Fort Wolcott was a fortification on the small Goat Island in Newport Harbor of Narragansett Bay less than 1 mile west of the city of Newport, Rhode Island. The attacks on  and  occurred near the fort.

Fort Anne
An earthen Fort Anne, built on Goat Island in 1702 or 1703 during the War of Spanish Succession, taking the name of Anne, Queen of Great Britain.  The fort with 12 guns lasted until 1724.

Fort George

In 1730, the fort returned to service under a new name, Fort George after King George II of Great Britain. In 1738, defenders of Rhode Island built a stone fortification on the site with perhaps fifty guns.

In 1764, residents of Newport, Rhode Island, took over Fort George and fired shots at St John with a crew that allegedly stole from local merchants. In another early act of rebellion against British rule, Rhode Islanders in 1769 burned the British customs ship Liberty when it drifted to the north end of Goat Island.

Fort Liberty
With the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, the fort was renamed as Fort Liberty.  In 1776, American patriots armed Fort Liberty with 25 guns and built various breastworks to defend the City of Newport.  In December 1776 the British army occupied Newport without resistance and renamed the fort "Fort George."  The British left Newport in November 1779.  The French army under Count de Rochambeau occupied Newport in 1780 and used the fort as part of their defenses until their departure in 1781.

Fort Washington
In 1784, Rhode Islanders repaired the fort, renamed it Fort Washington after General George Washington, and armed it with 28 guns.  In 1794, the City of Newport sold Goat Island to the federal government for $1,500 to maintain a fort to defend Newport Harbor.  Control of Fort Washington passed from the Rhode Island state militia to United States Army artillery and engineering companies.  The Army rebuilt Fort Washington and outfitted it with 38 guns.  The first United States Army officer to command the fort was Captain William Littlefield, a native of Newport who had served during the American Revolution. Captain Littlefield assumed his duties in either June or July 1794 which marked the beginning of a presence of the United States Armed Forces in Newport which continues to this day.  (Only West Point, New York can claim a longer continuous presence of the US Armed Forces.)

Fort Wolcott
The Army rebuilt the fort again in 1798 as part of the first system of Seacoast defense in the United States and renamed it Fort Wolcott, commemorating the services of the late Oliver Wolcott, a general of the Connecticut militia, a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Army assigned Captain John Henry, who was instrumental in starting the War of 1812, to Fort Wolcott in the late 1790s.  From 1798 to 1800, the American government rebuilt the earthworks of the fort.  After 1802 Fort Wolcott was the primary fort defending Newport harbor along with the smaller Fort Adams, which was activated in 1799.  The Army repaired Fort Wolcott in 1808. Secretary of War William Eustis on 19 December 1809 (American State Papers, Volume 016, page 245.) records 12 guns mounted within Fort Wolcott and 18 more guns mounted on the flank batteries to the north and south of the fort. The Secretary of War's report on fortifications for December 1811 describes Fort Wolcott as "a small enclosed work, with open batteries, extending from two opposite flanks, of stone, earth, sods, &c. mounting thirty-eight heavy guns... The barracks are of bricks and wood, for one company...".

By the time of the War of 1812, Fort Wolcott along with other fortifications at Fort Adams (on nearby Brenton Point), Fort Greene (in the Point Section of Newport), Fort Hamilton (on Rose Island, North Battery (location uncertain), Fort Dumpling (on Conanicut Island), and Tonomy Hill defended Newport harbor and strategically important Narragansett Bay.  Fort Wolcott, built of stone cemented with lime, featured a brick-and-stone magazine, sally-port, ditch, furnace, and bomb-proof brick barracks.  Armament included five long-range 32-pounder guns.

President James Monroe visited the garrison on 28 June 1817 and left with a positive impression.  By 1818, Fort Wolcott featured 28 guns.  After 1821, Fort Wolcott absorbed troops from the other forts in Rhode Island and hosted the only continuous army garrison in the state.  Meteorological observations began by 1822.  In 1823 or 1824, the first Newport Harbor Lighthouse was built at the north end of Goat Island.

Decommissioning
The Army transferred the garrison from Fort Wolcott on 22 May 1836 to fight in the First Seminole War. This left Rhode Island without an active coast defense fort until the opening of the new Fort Adams in 1841.

The United States Government built the present Goat Island Lighthouse at the northern tip of this island in 1842 to replace the old lighthouse which had been moved to Prudence Island.

Goat Island hosted the training ship squadron of United States Naval Academy during the American Civil War. The War Department still stationed an ordnance sergeant at the fort to maintain its artillery pieces as late as the 1870s.

Naval activities

In 1869, the United States Navy founded a United States Naval Torpedo Station on the site of the former Fort Wolcott.  This naval facility greatly expanded during the succeeding century, and the Navy Torpedo Factory on Goat Island produced many torpedoes for the Navy through World War I and World War II.  The Navy nevertheless closed the torpedo station in 1951 and created Naval Undersea Warfare Center at the nearby Newport Navy base.

United States Coast Guard
In addition to the Goat Island lighthouse, the United States Coast Guard has maintained a cutter at Goat Island since at least the late 1960s. The   served her entire 31-year career at Goat Island from when she was commissioned on 14 April 1967 until she was decommissioned on 3 April 1998. The tradition of having a Coast Guard cutter stationed at Goat Island resumed when the   was commissioned on 16 July 2005. Tiger Shark was based at Goat Island until about 2013 when its berth was moved to Pier 2 at the Naval Station Newport.

Privatization
In the 1960s, the federal government sold the majority of Goat Island to a private developer, Globe Manufacturing.  The developer demolished most buildings from the old fortifications.  Over the next several decades, Globe constructed a hotel and condominiums and converted the only former navy building remaining on the island into a marina.

See also
 Seacoast defense in the United States

References

External links
 History of Fort Wolcott by John T. Duchesneau

Military installations closed in the 1830s
Wolcott
Buildings and structures in Newport, Rhode Island
Wolcott
Wolcott
Wolcott
Wolcott

Fort Wolcott


David Schwarz (; , ; 20 December 1850 – 13 January 1897) was a Hungarian aviation pioneer. He is known for creating an airship with a rigid envelope made entirely of metal. Schwarz died only months before the airship was flown. Some sources have claimed that Count Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin purchased Schwarz's airship patent from his widow, a claim which has been disputed. He was the father of the opera and operetta soprano Vera Schwarz (1888–1964).

Personal life
Schwarz was born in Keszthely, Kingdom of Hungary, then part of the Austrian Empire He was a timber merchant raised in Županja, but he spent most of his life in Zagreb, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. He was Jewish.

Sources for his date of birth vary. The OCLC cites Rotem, Ẓ. giving it as 7 December 1850, while Brockhaus gives it as 20 December 1850 The OCLC, as well as Brockhaus, show Schwarz's place of birth as Zalaegerszeg, Hungary.

Although Schwarz had no special technical training, he became interested in technology and developed improvements for woodcutting machinery.

First airship thoughts
Schwarz first became interested in airships during the 1880s. This occurred while working away from home supervising the felling of some forest land. As the work took longer than planned, he had his wife send him books to while away the evenings. These included a mechanics textbook. Although Schwarz became excited, it is not certain that this inspired him to build his own airship. His lumber business suffered due to his obsession and, like other aviation pioneers, his project attracted mockery. Nevertheless, his wife Melanie supported him. Schwarz proposed aluminium, then a very new material, for construction.

First airship in Russia
Having worked out the design of an all-metal airship, Schwarz then offered his ideas to the Austro-Hungarian war minister. Some interest was shown, but the government was not ready to provide financial support.

The Russian military attaché, a technically educated man, advised Schwarz to demonstrate his airship in St. Petersburg, where an airship using Schwarz's ideas was built in 1893. Schwarz, and later his widow, assumed that test flights would also be made there, but this did not happen. He began construction in late 1892, with the industrialist Carl Berg supplying the aluminium and necessary funding.

Problems arose during gas-filling: on inflation, the framework collapsed. Schwarz apparently intended the metal skin to contain the gas directly without internal gas bags. The Russian engineer Kowanko pointed out that the lack of a ballonet would cause stresses on the skin during ascent and descent. Also, the skin was not airtight,

The first airship's specifications were:
 Power: four cylinder engine weighing  producing  at 480 rpm
 Volume:
 Empty weight:
 Gross lift:
 Ballast and fuel:
 Equipment and three people:
 Net lift:

The circumstances of Schwarz's return are unclear; there were reports of a hasty departure from Russia.

Second airship in Berlin
In 1894, Carl Berg procured a contract to build an airship for the Royal Prussian government, referring to Schwarz as the originator of the idea. Berg already had experience working with the then novel aluminium, and was to later manufacture components for Zeppelin's first airship. With financial and technical help from Berg and his firm, the airship was designed and built.

Construction began in 1895 at the Tempelhof field in Berlin. For a time the Prussian Airship Battalion placed its grounds and personnel at Schwarz's disposal. The components were produced in Carl Berg's Eveking Westphalia factory and, under the direction of Schwarz, assembled in Berlin. A gondola, also of aluminium, was fixed to the framework. Attached to the gondola was a  Daimler engine that drove aluminium propellers. One of the propellers was used to steer the craft.

In June 1896 Carl Berg sent a card to his stepfather from Moscow apparently indicating that he had searched for information on Schwarz and became cynical of delays and was nearly convinced he had been swindled.

Due to delays, the airship was first filled with gas and tested on 9 October 1896, but the results were not satisfactory because the hydrogen delivered by the Vereinigte Chemische Fabriken from Leopoldshall (part of Staßfurt) was not of the required purity and so did not provide enough lift. However, some sources claim that a test was performed on 8 October 1896. It was determined that gas with a density of 1.15 kg per cubic metre was needed. Gas of that quality could not be obtained for some time, and a test flight could not be made until November 1897, roughly ten months after Schwarz's death.

