea-Land's domestic services was operated until 2015 as Horizon Lines, which accounted for approximately 36% of the total U.S. marine container shipments between the continental U.S. and the markets of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and to Guam. The company was headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2015 the company was acquired by Matson Navigation Company.

Subsequent business ventures
In 1968 McLean financed a real estate project in Waveland, Mississippi that has become Diamondhead, Mississippi.

In 1971, the Pinehurst Resort property in Pinehurst, North Carolina was sold to Diamondhead Corporation, a land development company headquartered in a Mountainside, New Jersey and owned by McLean. The venerable old resort which had seen virtually no noticeable changes in its 75 years before its sale became the center of controversy. Finally, in 1982, Pinehurst became the property of Diamondhead's major lenders, who formed a NC corporation called Resort Assets Corporation. With their takeover, a more viable effort was then made to work in concert with Pinehurst village officials to restore the overall community.

In 1978, McLean purchased United States Lines. There, he built a fleet of 4,400-TEU container ships that were the largest afloat at the time. The ships, operating in round-the-world service, were designed in the aftermath of the 1970s oil shortages and were fuel-efficient but slow, and therefore not well-adapted to compete in the subsequent period of cheap oil. USL went bankrupt in 1986.  McLean took very personally the criticism directed against him after the collapse of USL and the resulting loss of many jobs associated with and dependent on USL.

In 1982, McLean made the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list with a net worth of $400 million, however, a few years later, having gambled on rising oil prices that failed to materialize, McLean had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing debt of $1.3 billion.

In 1991, at 78, McLean founded Trailer Bridge, Inc., which operates between the US mainland (Jacksonville, Florida), Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

McLean also developed non-maritime inventions, including a means of lifting a patient from a stretcher onto a hospital bed.

Death
McLean died at his home in New York City on May 25, 2001, age 87, of heart failure.  His death prompted Norman Y. Mineta to make the following statement:

In an editorial shortly after his death, Baltimore Sun stated that "he ranks next to Robert Fulton as the greatest revolutionary in the history of maritime trade." Forbes Magazine called McLean "one of the few men who changed the world."

On the morning of McLean's funeral, container ships around the world blew their whistles in his honor.

Honors
Fortune inducted McLean into its Business Hall of Fame in 1982.  In 1995, American Heritage named him one of the ten outstanding innovators of the past 40 years. In 2000, he was named Man of the Century by the International Maritime Hall of Fame.

McLean was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1982.

In 2000, McLean received an honorary degree from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

McLean is the only person to found three companies that were later listed on the New York Stock Exchange (plus two others on the NASDAQ).

Trailer Bridge, Inc., which McLean founded in 1992, annually awards the Malcom P. McLean Innovative Spirit Award.  The annual McLean Award recognizes an outstanding graduating student at George Mason University, selected by professors.

McLean was inducted into the North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame in 2006.

Notes and references
 Footnotes

 References
Marc Levinson. (2016, 2nd ed.). - The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. - Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Marc Levinson. (2020). Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas.  Princeton University Press.
Brian J. Cudahy. (2006). - Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World. - Fordham University Press
Frank Broeze. (2002). - "The Globalization of the Oceans: Containerization from the 1950s to the Present". - International Maritime Economic History Association.
The Container Revolution at sname.org

External links
Photo of Ideal-X, the first container ship
 Ideal-X and McLean

.
"The Box That Built the Modern World: How shipping containers made distance irrelevant." By Andrew Curry, July 25, 2013, Nautilus

1913 births
2001 deaths
People from Maxton, North Carolina
American businesspeople in shipping
20th-century American inventors
20th-century American businesspeople
Businesspeople from North Carolina

Malcom McLean


Rifling consists of spiral grooves cut into the inside of a barrel of a gun. It causes the bullet or projectile to spin as it flies through the air. This greatly improves the accuracy of the bullet over longer distances. The first muskets to use this technology were called rifles. Barrels are rifled using a left or right twist. The number of turns per inch is called the "twist rate". These are expressed as a ratio. For example, a 1:7 twist means the bullet will turn once for each seven inches of barrel length. As a general rule, the heavier the bullet, the higher the twist rate.

History
Gaspard Kollner, a 15th century gunmaker in Vienna, is thought by many to have invented rifling. Others think it was Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg who invented rifling in about 1520. At about that same time some crossbows fired a bolt (short heavy arrow) through a tube with spiral grooving. This gave the bolt more stability in flight. Whether these were used before rifling in gun barrels is not certain.

