Da Parbatia is a small village very close to west Tezpur, in the Indian State of Assam. In the village there are significant architectural remnants of an ancient temple of the 6th century overlying the ruins of another Shiva temple built of bricks during the Ahom period. Archaeological excavations done here in 1924 have unearthed a sixth-century antiquity in the form of a stone door frame with extensive carvings. The ruins of the temple built during the Ahom period are built over the ancient temple's foundations and are in the form of a stone paved layout plan of the sanctum sanctorum and a mandapa. This complex is under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India and its importance and notability is recorded under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958.

Archaeological excavations
The Dah Parvatiya village, located to the west of Tezpur, was subject to archaeological excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1924, and also during 1989–90. The excavations of many mounds have revealed structural features built of brick and stone; these are in various stages of decay. The excavations revealed many terracotta plaques in which human figures were shown in a sitting position.

History
The antiquities found at the Dah Parvatiya are inferred to have been from a temple complex built during the 5th or 6th century, prior to the Bhaskaravarman period. On the basis of the mouldings and its architectural style it is inferred that the terracotta plaques are definitely not later than the 6th century; the altered form of motifs noted in Assam confirms this assessment. This type of architectural feature, particularly in the stylistics of figurines of the ruins, is seen in North India, in the temples of the Bhumra and Nachha Kuthara which belonged to the Gupta period. Further confirmation of the dating is provided by the carvings of the river Goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, which are also akin to the Greek architecture with striking similarity to the Hellenistic art. The decorative elements of the ruins also have close similarity with those seen in the temples of Orissa.

During the Ahom period, a Shiva temple was built with bricks over the ruins of an ancient Gupta period temple. When the Ahom period temple was destroyed during the Assam Earthquake of 1897, the remains of Gupta period temple were exposed but only in the form of a door frame made of stone. Epigraphic evidence and ancient literature found here, supplemented by the ruins seen scattered around the area, also confirms that in the pre-Ahom period Gupta art extended into the early Medieval period.

Features
The excavated foundation of the temple of the Gupta period revealed the base of the garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum) in a roughly square form measuring  x , which is enclosed by a circumambulatory passage leading to a colonnaded hall of rectangular shape, which is interpreted as a mantapa or outdoor pavilion. To the east of the mantapa is a mukhamantapa (front hall), which is of smaller size. In the open space of the garbhagriha there is a "stone kunda" or Vedi (altar) of  x  size with a depth of . It is also inferred from the exposed ruins that the original temple was built of bricks (of size  x  x ) which were in use in the 5th century, with door frames and sill made of stone.

The door frame made of stone, which stands in front of a large block of stone with a square cavity that held the original linga, is the most important find here that has carvings which attest to the Gupta period art form.   The architectural depictions on this door frame are akin to the Gupta architectural features in Northern India, deciphered in the archaeological excavations done by Sir John Marshall.

Doorjambs

The door jambs or posts (the vertical part of the door frame), which measure  in height and  in width, have high relief carvings in their lower parts while the upper parts have four vertical bands or strips carved in different patterns. The human figures carved at the base of the door posts are of the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, which belong to the Gupta period art traditions, and also depict carvings of flying geese. This architectural depiction is stated to be the "finest and oldest specimen of sculptural art in Assam". The goddesses carved in an elegant standing posture are shown with divine halos over their heads with each figure holding a garland in its hands. This type of depiction of goddesses on the door frames was prevalent in the medieval temples. Many smaller figurines are also carved as if in attendance to the main goddess. On the right door post, there are two female attendants, one is in a standing posture holding up a chamara or an umbrella while the second attendant is shown on bent knees and holding a flat tray filled with flowers. The carvings on the right door post are better preserved than those on the left. On the left door post, the two figurines standing in attendance flanking the goddess are not distinct. Here, there is also a carving of a naga in a kneeling posture carved to the right of the halo of the goddess; to the left of this depiction there are carvings of two geese.

Vertical bands

The vertical strips in each of the upper part of the door posts extend up to the lintel.
The first strip, starting from the head of the naga or the nagi, is carved in the wavy pattern of a creeper and is filled with decorations of leaves pattern. The second band is like a lotus stem, out of which lotus leaves and different flowers emerge; the stem is supported at the base by two pygmy shaped figures. The third strip has embossed panels of human figures fronting ornamental leaves. This band is crowned by a vase with drooping decorative foliage. The vase is also decorated with a square shaped pilaster that terminates in a capital, which has a cruciform. The capital has carvings of a gana (attendant of Shiva). Decorative rosettees form the fourth strip.

Lintel
The lintel spanning over the door posts is  in length and  in breadth. The lintel is larger in size than the door-frame, extending a little on each side of the jambs. It is richly decorated with architectural carvings which are placed in a symmetrical form, similar to the architectural features seen in the fifth and sixth century temples in Pataliputra and Benares. Five Chaitya-windows (horse-shoe shaped) are carved in the front face of the lintel – three large and two small – with the figurine of a male with four arms carved in the extreme right window seated on a throne; two of its arms are damaged while one arm is seen holding Shiva's damaru. At the base of this throne there is a carving in the form of sea waves. The central window has a Shiva carving known as "Lakulisa", meaning Lord with the staff, a rope tied to its leg and is flanked by two mythical deities, called "suparna", anthropomorphic figures of a bird and man. Also seen in this window are two females figures. In another window is a depiction of man playing the flute, and with a hooded snake feature above his head. The window to the extreme right has carving of Surya, the Sun god, in a cross-legged posture holding a lotus flower. Two attendants are seen next to this figure, one is offering betel leaves (pan) while holding an ink pot in the other hand, and the second attendant is carrying a stick.

References

Bibliography

External links

Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts

Hindu temples in Assam
Archaeological sites in Assam
Tezpur
6th-century Hindu temples
Shiva temples
Vishnu temples

Dah Parvatiya


Budva () is a Montenegrin town on the Adriatic Sea, former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see. The coastal area around Budva, called the Budva riviera. It is the center of Montenegrin tourism, known for its well-preserved medieval walled city, sandy beaches and diverse nightlife. Budva is 2,500 years old, which makes it one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic coast. It has about 14,000 inhabitants.

Other websites

 Official website of the city of Budva

Cities in Montenegro
Municipalities of Montenegro

Budva


Dual specificity mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 2 is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MAP2K2 gene. It is more commonly known as MEK2, but has many alternative names including CFC4, MKK2, MAPKK2 and PRKMK2.

Function

The protein encoded by this gene is a dual specificity protein kinase that belongs to the MAP kinase kinase family. This kinase is known to play a critical role in mitogen growth factor signal transduction. It phosphorylates and thus activates MAPK1/ERK2 and MAPK3/ERK1.

The activation of this kinase itself is dependent on the Ser/Thr phosphorylation by MAP kinase kinase kinases.

The inhibition or degradation of this kinase is found to be involved in the pathogenesis of Yersinia and anthrax.

Interactions
MAP2K2 has been shown to interact with MAPK3 and ARAF.

References

Further reading

External links
  GeneReviews/NCBI/NIH/UW entry on Cardiofaciocutaneous Syndrome

EC 2.7.12

MAP2K2


Elijah Sandham (1875 – 7 May 1944)
was an English Independent Labour Party (ILP) politician from Lancashire. He sat in the House of Commons from 1929 to 1931 as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kirkdale division of Liverpool, and in 1934 he led the breakaway Independent Socialist Party.

Career
Sandham was elected in 1906 to Chorley Town Council, and remained active in the ILP, which at the time was affiliated to the Labour Party.

At the 1918 general election he unsuccessfully contested the Chorley division of Lancashire, and in 1924 he stood in Liverpool Kirkdale, where he lost by a wide margin to the sitting Conservative Party MP Sir John Pennefather, Bt. However, Pennefather retired from the Commons at the 1929 general election, when Sandham defeated the Conservative candidate Robert Rankin with a slim majority of 793 votes (2.6% of the total).

In Parliament
In Parliament, he took a radical socialist viewpoint. In April 1930, the Commons debated on the Unemployment Insurance Bill, in which the Minister of Labour Margaret Bondfield proposed to raise the borrowing limit of the Insurance Fund to cope with high unemployment. The Liberal MP Milner Gray had suggested that a permanent solution to the funding problem lay in tackling the unequal share of wealth going to the rentier class. Sandham replied that his only interest in the rentier class was to abolish them.

However, it was a contribution outside Parliament which brought Sandham to wider attention. On 28 July 1930, the Manchester Guardian newspaper reported a speech by in Manchester by Sandham in which he denounced Labour MPs. The report was read to the Commons on 28 July 1930 by the Conservative MP Earl Winterton, who asserted that these assertions amounted to a "gross libel upon honourable Members of this House and is a grave breach of its Privileges.
Sandham was not present, so debate was adjourned until the following day, when he explained that the speech had been made in response to the suspension of the Labour MP John Beckett. Sandham read to the House a longer extract from the speech, including the portion to which Winterton had objected:
When John Beckett touched the sacred symbol the other day, faces went white with horror. When J. H. Thomas took the initiative some time ago in handing over to the bankers the sacred reality of Parliamentary power, not a thrill of apprehension of regret stirred the conscience of these same custodians of democratic law and tradition. The sheer, stupid, tradition of this ghost-house has got most of the Members in its deadly grip. Labour Members can receive bribes to help pass doubtful Bills in the interests of private individuals. Labour Members can get stupidly drunk in this place. But none of these things are against the sacred traditions of the House. In fact, they are in keeping with them. It is known that Labour Members accepted money from moneylenders and other interests, and it is known that Labour Members of Parliament get drunk in the House. Our leaders see nothing wrong in that, or at any rate, such conduct is not bad enough to create a demand for their expulsion

The matter was referred to the Committee of Privileges,
whose report was issued on 30 July. The Committee found that "in making such allegations to a public meeting instead of from his place in the House of Commons the honourable member was guilty of a gross breach of privilege" and that "in stating that acceptance of bribes was in keeping with the traditions of this House he was guilty of a gross libel upon the House as a whole".
On 31 July the Commons debated the report, and voted by 304 to 13 that Sandham should be admonished by the Speaker.

