Mai Ghoussoub (; 2 November 1952, in Beirut – 17 February 2007, in London) was a Lebanese writer, artist, publisher and human rights activist.  She was the co-founder in London of the Saqi bookshop and publishing house.

Life
Her father, Raymond Ghoussoub, a Maronite Christian, was a professional footballer. She studied at the French lycée in Beirut, then mathematics at the American University of Beirut, and French literature at the Lebanese University, and later sculpture at Morley College and the Henry Moore Studio in London.

She was a Trotskyite at the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, but soon became disillusioned and moved on to humanitarian work, establishing two medical dispensaries in a poor Muslim area after the doctors had left and the pharmacies had closed.

She lost an eye in 1977, after her car was hit by a shell while taking someone to hospital.  She moved to London to be treated, and spent time in Paris, where she worked as a journalist for Arab newspapers.  She wrote Comprendre le Liban with her childhood friend André Gaspard, under the pseudonyms Selim Accaoui and Magida Salman.

In 1979, she founded the Al Saqi bookshop in Westbourne Grove, London, with Gaspard, the first London bookshop to specialise in Arabic works.
They began to publish books in Arabic in 1983.  They sold the Serpent's Tail imprint to Pete Ayrton in 1987, but continued with the Saqi and Telegram imprints.  An Arabic publishing house, Dar al-Saqi, was founded in Beirut in 1990.

She was a feminist, publishing works on a range of controversial issues and producing challenging artistic installations. She wrote for openDemocracy.

Her autobiographical book, Leaving Beirut: women and the wars within, was published in 1998.  She was passionately opposed to censorship, arguing in her 2006 play Texterminators, performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and Dominion Theatre in London, the Unity Theatre, Liverpool, and the Marignan Theatre in Beirut, that "Words don't kill; humans do."

Family
She married twice.  She married the Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh in 1991.
She died of heart failure in London on 17 February 2007, aged 54.  She was survived by her father, mother, Maggie Ghoussoub, sister, Houda, and husband, Hazem Saghieh.

Works

 reprint, Saqi, 2007,

Notes

References

External links
Saqi books
Lucy Popescu, "Remembering Mai Ghoussoub (1952-2007)", The Guardian, 22 February 2007.

Ghoussoub,Mai
2007 deaths
Lebanese writers
Lebanese expatriates in the United Kingdom
Lebanese expatriates in England
Lebanese University alumni
Lebanese women artists
Lebanese women writers

Mai Ghoussoub


Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923, primarily in 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country, led to the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium after Germany defaulted on its war reparations, and spread misery among the general populace.

Background
To pay for the large costs of the ongoing First World War, Germany suspended the gold standard (the convertibility of its currency to gold) when the war broke out. Unlike France, which imposed its first income tax to pay for the war, German Emperor Wilhelm II and the Reichstag decided unanimously to fund the war entirely by borrowing.

The government believed that it would be able to pay off the debt by winning the war and imposing war reparations on the defeated Allies. This was to be done by annexing resource-rich industrial territory in the west and east and imposing cash payments to Germany, similar to the French indemnity that followed German victory over France in 1870. Thus, the exchange rate of the mark against the US dollar steadily devalued from 4.2 to 7.9 marks per dollar between 1914 and 1918, a preliminary warning to the extreme postwar inflation.

This strategy failed as Germany lost the war, which left the new Weimar Republic saddled with massive war debts that it could not afford: the national debt stood at 156 billion marks in 1918. The debt problem was exacerbated by printing money without any economic resources to back it. The demand in the Treaty of Versailles for reparations – 132 billion gold marks , 1914 exchange rate), later revised under the Young Plan to 112 billion marks (, 1914 exchange rate) – further accelerated the decline in the value of the mark. By late 1919, 48 paper marks were required to buy a US dollar.

Afterwards, German currency was relatively stable at about 90 marks per dollar during the first half of 1921. Because the Western Front of the war had been mostly fought in France and Belgium, Germany came out of the war with most of its industrial infrastructure intact, leaving it in a better position to become the dominant economic force on the European continent after an Allied ultimatum to impose economic sanctions that would force Germany to meet payments.

The first payment was made when it came due in June 1921, and marked the beginning of an increasingly rapid devaluation of the mark, which fell in value to approximately 330 marks per dollar. The total reparations demanded were 132 billion gold marks, but Germany had to pay only 50 billion marks at the time, as the reparations were required to be repaid in hard currency, not the rapidly depreciating Papiermark.

From August 1921, the president of the Reichsbank, Rudolf Havenstein began a strategy of buying foreign currency with marks at any price, without any regard for inflation, and it only increased the speed of the collapse in value of the mark, meaning more and more marks were required to buy the foreign currency that was demanded by the Reparations Commission.