Death and maiden flight

Schwarz did not live to see his airship fly. Between 1892 and 1896 he traveled frequently, which affected his health. Shortly before his death he received news that his airship was ready to be filled with gas. On 13 January 1897 he collapsed outside the "Zur Linde" restaurant in Vienna, and died minutes later from heart failure, aged 44. Historical sources speak of a blutsturz (a term meaning either hemoptysis or hematemesis).

David Schwarz was buried in Zentralfriedhof, Vienna.

Carl Berg required confirmation of Schwarz's death, suspecting he had fled to sell his secrets. Nevertheless, Berg resumed the work with Melanie, Schwarz's widow, and together with the Airship Battalion they completed the airship with the addition of a gas relief valve.

This second airship had these specifications:
 Volume:
 Length:
 Diameter:
 Engine:  Daimler
 Four propellers: one of  diameter between the gongal and the envelope, two of  diameter mounted on brackets either side of the envelope, and a fourth of  diameter revolving in the horizontal plane mounted below the gondola to drive the craft up or down.
 Envelope: 0.2 mm aluminium plates riveted to framework.

A later structural analysis based on the drawings concluded that it was defective, with the skin taking most of the shear stresses: distortions of the skin can seen in a photo of the craft in flight.

The second airship was tested with partial success at Tempelhof near Berlin, Germany, on 3 November 1897. Airship Battalion mechanic Ernst Jägels climbed into the gondola and lifted off at 3 p.m. However, the airship broke free of the ground crew, and because it rose quickly Jägels disengaged the vertical axis 'lift' propeller. At an altitude of about  the drive belt slipped off the left propeller, resulting in the ship "...[turning] broadside to the wind, [and with the result that] the forward tether broke free." As the ship rose to  the drive belt slipped off the right propeller, the airship thus losing all propulsion. Jägels then opened the newly fitted gas release valve and landed safely, but the ship turned over and collapsed and was damaged beyond repair.

Legacy
About the time of the trial flight and for decades after, various accounts, sometimes conflicting or misleading, were written of the events. Later, Berg, as well as his son, would write negatively of his experiences with Schwarz.

Some sources state that Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin purchased Schwarz's patent from his widow in 1898, while others claim that the count used the design. However, Hugo Eckener, who worked with Count Zeppelin, dismissed these claims:

Cvi Rotem (1903–1980) wrote the only known biography, titled David Schwarz: Tragödie des Erfinders. Zur Geschichte des Luftschiffes. Rotem wrote that both Berg and Schwarz wished to keep their work secret.

From 3 December 2000 to 20 April 2001 the Museen der Stadt Lüdenscheid held an exhibition which covered Berg, Schwarz and Zeppelin history from 1892 to 1932, with displays of documents, photographs and airship remnants.

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Robinson, Douglas H., Giants in the Sky. Henley-on Thames: Foulis, 1973

 Schnitzler, Norbert. 2000. WWW-Tipp der Woche 24/2000 (German summary of museum exhibition)
  (also 1996 Gutenberg version)

External links

 Library of Congress Linked Authority File for David Schwarz

 Schwarz's Airship

1850 births
1897 deaths
Engineers from Zagreb
Croatian Austro-Hungarians
Croatian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
Aviation inventors
Airship designers
Aviation history of Germany
Croatian balloonists
Inventors from Austria-Hungary
Hungarian Jews
Engineers from Austria-Hungary

David Schwarz (aviation inventor)


Tearing Down the Wall of Sound is a biography of record producer Phil Spector, written by Mick Brown and published in 2008.  Between 1961 and 1966, Spector's so-called "Wall of Sound" made him the most successful pop-record producer in the world, with more than 20 hits by artists such as The Righteous Brothers, The Crystals, and the Ronettes. Later in his life Spector became a recluse. While Brown was working on this book, actress Lana Clarkson was found shot dead in Spector's foyer, and so the book is said to have an "inevitable true-crime element".

References

American biographies
Phil Spector
2007 non-fiction books
Music books

Tearing Down the Wall of Sound


The 1999 Woking Council election took place on 6 May 1999 to elect members of Woking Borough Council in Surrey, England.

Summary
One third of the council was up for election.  The council stayed under no overall control.  Before the election the largest council party grouping, the Liberal Democrats, were two seats short of a majority.  The effect of the election was to make the Liberal Democrats four seats short, to remove their option of relying on the independent councillor and vacant seat where necessary and calling for issue-by-issue full council chamber support of either a third of the local Conservatives or most of the local Labour Party councillors.

After the election, the composition of the council led by 35 councillors was:
Liberal Democrat 14
Conservative 12
Labour 7
Independent 1
Vacant 1

There were no boundary changes (by the Boundary Commission) to affect comparisons made between this election and that of four year's before for the same vacancies.  The council had had no single party overall control relatively frequently, for nine years of 25, since its creation in 1974.

Election result

References

1999
1999 English local elections
1990s in Surrey

1999 Woking Borough Council election


A pilot light is a small gas flame, usually natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas, which serves as an ignition source for a more powerful gas burner. Originally a pilot light was kept permanently alight, but this wastes gas. Now it is more common to light a burner electrically, but gas pilot lights are still used when a high energy ignition source is necessary, as in when lighting a large burner.

A United States patent was filed May 13, 1922 for a "safety gas-control system" by two employees of the Newark, NJ-based Public Service Gas Company, Conrad Shuck, Jr. and George Layer.

The term "pilot light" is also used occasionally for an electrical indicator light that illuminates to show that electrical power is available, or that an electrical device is operating. Such indicators were originally incandescent lamps or neon lamps, but now are usually LEDs.

Uses
Common applications include household water heaters, central heating systems, fireplaces, flamethrowers, and hot air balloons. While most commercial kitchens still rely on pilot lights for burners, ovens, and grills, current residential systems utilize an electrical ignition. This is more commonly known as standby on modern remote control fires.

Safety protection

In natural gas furnaces, water heaters, and room heating systems, a safety cut-off switch is normally included so that the gas supply to the pilot and heating system is shut off by an electrically operated valve if the pilot light goes out. This cut-off switch usually detects the pilot light in one of several ways:
 A flame rectification device.
 A sensor filled with mercury is used to detect the heat of the pilot light. Contraction of the mercury results in sufficient pressure to operate an electrical switch that interrupts the flow of electricity and shuts off the gas valve when the pilot light goes out.
 A photoresistor is used to detect the light from the pilot lamp. When the pilot light goes out, electrical circuitry connected to the photoresistor shuts off the gas valve.
 Use of a pilot generator or a thermocouple in the flame provides heating appliance safety as it generates enough electric current from the burning flame to hold the gas valve open. If the pilot light goes out, the pilot generator cools off and the current stops, closing the gas valve.

Other units use a non-electrical approach, where the pilot heats a bimetallic element or a gas-filled tube to exert mechanical pressure to keep the gas valve open. If the pilot fails, the valve closes. To restart the system, the valve must be held open manually and the pilot lit, and then the valve must be held open until the element heats up enough to hold the valve open. Non-electrical schemes are appropriate for systems that do not use electricity.

The above methods are examples of the use of "fail-safe" safety protection.

Energy waste

In domestic heating systems with pilot lights it has been estimated that half of the total energy usage is from the pilot light, with each pilot light on average using between 70 and 500 watts of gas power (between 8 and 16 gigajoules/year). The heat from a pilot light in many appliances (furnaces, space heaters, water heaters) is generally released in the same chamber as the primary burner.
The energy loss is much smaller for pilot lights in space heaters than other products, because space heaters heat a smaller enclosed space and contribute more significantly to heating the room. The appliance efficiency of a gas fired balanced flue local space heater in pilot light mode is almost equal with the appliance efficiency measured at the reduced power of the appliance, which efficiency is between 65 – 95% based on the low calorific value of the consumed gas, making part of the pilot light's energy consumption into a useful heat.

Modern alternatives

An alternative to the pilot light is a system to create a high voltage electrical arc or spark between two electrodes, in order to light the gas flowing to the burner. Fail-safe design for such a system requires the burner flame to be detected by passing an electric current through the flame, which is received by the flame rectification circuit inside an ignition controller connected to the gas valve. Flame rectification occurs when electrons flow through the flame burning, which the ignition controller senses and knows the flame is there, keeping the gas valve open. If the appliance loses gas or the flame goes out, the ignition controller doesn't see the flame, closing the gas valve.

A red-hot surface can also be used to provide ignition. Such igniters are often made of silicon carbide, silicon nitride, or another material that is durable under prolonged exposure to extreme heat. Hot-surface igniters are commonly used in cooking ovens, boilers, and modern gas furnaces.

A disadvantage to modern alternatives requiring high voltage is that the appliances are rendered useless during a power outage. Pilot light solutions work independently of the electrical system. However, some appliances can be lit with an external flame source during a power outage.  This may include cooking stoves and ovens, but not heating boilers that are either room-sealed or rely on electricity to operate pumps.

References

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning

Pilot light


Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler (; 17 March 1834 – 6 March 1900) was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf (Kingdom of Württemberg, a federal state of the German Confederation), in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine.

Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach were two inventors whose goal was to create small, high-speed engines to be mounted in any kind of locomotion device. In 1883 they designed a horizontal cylinder layout compressed charge liquid petroleum engine that fulfilled Daimler's desire for a high speed engine which could be throttled, making it useful in transportation applications. This engine was called Daimler's Dream.

In 1885 they designed a vertical cylinder version of this engine which they subsequently fitted to a two-wheeler, the first internal combustion motorcycle which was named the Petroleum Reitwagen (Riding Car) and, in the next year, to a coach, and a boat. Daimler called this engine the grandfather clock engine (Standuhr) because of its resemblance to a large pendulum clock.