After Parliament
At the next general election, in 1931, he lost his seat to Rankin, and did not stand for Parliament again.

Sandham had been chairman of the Lancashire division of the ILP, but after the ILP disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 1932 he became critical of the power which the Revolutionary Policy Committee held within the ILP. In 1934 he led the breakaway Independent Socialist Party (ISP). The ISP's support was concentrated in North-West England, although it had a small pocket of support in East Anglia, but it never gained a significant following and was wound up in the 1950s.

He died aged 68 on 7 May 1944, at Horncliffe, Blackpool.

References

External links

1875 births
1944 deaths
Independent Labour Party MPs
Independent Labour Party National Administrative Committee members
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
UK MPs 1929–1931
Councillors in Lancashire
Politics of Chorley
English socialists
People from Chorley

Elijah Sandham


Religulous () is a 2008 American documentary film written by and starring comedian Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles. The title of the film is a portmanteau derived from the words religious and ridiculous. The documentary
examines and challenges religion and religious belief.

Contents
A range of views on various world religions is explored as Bill Maher travels to numerous religious destinations including Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, interviewing believers from a variety of backgrounds and groups.  These include a former member of Jews for Jesus, Christians, Muslims, former Mormons, and Hasidic Jews. Maher travels to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London, where he "preaches" Scientology beliefs.

Maher also takes a tour around Creation Museum and the Holy Land Experience.

Cast

Bill Maher as himself
Francis Collins as himself
Jeremiah Cummings as himself
Pastor John Westcott as himself
Dean Hamer as himself
Ray Suarez as himself
Mark Pryor as himself
Father George Coyne as himself
Father Reginald Foster as himself
Andrew B. Newberg as himself
Dovid Weiss as himself
José Luis de Jesús Miranda as himself
Ken Ham as himself
Fatima Elatik as herself
Propa-Gandhi as himself
Geert Wilders as himself
Yehuda Etzion as himself

Production
Maher said he used a fake title A Spiritual Journey for the film to obtain interviews. Creationist Ken Ham of the group Answers in Genesis, who appeared in the film, was critical of what he called Maher's "deception" to obtain the interview.

The documentary was produced by Thousand Words and distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment. Originally slated for an international release date coinciding with the Christian Easter holiday 2008 (March 23), post-production delays resulting from a screenwriters guild strike pushed the release date back. The film was eventually released on October 3, 2008.

Reception

Box office
Religulous had an opening weekend take of $3.5 million from an early October 1 release in Los Angeles and New York City and also a limited 502-theater release, averaging $6,972 per theater. As a result, the film was ranked at #10 at the box office that weekend. Its per-screen receipts were almost three times those of a competing film to which it has been compared in the media, the politically conservative An American Carol, which edged out Religulous to finish at #9 over the same weekend, but had a per theater average of only $2,325. Only the #1 movie, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, at $9,020, had a higher per-screen average than Religulous.

For the second weekend, Religulous had a 35.5% drop in box office receipts and dropped to #13 with a gross of $2,200,000 at 568 theaters for a per screen average of $3,873.

Religulous grossed over $13 million after having a production budget of $2.5 million. , it is 27th among the highest grossing documentaries in the US and was the highest grossing documentary of 2008.

Critical response
Religulous received mixed to positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 69%, based on 154 reviews, with an average rating of 6.31/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Religulous is funny and offensive in equal measure, and aims less to change hearts and minds than to inspire conversation." On Metacritic the film has a score of 56 out of 100, based on 31 critics, "mixed or average reviews".

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a rating of three and a half out of four stars, and wrote: "I report faithfully that I laughed frequently. You may very well hate it, but at least you've been informed. Perhaps you could enjoy the material about other religions, and tune out when yours is being discussed. That's only human nature."

Robert W. Butler of The Kansas City Star gave the film a rating of three stars, and commented: "The film is one-sided, less a measured argument than a bunch of rants and barbed observations. But it's also very funny, which trumps everything else." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a rating of A−, and wrote: "The movie is funny as...well, hell." The Canadian Press said the movie "delivers a laugh-out-loud attack on the most sacred of cows."

Christie Lemire, of the Associated Press, wrote: "If you're an atheist or an agnostic, you'll be completely on board and happy to tag along with Maher as he travels the globe asking people about their faith — everywhere from Jerusalem to the Vatican to Amsterdam, where he finds not only the Cannabis Ministry but also a Muslim gay bar (with two people in it)." John Anderson of Newsday wrote: "much that's funny, insightful and thought-provoking. But it certainly doesn't give the religious a lot of slack."

The documentary received some negative reviews, with Rick McGinnis of Metro concluding that, "Maher is preaching to the choir with an undisguised dishonesty that only the true believers will forgive." James Berardinelli wrote, "If the subject of religion is as important to Maher as he claims during his end comments, then he should have followed those words with actions and made a movie that's more than a sum of inauthentic interviews, ranting attacks, and obvious observations. The choir may hum along with Maher but the rest of those watching this movie will be singing the blues." Nick Schager of Slant Magazine called it an "atheistic wannabe-dissection of modern faith."

In a review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden notes that when Maher "turns from evangelical Christianity to Judaism and Islam, its tone becomes uncertain and its rhythm choppy". Sam Greenspan argues that "Jewish people seemed to get handled with kid gloves" by Maher.

In his review, Stephen Holden also wrote that "the film has the same loose, on-the-road structure" as Larry Charles' previous film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and commented: "Much of Mr. Maher's film is extremely funny in a similarly irreverent, offhanded way." Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote: "those with a taste for irreverent humor and clear-eyed analysis will find it funny, enlightening and disturbing." Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter characterized the film as "An often hilarious but relentlessly shallow attack on religious fundamentalism by humorist Bill Maher".

Louis Peitzman of the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote that "It doesn't even matter that he goes out of his way to be offensive, as he's consistently funny enough to pull it off." Scott Indrisek wrote at Style.com that: "Religulous earns many of its laughs from skillful editing, with Maher's interviews jazzed up by video clips".

Ben Kenigsberg of Time Out New York gave the film a rating of three out of six stars, and wrote: "The worst scenes in Religulous are appalling for their methods; the best are appalling for their information."

Harry Forbes of Catholic News Service condemned the film, deeming it "morally offensive."

Accolades
The 3rd Annual Independent Investigative Group IIG Awards presented an award to Religulous recognizing the promotion of science and critical thinking in popular media on May 18, 2009.

DVD release
Lions Gate Entertainment released the film on DVD February 17, 2009. Special features on the DVD include a commentary with Bill Maher and director Larry Charles, deleted scenes, and extended Bill Maher monologues from around the world that were either edited down or not included in the film at all.

Possible sequel
On January 4, 2015, Maher tweeted a photo of himself and director Larry Charles with the caption: "Director Larry Charles on the Hawaii trip this year...was "Religulous II" discussed??", suggesting the possibility of a sequel.

See also
Jesus Camp
Marjoe
Religious satire
Kumaré

References

External links

2008 comedy films
2008 documentary films
Films with atheism-related themes
2008 films
2008 in religion
American documentary films
American satirical films
Religious comedy films
Religious satire films
Documentary films critical of Christianity
Works critical of Scientology
Films critical of religion
Films shot in California
Films shot in England
Films shot in Florida
Films shot in Israel
Films shot in New Jersey
Films shot in New York (state)
Films shot in North Carolina
Films shot in the Netherlands
Films about religion
Lionsgate films
Films directed by Larry Charles
Films with screenplays by Bill Maher
Documentary films about religion
2000s English-language films
2000s American films

Religulous


Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, Seigneur de Vauban, later Marquis de Vauban (baptised 15 May 163330 March 1707), commonly referred to as Vauban (), was a French military engineer and Marshal of France who worked under Louis XIV. He is generally considered the greatest engineer of his time, and one of the most important in European military history.

His principles for fortifications were widely used for nearly 100 years, while aspects of his offensive tactics remained in use until the mid-twentieth century. He viewed civilian infrastructure as closely connected to military effectiveness and worked on many of France's major ports, as well as projects like the Canal de la Bruche, which remain in use today. He founded the , whose curriculum was based on his publications on engineering design, strategy and training.

His economic tract, , used statistics in support of his arguments, making it a precursor of modern economics. Later destroyed by royal decree, it contained radical proposals for a more even distribution of the tax burden. His application of rational and scientific methods to problem-solving, whether engineering or social, anticipated an approach common in the Age of Enlightenment.

Perhaps the most enduring aspect of Vauban's legacy was his view of France as a geographical entity. His advocacy of giving up territory for a more coherent and defensible border was unusual for the period; the boundaries of the French state he proposed in the north and east have changed very little in the four centuries since.

Early life and education

Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban was born in May 1633, in Saint-Léger-de-Foucheret, renamed Saint-Léger-Vauban by Napoleon III in 1867, in the Yonne, now part of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. His parents, Urbain Le Prestre ( 1602–1652) and Edmée de Cormignolle (died c. 1651), were members of the minor nobility, from Vauban in Bazoches.

In 1570, his grandfather Jacques Le Prestre acquired Château de Bazoches, when he married Françoise de la Perrière, an illegitimate daughter of the Comte de Bazoches, who died intestate. The 30-year legal battle by the Le Prestre family to retain the property proved financially ruinous, forcing Urbain to become a forestry worker. He also designed gardens for the local gentry, including the owners of the Château de Ruère, where Vauban spent his early years.

His only sister, Charlotte (1638–1645?), died young, but he had many relatives; his cousin, Paul le Prestre (c. 1630 – 1703), was an army officer who supervised construction of Les Invalides. Three of Paul's sons served in the army, two of whom were killed in action in 1676 and 1677. The third, Antoine (1654–1731), became Vauban's assistant and later a lieutenant-general; in 1710, he was appointed Governor of Béthune for life, while he inherited Vauban's titles and the bulk of his lands.

Vauban's family was impacted by the domestic conflict and foreign wars, including the Huguenot rebellions of the 1620s, the 1635–1659 Franco-Spanish War, and 1648 to 1653 Fronde; his Catholic grandfather married a Protestant from La Rochelle, and served Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny, while two of his uncles died in the war with Spain.