In the first half of 1922, the mark stabilized at about 320 marks per dollar. International reparations conferences were being held. One, in June 1922, was organized by US investment banker J. P. Morgan, Jr. The meetings produced no workable solution, and inflation erupted into hyperinflation, the mark falling to 7,400 marks per US dollar by December 1922. The cost-of-living index was 41 in June 1922 and 685 in December, a nearly 17-fold increase. By the Autumn of 1922, Havenstein's Reichsbank found itself unable to make reparations payments.

The strategy that Havenstein had been using to pay war reparations was the mass printing of bank notes to buy foreign currency, which was then used to pay reparations, but this strategy greatly exacerbated the inflation of the paper mark. Since the mark was, by Autumn of 1922, practically worthless, it was impossible for Havenstein to buy foreign exchange or gold using paper marks. After Germany failed to pay France an installment of reparations on time in late 1922, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr valley, Germany's main industrial region, in January 1923. Reparations were to be paid in goods, such as coal, and the occupation was supposed to ensure reparations payments.

The German government's response was to order a policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr, with workers being told to do nothing which helped the invaders in any way. While this policy, in practice, amounted to a general strike to protest the occupation, the striking workers still had to be given financial support. The government paid these workers by printing more and more banknotes, with Germany soon being swamped with paper money, exacerbating the hyperinflation even further.

Hyperinflation

A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923.

By November 1923, one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks.

Stabilization
The hyperinflation crisis led prominent economists and politicians to seek a means to stabilize German currency. In August 1923, an economist, Karl Helfferich, proposed a plan to issue a new currency, the "Roggenmark" ("rye mark"), to be backed by mortgage bonds indexed to the market price of rye grain. The plan was rejected because of the greatly fluctuating price of rye in paper marks.

Agriculture Minister Hans Luther proposed a plan that substituted gold for rye and led to the issuance of the Rentenmark ("mortgage mark"), backed by bonds indexed to the market price of gold. The gold bonds were indexed at the rate of 2,790 gold marks per kilogram of gold, the same as the pre-war gold marks. Rentenmarks were not redeemable in gold but only indexed to the gold bonds. The plan was adopted in monetary reform decrees on October 13–15, 1923. A new bank, the Rentenbank, was set up by new German Finance Minister Hans Luther.

After November 12, 1923, when Hjalmar Schacht became currency commissioner, Germany's central bank (the Reichsbank) was not allowed to discount any further government Treasury bills, which meant the corresponding issue of paper marks also ceased. The discounting of commercial trade bills was allowed and the amount of Rentenmarks expanded, but the issue was strictly controlled to conform to current commercial and government transactions. The Rentenbank refused credit to the government and to speculators who were not able to borrow Rentenmarks, because Rentenmarks were not legal tender.

On November 16, 1923, the new Rentenmark was introduced to replace the worthless paper marks issued by the Reichsbank. Twelve zeros were cut from prices, and the prices quoted in the new currency remained stable.

When the president of the Reichsbank, Rudolf Havenstein, died on November 20, 1923, Schacht was appointed to replace him. By November 30, 1923, there were 500,000,000 Rentenmarks in circulation, which increased to 1,000,000,000 by January 1, 1924, and to 1,800,000,000 Rentenmarks by July 1924. Meanwhile, the old paper Marks continued in circulation. The total paper marks increased to 1.2 sextillion (1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000) in July 1924 and continued to fall in value to a third of their conversion value in Rentenmarks.

On August 30, 1924, a monetary law permitted the exchange of a 1-trillion paper mark note to a new Reichsmark, worth the same as a Rentenmark. By 1924 one dollar was equivalent to 4.2 Rentenmark.

Revaluation

Eventually, some debts were reinstated to compensate creditors partially for the catastrophic reduction in the value of debts that had been quoted in paper marks before the hyperinflation. A decree of 1925 reinstated some mortgages at 25% of face value in the new currency, effectively 25,000,000,000 times their value in the old paper marks, if they had been held for at least five years. Similarly, some government bonds were reinstated at 2.5% of face value, to be paid after reparations were paid.

Mortgage debt was reinstated at much higher rates than government bonds were. The reinstatement of some debts and a resumption of effective taxation in a still-devastated economy triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies.

One of the important issues of the stabilization of a hyperinflation is the revaluation. The term normally refers to the raising of the exchange rate of one national currency against other currencies. As well, it can mean revalorization, the restoration of the value of a currency depreciated by inflation. The German government had the choice of a revaluation law to finish the hyperinflation quickly or of allowing sprawling and the political and violent disturbances on the streets. The government argued in detail that the interests of creditors and debtors had to be fair and balanced. Neither the living standard price index nor the share price index was judged as relevant.

The calculation of the conversion relation was considerably judged to the dollar index as well as to the wholesale price index. In principle, the German government followed the line of market-oriented reasoning that the dollar index and the wholesale price index would roughly indicate the true price level in general over the period of high inflation and hyperinflation. In addition, the revaluation was bound on the exchange rate mark and United States dollar to obtain the value of the Goldmark.