In 1890, they converted their partnership into a stock company Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG, in English – the Daimler Motors Corporation). They sold their first automobile in 1892. Daimler fell ill and took a break from the business. Upon his return he experienced difficulty with the other stockholders that led to his resignation in 1893. This was reversed in 1894. Maybach resigned at the same time, and also returned. Daimler died in 1900 and Wilhelm Maybach quit DMG in 1907.

Daimler is seen as "the father of the motorcycle".

Early life and education (1834–1862)

Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was the son of a baker named Johannes Däumler (Daimler) and his wife Frederika, from the town of Schorndorf near Stuttgart, Württemberg. By the age of 13 (1847), he had completed six years of primary studies in Lateinschule and became interested in engineering.

After completing secondary school in 1848, Daimler had trained as a gunsmith under Master Gunsmith Hermann Raithel. In 1852 he ended the training with the trade examination. He graduated in 1852, passing the craft test with a pair of engraved double-barreled pistols. The same year, at eighteen, Daimler decided to take up mechanical engineering, abandoning gunsmithing, and left his hometown.

Daimler enrolled at Stuttgart's School for Advanced Training in the Industrial Arts, under the tutelage of Ferdinand von Steinbeis. Daimler was studious, even taking extra Sunday morning classes. In 1853, Daimler, with Steinbeis' assistance, got work at "the factory college", Rollé und Schwilque (R&S) in Grafenstaden, so-called because its manager, Friedrich Messmer, had been an instructor at the University of Karlsruhe. Daimler performed well, and when Rollé und Schwilque began making railway locomotives in 1856, Daimler, then 22, was named foreman.

Instead of staying, Daimler took two years at Stuttgart's Polytechnic Institute to hone his skills, gaining in-depth understanding of steam locomotives, as well as "a profound conviction" steam was destined to be superseded. He conceived small, cheap, simple engines for light industrial use, possibly inspired by the newly developed gas engines of that era.

In 1861, he resigned from R&S, visiting Paris, then went on to England, working with the country's top engineering firms, becoming knowledgeable with machine tools. He spent from autumn 1861 to summer 1863 in England, then regarded as "the motherland of technology", at Beyer, Peacock & Company, Manchester, whose partner Beyer was from Saxony. While in London, he visited the 1862 International Exhibition, where one of the exhibits was a steam carriage. These carriages did not evidently inspire him, however, for his wish was to improve machine tools for metal and woodworking machinery.

Career through 1882
Daimler went to work for Maschinenfabrik Daniel Straub, Geislingen an der Steige, where he designed tools, mills, and turbines. In 1863, he joined the Bruderhaus Reutlingen, a Christian Socialist toolmaker, as inspector and later executive. While there, he met Wilhelm Maybach, then a 15-year-old orphan. Thanks to Daimler's organizational skills, the factory managed to show a profit, but he quit in frustration in 1869, joining Maschinenbau Gesellschaft Karlsruhe in July.

When in 1872 N.A. Otto and Cie reorganized as Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz, management picked Daimler as factory manager, bypassing even Otto, and Daimler joined the company in August, bringing in Maybach as chief designer. While Daimler managed to improve production, the weakness in Otto's vertical piston design, coupled to Daimler's stubborn insistence on atmospheric engines, led the company to an impasse. Neither Otto nor Daimler would give way, and when Daimler was offered the choice of founding a Deutz branch in Saint Petersburg or resigning, he resigned to set up shop in Cannstatt (financed by savings and shares in Deutz), where he was shortly joined by Maybach.

Otto four-stroke engine (1876)
In 1872 at age 38, Daimler and Maybach moved to work at the world's largest manufacturer of stationary engines at the time, the Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik in Cologne. It was half-owned by Nicolaus Otto, who was looking for a new technical director. As directors, both Daimler and Otto focused on gas-engine development while Maybach was chief designer.

In 1876, Otto developed a gaseous fuel, compressed charge four-stroke cycle, (also known as the Otto Cycle) engine after 14 years of effort, a system characterized by four piston strokes (intake, compression, power, and exhaust). Otto intended that his invention would replace the steam engines predominant in those years, even though his engine was still primitive and inefficient.

Otto's engine was patented in 1877, but one of his 25 patents was soon challenged and overturned. Daimler, who wanted to make his own engine, feared Otto's patent would prevent it. Daimler hired an attorney who found that a prior art patent for a four stroke engine had been issued in Paris in 1862 to Beau De Rochas, a French public works engineer.

Meanwhile, serious personal differences arose between Daimler and Otto, reportedly with Otto being jealous of Daimler, because of his university background and knowledge. Daimler wanted to build small engines that could be applied to transportation but Otto had no interest in this. When Otto excluded Daimler from his engine patents there was great animosity between the two. Daimler was fired in 1880, receiving 112,000 Gold marks in Deutz-AG shares in compensation for the patents of both Daimler and Maybach. Maybach resigned later and followed Daimler.

Independent inventor of small, high speed engines (1882)

At Cannstatt, Daimler and the more creative thinking Maybach devised their engine. At Daimler's insistence, it eliminated "the clumsy, complicated slide-valve ignition", in favor of a hot tube system invented by an Englishman named Watson, since electrical systems functioned too slowly.

In the summer of 1882, Daimler moved to Cannstatt (just outside of Stuttgart at that time), purchasing a cottage in Cannstatt's Taubenheimstrasse, with 75,000 Gold marks from the compensation from Deutz-AG. Maybach followed in September of that year. In the garden, they added a brick extension to the roomy glass-fronted summer house and this became their workshop. Their activities alarmed the neighbors who reported them to the police as suspected counterfeiters. The police obtained a key from the gardener and raided the house in their absence, but found only engines.

Daimler and Maybach spent long hours debating how best to fuel Otto's four-stroke design, and turned to a commonly available petroleum fraction. The main distillates of petroleum at the time were lubricating oil, kerosene (burned as lamp fuel), and ligroin (petroleum naphtha or heavy naphtha), which up to then was used mainly as a cleaner and was sold in pharmacies. " [i.e. ligroin and similar petroleum fractions] of a kind common and readily available at pharmacies (chemist's) at the time", as described by antique car expert Michael Plag. "This is a combustible fuel called n-hexane."

Dream engine (1883)

In late 1883, Daimler and Maybach patented the first of their engines fueled by ligroin. This engine was patented on 16 December 1883. It achieved Daimler's goal of being small and running fast enough to be useful at 750 rpm. Improved designs in the next four years brought that up to 900 rpm. Daimler had three engines built to this design early in 1884, and a flywheel was included in one of the engines. This design was smaller and lighter than engines by other inventors of the time. Daimler relied on hot tube ignition, until 1897, when he adopted the electrical ignition designed by Bosch.

Grandfather clock engine (1885)

The engine with the flywheel included was built into a light vehicle, called the Reitwagen, the first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.

It took considerable effort and experimentation, but eventually, the duo perfected a  vertical single, which was fitted in the Reitwagen, a purpose-built two-wheeler chassis with two spring-loaded stabilizers.

Features of the 1885 Engine included:
 a single horizontal cylinder of  ()
 air cooling
 large cast iron flywheel
 surface carburetor
 hot tube ignition system (patent 28022)
 cam operated exhaust valves, allowing high speed operation

 600 rpm running speed, beating previous engines, which typically ran at about 120 to 180 rpm
 weight of around
 height of

In 1885, they created a carburetor which mixed gasoline with air allowing its use as fuel. In the same year Daimler and Maybach assembled a larger version of their engine, still relatively compact, but now with a vertical cylinder of 100 cc displacement and an output of 1 hp at 600 rpm (patent DRP-28-022: "non-cooled, heat insulated engine with unregulated hot-tube ignition"). It was baptized the Standuhr ("grandfather clock"), because Daimler thought it resembled an old pendulum clock.

In November 1885, Daimler installed a smaller version of this engine in a wooden two wheeler frame with two outrigger wheels, creating the first internal combustion motorcycle (Patent 36-423impff & Sohn "Vehicle with gas or petroleum drive machine"). It was named the Reitwagen (riding car). Maybach rode it for three kilometers (two miles) alongside the river Neckar, from Cannstatt to Untertürkheim, reaching .

First automobile (1886)
Independently of each other, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler each produced an automobile in 1886, both in Germany, about 60 miles apart.

About sixty miles away in Mannheim, Karl Benz built an automobile using an integral design for a motorized vehicle with one of his own engines. He was granted a patent for his motorwagen on 29 January 1886.

When this proved the engine capable of driving a vehicle, Daimler devised a  single and ordered a Wimpff und Söhne four-seater phaeton to house it. Daimler's engine was installed by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen and drove the rear wheels through a dual-ratio belt drive.

On 8 March 1886, Daimler and Maybach secretly brought an American Model coach made by Wilhelm Wimpff and Sohn into the house, telling the neighbors it was a birthday gift for Mrs. Daimler. Maybach supervised the installation of a larger 1.1 hp  () version of the Grandfather Clock engine into this stagecoach and it became the first four-wheeled vehicle to reach . The engine power was transmitted by a set of belts. As with the motorcycle, it was tested on the road to Untertürkheim where nowadays the MHPArena, formerly called the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, is situated.

Driven by Daimler's desire to use the engine as many ways as possible, Daimler and Maybach used the engine in other types of transport including:
 on water (1886), by mounting it in a  long boat and achieving a speed of . The boat was called Neckar after the river where it was tested. (patent DRP 39-367). This was the first motorboat and boat engines soon would become Daimler's main product for several years. The first customers expressed fear the petrol engine could explode, so Daimler hid the engine with a ceramic cover and told them it was "oil-electrical".
 street-cars and trolleys.
 in the air in Daimler's balloon, usually regarded as the first airship, where it replaced a hand-operated engine designed by Dr. Friedrich Hermann Wölfert of Leipzig. With the new engine, Daimler successfully flew over Seelberg on 10 August 1888.