Career

In 1643, at the age of ten, Vauban was sent to the Carmelite college in Semur-en-Auxois, where he was taught the basics of mathematics, science and geometry. His father's work was also relevant; the design of neo-classical gardens and fortifications were closely linked, since they both concerned managing space. It was common to combine these skills; John Armstrong (1674–1742), Marlborough's chief military engineer, laid out the lake and gardens at Blenheim Palace.

In 1650, Vauban joined the household of his local magnate, the Prince de Condé, where he met de Montal; a close neighbour from Nièvre, the two were colleagues for many years, and often worked together. During the 1650–1653 Fronde des nobles, Condé was arrested by the Regency Council, led by Louis XIV's mother Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin. After being released in 1652, he and his supporters, among them Vauban and de Montal, went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands and allied with the Spanish.

In early 1653, when Vauban worked on the defences of Sainte-Menehould, one of Condé's principal possessions, he was captured by a Royalist patrol and switched sides, serving in the force led by Louis Nicolas de Clerville that took Sainte-Menehould in November 1653. Clerville, later appointed Commissaire général des fortifications, employed him on siege operations and building fortifications. In 1655, Vauban was appointed Ingénieur du Roi or Royal Engineer, and by the time the war with Spain ended in 1659, he was known as a talented engineer of energy and courage.

Under the terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, Spain ceded much of French Flanders, and Vauban was put in charge of fortifying newly acquired towns such as Dunkirk. This pattern of French territorial gains, followed by fortification of new strongpoints, was followed in the 1667–1668 War of Devolution, 1672–1678 Franco-Dutch War and 1683-1684 War of the Reunions.

The first fortification Vauban designed was the 1673 siege of Maastricht, although he was subordinate to Louis, who ranked as the senior officer present, and thus took credit for its capture. Vauban was rewarded with a large sum of money, which he used to purchase the Château de Bazouches from his cousin in 1675.

Post-1673, French strategy in Flanders was based on a memorandum from Vauban to Louvois, Minister of War, setting out a proposed line of fortresses known as the Ceinture de fer, or iron belt (see Map). He was made Maréchal de camp in 1676, and succeeded Clerville as Commissaire general des fortifications in 1677.

During the Nine Years' War, he supervised the capture of Namur in 1692, the major French achievement of the war, while the 1697 siege of Ath is often considered his offensive masterpiece. He was rewarded with money, and made Comte de Vauban, a member of the Order of the Holy Spirit and Order of Saint Louis, and an Honorary Member of the French Academy of Sciences.

The numbers needed to conduct a siege, and prevent interference from opponents meant armies of the Nine Years' War often exceeded 100,000 men, sizes unsustainable for pre-industrial societies. It prompted a change in tactics, Marlborough arguing winning one battle was more beneficial than taking 12 fortresses. The armies of the War of the Spanish Succession averaged around 35,000, and siege warfare superseded by a greater emphasis on mobility.

In 1703, Vauban was promoted Maréchal de France, marking the end of his military career, although the Ceinture de fer proved its worth after the French defeat at Ramillies in 1706. Under pressure from superior forces on multiple fronts, France's northern border remained largely intact despite repeated efforts to break it. Capturing Lille cost the Allies 12,000 casualties and most of the 1708 campaigning season; the lack of progress between 1706 and 1712 enabled Louis to reach an acceptable deal at Utrecht in 1713, as opposed to the humiliating terms presented in 1707.

With more leisure time, Vauban developed a broader view of his role. His fortifications were designed for mutual support, so they required connecting roads, bridges and canals; garrisons needed to be fed, so he prepared maps showing the location of forges, forests and farms. Since these had to be paid for, he developed an interest in tax policy, and in 1707 published La Dîme royale, documenting the economic misery of the lower classes. His solution was a flat 10% tax on all agricultural and industrial output, and eliminating the exemptions which meant most of the nobility and clergy paid nothing. Although confiscated and destroyed by royal decree, the use of statistics to support his arguments "... establishes him as a founder of modern economics, and precursor of the Enlightenment's socially concerned intellectuals."

In the course of his career, Vauban supervised or designed the building of more than 300 separate fortifications,  and by his own estimate, supervised more than 40 sieges from 1653 to 1697.

Personal life and death

In 1660, Vauban married Jeanne d'Aunay d'Epiry (ca 1640–1705); they had two daughters, Charlotte (1661–1709) and Jeanne Françoise (1678–1713), as well as a short-lived infant son. He also had a long-term relationship with Marie-Antoinette de Puy-Montbrun, daughter of an exiled Huguenot officer, usually referred to as 'Mademoiselle de Villefranche.'

Vauban died in Paris on 30 March 1707; buried near his home in Bazoches, his grave was destroyed during the French Revolution. In 1808, Napoleon I ordered his heart reburied in Les Invalides, resting place for many of France's most famous soldiers.

Doctrines and legacy

Offensive doctrines; siege warfare

While his modern fame rests on the fortifications he built, Vauban's greatest innovations were in offensive operations, an approach he summarised as 'More powder, less blood.' Initially reliant on existing concepts, he later adapted these on lines set out in his memorandum of March 1672, Mémoire pour servir à l'instruction dans la conduite des sièges.

In this period, sieges became the dominant form of warfare; during the 1672–1678 Franco-Dutch War, three battles were fought in the Spanish Netherlands, of which only Seneffe was unrelated to a siege. Their importance was heightened by Louis XIV, who viewed them as low-risk opportunities for demonstrating his military skill and increasing his prestige; he was present at 20 of those conducted by Vauban.

The 'siege parallel' had been in development since the mid-16th century but Vauban brought the idea to practical fulfilment at Maastricht in 1673. Three parallel trenches were dug in front of the walls, the earth thus excavated being used to create embankments screening the attackers from defensive fire, while bringing them as close to the assault point as possible (see diagram). Artillery was moved into the trenches, allowing them to target the base of the walls at close range, with the defenders unable to depress their own guns enough to counter this; once a breach had been made, it was then stormed. This approach was used in offensive operations well into the 20th century.

However, Vauban adapted his approach to the situation, and did not use the siege parallel again until Valenciennes in 1677. Always willing to challenge accepted norms, at Valenciennes, he proposed assaulting the breach during the day, rather than at night as was normal practice. He argued this would reduce casualties by surprising the defenders, and allow better co-ordination among the assault force; he was supported by Louis, and the attack proved successful.

Vauban made several innovations in the use of siege artillery, including ricochet firing, and concentrating on specific parts of the fortifications, rather than targeting multiple targets. His Dutch rival Menno van Coehoorn employed a similar approach. While the 'Van Coehoorn method' sought to overwhelm defences with massive firepower, such as the Grand Battery of 200 guns at Namur in 1695, Vauban preferred a more gradual approach. Both had their supporters; Vauban argued his was less costly in terms of casualties, but it took more time, an important consideration in an age when far more soldiers died from disease than in combat.

Defensive doctrines; fortifications

It was accepted even the strongest fortifications would fall, given time; the process was so well understood by the 1690s, betting on the length of a siege became a popular craze. As few states could afford large standing armies, defenders needed time to mobilise; to provide this, fortresses were designed to absorb the attackers' energies, similar to the use of crumple zones in modern cars. The French defence of Namur in 1695 showed "how one could effectively win a campaign, by losing a fortress, but exhausting the besiegers."

As with the siege parallel, the strength of Vauban's defensive designs was his ability to synthesise and adapt the work of others to create a more powerful whole. His first works used the 'star-shape' or bastion fort design, also known as the trace Italienne, based on the designs of Antoine de Ville (1596–1656) and Blaise Pagan (1603–1665). His subsequent 'systems' strengthened their internal works with the addition of casemated shoulders and flanks.

The principles of Vauban's 'second system' were set out in the 1683 work Le Directeur-Général des fortifications, and used at Landau and Mont-Royal, near Traben-Trarbach; both were advanced positions, intended as stepping-off points for French offensives into the Rhineland. Located  above the Moselle, Mont-Royal had main walls  high,  long and space for 12,000 troops; this enormously expensive work was demolished when the French withdrew after the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, and only the foundations remain today. Fort-Louis was another new construction, built on an island in the middle of the Rhine; this allowed Vauban to combine his defensive principles with town planning, although like Mont-Royal, little of it remains.

The French retreat from the Rhine after 1697 required new fortresses; Neuf-Brisach was the most significant, designed on Vauban's 'third system', and completed after his death by Louis de Cormontaigne. Using ideas from Fort-Louis, this incorporated a regular square grid street pattern inside an octagonal fortification; tenement blocks were built inside each curtain wall, strengthening the defensive walls and shielding more expensive houses from cannon fire.

To create a more coherent border, Vauban advocated destroying poor fortifications, and relinquishing territory that was hard to defend. In December 1672, he wrote to Louvois: "I am not for the greater number of places, we already have too many, and please God we had half of that, but all in good condition!"

Many of the fortifications designed by Vauban are still standing; in 2008, twelve groups of Vauban fortifications were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their exceptional engineering and influence on military fortifications from the 17th through the 20th centuries.

Infrastructure and engineering

While often overlooked, Vauban worked on many civilian infrastructure projects, including rebuilding the ports of Brest, Dunkerque and Toulon. Since his fortifications were designed for mutual support, roads and waterways were an essential part of their design, such as the Canal de la Bruche, a  canal built in 1682 to transport materials for the fortification of Strasbourg. As early as 1684, Vauban published design tables for retaining walls with heights of 3 m < H < 25 m. Three years later, Vauban, in his role as newly appointed Commissary General of all French fortifications, sent his engineers in the Corps du Génie Militaire his Profil général pour les murs de soutènement in which he presented his retaining wall profiles that were later adopted by engineering offers such as Bélidor (1729), Poncelet (1840) and Wheeler (1870). He also provided advice on the repair and enlargement of the Canal du Midi in 1686.

His holistic approach to urban planning, which integrated city defences with layout and infrastructure, is most obvious at Neuf-Brisach. His legacy is recognised in the Vauban district in Freiburg, developed as a model for sustainable neighbourhoods post-1998.