Finally, the Law on the Revaluation of Mortgages and other Claims of 16 July 1925 ( or ) included only the ratio of the paper mark to the gold mark for the period from January 1, 1918, to November 30, 1923, and the following days. The galloping inflation thus caused the end of a principle, "a mark is worth a mark", which had been recognized, the nominal value principle.

The law was challenged in the Supreme Court of the German Reich (), but its 5th Senate ruled, on November 4, 1925, that the law was constitutional, even according to the Bill of Rights and Duties of Germans (Articles 109, 134, 152 and 153 of the Constitution). The case set a precedent for judicial review in German jurisprudence.

Analysis
The hyperinflation episode in the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s was not the first or even the most severe instance of inflation in history (the Hungarian pengő and Zimbabwean dollar, for example, have been even more inflated). However, it has been the subject of the most scholarly economic analysis and debate. The hyperinflation drew significant interest, as many of the dramatic and unusual economic behaviors now associated with hyperinflation were first documented systematically: exponential increases in prices and interest rates, redenomination of the currency, consumer flight from cash to hard assets and the rapid expansion of industries that produced those assets.

German monetary economics was at that time heavily influenced by Chartalism and the German Historical School, which conditioned the way the hyperinflation was analyzed.

John Maynard Keynes described the situation in The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

It was then that French and British economic experts began to claim that Germany deliberately destroyed its economy to avoid war reparations, but both governments had conflicting views on how to handle the situation. The French declared that Germany should keep paying reparations, but Britain sought to grant a moratorium to allow financial reconstruction.

Reparations accounted for about a third of the German deficit from 1920 to 1923 and so were cited by the German government as one of the main causes of hyperinflation. Other causes cited included bankers and speculators (particularly foreign). Hyperinflation reached its peak by November 1923 but ended when a new currency (the Rentenmark) was introduced. To make way for the new currency, banks "turned the marks over to junk dealers by the ton" to be recycled as paper.

Firms responded to the crisis by focusing on those elements of their information systems they identified as essential to continuing operations. In the beginning the focus was on adjusting sales and procurement arrangements, modifications to financial reporting, and the use of more nonmonetary information in internal reporting. With the continuous acceleration of inflation, human resources were redeployed to the most critical corporate functions, in particular those involved in the remuneration of labor. There is evidence that some parts of corporate accounting systems fell into disrepair, but there was also innovation.

Aftermath and legacy

Since the hyperinflation, German monetary policy has retained a central concern with the maintenance of a sound currency, a concern that had an effect on the European sovereign debt crisis. According to one study, many Germans conflate hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic with the Great Depression, seeing the two separate events as one big economic crisis that encompassed both rapidly rising prices and mass unemployment.

The hyperinflated, worthless marks became widely collected abroad. The Los Angeles Times estimated in 1924 that more of the decommissioned notes were spread about the US than existed in Germany.

Causes
The cause of the immense acceleration of prices seemed unclear and unpredictable to those who lived through it, but in retrospect, it was relatively simple. The Treaty of Versailles imposed a huge debt on Germany that could be paid only in gold or foreign currency. With its gold depleted, the German government attempted to buy foreign currency with German currency, equivalent to selling German currency in exchange for payment in foreign currency, but the resulting increase in the supply of German marks on the market caused the German mark to fall rapidly in value, which greatly increased the number of marks needed to buy more foreign currency.

That caused German prices of goods to rise rapidly, increasing the cost of operating the German government, which could not be financed by raising taxes because those taxes would be payable in the ever-falling German currency. The resulting deficit was financed by some combination of issuing bonds and simply creating more money, both increasing the supply of German mark-denominated financial assets on the market and so further reducing the currency's price. When the German people realized that their money was rapidly losing value, they tried to spend it quickly. That increased monetary velocity caused an ever-faster increase in prices, creating a vicious cycle.

The government and the banks had two unacceptable alternatives. If they stopped inflation, there would be immediate bankruptcies, unemployment, strikes, hunger, violence, collapse of civil order, insurrection and possibly even revolution. If they continued the inflation, they would default on their foreign debt.

However, attempting to avoid both unemployment and insolvency ultimately failed when Germany had both.

See also

 Andreas Hermes
 Zero stroke

Citations

General and cited sources

 Costantino Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation (English transl.), Northampton, England: Augustus Kelly Publishers, 1937, on the German 1919–1923 inflation.

 Guttmann, William. The Great Inflation. Saxon House (1975 hardback w/ sources; ) or Gordon & Cremonesi Ltd. Publ., London (1976 paperback w/o sources; ). Germany currency hyperinflation 1919–1923.
 When Money Buys Little – Jerry Jensen Study of the 1923 German postage stamps
 Karsten Laursen and Jorgen Pedersen, The German Inflation, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1964.