They sold their first foreign licenses for engines in 1887 and Maybach went as their representative to the 1889 Paris Exposition to show their achievements.

First Daimler-Maybach automobile built (1889)

Engine sales increased, mostly for use in boats, and in June 1887, Daimler bought another property at Seelberg hill, Cannstatt. It was located some distance from the town on Ludwigstraße 67 because Cannstatt's mayor did not approve of the workshop. Built at a cost 30,200 goldmarks, the new premises had room for 23 employees. Daimler managed the commercial issues while Maybach ran the engine design department.

In 1889, Daimler and Maybach built the Stahlradwagen, their first automobile that did not involve adapting a horse-drawn carriage with their engine, but which was somewhat influenced by bicycle designs. There was no production in Germany, but it was licensed to be built in France and presented to the public in Paris in October 1889 by both engineers. The same year, Daimler's wife, Emma Kunz, died.

Daimler Motors, the Phönix engine, and the first motorcar sold (1890 to 1900)

With demand for engines growing, for uses in everything from motorboats to railcars, Maybach and Daimler expanded. In 1890 Daimler founded his own engine business, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG). With funding from gunpowder maker Max Duttenhofer, industrialist, and banker Kilian von Steiner, and munitions manufacturer :de:Wilhelm Lorenz, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft was founded 28 November 1890, with Maybach as chief designer. Its purpose was the construction of small, high-speed engines for use on land, water, and air transport. The three uses were expressed by Daimler in a sketch that became the basis for a logo with a three-pointed star.

From 1882 until 1890, Daimler had resisted making his company into an incorporation or stock company. He had seen what happened to too many engineers who had pioneered a capital invention as he had. Many of them were forced out of their own companies by stock holders who "knew better" about how to run the company that they had just purchased than the man who founded the company. It happened to Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, Karl Benz, and August Horch.

Daimler hated having to incorporate his company. Unable to obtain majority control, he sold out and then resigned. DMG expanded, but it changed. The newcomers, not believing in automobile production, ordered the creation of additional stationary engine building capacity, and considered merging DMG with Otto's Deutz-AG.

In 1892, DMG finally sold its first automobile. DMG developed the high-speed inline-two Phönix, for which Maybach invented a spray carburettor. This was fitted in a singularly ugly car, which entered production in 1895 after a cessation of hostilities between Daimler, Maybach, and the DMG board.

Gottlieb Daimler, aged 58, had heart problems and suffered a collapse in the winter of 1892–1893. His doctor prescribed a trip to Florence, where he met Lina Hartmann, a widow 22 years his junior who was the owner of the hotel where he was staying. They married on 8 July 1893, honeymooning in Chicago during its World Fair.

Returning from the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago with his new wife, Daimler had vowed to purchase enough shares of DMG to regain control. This effort failed. Daimler sold all his shares and patents and resigned from the company. Maybach had left earlier.

The disputes with Lorenz continued. Daimler attempted to buy 102 extra shares to get a majority holding, but was forced out of his post as technical director. The corporation was 400,000 Gold marks in debt. The other directors threatened to declare bankruptcy if Daimler didn't sell them all his shares and all his personal patent rights from the previous thirty years. Daimler accepted the offer, receiving 66,666 Gold Marks, and resigned in 1893.

In 1894 at the Hermann Hotel, Maybach together with Daimler and his son Paul designed a third engine called the "Phoenix" and had DMG make it. It featured:
 four cylinders cast in one block arranged vertically and parallel
 camshaft operated exhaust valves
 a spray nozzle carburetor, patented by Maybach in 1893
 an improved belt drive system

This is probably the same internal-combustion engine referred to by the American author and historian Henry Brooks Adams, who describes the "Daimler motor" and its great speed from his visit to the 1900 Paris Exposition in his autobiography.

Daimler and Maybach continued to work together. They built a four-cylinder engine with Maybach' spray nozzle carburetor. It was in the first organized automobile race, the "Paris to Rouen" and defeated all the entries from DMG. Frederick Simms, German-born long-time friend of Gottlieb Daimler insisted that Daimler be brought back into the company making it a condition of his payment of  £17,500 for the transfer of his Daimler licenses to the British Daimler Company which would stabilize the corporation's finances, that Daimler, now aged sixty, should return to DMG. Gottlieb Daimler received 200,000 goldmarks in shares, plus a 100,000 bonus. Simms received the right to use the name "Daimler" as his brand name for Daimler Company products. In 1895, the year DMG assembled its 1,000th engine, Maybach returned as  General Inspector, receiving 30,000 shares.

During this period, they agreed to licenses to build Daimler engines around the world, which included:
 France, from 1890, under a licence held by Louise Sarazin: Panhard et Levassor and Peugeot,
 the United States, from 1891, under Daimler Motor Company of Long Island City in a partnership with American and German piano maker Steinway & Sons
 the United Kingdom, from 1893, by Frederick Simms' Daimler Motor Syndicate transferred in 1896 to the Daimler Motor Company
 Austria, by Austro Daimler

Daimler died in 1900, and in 1907 Maybach resigned from DMG.

Founding of Daimler-Benz

Daimler had developed the first liquid petroleum vehicle in 1885 and Karl Benz had developed the first purpose-built automobile using a 2 cycle engine of his own design a few months later. Daimler never met Karl Benz during the period of invention. In 1896 Daimler (DMG) sued Benz & Cie for violating his 1883 patent on hot tube ignition. Daimler won and Benz had to pay royalties to DMG. Daimler did not meet Karl Benz while they were in court in Mannheim. Later at the founding of the Central European Motor Car Association Daimler and Benz still did not speak to each other.

Years after Daimler died, the two companies did cooperate in many ways. After many years of cooperation, on 28 June 1926 representatives of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) and Benz & Cie signed the agreement for the merger of the two oldest automobile manufacturers in the world. The resulting new company was named Daimler-Benz AG.

Honours
Gottlieb Daimler was accepted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1978. Between 1993 and July 2008 Daimler had a stadium named after him in Stuttgart, Germany. The former Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion was the venue for six matches in the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

Gottlieb Daimler's motto was Das Beste oder nichts ("The best or nothing at all"; "Nothing but the best"). Mercedes-Benz adopted this motto as their slogan in 2010.

See also
 Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, physics of the internal combustion engine
 Illuminating gas, first internal combustion engine fuel
 Ligroin or heavy naphtha, first liquid automotive fuel, n-hexane
 List of German inventors and discoverers

Car and car engine designers, chronologically by first vehicle/engine built
 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (1725–1804), French inventor of the world's first automobile, a 1769–1770 steam-fuelled vehicle
 Étienne Lenoir (1822–1900), developer of the first atmospheric gaseous fueled internal combustion engine and automobile (1860–1863), pioneer of electroplating
 Nicolaus Otto (1832–1891), developer of the first successful compressed charge gaseous fueled internal combustion engine (1860s–70s)
 Siegfried Marcus (1831–1898), developed petrol-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles (1864? 1870? 1888)
 Wilhelm Maybach (1846–1929), designed engines starting in the 1870s–80s; first motorbike (1885), second internal combustion car (1889)

References

Sources

 Niemann, Harry: Gottlieb Daimler. Fabriken, Banken und Motoren. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2000, .

 Seherr-Thoss, Hans-Christoph von, ed.: Zwei Männer, ein Stern – Gottlieb Daimler und Karl Benz in Bildern, Daten, Dokumenten. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, . Hier handelt es sich um Reprints der beiden o.g. Werke in einem Band.
 Siebertz, Paul. Gottlieb Daimler: ein Revolutionär der Technik. 4. Auflage, Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 1950.
 Völker, Renate; Völker, Karl-Otto: Gottlieb Daimler – Ein bewegtes Leben. Silberburg-Verlag, Tübingen und Baden-Baden, 2013, .
 Wise, David Burgess. "Daimler: Founder of the Four-Wheeler", in Northey, Tom, ed. World of Automobiles Vol. 5, pp. 481–483. London: Orbis, 1974.

External links

 The workaholic who made the automotive revolution possible
Gottlieb-Daimler Memorial
1883: the high-speed engine with hot-tube ignition system from Daimler
Daimler's Dream Engine of 1883
 Encarta article (Archived 31 October 2009)

 The Maybach S600 - Mercedes Benz tribute to Wilhelm Maybach

1834 births
1900 deaths
People from Schorndorf
German automotive pioneers
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft
German founders of automobile manufacturers
German industrialists
Engineers from Baden-Württemberg
19th-century German inventors
People associated with the internal combustion engine
People from the Kingdom of Württemberg
University of Stuttgart alumni
19th-century German aviation

Gottlieb Daimler


St.-Pius-Gymnasium is a catholic private highschool in Coesfeld near Münster in Germany. It is held by the diocese of Münster and named after Pope Pius X. . Until 1976 the school was a boarding school only for boys. Since then it has been a Gymnasium. Today, there are 791 pupils.

There is a statue of Pius X on the school ground to express solidarity with the patron. The school has a chapel and a pastor. There is a modern, well-equipped assembly hall, too.

St.-Pius-Gymnasium is associated with the Lyceé Notre-Dame in Guingamp (France), offers trips to Poole (England) and tries to establish a partnership with a school in Orlando (Florida, USA).

In Advent, the school publishes a yearbook named "Piusbrief". Its pupil magazine "Fünf vor Acht" got multiple honours.

The whole school is a non-smoking area.

Education in North Rhine-Westphalia

St.-Pius-Gymnasium


Strange matter (or strange quark matter) is quark matter containing strange quarks. In extreme environments, strange matter is hypothesized to occur in the core of neutron stars, or, more speculatively, as isolated droplets that may vary in size from femtometers (strangelets) to kilometers, as in the hypothetical strange stars. At high enough density, strange matter is expected to be color superconducting.