Vauban's 'scientific approach' and focus on large infrastructure projects strongly influenced American military and civil engineering and inspired the creation of the US Corps of Engineers in 1824. Until 1866, West Point's curriculum was modelled on that of the French Ecole Polytechnique and designed to produce officers with skills in engineering and mathematics.

To ensure a steady supply of skilled engineers, in 1690 Vauban established the Corps royal des ingénieurs militaires; until his death, candidates had to pass an examination administered by Vauban himself. Young French Huguenots made up a disproportionately high number of successful engineers due to the social and educational characteristics of French Protestantism. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a significant number of these engineers joined the English and Dutch armies to fight in Ireland, Flanders and Spain. Many of his publications, including Traité de l'attaque des places and Traité des mines, were written at the end of his career to provide a training curriculum for his successors.

Assessment

Vauban's offensive tactics remained relevant for centuries; his principles were clearly identifiable in those used by the Việt Minh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. His defensive fortifications dated far more quickly, partly due to the enormous investment required; Vauban himself estimated that in 1678, 1694 and 1705, between 40 and 45% of the French army was assigned to garrison duty.

Vauban's reputation meant his designs remained in use long after developments in artillery made them obsolete, for example the Dutch fort of Bourtange, built in 1742. The Corps des ingénieurs militaires was based on his teachings; between 1699 and 1743, only 631 new candidates were accepted, the vast majority relatives of existing or former members. As a result, French military engineering became ultra-conservative, while many 'new' works used his designs, or professed to do so, such as those built by Louis de Cortmontaigne at Metz in 1728–1733. This persisted into the late 19th century; Fort de Queuleu, built in 1867 near Metz, is recognisably a Vauban-style design.

Some French engineers continued to be innovators, notably the Marquis de Montalembert, who published La Fortification perpendiculaire in 1776. A rejection of the principles advocated by Vauban and his successors; his ideas became the prevailing orthodoxy in much of Europe but were dismissed in France.

See also
 Vauban fortifications
 Fortifications of Vauban UNESCO World Heritage Sites: UNESCO World Heritage Sites preserving many of Vauban's fortifications.

Notes

References

Sources

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Bibliography

1633 births
1707 deaths
17th-century French architects
18th-century French architects
17th-century French engineers
18th-century French engineers
French military engineers
French military personnel of the Nine Years' War
French marquesses
Marshals of France
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Military theorists
People from Yonne
Knights of the Order of Saint Louis
Forestry in France
Military personnel of the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659)
People of the War of Devolution

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban


The Musician (1662) is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch painter Bartholomeus van der Helst. It is an example of Dutch Golden Age painting and is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The woman is looking at the viewer and according to art historian Walter Liedtke, "spills out of her dress". Liedtke goes on to make this a case for considering it a genre work rather than a portrait, comparing it with other scantily clad lute players that may have influenced the painter, such as the earlier works of Gerrit van Honthorst and contemporary work such as by Ferdinand Bol:

Liedtke wonders if it could possibly a portrait of the artist's wife, as has sometimes been claimed for the female pendant of a shepherd by Van der Helst that has often been claimed to be a self-portrait:

This work is the only surviving painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was acquired before 1906 and after the initial purchase of 1871, and though it is officially recorded as entering the collection in 1873, Liedtke mentions that it was grouped as one of two paintings that came into the collection in 1872 after the initial 1871 purchase, but also via the same vice-president of the Board of Trustees William T. Blodgett and presumably therefore via his dealer Leon Gauchez. The other painting (accession number 73.1) was a double portrait by Carel de Moor, but it was deaccessioned in 1988.

The art historian J.J. de Gelder mentioned the lute shown in the painting is a theorbe and it rests on a viola de gamba. He found the landscape reminiscent of Jan Baptist Weenix. The Van der Helst scholar Judith van Gent dismisses both this painting and the Granida as a portrait of the artist's wife Anna du Pire based on the age of the painter and his wife at the time. She notes Liedtke's comparison to the other Dutch lute players in the MET collection, namely Vermeer's Woman with a Lute, where the woman is also tuning the lute, and Gerard ter Borch's A Woman Playing the Theorbo-Lute and a Cavalier. She wonders whether the act of tuning a lute used to have a meaning that is now lost on us.

The Vermeer was donated to the MET's collection in 1900, and the Ter Borch in 1914, both of which had been recently imported to the US, probably also based on the popularity at the time of this painting.

See also
 List of paintings by Bartholomeus van der Helst

References

 J.J. de Gelder, dissertation on Bartholomeus van der Helst with a monograph of his work, 1921, cat. nr. 17
 Judith van Gent, Bartholomeus van der Helst (ca. 1613–1670). Een studie naar zijn leven en werk', Waanders, Zwolle, 2011, nr. 127

1662 paintings
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Lutenists
Paintings by Bartholomeus van der Helst
Musical instruments in art

The Musician (Bartholomeus van der Helst painting)


The Tay Bridge disaster was one of the great engineering disasters of the 19th century. It happened during a violent storm on 28 December 1879. The first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed while a train was passing over it from Wormit to Dundee, killing all aboard.

First rail bridge
The Tay Bridge was designed by noted railway engineer Thomas Bouch, who received a knighthood when the bridge was completed. It was a lattice-grid design, combining cast and wrought iron. The design was well known, having been successfully used in the Crumlin Viaduct in South Wales in 1858.

An earlier cast iron design, the Dee bridge which collapsed in 1847, failed due to poor use of cast-iron girders. In 1867 Gustave Eiffel used a similar design to build several large viaducts in the Massif Central.

Plans to build a bridge across the River Tay date back to at least 1854. The North British Railway (Tay Bridge) Act received the Royal Assent on 15 July 1870 and the foundation stone was laid on 22 July 1871.

The bridge design: the basic idea
The original design was for lattice girders supported by brick piers resting on bedrock. Test drilling showed the rock was not far below the river. At either end of the bridge the single rail track ran on top of the bridge girder, most of which lay below the pier tops.  However, in the middle section of the bridge (the "high girders") the railway ran inside the bridge girder, which could then run above the pier tops. This made the bridge high enough to allow sailing ships to travel up the river to Perth.

However as the bridge extended out into the river, it became clear in December 1873, that the bedrock really lay much deeper. It was too deep to act as a foundation for the bridge piers.  Bouch had to redesign the bridge. He reduced the number of piers and increased the span of the girders. The pier foundations were no longer taken down to bedrock; instead they were built by sinking brick-lined wrought-iron caissons onto the riverbed,

The work
The company which had the contract for building the bridge went bankrupt while Bouch was redesigning the bridge. The new company did poor work. Almost every part of the bridge was substandard, including the iron and the ties and fixings. Lack of precision in the bolts and braces led to on-site fixes, described by one witness at the later inquiry as  "about as slovenly a piece of work as ever I saw in my life".

Opening
The bridge was opened for passenger traffic on 1 June 1878. The next year, on June 20 1879, Queen Victoria crossed the bridge to return south from Balmoral. Bouch was presented to her before she did so, and on June 26th 1879 he was knighted by the Queen at Windsor Castle.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

On the night of 28 December 1879 at 7.15pm, the bridge collapsed after its central spans gave way during high winter gales. A train with six carriages carrying 75 passengers and crew, crossing at the time of the collapse, fell into the icy waters of the Tay. All 75 were killed. The disaster stunned the whole country and sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering community.

At the time a gale of about force ten or eleven (Tropical Storm force winds: 55–72 mph/80–117 km/hr) had been blowing down the Tay estuary at right angles to the bridge. The engine itself was salvaged from the river and repaired for service on the railways.

The collapse of the bridge, opened only 19 months earlier and passed as safe by the Board of Trade, is still the most famous bridge disaster in the British Isles. The stumps of the original bridge piers can still be seen above the surface of the Tay even at high tide.

Report of the Court of Inquiry

Causes
The inquiry said that "the fall of the bridge was occasioned by the insufficiency of the cross-bracings and fastenings to sustain the force of the gale on the night of December 28th 1879 and that the bridge had been previously strained by other gales."

However, this is not a finding that the bridge as designed would have failed. The engineer who carried out a detailed report on the bridge design said:
"Wind-pressure alone (supposing the structure to have been perfectly made, and so designed) to the amount of 37 lbs to the square foot would have overthrown it, but that, being perfect, it fell in consequence of an excess of wind-pressure is evidently not the case, [because] it did not fall upon those points which would have been the least lines of resistance had the structure been perfect. The mode in which it fell shows that there must have been weak points in the structure and that, with the knowledge which I have [of parts which already had to be repaired], ... shows me that the structure was not in that perfect condition".

The section in the middle of the bridge, where the rail ran inside high girders, was likely to be top-heavy and very vulnerable to high winds. Neither Bouch nor the builders appeared to have regularly visited the on-site foundry where iron from the earlier half-built bridge was recycled. The cylindrical cast iron columns supporting the 13 longest spans of the bridge, each 245 ft (75 m) long, were of poor quality. Many had been cast horizontally, with the result that the walls were not of even thickness. There was some evidence that poor quality work was hidden from the (very inadequate) quality control inspections.

In particular, some of the lugs used as attachment points for the wrought iron bracing bars had been "burnt on" rather than cast with the columns. Even the normal lugs were very weak. They were tested for the Inquiry, and proved to break at only about  rather than the expected load of . These lugs failed and weakened the entire middle of the bridge during the storm.

Put into simple words, the bridge failed because of defects in its manufacture. This meant it did not reach the standards of wind resistance planned by the designer.

Report of the Court of Inquiry and report of Mr Rothery. Stationery Office, London 1880.
Tay Bridge Disaster: Appendix to the Report Of The Court of Inquiry.

References

1879
1870s in the United Kingdom
Bridges in Scotland
19th century in Scotland
Transport disasters in Europe

Tay Bridge disaster


The Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement (formally the Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic) is an international treaty concluded among the member states of the Arctic Council — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States — on 12 May 2011  in Nuuk, Greenland.