External links

1910s economic history
1920s economic history
1923 in economics
1923 in Germany
Economic history of Germany
Economy of the Weimar Republic
Inflation in Germany
Man-made disasters in Germany
1923 disasters in Germany
1920s disasters in Germany

Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic


Robert Hindmarsh (1759–1835) was an English printer and one of the original founders of Swedenborgianism.

Life
He was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, on 8 November 1759. His father, James Hindmarsh, was one of John Wesley's preachers, and was in 1777 under training by Wesley in London; Robert, however, was never a Methodist. At 14 he got an apprenticeship as a printer in London, and he later opened his own print shop, setting up for himself at 32 Clerkenwell Close.

About 1781 he met with one of Anthoinette Bourignon's works, and afterwards with those of ; a Methodist preacher complained of his lending about works of this class. He first discovered Emanuel Swedenborg's theology when he read Heaven and Hell and Intercourse between the Soul and the Body in 1782. He was instantly converted.

In December 1783 he formed a society (originally consisting of five members) for the purpose of studying Swedenborg's works. Hindmarsh found first three other readers of Swedenborg: Peter Prow, William Bonington, and John August Tulk. They organized a public meeting of readers of Swedenborg with an advertisement in the newspaper. The meeting took place on 5 December 1783 at the "London Coffee House" on Ludgate Hill. They were joined by one other member, William Spence. They met again on 12 December and were joined by Henry Pickitt and James Glen. A group of readers of Swedenborg slowly grew.

In January 1784 they formed "The Theosophical Society", for translating, printing and distributing the writings of Swedenborg. Rooms were taken for the society in New Court, Middle Temple. Among the members were John Flaxman, William Sharp, two clergymen, and Hindmarsh's father, who left Methodism in 1785. Hindmarsh printed for this society Swedenborg's Apocalypsis Explicata (1785–1789), and in 1786 he issued his own abridgment of Bourignon's Light of the World. A proposal made on 19 April 1787 to open a place of worship was defeated by John Clowes, who came from Manchester to oppose it. However, on 31 July sixteen worshippers met at the house of Thomas Wright, a watchmaker, in the Poultry. James Hindmarsh, his father, was chosen by lot to administer the sacraments; ten communicated, and five, including Robert Hindmarsh, were baptised into the 'new church'.

On 27 January 1788 a chapel in Great Eastcheap (bearing over its entrance the words 'Now it is allowable') was opened with a sermon by Hindmarsh's father. On 1 June two priests, the elder Hindmarsh and Samuel Smith, another ex-Methodist preacher, were ordained by twelve members, of whom Robert Hindmarsh was one selected by lot. In 1789 Hindmarsh was expelled (with five others) on the ground of lax views of the conjugial relation, perhaps only theoretical. He therefore vowed never again to be a member of any society; but he became sole tenant of the premises in Eastcheap, the majority seceding to Store Street, Tottenham Court Road.

Hindmarsh fell into controversy with Joseph Priestley, to whom he had lent (1791) Swedenborg's works, and attended annual conferences of believers in Swedenborg's doctrine, advocating in 1792 the autocracy of the priesthood. Hindmarsh held a conference (of seven members) in 1793, at which a hierarchy of three orders was agreed on, and Great Britain parcelled into twenty-four dioceses; but for want of funds the Eastcheap chapel was closed within the year. A few years later he got his friends to build a 'temple' in Cross Street, Hatton Garden. It was opened on 30 July 1797 by Joseph Proud, who had moved from Birmingham. Proud left in 1799 owing to disputes with the proprietors, and the chapel subsequently became the scene of Edward Irving's labours.

Meanwhile, Hindmarsh tried stockbroking, with only temporary success. In 1811 William Cowherd invited him to Salford to superintend a printing office for cheap editions of Swedenborg's works. He soon broke with Cowherd, but some of the hearers of Clowes and of Cowherd persuaded him to stay. He preached in Clarence Street, Manchester, from 7 July 1811, holding on Thursdays in 1812 a debating society, which he called the 'new school of theology.' His friends built for him (1813) a 'New Jerusalem temple' in Salford.

He was the founder of The New Magazine of Knowledge and the head of the Society for Promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem.  At the conference held in Derby, 1818, over which Hindmarsh presided, it was resolved that he had been 'virtually ordained by the divine auspices.' Hindmarsh preached at Salford till 1824. After his retirement he wrote a history, from 1824 to 1834 working on the manuscript for Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church in England, America and Other Parts. He passed the work on to others (including the Rev. Edward Madeley) to edit and complete.  It was published in London in 1861.

He died on 2 January 1835 in his daughter's house at Gravesend, and was buried at Milton-next-Gravesend. He married on 7 May 1782, and had five children; his wife died on 2 March 1833.

References

 Odhner, Carl Theophilus, Robert Hindmarsh: A Biography, Academy Book Room 1821 Wallace Street, Philadelphia, 1895.

External links

Attribution

British printers
English Swedenborgians
1759 births
1835 deaths
People from Alnwick
Burials in Kent

Robert Hindmarsh


Robert Joseph "Bob" Cenker (born November 5, 1948) is an American engineer, and former astronaut. In January 1986, Cenker was a crew member on the seventh flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. Cenker was a type of astronaut called a Payload Specialist.