Ordinary matter, also referred to as atomic matter, is composed of atoms, with nearly all matter concentrated in the atomic nuclei. Nuclear matter is a liquid composed of neutrons and protons, and they are themselves composed of up and down quarks. Quark matter is a condensed form of matter composed entirely of quarks. When quark matter does not contain strange quarks, it is sometimes referred to as non-strange quark matter.

Context
In particle physics and astrophysics, the term 'strange matter' is used in two different contexts, one broader and the other more specific and hypothetical:

 In the broader context, our current understanding of the laws of nature predicts that strange matter could be created when nuclear matter (made of protons and neutrons) is compressed beyond a critical density. At this critical pressure and density, the protons and neutrons dissociate into quarks, yielding quark matter and potentially strange matter.
 A more specific hypothesis is that quark matter is the true ground state of all matter, and thus more stable than ordinary nuclear matter. This idea is known as the "strange matter hypothesis", or the Bodmer–Witten assumption. Under this hypothesis, the nuclei of the atoms we see around us are only metastable, even when the external critical pressure is zero, and given enough time (or the right stimulus) the nuclei would decay into stable droplets of strange matter. Droplets of strange matter are also referred to as strangelets.

Stability of strange matter only at high pressure

In the general context, strange matter might occur inside neutron stars, if the pressure at their core is high enough to provide a sufficient gravitational force(i.e. above the critical pressure). At the sort of densities and high pressures we expect in the center of a neutron star, the quark matter would probably be strange matter. It could conceivably be non-strange quark matter, if the effective mass of the strange quark were too high. Charm quarks and heavier quarks would only occur at much higher densities.

Strange matter comes about as a way to relieve degeneracy pressure.  The Pauli exclusion principle forbids fermions such as quarks from occupying the same position and energy level.  When the particle density is high enough that all energy levels below the available thermal energy are already occupied, increasing the density further requires raising some to higher, unoccupied energy levels.  This need for energy to cause compression manifests as a pressure.  Neutrons consist of twice as many down quarks (charge − e) as up quarks (charge + e), so the degeneracy pressure of down quarks usually dominates electrically neutral quark matter.  However, when the required energy level is high enough, an alternative becomes available: half of the down quarks can be transmuted to strange quarks (charge − e).  The higher rest mass of the strange quark costs some energy, but by opening up an additional set of energy levels, the average energy per particle can be lower, making strange matter more stable than non-strange quark matter.

A neutron star with a quark matter core is often called a hybrid star. However, it is difficult to know whether hybrid stars really exist in nature because physicists currently have little idea of the likely value of the critical pressure or density. It seems plausible that the transition to quark matter will already have occurred when the separation between the nucleons becomes much smaller than their size, so the critical density must be less than about 100 times nuclear saturation density. But a more precise estimate is not yet available, because the strong interaction that governs the behavior of quarks is mathematically intractable, and numerical calculations using lattice QCD are currently blocked by the fermion sign problem.

One major area of activity in neutron star physics is the attempt to find observable signatures by which we could tell whether neutron stars have quark matter (probably strange matter) in their core.

During the merger of two neutron stars, strange matter may be ejected out into the space around the stars, which may allow for the studying of strange matter. However, the rate at which strange matter decays is unknown, and there are very few binary pairs of neutron stars nearby to the Solar System, which could make the official discovery of strange matter very difficult.

Stability of strange matter at zero pressure

If the "strange matter hypothesis" is true, then nuclear matter is metastable against decaying into strange matter. The lifetime for spontaneous decay is very long, so we do not see this decay process happening around us. However, under this hypothesis there should be strange matter in the universe:
 Quark stars (often called "strange stars") consist of quark matter from their core to their surface. They would be several kilometers across, and may have a very thin crust of nuclear matter.
 Strangelets are small pieces of strange matter, perhaps as small as nuclei. They would be produced when strange stars are formed or collide, or when a nucleus decays.

See also

 Strangeness and quark–gluon plasma – subatomic signature

References

Exotic matter
Phases of matter
Quark matter
Unsolved problems in physics
Strange quark

Strange matter


Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (also P. A. Florenskiĭ, Florenskii, Florenskij; ; ;  – December 8, 1937) was a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, polymath, neomartyr and folk saint. During the later twentieth century, statements had appeared noting a recognition by the Russian Orthodox Church of him as a saint, though it was later firmly noted that no such decision had been made.

Biography

Early life
Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born on  in the town of Yevlakh in Elisabethpol Governorate (in present-day western Azerbaijan) into the family of a railroad engineer, Aleksandr Florensky. His father came from a family of Russian Orthodox priests while his mother Olga (Salomia) Saparova (Saparyan, Sapharashvili) was of the Tbilisi Armenian nobility in Georgia. His maternal grandmother Sofia Paatova (Paatashvili) was from an Armenian family from Karabakh, living in Bolnisi, Georgia. Florensky "always searched for the roots of his Armenian family" and noted that they came from Karabakh.

Florensky completed his high school studies (1893-1899) at the  Tbilisi classical lyceum, where several companions were later to distinguish themselves, among them the founder of Russian Cubo-Futurism, David Burliuk. In 1899, Florensky underwent a religious crisis, connected to a visit to Leo Tolstoy caused by an awareness of the limits and relativity of the scientific positivism and rationality which had been an integral part of his initial formation within his family and high school. He decided to construct his own solution by developing theories that would reconcile the spiritual and the scientific visions on the basis of mathematics. He entered the department of mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University and studied under Nikolai Bugaev, and became friends with his son, the future poet and theorist of Russian symbolism, Andrei Bely. He was particularly drawn to Georg Cantor's set theory.

He also took courses on ancient philosophy. During this period the young Florensky, who had no religious upbringing, began taking an interest in studies beyond "the limitations of physical knowledge" In 1904 he graduated from the Imperial Moscow University and declined a teaching position at the university: instead, he proceeded to study theology at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Sergiyev Posad. During his theological studies there, he came into contact with Elder Isidore on a visit to Gethsemane Hermitage, and Isidore was to become his spiritual guide and father. Together with fellow students Ern, Svenitsky and Brikhnichev he founded a society, the Christian Struggle Union (Союз Христиaнской Борьбы), with the revolutionary aim of rebuilding Russian society according to the principles of Vladimir Solovyov. Subsequently he was arrested for membership in this society in 1906: however, he later lost his interest in the Radical Christianity movement.

Intellectual interests
During his studies at the Ecclesiastical Academy, Florensky's interests included philosophy, religion, art and folklore. He became a prominent member of the Russian Symbolism movement, together with his friend Andrei Bely and published works in the magazines New Way (Новый Путь)  and Libra (Весы). He also started his main philosophical work, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters. The complete book was published only in 1914 but most of it was finished at the time of his graduation from the academy in 1908.

According to the forward in a book of his letters published by the Princeton University Press: "The book is a series of twelve letters to a 'brother' or 'friend,' who may be understood symbolically as Christ. Central to Florensky's work is an exploration of the various meanings of Christian love, which is viewed as a combination of philia (friendship) and agape (universal love). He describes the ancient Christian rites of the adelphopoiesis (brother-making), which joins male friends in chaste bonds of love. In addition, Florensky was one of the first thinkers in the twentieth century to develop the idea of the Divine Sophia, who has become one of the central concerns of feminist theologians."

Recent research by Michael Hagemeister, known mostly for his work on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has authenticated that antisemitic material, written under a pseudonym, is in Florensky's hand. Florensky's biographer Avril Pyman evaluates Florensky's position regarding Jews as, contextually for the period, a middle way between liberal critics who excoriated at the time of the incident Russia's backwardness and the behaviour of instigators of pogroms like the Black Hundreds.

After graduating from the academy, he married Anna Giatsintova, the sister of a friend, in August 1910, a move which shocked his friends who were familiar with his aversion to marriage. He continued to teach philosophy and lived at Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra until 1919. In 1911 he was ordained into the priesthood. In 1914 he wrote his dissertation, About Spiritual Truth. He published works on philosophy, theology, art theory, mathematics and electrodynamics. Between 1911 and 1917 he was the chief editor of the most authoritative Orthodox theological publication of that time, Bogoslovskiy Vestnik. He was also a spiritual teacher of the controversial Russian writer Vasily Rozanov, urging him to reconcile with the Orthodox Church.

Period of Communist rule in Russia
After the October Revolution he formulated his position as: "I have developed my own philosophical and scientific worldview, which, though it contradicts the vulgar interpretation of communism... does not prevent me from honestly working in the service of the state." After the Bolsheviks closed the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra (1918) and the Sergievo-Posad Church (1921), where he was the priest, he moved to Moscow to work on the State Plan for Electrification of Russia (ГОЭЛРО) under the recommendation of Leon Trotsky who strongly believed in Florensky's ability to help the government in the electrification of rural Russia. According to contemporaries, Florensky in his priest's cassock, working alongside other leaders of a Government department, was a remarkable sight.

In 1924, he published a large monograph on dielectrics. He worked simultaneously as the Scientific Secretary of the Historical Commission on Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra and published his works on ancient Russian art. He was rumoured to be the main organizer of a secret endeavour to save the relics of St. Sergii Radonezhsky whose destruction had been ordered by the government.

In the second half of the 1920s, he mostly worked on physics and electrodynamics, eventually publishing his paper  Imaginary numbers in Geometry («Мнимости в геометрии. Расширение области двухмерных образов геометрии») devoted to the geometrical interpretation of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Among other things, he proclaimed that the geometry of imaginary numbers predicted by the theory of relativity for a body moving faster than light is the geometry of the Kingdom of God. For mentioning the Kingdom of God in that work, he was accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda by Soviet authorities.