The treaty coordinates international search and rescue (SAR) coverage and response in the Arctic, and establishes the area of SAR responsibility of each state party. In view of the conflicting territorial claims in the Arctic, the treaty provides that "the delimitation of search and rescue regions is not related to and shall not prejudice the delimitation of any boundary between States or their sovereignty, sovereign rights or jurisdiction."

The Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement is the first binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council. The treaty reflects the Arctic region's growing economic importance as a result of its improved accessibility due to global warming.

The government of Canada is the depositary for the treaty. It entered into force on 19 January 2013 after it had been ratified by each of the eight signatory states.

See also
Arctic Council
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA)
Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy
Arctic Cooperation and Politics
Arctic policy of Canada

References

External links
 Text of the Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement

Government of the Arctic
Treaties concluded in 2011
Rescue
Treaties entered into force in 2013
Treaties of Canada
Treaties of Denmark
Treaties of Finland
Treaties of Iceland
Treaties of Norway
Treaties of Russia
Treaties of Sweden
Treaties of the United States
2011 in Greenland
21st century in the Arctic

Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement


Andrew Jackson McGonnigle (March 4, 1829 – January 25, 1901) was a Union Army officer during the American Civil War. He received the Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Battle of Cedar Creek fought near Middletown, Virginia on October 19, 1864. The battle was the decisive engagement of Major General Philip Sheridan's Valley Campaigns of 1864 and was the largest battle fought in the Shenandoah Valley.

McGonnigle was commissioned as a Captain of Volunteers in March 1864, and served as an assistant quartermaster in the Army of the Shenandoah under General Philip Sheridan. He was transferred to the regular army Quartermaster Corps with the same rank in May 1865. He received a promotion to Major in February 1882, and retired from the Army in March 1893.

Medal of Honor citation
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Captain & Assistant Quartermaster Andrew Jackson McGonnigle, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 19 October 1864, while serving with U.S. Volunteers, in action at Cedar Creek, Virginia. While acting chief quartermaster of General Sheridan's forces operating in the Shenandoah Valley, Captain McGonnigle was severely wounded while voluntarily leading a brigade of infantry and was commended for the greatest gallantry by General Sheridan.

See also

List of Medal of Honor recipients
List of American Civil War Medal of Honor recipients: M-P

References

External links

1829 births
1901 deaths
Military personnel from New York City
People of New York (state) in the American Civil War
United States Army generals
Union Army colonels
United States Army Medal of Honor recipients
American Civil War recipients of the Medal of Honor

Andrew J. McGonnigle


David Thomas (10 December 1795 – 1836) was a signatory of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the first Attorney General (ad interim) and acting Secretary of War of the Republic of Texas.

Early life and family
David Thomas was the third of six children of William and Elizabeth (Purviance) Thomas of Wilson County, Tennessee. He was born on 10 December 1795 (State of Texas records say 1801), presumably in Wilson County, Tennessee. His parents removed from Middle Tennessee to Dyer County in the newly opened Western District of Tennessee.

David Thomas's father, William Thomas, was from the area of Statesville, North Carolina, then Tennessee. His three brothers, Henry, James, and John, were also soldiers in the Revolutionary War. William's father was Jacob Thomas of Rowan County, North Carolina, also a Revolutionary War soldier, who married Margaret Brevard.

David Thomas's mother Elizabeth was the daughter of American Revolutionary War soldier John Purviance of Rowan County, who married Mary Jane Wasson. One of Elizabeth's brothers was David Purviance, who is listed as a co-founder with Barton Stone of the Christian Church-Church of Christ which originated at the Cane Ridge Meeting House in Bourbon County, Kentucky, outside Paris, Kentucky, circa 1804. David Purviance served in the Kentucky and Ohio legislatures, where he continually advocated abolitionism, and was an early trustee of Miami University, serving often as the board's president pro tempore. Levi Purviance wrote a biography of the father David Purviance.  A birth quilt made by his family is crafted "D.O. Thomas", but his middle name is unknown and it is possible that the intent was "DP" for "David Purviance Thomas", reflecting his mother's maiden name.

David Thomas later became a lawyer. It is known that Sam Houston read law at Maryville College in eastern Tennessee, but is not yet known where his friend and colleague David Thomas read law, whether with a preceptor or at college. Also, it is known that David Thomas's first cousin-once removed, James Houston Thomas was the Attorney General of Tennessee 1836–1842, at roughly the same time David Thomas was attorney general ad interim of the Republic of Texas.

The independence of Texas
David Thomas affixed his signature to the Texas Declaration of Independence alongside that of Sam Houston, each from Refugio on March 2, 1836. His writings in the Texas State Archives as Secretary of War reveal, by the degree of shakiness of handwriting, the relative proximity to the Texans of Santa Anna's troops heading toward San Jacinto.

On 3 March 1836, David Thomas was amongst those appointed to the Constitutional Committee for the nascent Republic of Texas and is thought to have been a principal drafter of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas: on the committee were, inter alia, David Thomas and Sam Houston of Refugio, Texas, and Robert Hamilton of Red River and James Collinsworth of Brazoria.

Death and legacy
Thomas died 1836 after suffering a mortal wound from a musket ball in the leg on the steamship Cayuga when fleeing troops of Santa Anna (Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna) with the new government of the Republic of Texas as part of the Runaway Scrape. David Thomas is buried in a hero's grave in the de Zavala Cemetery in the San Jacinto battlefield state shrine near Houston.

David Thomas's land grant from the State of Texas was posthumously claimed by his nephew in West Tennessee John Edwin McCorkle (1839–1924), Tennessee state legislator and son of Jane Maxwell Thomas (Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle), on behalf of all the nieces and nephews of David Thomas. One of them was David E. Thomas, by then an attorney in Austin, Texas, who responded to an inquiry from McCorkle that the land grant was not worth claiming, for it was subject to Indian depredations and back taxes amounting to more than its fair market value. Nevertheless, McCorkle claimed the land for the heirs of the decedent David Thomas.

References

1795 births
1836 deaths
Texas Attorneys General
People of the Texas Revolution
19th-century American politicians
American lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law
Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence

David Thomas (Texas politician)


The Jona J-6 was an experimental Italian sesquiplane built in 1936 to demonstrate a novel, tilting wing stabilisation system. A military trainer development without the moving wing was produced in small numbers.

Design and development
The Jona J-6 was a very unusual design: not only was it a cantilever sesquiplane, its lower wing having a span about two thirds that of the upper wing and having a narrower chord but, uniquely, the upper plane was mounted to the fuselage so that it could tilt about a longitudinal axis with respect to the rest of the aircraft. The objective was lateral stability; the ailerons were linked to the fuselage so that if the port wing was raised by a gust its aileron was also raised and that of the starboard wing lowered, automatically correcting the roll.

Because the upper wing tilted, it had to be a cantilever structure.  It was built around two wooden spars and was mounted at its centre on a chordwise circular cross-section rod, fixed to the fuselage, which acted as a hinge and allowed the wing to see-saw. When the Jona J-6 appeared at the Milan show in 1935, the year before its first flight, this hinge was held above the fuselage on a faired column, but before it flew this was replaced by four pairs of faired V-form struts with their eight ends fixed to it.  Control wires from the ailerons were attached to the fixed hinge rod, providing the required automatic deflections as the wing tilted. The rate of tilt was limited by a pair of telescopic, sprung struts from mid-chord quite close to the centreline, which met at the bottom centre of the fuselage after passing in through the upper sides.  These could be hydraulically locked for aerobatics and spins or when stabilisation was not wanted. Leading edge automatic Handley Page slots were fitted to prevent spinning via wingtip stalling. The wing was plywood-covered and straight-tapered in plan form, with semi-elliptical tips.  The lower wing was generally similar, though much smaller and rigidly mounted. Though not required when the automatic lateral control system was engaged, conventional, pilot operated ailerons were later added to the lower wing.

The fuselage was built around a rectangular section steel tube structure, shaped into an oval with metal covering forward of the lower wing leading edge and for the decking behind the cockpit, with fabric elsewhere.  At the front a 140 hp (104 kW) Fiat A.54 radial engine was mounted forward of the fuselage within a Townend ring.  The tandem cockpits were under continuous glazing with the forward seat under the midwing, where a large cutout eased visibility.  The glazing was faired into the rear decking.  The externally braced tailplane had a swept, straight leading edge and was mounted on top of the fuselage.  It carried separate elevators, between which moved a deep, curved edged rudder.

The mainwheels of the J-6 were mounted on split axles from the lower central fuselage, with shock absorbers fixed to the upper longerons.  The wheels were spatted and the shock absorbers, though not their upper extension rods, were faired.  The conventional undercarriage had a steerable, partly faired tailskid.

The Jona J-6 first flew on 24 May 1936. Its designer claimed that it could be flown without using the rudder, which was only needed on takeoff or landing.  It could not be spun or side-slipped when the upper wing was free to move, though with the wing locked it could be spun and looped at will.

After successfully completing its flight testing, the J-6 prototype was bought by the Italian government, though no more were built.  It was transferred to the civil register and was flown by Leonardo Bonzi until its registration was cancelled in 1943.

The prototype of a development, the J-6S, built for Jona by Piero Magni Aviazione was flying by 1938.  This aircraft, intended as a military trainer, was powered by a 240 hp (180 kW) Alfa Romeo D2C.30 radial engine and did not have the tilting wing but was otherwise closely similar to the J-6.  The J-6S lacked a Townend ring cowling on the nine-cylinder radial, was slightly shorter with the front cockpit set slightly further aft and had a tailwheel instead of a skid.  Six J-6S were built and used by the Staff Training Squadron at Centocelle Airport.  One was armed in April 1940.  They were later stored at Milan-Bresso and destroyed in an air raid in early 1942.

Variants
J-6
Built to test the stabilising wing system.
J-6S
Military trainer development with conventional wing and more powerful engine.  Six delivered to Italian Air Force.

Specifications (J-6)

References

External links

1930s Italian aircraft
Sesquiplanes

Jona J-6


A linear actuator is an actuator that creates linear motion (i.e., in a straight line), in contrast to the circular motion of a conventional electric motor. Linear actuators are used in machine tools and industrial machinery, in computer peripherals such as disk drives and printers, in valves and dampers, and in many other places where linear  motion is required. Hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders inherently produce linear motion. Many other mechanisms are used to generate linear motion from a rotating motor.