This mission was the final flight before the Challenger explosion, which ended the Space Shuttle program until 1988. As a result, Cenker's mission was called "The End of Innocence" for the Shuttle.

Following the end of his space mission, Cenker returned to work as an engineer, and also makes appearances for NASA.

Early life and education
Cenker was born on November 5, 1948, and raised near Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He started his education at St. Fidelis College Seminary in Herman, Pennsylvania, leaving in 1962. He later attended Uniontown Joint Senior High School and graduated in 1966.

Cenker enrolled at Penn State University in 1970 where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering. He continued his studies at Penn State and earned a Master of Science degree in 1973, also in aerospace engineering. Cenker earned a second Master of Science (M Sc.) degree in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University in 1977.

Pre-spaceflight career
Cenker worked for 18 years at RCA Astro-Electronics and its successor company GE Astro Space. Cenker worked on hardware design and systems design concerning satellite attitude control. He also worked on in-orbit operations, as well as spacecraft assembly, test control, and pre-launch operations. He spent two years on the Navy navigation satellite program, but spent most of his career working on commercial communications satellites.

Cenker's positions included integration and test manager for the Satcom D and E spacecraft, where he was responsible for all launch site activities. He also served as spacecraft bus manager on the Spacenet/GStar programs. He was responsible for ensuring the spacecraft bus could interface with multiple rockets, including the Delta, Space Shuttle, and Ariane launch vehicles.

Spaceflight experience

As an incentive for a spacecraft owner to contract with NASA to use a Shuttle launch instead of an unmanned, commercial launch system, NASA permitted contracting companies to apply for a Payload Specialist seat on the same mission. When RCA contracted with NASA to launch Satcom Ku-1, RCA Astro-Electronics' manager of systems engineering for the Satcom-K program Bob Cenker, and his co-worker Gerard Magilton, were selected to train as Payload Specialists.

Cenker and Magilton trained with career astronauts as well as other Payload and Mission Specialists, including those scheduled for the next scheduled flight, that of the Challenger mission, STS-51-L.

This flight of Columbia was originally scheduled to occur in August 1985, but the timeline slipped. In July 1985 the payload was finalized to include the RCA satellite, and Cenker was assigned to the mission, now designated as STS-61-C. Magilton was assigned as the back-up.Prior to its successful launch, Columbia had several aborted launch attempts, including one on January 6 which was "one of the most hazardous in the shuttle's operational history" to that point, as well as a near-catastrophic abort three days later. Referring to the January 9 abort, pilot Charlie Bolden later stated that it "...would have been catastrophic, because the engine would have exploded had we launched."

Columbia ultimately launched and achieved orbit on January 12, 1986, with a full crew of seven. Along with Cenker, the crew included Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson, future NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, George D. Nelson, Steven A. Hawley, Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, and US Representative Bill Nelson.
  Cenker and his crewmates traveled over 2.1 million miles in 96 orbits aboard Columbia and logged over 146 hours in space.

During the six-day mission, January 12–18, Cenker performed a variety of physiological tests, operated a primary experiment – an infrared imaging camera – and assisted with the deployment of RCA Americom's Satcom Ku-1 satellite, the primary mission objective. Satcom K-1 was deployed nearly 10 hours into the mission, and Satcom later reached its geostationary "slot" at 85 degrees West longitude where it remained operational until April 1997, the last major commercial satellite deployed by the space shuttle program.

In a 2014 video of the "Tell Me a Story" series titled "Close My Eyes & Drift Away", posted to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex YouTube channel, Cenker tells a humorous story regarding a zero-g sleeping problem that he faced on his mission.

The next Shuttle launch, ten days after the return of Columbia, resulted in the destruction of Challenger with the loss of all aboard, including Cenker's counterpart from Hughes Aircraft, civilian crew member and Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis. Accordingly, commander Gibson later called the STS-61-C mission "The End of Innocence" for the Shuttle Program.

Following the Challenger disaster, the shuttle fleet was grounded until 1988. Even after Shuttle missions resumed, civilian Payload Specialists like Cenker were excluded until the Payload Specialist program was reinstated on December 2, 1990 when Samuel T. Durrance, an Applied Physics Laboratory astrophysicist and Ronald A. Parise, a Computer Sciences Corporation astronomer, flew aboard STS-35. By that time, RCA had been purchased by General Electric, and RCA Astro-Electronics became part of GE. Following two additional ownership transitions, the facility was closed in 1998. As  a result, Cenker was the only RCA Astro-Electronics employee, and only employee in the history of the facility under all of its subsequent names, to ever fly in space.