1928–1937: exile, imprisonment, death

In 1928, Florensky was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. After the intercession of Ekaterina Peshkova (wife of Maxim Gorky), Florensky was allowed to return to Moscow. On 26 February 1933 he was arrested again, on suspicion of engaging in a conspiracy with Pavel Gidiulianov, a professor of canon law who was a complete stranger to Florensky, to overthrow the state and install, with Nazi assistance, a fascist monarchy. He defended himself vigorously against the imputations until he realized that by showing a willingness to admit them, though false, he would enable several acquaintances to resecure their liberty. He was sentenced to ten years in the labor camps by the infamous Article 58 of Joseph Stalin's criminal code (clauses ten and eleven: "agitation against the Soviet system" and "publishing agitation materials against the Soviet system"). The published agitation materials were the monograph about the theory of relativity. His manner of continuing to wear priestly garb annoyed his employers. The state offered him numerous opportunities to go into exile in Paris, but he declined them.

He served at the Baikal Amur Mainline camp until 1934 when he was moved to Solovki, where he conducted research into producing iodine and agar out of the local seaweed. In 1937 he was transferred to Saint Petersburg (then known as Leningrad) where, on 25 November, he was sentenced by an extrajudicial NKVD troika to death. According to a legend he was sentenced for the refusal to disclose the location of the head of St. Sergii Radonezhsky that the communists wanted to destroy. The saint's head was indeed saved and in 1946 the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra was opened again. The relics of St. Sergii became fashionable once more. The saint's relics were returned to Lavra by Pavel Golubtsov, later known as Archbishop Sergiy.

After sentencing, Florensky was transported in a special train together with another 500 prisoners to a location near St. Petersburg, where he was shot dead on the night of 8 December 1937 in a wood not far from the city. The site of his burial is unknown. Antonio Maccioni states that he was shot at the Rzhevsky Artillery Range, near Toksovo, which is located about twenty kilometers northeast of Saint Petersburg and was buried in a secret grave in Koirangakangas near Toksovo together with 30,000 others who were executed by the NKVD at the same time. In 1997, a mass burial ditch was excavated in the Sandarmokh forest, which may well contain his remains. His name was registered in 1982 among the list of New Martyrs and Confessors.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1958 (of the 1933 charges) and 1959 (of the 1937 charges.)

Influence
Florensky, often read for his contributions to the religious renaissance of his time or scientific thinking, came to be studied in a broader perspective in the 1960s, a change associated with the revival of interest in neglected aspects of his oeuvre shown by the Tartu school of semiotics, which evaluated his works in terms of their anticipation of themes that formed part of the theoretical avant-garde's interests in a general theory of cultural signs at that time. Read in this light, the evidence that Florensky's thinking actively responded to the art of the Russian modernists. Of particular importance in this regard was their publication of his 1919 essay, delivered as a lecture the following year, on spatial organization in the Russian icon tradition, entitled "Reverse Perspective", a concept which Florensky, like Erwin Panofsky later, picked up from Oskar Wulff's 1907 essay, 'Die umgekehrte Perspektive und die Niedersicht.  Here Florensky contrasted the dominant concept of spatiality in Renaissance art analysing the visual conventions employed in the iconological tradition. This work has remained since its publication a seminal text in this area down to the present day. In that essay, his interpretation has recently been developed and reformulated critically by Clemena Antonova, who argues rather that what Florensky analysed is better described in terms of  "simultaneous planes".

See also

Vladimir N. Beneshevich
Theophilus of Antioch
Imiaslavie
Andrei N. Kolmogorov
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941)
Superluminal speeds
Tachyonic particle
Imaginary mass fields

References

External links

Biographies
 Site devoted to Florensky
 Biography
 Hagiography
 Biography, by Abate Herman and Padre Damascene

Works
 The Pavel Florensky School of Theology and Ministry
  DISF: P.A. Florenskij - Voice by N. Valentini
  Paper about some Florenskij's book
  Florenskij in Italy - Article by A. Maccioni
  Page devoted to Florenskij

1882 births
1937 deaths
20th-century Christian mystics
20th-century Eastern Orthodox martyrs
20th-century Eastern Orthodox theologians
20th-century Russian philosophers
20th-century Russian scientists
Eastern Orthodox mystics
Critics of atheism
Eastern Orthodox philosophers
Eastern Orthodox theologians
Executed priests
Bamlag detainees
Great Purge victims from Azerbaijan
Armenian people from the Russian Empire
Engineers from the Russian Empire
Inventors from the Russian Empire
Mathematicians from the Russian Empire
Philosophers from the Russian Empire
Religious leaders from the Russian Empire
Theologians from the Russian Empire
Imperial Moscow University alumni
People executed by the Soviet Union
People from Elizavetpol Governorate
People from Yevlakh
Persecution of Eastern Orthodox Christians
Russian Christian mystics
Russian people of Armenian descent
Sophiology
Soviet inventors
Soviet rehabilitations
Soviet theologians
Inmates of Solovki prison camp

Pavel Florensky


Mário de Miranda Quintana (July 30, 1906 – May 5, 1994) was a Brazilian writer and translator.

He became known as the poet of "simple things", and his style is marked by irony, profundity and technical perfection. The main themes of his poetry include death, the lost childhood and time. Quintana also worked as a journalist and translated into Portuguese innumerable books, such as Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

Biography
The son of Celso de Oliveira Quintana de Miranda and Virginia, Mário Quintana was born in Alegrete, where he received his early education. He moved to Porto Alegre in 1919 to study at the Military School, and there he published his first works. He started working for Editora Globo, while it was still a state-owned publishing house.

Considered the "poet of simple things" with a style marked by irony, depth, and technical perfection, he worked as a journalist for most of his life. He translated over one hundred and thirty books of world literature, including in Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Words and Blood, by Giovanni Papini.

In 1940, he released his first book of poetry, The Windmills Street, beginning his career as a poet, writer and children's author. In 1953, Quintana worked at the newspaper Correio do Povo as a columnist of a subsection on culture, which was published every Saturday, and left the newspaper in 1977. In 1966, to commemorate his sixty years of age, he published "Poetics Anthology", with sixty poems, organized by Rubem Braga and Paulo Mendes Campos, and for this reason the poet was acclaimed by the Brazilian Academy of Letters by Meyer and Manuel Augusto Bandeira, who recited his own poem "Quintanares", in honor of his fellow gaucho. In the same year he won the Brazilian Union of Writer's Fernando Chinaglia Prize for best book of the year. In 1976, after turning seventy years old, Quintana was awarded from the state of Rio Grande do Sul government the Medal Negrinho do Pastoreio. In 1980, for his body of work, Quintana was awarded the Machado de Assis prize from the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Mario Quintana never married nor had children. Solitary, he lived most of his life in hotels: from 1968 to 1980 he resided at the Hotel Majestic, in the historic center of Porto Alegre. Recently a fictional story originally written by Roberto Vieira in 2012 was revived on social media. The story claimed that in 1980 football star Paulo Roberto Falcão rescued Qunitana from a dire financial situation when Quintana was supposedly evicted from the Hotel Majestic when financial problems, due to the temporary closing of Correio do Povo, left him without pay. In reality, Falcão was moved to invite Quintano to stay at the Hotel Royal (owned by Falcão) when he heard that Quintano had undergone surgery; at that time Quintana was staying at the Hotel Presidente and was not suffering financial hardship.

The poet tried three times for a chair at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, but in none of the occasions he was elected, falling short of twenty votes required to qualify. Even with the promise of unanimimous approval, the poet refused to apply a fourth time. He died in Porto Alegre, aged 87.

Works
 A Rua dos Cataventos, 1940
 Canções, 1946
 Sapato Florido, 1948
 O Aprendiz de Feiticeiro, 1950
 Espelho Mágico, 1951
 Inéditos e Esparsos, 1953
 Poesias, 1962
 Caderno H, 1973
 Apontamentos de História Sobrenatural, 1976
 Quintanares, 1976
 A Vaca e o Hipogrifo, 1977
 Esconderijos do Tempo, 1980
 Baú de Espantos, 1986
 Preparativos de Viagem, 1987
 Da Preguiça como Método de Trabalho, 1987
 Porta Giratória, 1988
 A Cor do Invisível, 1989
 Velório Sem Defunto, 1990
 Água, 2001

References

External links
 Mario Quintana – A Life in Poems < Eyes On Brazil >

1906 births
1994 deaths
People from Alegrete
Culture in Rio Grande do Sul
20th-century Brazilian poets
Brazilian male poets
Translators to Portuguese
20th-century translators
20th-century Brazilian male writers

Mário Quintana


Zeder is a 1983 Italian horror film directed by Pupi Avati, starring Gabriele Lavia. The story is about a young novelist's discovery of the writings of a late scientist who had found a means of reviving the dead.

Plot
In 1956, Gabriella (Veronica Moriconi)—a girl with apparent psychic powers—is brought to the enormous house of Dr. Meyer (Cesare Barbetti) in Chartres, France. Meyer intends to conduct an experiment testing her abilities. He takes her into his basement, where the youngster abruptly falls to her knees and begins digging into the dirt. "This is where you're hiding, isn't it?" Meyer yells. He rushes upstairs for help from his assistants and leaves Gabriella by herself. She is attacked by something unseen and is taken to the hospital. In the basement, further digging reveals a rotted corpse, with a nearby wallet identifying the dead man as Paolo Zeder. Dr. Meyer realizes that the earth in which Zeder was buried was a 'K-Zone'.

In present-day Bologna, Stefano (Gabriele Lavia), a novelist, is given an old typewriter as a birthday present by his wife Alessandra (Anne Canovas). One night, after Alessandra has gone to bed, he discovers a series of typed letters on the typewriter's ribbon. As he reads the ribbon, he finds it is an essay written by scientist Paolo Zeder discussing the existence of K-Zones—areas where death ceases to exist. According to Zeder's essay, bodies buried in these zones can return from the dead.