Types

Mechanical actuators

Mechanical linear actuators typically operate by conversion of rotary motion into linear motion.  Conversion is commonly made via a few simple types of mechanism:
 Screw: leadscrew, screw jack, ball screw and roller screw actuators all operate on the principle of the simple machine known as the screw. By rotating the actuator's nut, the screw shaft moves in a line.
 Wheel and axle: Hoist, winch, rack and pinion, chain drive, belt drive, rigid chain and rigid belt actuators operate on the principle of the wheel and axle. A rotating wheel moves a cable, rack, chain or belt to produce linear motion.
 Cam: Cam actuators function on a principle similar to that of the wedge, but provide relatively limited travel.  As a wheel-like cam rotates, its eccentric shape provides thrust at the base of a shaft.

Some mechanical linear actuators only pull, such as hoists, chain drive and belt drives. Others only push (such as a cam actuator). Pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders, or lead screws can be designed to generate force in both directions.

Mechanical actuators typically convert rotary motion of a control knob or handle into linear displacement via screws and/or gears to which the knob or handle is attached. A jackscrew or car jack is a familiar mechanical actuator. Another family of actuators are based on the segmented spindle. Rotation of the jack handle is converted mechanically into the linear motion of the jack head. Mechanical actuators are also frequently used in the field of lasers and optics to manipulate the position of linear stages, rotary stages, mirror mounts, goniometers and other positioning instruments. For accurate and repeatable positioning, index marks may be used on control knobs. Some actuators include an encoder and digital position readout. These are similar to the adjustment knobs used on micrometers except their purpose is position adjustment rather than position measurement.

Hydraulic actuators
Hydraulic actuators or hydraulic cylinders typically involve a hollow cylinder having a piston inserted in it. An unbalanced pressure applied to the piston generates a force that can move an external object. Since liquids are nearly incompressible, a hydraulic cylinder can provide controlled precise linear displacement of the piston. The displacement is only along the axis of the piston. A familiar example of a manually operated hydraulic actuator is a hydraulic car jack. Typically though, the term "hydraulic actuator" refers to a device controlled by a hydraulic pump.

Pneumatic actuators
Pneumatic actuators, or pneumatic cylinders, are similar to hydraulic actuators except they use compressed air to generate force instead of a liquid. They work similarly to a piston in which air is pumped inside a chamber and pushed out of the other side of the chamber.  Air actuators are not necessarily used for heavy duty machinery and instances where large amounts of weight are present.  One of the reasons pneumatic linear actuators are preferred to other types is the fact that the power source is simply an air compressor.  Because air is the input source, pneumatic actuators are able to be used in many places of mechanical activity.  The downside is, most air compressors are large, bulky, and loud.  They are hard to transport to other areas once installed.  Pneumatic linear actuators are likely to leak and this makes them less efficient than mechanical linear actuators.

Piezoelectric actuators

The piezoelectric effect is a property of certain materials in which application of a voltage to the material causes it to expand. Very high voltages correspond to only tiny expansions. As a result, piezoelectric actuators can achieve extremely fine positioning resolution, but also have a very short range of motion. In addition, piezoelectric materials exhibit hysteresis which makes it difficult to control their expansion in a repeatable manner.

Electro-mechanical actuators

Electro-mechanical actuators are similar to mechanical actuators except that the control knob or handle is replaced with an electric motor. Rotary motion of the motor is converted to linear displacement. Electromechanical actuators may also be used to power a motor that converts electrical energy into mechanical torque. There are many designs of modern linear actuators and every company that manufactures them tends to have a proprietary method. The following is a generalized description of a very simple electro-mechanical linear actuator.

Simplified design
Typically, an electric motor is mechanically connected to rotate a lead screw. A lead screw has a continuous helical thread machined on its circumference running along the length (similar to the thread on a bolt). Threaded onto the lead screw is a lead nut or ball nut with corresponding helical threads. The nut is prevented from rotating with the lead screw (typically the nut interlocks with a non-rotating part of the actuator body). When the lead screw is rotated, the nut will be driven along the threads. The direction of motion of the nut depends on the direction of rotation of the lead screw. By connecting linkages to the nut, the motion can be converted to usable linear displacement. Most current actuators are built for high speed, high force, or a compromise between the two. When considering an actuator for a particular application, the most important specifications are typically travel, speed, force, accuracy, and lifetime. Most varieties are mounted on dampers or butterfly valves.

There are many types of motors that can be used in a linear actuator system.  These include dc brush, dc brushless, stepper, or in some cases, even induction motors.  It all depends on the application requirements and the loads the actuator is designed to move.  For example, a linear actuator using an integral horsepower AC induction motor driving a lead screw can be used to operate a large valve in a refinery.  In this case, accuracy and high movement resolution aren't needed, but high force and speed are.  For electromechanical linear actuators used in laboratory instrumentation robotics, optical and laser equipment, or X-Y tables, fine resolution in the micron range and high accuracy may require the use of a fractional horsepower stepper motor linear actuator with a fine pitch lead screw.  There are many variations in the electromechanical linear actuator system.  It is critical to understand the design requirements and application constraints to know which one would be best.

Standard vs compact construction
A linear actuator using standard motors will commonly have the motor as a separate cylinder attached to the side of the actuator, either parallel with the actuator or perpendicular to the actuator. The motor may be attached to the end of the actuator. The drive motor is of typical construction with a solid drive shaft that is geared to the drive nut or drive screw of the actuator.

Compact linear actuators use specially designed motors that try to fit the motor and actuator into the smallest possible shape.
 The inner diameter of the motor shaft can be enlarged, so that the drive shaft can be hollow. The drive screw and nut can therefore occupy the center of the motor, with no need for additional gearing between the motor and the drive screw.
 Similarly the motor can be made to have a very small outside diameter, but instead the pole faces are stretched lengthwise so the motor can still have very high torque while fitting in a small diameter space.

Principles
In the majority of linear actuator designs, the basic principle of operation is that of an inclined plane. The threads of a lead screw act as a continuous ramp that allows a small rotational force to be used over a long distance to accomplish the movement of a large load over a short distance.
The power supply is from a DC or AC motor. The typical motor is a 12v DC, but other voltages are available. Actuators have a switch to reverse the polarity of the motor, which makes the actuator change its motion.

The speed and force of an actuator depend on its gearbox. The amount of force depends on the actuator's speed. Lower speeds supply greater force because motor speed and force are constant.

One of the basic differences between actuators is their stroke, which is defined by the length of the screw and shaft. Speed depends on the gears that connect the motor to the screw.

The mechanism to stop the stroke of an actuator is a limit or micro switch, which can be seen in the image below. Microswitches are located at the top and bottom of the shaft and are triggered by the up and down movement of the screw.

Variations
Many variations on the basic design have been created. Most focus on providing general improvements such as a higher mechanical efficiency, speed, or load capacity. There is also a large engineering movement towards actuator miniaturization.

Most electro-mechanical designs incorporate a lead screw and lead nut. Some use a ball screw and ball nut. In either case the screw may be connected to a motor or manual control knob either directly or through a series of gears. Gears are typically used to allow a smaller (and weaker) motor spinning at a higher rpm to be geared down to provide the torque necessary to spin the screw under a heavier load than the motor would otherwise be capable of driving directly. Effectively this sacrifices actuator speed in favor of increased actuator thrust. In some applications the use of worm gear is common as this allow a smaller built in dimension still allowing great travel length.

A traveling-nut linear actuator has a motor that stays attached to one end of the lead screw (perhaps indirectly through a gear box), the motor spins the lead screw, and the lead nut is restrained from spinning so it travels up and down the lead screw.

A traveling-screw linear actuator has a lead screw that passes entirely through the motor.
In a traveling-screw linear actuator, the motor "crawls" up and down a lead screw that is restrained from spinning. The only spinning parts are inside the motor, and may not be visible from the outside.

Some lead screws have multiple "starts". This means they have multiple threads alternating on the same shaft. One way of visualizing this is in comparison to the multiple color stripes on a candy cane. This allows for more adjustment between thread pitch and nut/screw thread contact area, which determines the extension speed and load carrying capacity (of the threads), respectively.

Static load capacity
Linear screw actuators can have a static loading capacity, meaning that when the motor stops the actuator essentially locks in place and can support a load that is either pulling or pushing on the actuator. This static load capacity increases mobility and speed.

The braking force of the actuator varies with the angular pitch of the screw threads and the specific design of the threads. Acme threads have a very high static load capacity, while ball screws have an extremely low load capacity and can be nearly free-floating.

Generally it is not possible to vary the static load capacity of screw actuators without additional technology. The screw thread pitch and drive nut design defines a specific load capacity that cannot be dynamically adjusted.

In some cases, high viscosity grease can be added to linear screw actuators to increase the static load. Some manufacturers use this to alter the load for specific needs.

Static load capacity can be added to a linear screw actuator using an electromagnetic brake system, which applies friction to the spinning drive nut. For example, a spring may be used to apply brake pads to the drive nut, holding it in position when power is turned off. When the actuator needs to be moved, an electromagnet counteracts the spring and releases the braking force on the drive nut.

Similarly an electromagnetic ratchet mechanism can be used with a linear screw actuator so that the drive system lifting a load will lock in position when power to the actuator is turned off. To lower the actuator, an electromagnet is used to counteract the spring force and unlock the ratchet.

Dynamic load capacity
Dynamic load capacity is typically referred to as the amount of force the linear actuator is capable of providing during operation. This force will vary with screw type (amount of friction restricting movement) and the motor driving the movement. Dynamic load is the figure which most actuators are classified by, and is a good indication of what applications it would suit best.

Speed control
In most cases when using an electro-mechanical actuator, it is preferred to have some type of speed control. Such controllers vary the voltage supplied to the motor, which in turn changes the speed at which the lead screw turns. Adjusting the gear ratio is another way to adjust speed. Some actuators are available with several different gearing options.