The "hand cannon" was first used in China in 1288. From this early beginning and a number of different guns, the smoothbore  Musket was in use in Europe by the 15th century. While it could not fire and reload as fast as an archer and could not be reloaded on horseback, it could penetrate armor. Its greatest advantage over the bow was that anyone could learn to fire a musket in a very short period of time. It took much longer to properly train an archer. The British army used the musket along with pikemen until about 1705 when the pikes were abandoned. In 1722 the army adopted a standard musket called the Brown Bess and continued to use it until about the 1830s. Muskets used a round cast ball that was smaller in diameter than the gun barrel. As a consequence, when the musket was fired, the ball bounced along the inside the barrel. When it exited the barrel it could take a variety of paths making the musket inaccurate. So soldiers were massed together very closely and fired in volly (all at the same time). This sent bullets flying generally in the direction of the enemy on the theory that at least some of the bullets would hit some of the soldiers. The smoke from repeated vollies prevented soldiers from seeing what they were shooting at. In the heat of battle, soldiers who wanted reload and fire faster sometimes omitted ramming the bullet and powder into the barrel with the ramrod. Instead, they would try to seat the ball by sharply hitting the butt of the musket on the ground. This reduced the effectiveness even more. Sometimes the bullet would do little more than dribble out of the barrel and travel only a short distance.

The use of rifled muskets called rifles, changed this. During the American Revolutionary War Americans used muskets. But they also had marksmen who used their Kentucky rifles. The longer barrel was rifled for accuracy at a long range. American riflemen began targeting British officers in battle instead of just individual soldiers. Without their officers giving them every command, the British soldiers could not function as a unit. The British command despised the tactic calling it "unsportsmanlike". But the Americans continued the practice up to the end of the war.

In 1849, a French army officer, Claude-Étienne Minié, invented a bullet with a hollow base named for him called the Minié ball. When fired, the bullet expanded to fit the rifling inside the gun barrel. This gave it even greater accuracy over a longer distance. The British used it in the Crimean War against Russian forces with tremendous success. At the time of the American Civil War, both the Union and the Confederate armies were using smoothbore muskets out of necessity. But soon rifled muskets using the Minié ball replaced the smoothbore muskets. The effects were to devastate the opposing army at much longer distances.

Rifling process

Most firearms produced today use a rifled barrel. There are basically three machining processes used to produce rifled barrels.
 Broach rifling - Uses a hardened steel broach that has several cutting rings. Each cutting ring is slightly larger and cuts the grooves progressively deeper. The gun barrel material ridges that are left after rifling are called lands.

 Button Rifling - (most commonly used) Pushes a hardened steel button into the unrifled barrel of a gun. The rifling grooves are cut by very high pressure that also polishes the inside of the barrel.

 Hammer Forged Rifling - This is used to create a type of rifling called "polygonal rifling". A mandrel is inserted into the barrel blank. Then the outside of the barrel is hammered until it becomes smaller and forms the rifling around the mandrel. The mandrel is then removed leaving a rifled barrel. The final step is to finish the outside of the barrel removing any hammer marks.

References

Other websites
 History of the Gun Part-7: Rifling; Ruger
 Rifling and twist rate explained; YouTube
 The First American Sharpshooters: YouTube

Firearms

Rifling


The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named "Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom () and $599 in the United States ().

History
The A1200 was launched a few months after the Amiga 600, using a similar slimline design that replaced the earlier Amiga 500 Plus and Amiga 500. Whereas the A600 used the 16-bit Motorola 68000 of earlier Amigas, the A1200 was built around the 32-bit Motorola 68EC020. Physically, the A1200 is an all-in-one design incorporating the CPU, keyboard, and disk drives (including the option of an internal 2.5" hard disk drive) in one physical unit. The A1200's hardware architecture was later used as the basis for Commodore's Amiga CD32 game console in 1993.

Initially, only 30,000 A1200s were available at the UK launch. During the first year of its life the system reportedly sold well, but Commodore ran into cash flow problems and filed for bankruptcy. Worldwide sales figures for the A1200 are unknown, but 95,000 systems were sold in Germany before Commodore's bankruptcy.

After Commodore's demise in 1994, the A1200 almost disappeared from the market but was later relaunched by Escom in 1995. The new Escom A1200 was priced at £399, and it came bundled with two games, seven applications and AmigaOS 3.1. It was initially criticized for being priced 150 pounds higher than the Commodore variant that had been sold for two years prior. It also came with a modified PC floppy disk drive that is incompatible with some Amiga software. The A1200 was finally discontinued in 1996 as the parent company folded.