NASA's Payload Specialist program has been criticized for giving limited Shuttle flight positions to civilian aerospace engineers such as Cenker and Greg Jarvis (killed aboard Challenger), politicians such as Bill Nelson, and others civilians such as Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe (also killed aboard Challenger). Even the flight of former Mercury astronaut and US Senator John Glenn was questioned. The concern was that these people had replaced career astronauts in very limited flight opportunities, and some may have flown without fully understanding the level of danger involved in a Shuttle mission.

Post-spaceflight

Following the completion of his shuttle mission, Cenker returned to work in the civilian aerospace field. Cenker's last two years with RCA Astro-Electronics and it's successor GE Astro Space were spent as Manager of Payload Accommodations on an EOS spacecraft program. After leaving GE, Cenker served as a consultant for various aerospace companies regarding micro-gravity research, and spacecraft design, assembly and flight operations. Cenker supported systems engineering and systems architecture studies for various spacecraft projects, including smallsats, military communications satellites, and large, assembled-in-orbit platforms. His contributions included launch vehicle evaluation and systems engineering support for Motorola on Iridium, and launch readiness for the Globalstar constellation. Other efforts include systems engineering and operations support for INTELSAT on Intelsat K and Intelsat VIII, for AT&T on Telstar 401 and 402, for Fairchild-Matra  on SPAS III, for Martin Marietta on Astra 1B, BS-3N, ACTS, and for the Lockheed Martin Series 7000 communications satellites.

Cenker continues to make periodic public appearances representing NASA and the shuttle astronaut program, including one at the Kennedy Space Center in March 2017.

In 2017, Cenker's STS-61C crewmate former US Senator Bill Nelson spoke at a session of the US House of Representatives. In an address, titled "Mission to Mars and Space Shuttle Flight 30th Anniversary", he read into the Congressional Record the details of the mission of STS-61C, as well as the names and function of each crew member including Cenker.

Personal life
Bob Cenker is married to Barbara Ann Cenker; they have two sons and a daughter.

Professional societies
 Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
 Life Member of the Penn State Alumni Association
 Life Member of the Association of Space Explorers
 Registered Professional Engineer in the state of New Jersey
 Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
 Sigma Gamma Tau
 Tau Beta Pi

Notes

References

Other websites
 NASA biography of Robert Cenker
 STS-61C Press Kit
 NASA: 61-C Mission Page
 Space Shuttle Flight 24 (STS-61C) Post Flight Presentation on YouTube

1948 births
American astronauts
People from Pennsylvania
Living people

Robert J. Cenker


Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 13 is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MAP3K13 gene.

Function

The protein encoded by this gene is a member of serine/threonine protein kinase family. This kinase contains a dual leucine-zipper motif, and has been shown to form dimers/oligomers through its leucine-zipper motif. This kinase can phosphorylate and activate MAPK8/JNK, MAP2K7/MKK7, which suggests a role in the JNK signaling pathway.

Interactions

MAP3K13 has been shown to interact with PRDX3.

References

Further reading

EC 2.7.11

MAP3K13


Bernardino Bertolotti (March 26, 1547 – after 1609) was an Italian composer and instrumentalist. He came from a family of instrumentalists and instrument makers, and was the son of Agostino Bertolotti, who was the maestro di cappella at Salò cathedral. Bernardino joined the Este court at Ferrara in 1578, and left when the court dissolved in 1598, at which point he went to the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua, a closely related court, and in 1609 was instrumentalist to the pope at the Castel Sant'Angelo. It seems that he played the violin and trombone as part of his duties.

Bertolotti was a minor composer, and despite the revolutionary musical changes which were occurring in Ferrara during his tenure there, most notably in the work of Luzzasco Luzzaschi, his works remained pedestrian and were published: Missarum ad quinque voces, Bernardini Bertolotti Salodien. Serenissimi Ferrariae Ducis Musici. Liber primus. Nunc primum in lucem editus. - Venetijs. Apud Riciardum Amadinum 1593 - in 4°. He was the cousin of Gasparo da Salò.

References
Anthony Newcomb. "Bernardino Bertolotti", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, grovemusic.com  (subscription access).
 Dassenno Flavio "Gasparo da Salò architetto del suono" ed. Comune di Salò, 2009

Notes

1547 births
17th-century deaths
Italian Roman Catholics
Italian classical violinists
Male classical violinists
Italian classical trombonists

Bernardino Bertolotti


Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was a English Baptist preacher. People still know him as the "Prince of Preachers". In his lifetime, Spurgeon preached to about 10 million people. Spurgeon would often preach 10 times a week at different places. His sermons have been translated into many languages. Today, there are more writings and books by Spurgeon than by any other Christian writer.

Spurgeon was the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London for 38 years. Under the previous pastor, Dr John Rippon, it became the largest Baptist congregation in Great Britain. He was part of several controversies with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, and later had to leave that denomination. Throughout his life, Spurgeon suffered from depression and other mental illnesses. In 1857, he started a charity organisation called Spurgeon's which works all over the world.