Stefano investigates the message left on the typewriter ribbon. He encounters people who make it clear that they do not appreciate any questions relating to Paolo Zeder or K-Zones. However, the resistance he experiences intrigues him even more. He becomes obsessed with getting answers to the mystery and temporarily abandons his wife. His investigation leads him to a huge old property, ostensibly abandoned but protected by electrified fences. A nearby service station attendant tells Stefano that French investors are building a gigantic hotel on the property, but no work is ever seen being done.

Stefano sneaks onto the property and discovers surveillance equipment with numerous monitors showing the dead face of a man buried in a coffin. Stefano watches the monitors. The dead man is Don Luigi Costa, an ex-priest who abandoned his vows after contracting an incurable disease. Continuing Zeder's work, Costa had himself buried on the property, a suspected K-Zone, and his rebirth from the dead is caught on camera. Stefano manages to elude the conspirators involved in the experimental work, but finds his wife has been murdered by them. At night, Stefano buries her in a K-Zone located on the abandoned property. She revives and approaches her husband. In the darkness, Stefano begins screaming horribly.

Cast

Release
Although it was initially set for a February 1983 release, Zeder was distributed theatrically in Italy by Gaumont on 10 August 1983. The film grossed a total of 334 million Italian lira in Italy.

Zeder was distributed in the United States under the title Revenge of the Dead by Motion Picture Marketing on 8 May 1984. This version was heavily edited. It was released on DVD in the United States by Image Entertainment.  In 2016 the film was released on blu-ray under the original title Zeder and in an uncut form through the independent label Code Red DVD.  Before then, the U.S. release of the VHS and DVD were both heavily edited.

Reception

Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle said, "Though the acting, direction, and production values of Avati's stylish Italian mystery are solid, the tight build-up of the first half only deteriorates into irresolution and incoherence."  Glenn Kay, who wrote Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide, said that the film "stands out a little by actually trying to generate suspense and not completely repulsing its audience".

References

Footnotes

Sources

External links

1983 films
1983 horror films
Italian supernatural horror films
1980s Italian-language films
Films about writers
1980s supernatural horror films
Italian zombie films
Films scored by Riz Ortolani
Films directed by Pupi Avati
Films with screenplays by Maurizio Costanzo
1980s Italian films

Zeder


Real estate in Pakistan is a growing sector of the economy of Pakistan.

Real Estate Demand
Demand for residential properties in Pakistan grew in 2010, leading to increased interest among real estate developers and investors. Since prices have exceeded 10 million PKR, new housing developments are often aimed at the upper middle class. To assist the real-estate sector, the Government of Pakistan announced a reduction in interest rates on mortgage loans in 2012.

In 2017, the housing gap in Punjab, one of the largest provinces of Pakistan, was around 2.3 million units, this figure is expected to reach the figure of 11.3 million units by the end of 2047.

The prominent factors causing the shortages includes rural-to-urban migration, population growth, lower interest rates, and tax incentives, the poor quality of available properties, and the subsidy schemes, like Roshan Apna Ghar, Mera Ghar Mera Pakistan, etc., in urban areas of the country.

According to a report, the population in Pakistan has grown by a CAGR of 2.1% between FY16 and FY21. With the given trend, the figure would reach 231.58 million in FY23.

The overall real estate industry contributed significantly to Pakistan's GDP during the stated period with a growth rate of between 5.4 % and 5.9%.

Real estate sector worth
Moreover, many more billions are spent on buying residential and commercial plots. Pakistan's real estate sector is worth around $1.8 trillion. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, construction output accounts for 2% of GDP, with housing representing less than half that total. With the rate of urbanization that Pakistan has been experiencing, there is a growing need for urban planning.

Real estate regulatory authority
Prime Minister Imran Khan has recommended the formation of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority, while the Association of Builders and Developers is against its formation.

Real estate education
NED University of Engineering & Technology offers Master of Science in Real Estate Management.

Panjwani Institute of Business Studies & Technology offers Professional Diploma in Real Estate Management

NIREM (National Institute of Real Estate Management) offers Real Estate Professionals Development Program.

Real estate agents
According to FPCCI (The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry), real estate agents are playing an important role in the economic development of the country. "Construction sector has grown by 9% which indicates its strength but this robust sector needs help of the real-estate sector," it said in a 2017 statement.

Real estate and Finance Bill 2023-24
Poor economic situation in 2023 is one of the reasons behind low investment in real estate. Besides, some parts of the Finance Bill 2023-24 are angering realtors. The real estate market is not getting enough investments because people are getting a high interest on their bank deposits. The growth prospects of the sector are shattered by the imposition of an 18.5% tax on non-filers. Real estate leaders are calling for immediate reforms to put the industry on right track.

Illegal housing societies in Rawalpindi
The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) has declared more than 300 housing societies illegal. The management of the RDA has announced that 69 housing societies are authoirized to operate in Rawalpindi.

Illegal housing societies in Islamabad
Over 111 housing societies in Islamabad have been declared illegal by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) as per the statistics available with the National Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change and Environmental Coordination. The list of illegal housing societies in Islamabad is also available online.

References

Housing in Pakistan
Construction and civil engineering companies of Pakistan

Real estate in Pakistan


Route 47 is a highway in eastern Missouri.  Its northern terminus is at Route 79 near Winfield; its southern terminus is at U.S. Route 67 in Bonne Terre.

Route description
The highway begins at Route 79 in Winfield, MO, where it travels due west towards Troy and Hawk Point, where it turns south and meets Interstate 70 in Warrenton.

After Warrenton, the highway continues south to Marthasville, where it intersects with Route 94. The two highways share a concurrency through the Missouri River bottomlands for approximately 4 miles to near Dutzow. The highway still continues south across the Missouri River into Washington, where it intersects Route 100.

From Washington, Route 47 goes down to Union, where it meets up with US Route 50. Route 47 runs concurrent with U.S. 50 very shortly before returning south towards St. Clair.

At St. Clair, Route 47 meets Interstate 44, before joining up with Route 30. The highway now runs east with that route for about 8 miles, until returning south. This stretch of highway is very rural, narrow, and windy. It joins up with Route 21 for a short concurrency, before heading east towards Bonne Terre at its terminus with U.S. Route 67.

History
Route 47 is one of the original 1922 state highways.  Its original northern terminus was at Troy, its southern terminus was at Villa Ridge.  The section between Washington and Villa Ridge becoming part of Route 100.

Major intersections

References

047
Transportation in St. Francois County, Missouri
Transportation in Washington County, Missouri
Transportation in Franklin County, Missouri
Transportation in Warren County, Missouri
Transportation in Lincoln County, Missouri

Missouri Route 47


First United Presbyterian Church is a historic African-American church at 321 N. Jackson Street in Athens, Tennessee.

The church was established in 1889 or 1890 as a mission church, led by minister Jacob L. Cook. Cook, a native of Athens and the son of former slaves, had attended Fisk University as a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, then went on to graduate from Knoxville College. In 1888 he traveled north to study for the Presbyterian ministry at the United Presbyterian Church's Allegheny Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He returned to Athens and started a new congregation in a building that also served as a dance hall. The current church building was built and furnished in 1892 with assistance from sponsors in Pennsylvania. The interior seating, which is still in the church, came from an opera house.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. In October 2013 the Tennessee Preservation Trust named it to its annual "Ten in Tennessee" list of endangered historic properties in the state.

References

Presbyterian churches in Tennessee
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee
Gothic Revival church buildings in Tennessee
Churches completed in 1892
19th-century Presbyterian church buildings in the United States
Churches in McMinn County, Tennessee
National Register of Historic Places in McMinn County, Tennessee

First United Presbyterian Church (Athens, Tennessee)


The Haverah Park experiment was a cosmic ray air shower detection array consisting of water Cherenkov detectors distributed over an area of 12 km2 on Haverah Park on the Pennine moorland near Harrogate, North Yorkshire. The experiment was operated by University of Leeds for 20 years, and was switched off in 1987.

Air showers of secondary particles generated from a primary cosmic ray hitting the Earth's atmosphere are spread over many kilometres when they hit the ground. An array allows for detection of secondary particles caused by a single cosmic ray at several detectors. The geographic spread of the detectors allows for calculation of the following:

The total number of particles detected can be used to estimate the number of particles in the air shower and from the model of the energy required to generate those particles, the energy of the primary cosmic ray.
The difference in the time of arrival of recorded particles at multiple detectors can be used to estimate the arrival direction of the primary cosmic ray.

During its operation, many thousands of cosmic ray events were recorded including four exceptional events with energies over 1020 eV. These results were somewhat controversial because they are beyond the GZK limit. Such particles were later observed by other experiments, such as Fly's Eye (Oh-My-God particle) and AGASA.

References

External links
 Haverah Park, Astrophysics group, University of Leeds
 map of Haverah Park

Cosmic-ray telescopes
High energy particle telescopes
Buildings and structures in North Yorkshire
University of Leeds

Haverah Park experiment


TE10 () is a Soviet-Ukrainian diesel-electric locomotive. The name o this locomotive (ТЭ10) is frae тепловоз с электрической передачей, тип 10, which translate tae "diesel-electric locomotive type 10." Thay war made in single-unit form (TE10) an twa-unit form (2TE10). Thare war an aa three-unit an fower-unit versions (3TE10 an 4TE10).

History
In 1957–1961, the Kharkov plant "Electrotyazhmash" an Malyshev Factory designed a new single-unit locomotive wi 50% mair power than a single TE3 unit an anly a slichtly greater mass. The result wis the TEP10 an TEP10L designs. Efter 1961, work on the freight version o the design wis assigned tae the Lugansk works. Thir designs received the suffix "L" tae the name tae signify the transfer.