The machine is reported to have sold 95,500 units in Germany.

Design improvements
The A1200 offers a number of advantages over earlier lower-budget Amiga models. It is a 32-bit design; the 68EC020 microprocessor is faster than the 68000 and has 2 MB of RAM as standard. The AGA chipset used in the A1200 is a significant improvement. AGA increases the color palette from 4096 colors to 16.8 million colors with up to 256 on-screen colors normally, and an improved HAM mode allowing 262,144 on-screen colors. The graphics hardware also features improved sprite capacity and faster graphics performance mainly due to faster video memory. Additionally, compared to the A600 the A1200 offers greater expansion possibilities.

Popularity and criticism
Although it is a significant upgrade, the A1200 did not sell as well as the 500 and proved to be Commodore's last lower-budget model before filing for bankruptcy in 1994. This is mainly because the 1200 failed to repeat the technological advantage over competitors like the first Amiga systems. The AGA chipset was something of a disappointment. Commodore had initially been working on a much-improved version of the original Amiga chipset, codenamed "AAA", but when development fell behind they rushed out the less-improved AGA, found on the A4000 and CD32 units. While AGA is not notably less capable than its competition, when compared to VGA and its emerging extensions, the Amiga no longer commanded the lead it had in earlier times. Additionally, the Amiga's custom chips cost more to produce than the increasingly ubiquitous commodity chips utilized in PCs, making the A1200 more expensive. Some industry commentators also felt that the 68020 microprocessor was already too outdated and that the new system should have been fitted with a 68030 to be competitive. Another issue was that the A1200 never supported high-density floppy disks without a special external drive or unreliable hacks, despite the (downgraded) PC HD drive in Escom models.

The gaming market, which had been a major factor in the A500's popularity, was becoming ever more competitive with the emergence of more advanced and less expensive fourth generation console gaming systems, and multimedia-enabled IBM PC compatibles. As a result, fewer retailers carried the A1200, especially in North America. The A1200 also received bad press for being incompatible with a number of Amiga 500 games. Further criticism was directed at the A1200's power supply, which is often inadequate in expanded systems, limiting upgrade options that had been popular with earlier Amiga models. Due to fewer sales and short lifetime, not as many games were produced for the A1200 than for the previous generations of Amiga computers.

The Amiga 1200 was developed and released during the waning days of the home computer market its manufacturer once dominated. While Commodore never released any official sales figures, Commodore Frankfurt gave a figure of 95,000 Amiga 1200 systems sold in Germany. Worldwide sales of the A1200 would have been less than 1 million units.

Technical information

Processor and RAM

The A1200 has a Motorola 68EC020 CPU. It is noteworthy that, like the 68000, the 68EC020 has a 24-bit address space, allowing for a theoretical maximum of 16 MB of memory. A stock A1200 has 2 MB of in-built "chip RAM". (Chip RAM cannot be expanded beyond 2 MB). Up to 8 MB of "fast RAM" can be added in the "trap-door" expansion slot, which approximately doubles (~2.26×) the speed of a stock machine. Various CPU upgrades featuring 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060 and even PowerPC processors were made available by third-party developers. Such upgrades typically utilize faster and greater capacity memory (up to 256 MB).

Graphics and sound
The A1200 shipped with Commodore's third-generation Amiga chipset, the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA), which features improved graphical abilities in comparison to the earlier generations.

However, the sound hardware remains identical to the design used in the Amiga 1000, though the AGA chipset allows higher sampling rates for sound playback, either by using a video mode with higher horizontal scan rate or by using the CPU to drive audio output directly.

Peripherals and expansion

Like earlier models, the A1200 features several Amiga-specific connectors including two DE9M ports for joysticks, mice, and light pens, a standard 25-pin RS-232 serial port and a 25-pin Centronics parallel port. As a result, the A1200 is compatible with many existing Amiga peripherals, such as external floppy disk drives, MIDI devices, sound samplers and video capture devices.