Biography

Family background and childhood

His family
Charles Spurgeon was born on 19 June 1834, in Kelvedon, in the English county of Essex. He was the eldest child of Eliza Jarvis and John Spurgeon. His mother Eliza was born in nearby Belchamp Otten on 3 May 1815. She was about 19-years-old when Spurgeon was born. His father John Spurgeon, born in Clare, Suffolk on 15 July 1810, was about 24-years-old. There were 17 children in Spurgeon's family, but nine of them died when they were babies.

Interests

When he was six, Spurgeon read The Pilgrim's Progress. He read that book over 100 times in his life. Spurgeon was also very good at mathematics. As a young boy, he would read the Scriptures at family worship. He memorised many hymns as a child, and would use many of them in his sermons later in life.

Spirituality
As an early teenager, he was very intelligent, but was also fearful and doubting. By the influence of his father and grandfather, Spurgeon was kept from most normal sins. As a child, he thought that he was a good person. But he later said that, "Day and night God's hand was heavy on me." He read the whole Bible, but he thought that it was threatening him, rather than promising him good things. As he got older, these things weighed on his conscience.

On 6 January 1850, when he was 15, a snow storm made him seek shelter in a Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester. While he was there, a worker there said to him, "Young man, you look very miserable." Spurgeon knew this, and he believed now that only God could heal him. The worker, seeing his need, replied, "Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look! Look! Look! You have nothin' to do but to look and live."

Within moments, he was converted to Christianity, or as he said: "God opened his heart to the Salvation message." He later said that, "I thought I could dance all the way home." On 3 May 1850, he was baptised in the River Lark, at Isleham. Later that year, his family moved to Cambridge.

Early adulthood

Beginnings
He preached his first sermon in the winter of 1850–51. At that time, he was made the pastor of the Waterbeach Baptist Chapel in Cambridgeshire. His preaching was thought to be very good. In 1853, he authored his first written work: a Gospel tract.

New Park Street Chapel
In April 1854, aged 19 and after he had preached for three months, Spurgeon became the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in London. At that time, it was the largest Baptist congregation in the city. Within months of Spurgeon being the pastor there, he became very famous. Even before he was 20, Spurgeon had preached over 600 times. His sermons were published every week, and many people read them. While he was at the New Park Street Chapel, Spurgeon became friends with James Hudson Taylor. Taylor was the man who started the China Inland Mission.

The way Spurgeon preached was not new, but it was easy to understand. When he would read and teach the Bible in his messages, many people would think about what Jesus had said. Because the church congregation became too large for their building, they had to move to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall, and later to the Metropolitan Tabernacle. By the age of 22, he was a very popular preacher. He would preach to more than 10,000 people at a time. Even before the microphone was invented, he spoke to an audience of almost 24,000 at the Crystal Palace.

On 8 January 1856, Spurgeon got married to Susannah Spurgeon. By the age of 33, she had to stay home because of her disabilities. They had twin sons, Charles and Thomas, born 20 September 1856.

Tragedy

While he was preaching on 19 October 1856, there was a tragedy. A group of men yelled "Fire!" This made many people panic and run for the exits. It was later found out that seven people died after being trampled to death. Spurgeon was hurt emotionally by the actions of these men, and it had a large influence on his life. He had depression for many years. He later said that he cried for no reason, but still his ministry went on.

Middle life

On 18 March 1861, the church moved to their newly built Metropolitan Tabernacle, at Elephant-and-Castle in London. The building could hold from five to six thousand people, and was like a modern-day "megachurch". Spurgeon read many books, up to six a week.

Spurgeon liked singing hymns and wrote several of them. He published a book of well-known hymns for use at his church. There was no pipe organ or other instruments in his church; the hymns were always sang unaccompanied. Spurgeon never called people to come forward after his sermons, which is a custom of many evangelical preachers, who like to talk to the people who have been moved in their faith by the preaching. Spurgeon would say that anyone could meet him on Monday to talk about Christ. There was always someone at his door the next day. He preached there until his death 31 years later.

When the missionary David Livingstone died in 1873, a copy of Spurgeon's sermon, "Accidents, Not Punishments", was found among his belongings. There was a comment at the top of the first page that read, "Very good, D.L." Livingstone carried the sermon with him when he travelled to Africa, but it was given back to Spurgeon. Spurgeon had given the message on Sunday, 8 September 1861, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in Newington, London. He had preached it because of two disasters that happened close to his house. On Sunday, 25 August 1861, there was a tragic accident between two trains in the Clayton Tunnel between London and Brighton. 23 people died from this crash and the crash also injured hundreds. About two weeks later, on Monday, 2 September another train wreck in North London that made 15 more people die.

Final years and death

Spurgeon gave his last sermon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on 7 June 1891. During his pastorate, 14,692 were baptised and joined the Tabernacle. Spurgeon's wife was often too sick to leave their home to hear him preach.