Duty cycle
The duty cycle of a motor refers to the amount of time the actuator can be run before it needs to cool down. Staying within this guideline when operating an actuator is key to its longevity and performance. If the duty cycle rating is exceeded, then overheating, loss of power, and eventual burning of the motor is risked.

Linear motors
A linear motor is functionally the same as a rotary electric motor with the rotor and stator circular magnetic field components laid out in a straight line. Where a rotary motor would spin around and re-use the same magnetic pole faces again, the magnetic field structures of a linear motor are physically repeated across the length of the actuator.

Since the motor moves in a linear fashion, no lead screw is needed to convert rotary motion to linear. While high capacity is possible, the material and/or motor limitations on most designs are surpassed relatively quickly due to a reliance solely on magnetic attraction and repulsion forces. Most linear motors have a low load capacity compared to other types of linear actuators.
Linear motors have an advantage in outdoor or dirty environments in that the two halves do not need to contact each other, and so the electromagnetic drive coils can be waterproofed and sealed against moisture and corrosion, allowing for a very long service life. Linear motors are being used extensively in high performance positioning systems for applications which require various combinations of high velocity, high precision and high force.

Telescoping linear actuator

Telescoping linear actuators are specialized linear actuators used where space restrictions exist.  Their range of motion is many times greater than the unextended length of the actuating member.

A common form is made of concentric tubes of approximately equal length that extend and retract like sleeves, one inside the other, such as the telescopic cylinder.

Other more specialized telescoping actuators use actuating members that act as rigid linear shafts when extended, but break that line by folding, separating into pieces and/or uncoiling when retracted.  Examples of telescoping linear actuators include:

 Helical band actuator
 Rigid belt actuator
 Rigid chain actuator
 Segmented spindle

Advantages and disadvantages

See also

References

External links

Leo Dorst's Lego linear actuator

Actuators
Positioning instruments
Articles containing video clips
Linear motion

Linear actuator


Nicolai Stepanovich Cikovsky (December 10, 1894 – May 6, 1985) was an American painter. His work is held at the Whitney, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He also had three New Deal-era Treasury Section of Fine Arts commissions for public buildings: two murals at Maryland post offices and a set of the murals at the Interior Building in Washington, D.C.

Born "near the Polish border," Cikovsky emigrated from Pinsk to the United States in 1923.  He published a number of pieces in proletarian (Communist) journals like New Masses and International Literature in the 1930s. He was a member of the John Reed Club and showed landscapes at the Whitney. Cikovsky was a resident at Yaddo in 1931. Cikovsky was one of the Soviet émigré painters who formed the Hampton Bays Art Group. Other members of the group were David Burliuk, Arshile Gorky, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, John D. Graham, George Constant, and Milton Avery. Originally producing slightly abstracted images, by the late 1940s Cikovsky had moved toward naturalism. Cikovsky died in Washington, D.C. at age 90.

Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. (1933–2016) was a noted art historian and curator at the National Gallery of Art.

References

1895 births
1984 deaths
Soviet emigrants to the United States

Nicolai Cikovsky


Leslie George Hurry (10 February 1909– 20 November 1978) was a British artist and set designer for ballet, theatre and opera.

Biography
Hurry was born in London, where his father, A. G. Hurry, was a funeral director in St John's Wood. Leslie Hurray was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School before, resisting pressure to join the family business, he attended St. John's Wood Art School and the Royal Academy Schools. Leaving the Royal Academy School of Painting in 1931, before the completion of his five-year scholarship, his first commission was from a brewing firm to decorate a chain of saloon bars with landscape murals.

In the second half of the 1930s he wandered Britain and Ireland painting landscapes. Depressed with his work and seeking inspiration to develop a personal style, he moved to Brittany then Paris, but was forced to return to Britain due to health problems.

In 1939, found unfit for military service and disturbed by the war, he isolated himself in his secluded cottage at [Buntings, Hundon,[Suffolk]. At this time he was befriended by Grace Sholto Douglas, an elderly patron of arts who died in 1942. In 1940–41 he produced two books of intricate automatic drawings that were exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, leading to his acclaim as an "ultra-surrealist".

His first stage work was for a production of Hamlet for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1942, work commissioned by Robert Helpmann, who had seen his paintings in a London gallery. He subsequently worked for Sadler's Wells, the Old Vic, Aldwych Theatre, Glyndebourne, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the theatre in Canada, particularly in Stratford, Ontario.

He left a large corpus of paintings, including abstract, portraiture and landscape works.

References

"Hurry, Leslie George (1909–1978)", Raymond Ingram, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
Obituary, The Times, Friday, Nov 24, 1978; p. 16
Obituary by Jack Lindsay, The Times, Monday, Nov 27, 1978; p. 14
Leslie Hurry, British Council biography

External links
Leslie Hurry costume designs, 1966, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
 W.H. Crain Costume and Scene Design Collection at the Harry Ransom Center

1909 births
1978 deaths
20th-century English painters
English male painters
Alumni of St John's Wood Art School
Artists from London
British scenic designers
Opera designers
People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School
20th-century English male artists

Leslie Hurry


(or the Great Charter of Ireland) is an issue of the English Magna Carta (or Great Charter of Liberties) in Ireland. King Henry III of England's Charter of 1216 was issued for Ireland on 12 November 1216 but not transmitted to Ireland until February 1217; it secured rights for the Anglo-Norman magnates in Ireland. The Charter was reissued in 1217 as in England. It was in effect the application of Magna Carta to Ireland, with appropriate substitutions (such as "Dublin" for "London", and "Irish Church" for "Church of England").

The only known copy of the Charter was once to be found in the Red Book of the Dublin Court of Exchequer, a manuscript volume compiled in the fourteenth century. The Red Book was destroyed in the explosion at the Four Courts in Dublin, in 1922, but the Charter had been recorded by H. F. Berry in Early Statutes of Ireland (1907). Magna Carta Hiberniae 1216 (1 Hen. 3) is now a retained statute in the Republic of Ireland under the Statute Law Revision Act 2007, s.2(2)(a), Schedule 1.

Further reading
 Early Statutes of Ireland H. F. Berry, 1907
 Magna Charta Hiberniae, pp. 31–33, H.G. Richardson, Irish Historical Studies

References

External links
Magna Charta Hiberniae 1216 (Great Charter of Ireland)

Statute Law Revision Act 2007

1210s in law
Irish laws
Law of Northern Ireland
Legal history of Ireland
1216 in Europe
13th century in Ireland
Medieval charters and cartularies

Great Charter of Ireland


In Italy, Pro Loco (the term is both singular and plural) are grass-roots organizations that seek to promote some particular place, almost always a town and its immediate area; pro loco is a Latin phrase that may be roughly translated "in favor of the place". Usually the town is a full-fledged comune, but not always: frazioni and other small places with a high level of civic pride may have their own Pro Loco.

Very often, the name of a Pro Loco is just "Pro Loco N", where N is the name of the town; not infrequently, though, one meets with the simpler "Pro N", where N may be the name of the town or even its ancient Roman name.

The Pro Loco is a volunteer, grass-roots organization, and must not be confused with such publicly financed organizations as the Azienda di Promozione Turistica (APT) or the Ufficio di Informazione e Accoglienza Turistica (IAT), the aim of which is to promote tourism.

Still, Pro Loco could have a legal identity as a no-profit organization if part of the UNPLI, Unione Nazionale Pro Loco d'Italia, the National Union: Pro Loco with a statute in line with UNPLI's protocols could have legal advice and some fiscal advantages, mostly a reduced fare in paying the (quite expensive) rights to SIAE to play music or theatre in public places.

In most Italian towns, the Pro Loco's main purpose is to organize, finance, advertise, and operate the local Sagra or palio; it is thus quintessentially at the service of residents rather than visitors.

In some places though, a wider purpose has been taken on, that of promoting the town's products or tourism; and in some few cases, a very active and socially conscious Pro Loco will sponsor publications, scholarly research, or the restoration of local monuments.

References

External links

Organisations based in Italy

Pro Loco


Direct presidential elections were held for the first time in Cape Verde on 17 February 1991, as previously the National Assembly had elected the President. The result was a victory for António Mascarenhas Monteiro of the Movement for Democracy, which had also won the parliamentary elections the previous month. He defeated incumbent Aristides Pereira of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde. Voter turnout was 61.4%.

Monteiro took office on 22 March.

Results

References

Cape Verde
Presidential elections in Cape Verde
1991 in Cape Verde
February 1991 events in Africa

1991 Cape Verdean presidential election


Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98. His work, initially modernist, evolved towards an intimate form of symbolism with romantic traits. He gradually developed a style characterised by both an engagement with humanity on one side and an almost Taoist contemplation of existence on the other, a synthesis that according to Machado echoed the most ancient popular wisdom. In Gerardo Diego's words, Machado "spoke in verse and lived in poetry."

Biography
Machado was born in Seville, Spain, one year after his brother Manuel. He was a grandson to the noted Spanish folklorist, Cipriana Álvarez Durán. The family moved to Madrid in 1883 and both brothers enrolled in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. During these years—with the encouragement of his teachers—Antonio discovered his passion for literature. While completing his Bachillerato in Madrid, economic difficulties forced him to take several jobs including working as an actor. In 1899, he and his brother traveled to Paris to work as translators for a French publisher. During these months in Paris, he came into contact with the great French Symbolist poets Jean Moréas, Paul Fort and Paul Verlaine, and also with other contemporary literary figures, including Rubén Darío and Oscar Wilde. These encounters cemented Machado's decision to dedicate himself to poetry.

In 1901, he had his first poems published in the literary journal 'Electra'. His first book of poetry was published in 1903, titled Soledades. Over the next few years, he gradually amended the collection, removing some and adding many more. In 1907, the definitive collection was published with the title Soledades and Galerías. Otros Poemas. In the same year, Machado was offered the job of Professor of French at the school in Soria. Here, he met Leonor Izquierdo, daughter of the owners of the boarding house Machado was staying in. They were married in 1909, he was 34 and Leonor was 15. Early in 1911, the couple went to live in Paris where Machado read more French literature and studied philosophy. In the summer however, Leonor was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis and they returned to Spain. On 1 August 1912, Leonor died, just a few weeks after the publication of Campos de Castilla. Machado was devastated and left Soria, the city that had inspired the poetry of Campos, never to return. He went to live in Baeza, Andalusia, where he stayed until 1919. Here, he wrote a series of poems dealing with the death of Leonor which were added to a new (and now definitive) edition of Campos de Castilla published in 1916 along with the first edition of Nuevas canciones. While his earlier poems are in an ornate, Modernist style, with the publication of "Campos de Castilla" he showed an evolution toward greater simplicity, a characteristic that was to distinguish his poetry from then on.