Like the Amiga 600, the A1200 features a PCMCIA Type II slot and an internal 44-pin ATA interface, both most commonly seen on laptop computers. The A1200 has internal housing for one 2.5" internal hard disk drive connecting to the ATA controller, though it is also possible to accommodate slim 3.5" drives with suitable cabling and fixings. The 16-bit PCMCIA Type II interface allows use of a number of compatible peripherals available for the laptop market, although only 16-bit 5V-capable PCMCIA cards are hardware compatible; newer 32-bit PC Card (CardBus) peripherals are incompatible, as well as 16-bit 3.3V-only cards. Mechanically, only Type I and Type II cards fit in the slot; thicker Type III cards will not fit (although they may connect if the A1200 is removed from its original case). The slot is also designed to prevent insertion of 3.3V-only cards. The PCMCIA implementation is almost identical to the one featured on the earlier A600. A number of Amiga peripherals were released by third-party developers for this connector including SRAM cards, CD-ROM controllers, SCSI controllers, network cards, sound samplers and video capture devices. Later, a number of compatible laptop peripherals have been made to operate with this port including serial modems, network cards, and CompactFlash adapters.

In addition the A1200 features a 32-bit CPU/RAM expansion slot and a unique feature, the so-called "clock port", which is a remnant of an abandoned design feature for addition of internal RAM and a real-time clock. Later, third-party developers put it to use by creating an array of expansions for the A1200, such as I/O cards, audio cards, and even a USB controller. Several CPU boards also have integrated SCSI controllers or even the option to add a graphics card.

One problematic factor for expanding the A1200 is the rather limited 23-watt power supply. Hard disks and even external floppy drives can stress it leading to system instability. The problem can be mitigated by replacing the stock power supply with a higher-rated supply, such as the one supplied with the A500.

The A1200 became a popular machine for "modding". If one is willing to forgo the A1200's form-fitting desktop case in exchange for further expansion options it is possible to rehouse the hardware into alternative casing. Several third-party developers built and supplied popular kits to "tower up" the A1200 and, in essence, convert it to a "big-box" Amiga. These expansion kits allow use of PC/AT keyboards, hard-disk bays, CD-ROM drives, and Zorro II, Zorro III, and PCI expansion slots. Such expansion slots make it possible to use devices not originally intended for the A1200, such as graphic, sound, and network cards.

The revision of the A1200 manufactured by Escom was fitted with PC-based "high-density" floppy-disk drives that had been downgraded to double-density drives. This resulted in some software incompatibility as PC-style drives do not supply a "ready" signal, which signals the presence of a floppy in the disk drive. Escom released a free circuit upgrade to correct this issue.

Operating system
The first incarnation of the A1200 shipped with Workbench 3.0 and Kickstart 3.0 (revision 39.106), which together provide standard single-user operating system functionality and support for the built-in hardware. The later models, from Escom and Amiga Technologies, shipped with Workbench 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 (AmigaOS 3.1), though earlier A1200 models can be upgraded by installing compatible Kickstart 3.1 ROM chips. The later AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 releases are software-only updates requiring Kickstart 3.1.

AmigaOS 4, a PowerPC-native release of the operating system, can be used with the A1200 provided Blizzard PPC PowerPC board is installed. Likewise, MorphOS, an alternative Amiga-compatible operating system, can be used with this hardware.

Variants of platform-independent operating systems such as Linux and BSD, and AROS, an open-source alternative Amiga-compatible operating system can also be used with the A1200.

Specifications

Bundled software
Some software officially bundled with the A1200 included Deluxe Paint IV AGA (a 2D image and animation editor) and Final Copy (a word processor). The Amiga Technologies/Escom version was bundled with applications such as Scala (multimedia authoring software) and Wordworth (a word processor), and games like Pinball Mania and Whizz.

In the UK the Amiga 1200 was available in a Desktop Dynamite bundle which contained Workbench 3.0, Deluxe Paint IV AGA, Wordworth and two games: Oscar and Dennis. There was also a Comic relief version that came bundled with the game Sleepwalker. This also came with Workbench 3.0.  Later packs included a cut-down version of the graphics software Photogenics.

See also

 Amiga models and variants

References

Amiga

68k-based computers

Amiga 1200


Killing a living thing is when someone or something ends that life and makes the living thing die. It means causing a death. When a human being kills another human being, it is called murder or homicide, such as manslaughter.

Pesticides and herbicides are poisons for killing bad wild small animals or plants, respectively.

When a soldier kills another in war, it is called "combat".  When the state kills a convict sentenced to capital punishment, it is called execution. When someone kills a  powerful person it is called assassination. When a person who wants to die kills himself it is suicide, or euthanasia if killed by another. When people kill other people to eat them, it is called cannibalism.

Related pages
 Death
 Murder
 Suicide
 Manslaughter

Violence
Death

Killing