The first locomotive o the new design, designated TE10-001 (Kharkov), wis released in November 1958.

Anly smaw nummers o the TEP variant o the design war produced afore the design became a dedicated freight locomotive, while a passenger version wis nae further developed.

Ingines

Initial prototypes uised the 12 cylinder 9D100 opposed piston twa-stroke diesel ingine tae achieve the required power levels.

This wis based on the Kharkov 10 cylinder 2D100 twa-stroke diesel unit. Houiver problems war encountered an anither variant o the 2D100 wis uised, the 10D100, anither 10 cylinder twa-stroke diesel design. Aw derivatives o the TE10 locomotive biggit as new uised this ingine.

Body
Ane o the innovations in Soviet locomotive factories wis semi-monocoque construction - the principle o whole body supporting structur (what the US wad caw a carbody structur). This haed previously been uised anly bi the Czechoslovakian CHS1 electric locomotives an the Riga ER1 electric train. The body o the locomotive wis based on twa three-axle trucks lik the TE3 predecessor.

Wi much less wecht than the twa-unit locomotive TE3, a single TE10 diesel locomotive coud successfully replace a pair o TE3s.

Derivative designs
This single unit design formed the basis for a faimily o locomotives that wis biggit for ower 30 years an ranged frae single unit passenger locomotives TEP10 throu twa an three unit freight locomotives 2TE10 3TE10 tae fower unit very hivy freight 4TE10U ingines.

References

Diesel-electric locomotives o the Soviet Union
Diesel-electric locomotives o Ukraine
Railwey locomotives introduced in 1958
5 ft gauge locomotives

TE10


POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews () is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum's English name means either "Poland" or "rest here" and relates to a legend about the arrival of the first Jews to Poland.

The museum's cornerstone was laid in 2007, and the museum opened on 19 April 2013. The core exhibition opened in October 2014 and features a multimedia exhibition about the Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the World War II Holocaust.

The building, a postmodern structure in glass, copper, and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.

History

The idea for creating a major new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the history of Polish Jews was initiated in 1995 by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. In the same year, the Warsaw City Council allocated the land for this purpose in Muranów, Warsaw's prewar Jewish quarter and site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, facing the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes. In 2005, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland established a private-public partnership with the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw. The museum's first director was Jerzy Halbersztadt. In September 2006, a specially designed tent called Ohel (the Hebrew word for tent) was erected for exhibitions and events at the site of the museum's future location.

An international architectural competition to design the building was launched in 2005, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. On June 30, 2005, the winner was announced by the jury as the team of two Finnish architects, Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma. On June 30, 2009, construction of the building was officially inaugurated. The project was completed in 33 months at a cost of 150 million zlotys allocated by the ministry and the city,  with  a total cost of 320 million zloty. It is financially supported by annual funds from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Warsaw City Council.

The building opened and the museum began its educational and cultural programs on April 19, 2013, on the 70th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During the 18 months that followed, more than 180,000 visitors toured the building, visited the first temporary exhibitions, and took part in cultural and educational programs and events, including film screenings, debates, workshops, performances, concerts, and lectures. The Grand Opening, with the completed Core Exhibition, took place on October 28, 2014. The Core Exhibition documents and celebrates the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland that was decimated by the Holocaust.

In 2016 the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award from the European Museum Forum.

Construction

The museum faces the memorial commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. The winner of the architectural competition was Rainer Mahlamäki, of the architectural studio 'Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Oy in Helsinki, whose design was chosen from 100 submissions to the international architectural competition. The Polish firm Kuryłowicz & Associates was responsible for construction. The building's minimalist exterior is clad with glass fins and copper mesh. Silk screened on the glass is the word Polin, in Latin and Hebrew letters.

The central feature of the building is its cavernous entrance hall. The main hall forms a high, undulating wall. The empty space is a symbol of cracks in the history of Polish Jews. Similar in shape to gorge, which could be a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea known from the Exodus. The museum is nearly 13,000 square meters of usable space. At the lowest level, in the basement of the building will be placed the main exhibition about the history of Jews from the Middle Ages to modern times. The museum building also has a multipurpose auditorium with 480 seats, temporary exhibition rooms, an education center, an information center, a playroom for children, café, shop, and a future kosher restaurant.

Since the museum presents the whole history of Jews in Poland, not only the period under German occupation, the designer wanted to avoid similarities to existing Holocaust museums (such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the museum at Yad Vashem) which had austere concrete structures. The architects kept the museum in the colors of sand, giving it a more approachable feeling.

The interior design was conceived and master-planned by London-based museum design consultancy, Event Communications, along with local firms.

In 2008, the design of the museum was awarded the Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award. In 2014, the designer Rainer Mahlamäki was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Architecture for his design of the museum. The same year, the building received the SARP Award of the Year conferred by the Association of Polish Architects.

Organizational structure
The Core Exhibition's academic team consists of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Program Director) of New York University, Hanna Zaremska of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Adam Teller of Brown University, Igor Kąkolewski of the University of Warmia and Mazury, Marcin Wodziński of the University of Wrocław, Samuel Kassow of Trinity College, Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Helena Datner of the Jewish Historical Institute, and Stanisław Krajewski of Warsaw University. Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University is the Core Exhibition's chief historian.

American Friends of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a U.S. based non-profit organization supporting the foundation of the museum.

On June 17, 2009, the museum launched the Virtual Shtetl portal, which collects and provides access to essential information about Jewish life in Poland before and after the Holocaust in Poland. The portal now features more than 1,240 towns with maps, statistics, and image galleries based in large measure on material provided by local history enthusiasts and former residents of those places.

Core exhibition
The core exhibition occupies more than  of space.  It consists of eight galleries that document and celebrate the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland  – once the largest Jewish community in the world – that was almost entirely destroyed during the Holocaust. The exhibition includes a multimedia narrative with interactive installations, paintings and oral histories, among other features created by more than 120 scholars and curators. One item is a replica of the roof and ceiling of a 17th-century Gwoździec synagogue.

Galleries

Forest
This gallery tells the tale of how, fleeing from persecution in Western Europe, the Jews came to Poland. Over the next thousand years, the country would become the largest European home for the Jewish community.

First Encounters (10th century–1507)
This gallery is devoted to the first Jewish settlers in Poland. Visitors meet Ibrahim ibn Jakub, a Jewish diplomat from Cordoba, author of famous notes from a trip to Europe. One of the most interesting objects presented in the gallery is the first sentence written in Yiddish in the prayer book of 1272.

Paradisus Iudaeorum (1569–1648)
This gallery presents how the Jewish community was organized and what role Jews played in the country's economy. One of the most important elements in this gallery is an interactive model of Kraków and Jewish Kazimierz, showing the rich culture of the local Jewish community. Visitors learn that religious tolerance in Poland made it a "Paradisus Iudaeorum" (Jewish paradise). This golden age of the Jewish community in Poland ended with pogroms during the Khmelnitsky Uprising. This event is commemorated by a symbolic fire gall leading to the next gallery.

The title of the gallery has been subject to some criticism and debate among scholars due to the antisemitic roots of the proverb it is taken from, a 17th-century condemnation of the "rampant prevalence of the infidels".

The Jewish Town (1648–1772)

This gallery presents the history of Polish Jews until the period of the partitions. It is shown by an example of a typical borderland town where Jews constituted a significant part of the population. The most important part of this gallery is a unique reconstruction of the roof and ceiling of Gwoździec, a wooden synagogue that was located in pre-war Poland.

Encounters with Modernity (1772–1914)
This gallery presents the time of the partitions when Jews shared the fate of Polish society divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia. The exhibition includes the role played by Jewish entrepreneurs, such as Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański, in the industrial revolution in Polish lands. Visitors also learn about changes in traditional Jewish rituals and other areas of life, and the emergence of new social movements, religious and political.

On the Jewish Street (1914–1939)

This gallery is devoted to the period of the Second Polish Republic, which is seen – despite the challenges that the young country had to face – as a second golden age in the history of Polish Jews. A graphic timeline is presented, indicating many of the most important political events of the interwar period. The exhibition also highlights Jewish film, theater, and literature.

Holocaust (1939–1944)
This gallery shows the tragedy of the Holocaust during the German occupation of Poland, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 90 percent of the 3.3 million Polish Jews. Visitors are shown the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and introduced to Emanuel Ringelblum and the clandestine group of volunteers that went by the code name Oyneg Shabbos, who collected documents and solicited testimonies and reports chronicling life in the Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. The gallery also portrays the horrors experienced by the Poles during World War II as well as their reactions and responses to the extermination of Jews.

Postwar Years (1944–present)
The last gallery shows the period after 1945, when most of the survivors of the Holocaust emigrated for various reasons, including the post-war takeover of Poland by the Soviets, the hostility of some portion of the Polish populace, and the state-sponsored anti-Semitic campaign conducted by the communist authorities in 1968. An important date is the year 1989, marking the end of Soviet domination, followed by the revival of a small but dynamic Jewish community in Poland.

The exhibition was developed by an international team of scholars and museum professionals from Poland, the United States and Israel, in conjunction with the museum's curatorial team under the direction of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.

See also
History of the Jews in Poland
Gwoździec Synagogue
Galicia Jewish Museum
Yad Vashem
Jewish Museum in Berlin
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Notes

References

External links

 Museum of the History of the Polish Jews at sztetl.org.pl
 The North American Council of the Museum at mhpjnac.org
 Read about museum at culture.pl
 "POLIN: A Light Unto the Nations", by David G. Roskies, Jewish Review of Books, 2015
 POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews at Google Cultural Institute

Jewish Polish history
Museums in Warsaw
Jewish museums in Poland
History museums in Poland
Museums established in 2013
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Buildings and structures by Finnish architects
Jews and Judaism in Warsaw
21st-century religious buildings and structures in Poland