Between 1919 and 1931, Machado was Professor of French at the Instituto de Segovia, in Segovia. He moved there to be nearer to Madrid, where Manuel lived. The brothers would meet at weekends to work together on a number of plays, the performances of which earned them great popularity. It was here also that Antonio had a secret affair with Pilar de Valderrama, a married woman with three children, to whom he would refer in his work by the name Guiomar. In 1932, he was given the post of professor at the "Instituto Calderón de la Barca" in Madrid. He collaborated with Rafael Alberti and published articles in his magazine, Octubre, in 1933–1934.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, Machado was in Madrid. The war was to separate him forever from his brother Manuel who was trapped in the Nationalist (Francoist) zone, and from Valderrama who was in Portugal. Machado was evacuated with his elderly mother and uncle to Valencia, and then to Barcelona in 1938. Finally, as Franco closed in on the last Republican strongholds, they were obliged to move across the French border to Collioure. It was here, on 22 February 1939, that Antonio Machado died, just three days before his mother. In his pocket was found his last poem, Estos días azules y este sol de infancia. Machado is buried in Collioure where he died; Leonor is buried in Soria.

On his way to Collioure in December 1938, he wrote "For the strategists, for the politicians, for the historians, all this will be clear: we lost the war. But at a human level I am not so sure: perhaps we won."

He turned away from the hermetic esthetic principles of post-symbolism and cultivated the dynamic openness of social realism. Like such French æsthetes as Verlaine, Machado began with a fin de siècle contemplation of his sensory world, portraying it through memory and the impressions of his private consciousness. And like his socially conscious colleagues of the Generation of 1898, he emerged from his solitude to contemplate Spain's historical landscape with a sympathetic yet unindulgent eye. His poetic work begins with the publication of Soledades in 1903. In this short volume, many personal links which will characterize his later work are noticeable. In Soledades, Galerías. Otros poemas, published in 1907, his voice becomes his own and influences 20th Century poets Octavio Paz, Derek Walcott, and Giannina Braschi who writes about Machado's impact in her Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing!. The most typical feature of his personality is the antipathetic, softly sorrowful tone that can be felt even when he describes real things or common themes of the time, for example abandoned gardens, old parks or fountains: places which he approaches via memory or dreams.

After Machado's experience with the introspective poetry of his first period, he withdrew from the spectacle of his conflictive personality and undertook to witness the general battle of the "two Spains", each one struggling to gain the ascendancy. In 1912, he published "Campos de Castilla", a collection of poems lyricising the beauty of the Castilian countryside. Just as the poet's own personality revealed mutually destructive elements in the earlier Galerías and Soledades, so too did the Cain–Abel Bible story, interpreted in "La Tierra de Alvargonzález", later attest to the factions in Spain that shredded one another and the national fabric in an effort to restore unity. At the same time, other poems projected Castilian archetypes that evoked emotions like pathos ("La mujer manchega", "The Manchegan Woman"), revulsion ("Un criminal"), and stark rapture ("Campos de Soria"). The book also included a series of short reflective poems, often resembling popular songs or sayings, called "Proverbios y Cantares" (Proverbs and Songs).

In 1917, various poems were added to "Campos", including a group of poems written in Baeza about the death of his young wife, new "Proverbios y Cantares", and a series of "Elogios", dedicated to people such as Rubén Darío and Juan Ramón Jiménez who had been influential in his life.

Machado's later poems are a virtual anthropology of Spain's common people, describing their collective psychology, social mores, and historical destiny. He achieves this panorama through basic myths and recurrent, eternal patterns of group behavior. He developed these archetypes in Campos de Castilla ("Castilian Fields") in such key poems as "La tierra de Alvargonzález", and "Por tierras de España", which are based on Biblical inheritance stories. The metaphors of this second period use geographical and topographical allusions that frame powerful judgments about socio-economic and moral conditions on the Peninsula.

His next book, "Nuevas canciones" (New Songs), published in 1924, marks the last period of his work. The complete works of his poetry, Poesías Completas was published in 1938 and contains Poesias de Guerra (Poems of War), with El crimen fue en Granada (The crime took place in Granada), an elegy to Federico García Lorca.

Poet Geoffrey Hill has hailed him as Montale's 'grand equal'. His phrase "the two Spains"—one that dies and one that yawns—referring to the left-right political divisions that led to the Civil War, has passed into Spanish and other languages.

Major publications
 Soledades (1903)
 Soledades. Galerías. Otros poemas (1907)
 Campos de Castilla (1912). See .
 Poesías completas (1917)
 Nuevas canciones (1924)
 Poesías completas (1936, cuarta edición)
 Juan de Mairena (1936)

Translations into English (selected poems)
 Dual language edition.
 Dual language edition.
 Dual language edition.

References

Further reading
   Walcott, Derek "Reading Machado" The New Yorker 18 November 1996
   Ballagas, Emilio  Del sueño y la vigilia en Antonio Machado. Ballagas. Revista Nacional de Cultura de Venezuela. 1945 (article)
   Barnstone, Willis "Antonio Machado: A Theory of Method in His Use of Dream, Landscape, and Awakening" in Revista Hispánica Moderna Year 39, No. 1/2 (1976/1977), pp. 11–25 University of Pennsylvania Press
   Braschi, Giannina, "La Gravedad de la Armonia en 'Soledades Galerias y Otros Poemas' de Machado," PLURAL, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1983.
   Fernández-Medina, Nicolás. The Poetics of Otherness in Antonio Machado's Proverbios y cantares . Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2011.
   ---. "Intertexutality and Poetic Practice in José Angel Valente's Dialogue with Antonio Machado," 2011.
   ---. "Pythagoras, Buddha, and Christ: Antonio Machado's Poem lxv of 'Proverbios y cantares' (Nuevas canciones)," 2010.
   ---. "Reality, Idealism, and the Subject/Object Divide: Antonio Machado and the Modernist Crisis of Knowledge," 2016.
   ---. "Antonio Machado en diálogo con Emmanuel Lévinas: El compromiso con la objetividad y la otredad," 2020.
   Johnston, Philip (2002) The power of paradox in the work of Spanish poet Antonio Machado Edwin Mellen Press
   Prowle, Allen (2010) "Sunshine and Shadows: translations from Bertollucci, Machado and Pavese" Nunny Books, 2011.

External links

Poems and videos in Poeticous

1875 births
1939 deaths
20th-century Spanish poets
Writers from Seville
Members of the Royal Spanish Academy
Spanish people of the Spanish Civil War (Republican faction)
Exiles of the Spanish Civil War in France
Complutense University of Madrid alumni
Spanish male poets
20th-century Spanish male writers

Antonio Machado


PlayTape is a  audiotape format and mono or stereo playback system introduced in 1966 by Frank Stanton. It is a two-track system, and was launched to compete with existing 4-track cartridge technology. The cartridges play anywhere from eight to 24 minutes, and are continuous. Because of its portability, PlayTape was an almost instant success, and over 3,000 artists had published in this format by 1968. White cases usually meant about eight songs were on the tape.

Introducing PlayTape
When PlayTape was launched, vinyl records reigned supreme, and Earl Muntz's Stereo-Pak, based on the broadcast "Fidelipac" cartridge system, was also a popular sound delivery system. His car players were offered with stereo sound. Although in production, Bill Lear's 8-track tape and Philips' cassette tape systems had not yet achieved their market potential. Moreover, neither Lear or Muntz was offering a portable player, though Muntz eventually did sell one, while portable cassette players were available from the outset.

While PlayTape found some success in reaching the youth audience, it was not as successful in targeting the business market. Stanton marketed his device as a dictation machine, but he was unable to persuade businesses to adopt his creation. Problems with player quality limited sales and, ultimately, the introduction of home and portable players by the 4-track, 8-track, and cassette manufacturers led to the demise of PlayTape.

Automobile players
Only a handful of small compact players, and a few very rare car players, were sold on the open market. In the United States, Volkswagen was the only manufacturer to offer a PlayTape player as optional equipment.
They are collectors' items today.

Volkswagen saw a market opportunity in the U.S. for automotive audio players in 1968. Frank Stanton, president of PlayTape, announced that Motorola would manufacture an automotive player in OEM and after-market models for Volkswagen. The "Sapphire I" OEM model was designed for in-dash installation, and included an AM radio. The "Sapphire II" after-market version omitted the radio, and was designed to hang from the dashboard. The price for either unit was said to be about US $40, (today US $).

Stanton also claimed that VW dealers would carry about 250 PlayTape titles for sale, and that some Volkswagen dealers would also sell the full line of PlayTape home and portable players. "We feel that Volkswagen salesmen will be able to interest the purchaser of a Sapphire I player in a complementary model for his home," Stanton said.

Mail Call
In 1967, Smith Corona (SCM) used the PlayTape cartridge format for the Mail Call, a device which contained the PlayTape drive. Its design resembled a telephone and used blank tape PlayTape cartridges, offered with capacities of 3, 6 and 10 minutes of recording time, to be sent as voice letters with inexpensive shipping cost. The ends of the tape loop were fixed by an adhesive tape with a conductive top to prevent overwriting the same recording.

HIPAC

HiPac was a successor of the PlayTape cartridge, with some changes introduced in Japan in 1971 and disappearing soon afterwards. The HiPac had a small comeback in the mid-1970s, in children's toys for education.

References

External links
8-Track Heaven
Museum Of Obsolete Media
Techmoan: Retro Tech – The PlayTape, YouTube 14 January 2016

Audio storage
History of sound recording
Tape recording
Discontinued media formats
1966 in music
1966 in technology
Products introduced in 1966

PlayTape