Near the end of his life, he had poor health with rheumatism, gout, and Bright's disease. He died in Menton, in France, on 31 January 1892. Spurgeon's wife and sons lived longer than him. His body is buried in a tomb in West Norwood Cemetery, in London.

Controversies

Baptist Union controversies
Around the end of Spurgeon's life, he was part of many conflicts in the Baptist Union of Great Britain (BUGB). Spurgeon later left the Baptist Union. Even after Spurgeon's death, there were such controversies there, such as the talk over whether or not the Baptist Union should be allowed to meet in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Spurgeon's son, Thomas, who was the co-pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle with Archibald G. Brown, said that, "The Baptist Union almost killed my father." "Yes," replied someone at BUGB, "and your father almost killed the Baptist Union."

Downgrade controversy
A controversy with Baptists started in 1887 when Spurgeon wrote what was later called the "Downgrade Controversy." It got that name when Spurgeon used word "Downgrade" when talking about how other Baptists looked at the Bible. Spurgeon meant that things such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution were making the Baptist Union weak.

Baptismal regeneration
The "baptismal regeneration" controversy was started by a sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle on 5 June 1864. That was when Spurgeon spoke to Anglican Christian leaders who supported infant baptism. The sermon is 16 pages long, so it took around an hour for Spurgeon to preach it. Over 350,000 copies of this sermon were sold. However, Spurgeon did work with Anglicans, as well as people from other denominations all his life.

Spurgeon's ministries

Spurgeon's

Stockwell Orphanage was an orphanage started by Spurgeon in London in 1867. It opened on 9 September 1869, and was originally for boys only. It began taking girls as well in 1879. The children were fed, clothed and taught at the orphanage. The money to pay for this mainly came from donations.

The orphanage was open until London was bombed in the Second World War. It later turned into Spurgeon's Child Care (and then into Spurgeon's). It is now mainly in England, but has international projects in Mexico, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Spurgeon's College

Spurgeon's College is a theological institute in London. Spurgeon started it in 1857. Spurgeon's College is a member of the Baptist Union.

Spurgeon library
In 1906, William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri paid £500 ($2500) for most of the Spurgeon library. The Spurgeon library had around 5,100 books in it at the time. In 2006, the whole library was sold to the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of Spurgeon's sermon notes are at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.

Works

His works have been translated into many languages. He also made many volumes of commentaries, sayings, and other types of literature.

 2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon
 Able To The Uttermost
 According To Promise
 All of Grace :
 An All Round Ministry
 Around the Wicket Gate
 Barbed Arrows
 C. H. Spurgeon's Autobiography :
 Chequebook of the Bank of Faith :
 Christ's Incarnation
 Come Ye Children
 Commenting and Commentaries
 The Dawn of Revival, (Prayer Speedily Answered)
 Down Grade Controversy, The
 Eccentric Preachers
 Feathers For Arrows
 Flashes Of Thought
 Gleanings Among The Sheaves
 God Promises You :
 Good Start, A
 Greatest Fight In The World, The
 Home Worship And The Use of the Bible in the Home
 Interpreter, The or Scripture for Family Worship
 John Ploughman's Pictures
 John Ploughman's Talks
 Lectures to My Students :
 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, The
 Miracles and Parables of Our Lord
 Morning & Evening :
 New Park Street Pulpit, The
 Only A Prayer Meeting
 Our Own Hymn Book
 Pictures From Pilgrim's Progress
 Power in Prayer :
 The Preachers Power and the Conditions of Obtaining it
 Saint And His Saviour, The
 Sermons In Candles
 Sermons On Unusual Occasions
 Soul Winner, The :
 Speeches At Home And Abroad
 Spurgeon's Commentary on Great Chapters of the Bible
 Spurgeon's Morning and Evening
 Spurgeon's Sermon Notes :
 Sword and The Trowel, The
 Till He Come
 Treasury of David, The :
 We Endeavour
 The Wordless Book
 Word and Spirit :
 Words Of Advice
 Words Of Cheer
 Words Of Counsel

References

Bibliography

Other websites

 More information on Charles Spurgeon
 Chronological index of Spurgeon's sermon
 Index of Spurgeon's writings
 Spurgeon Gems - Over 2,750 of Spurgeon's sermons in modern English
 Spurgeon's quotes and illustrations

Biographies
 Spurgeon's Biography - at Christian Biography Resources
 Spurgeon's Audio Biography
 "Charles Haddon Spurgeon, A Biography"  - By W. Y. Fullerton
 "The Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon", vols. 1 and 2

1834 births
1892 deaths

Baptist ministers
English autobiographers
English Protestants
Evangelists
Writers from Suffolk

Charles Spurgeon


Sir Paul Maxime Nurse  (born 25 January 1949) is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle.

Early life and education
Nurse's mother went from London to Norwich and lived with relatives while awaiting Paul's birth (at the age of 18) in order to hide illegitimacy. For the rest of their lives, his maternal grandmother pretended to be his mother, and his mother pretended to be his sister.

Paul was brought up by his grandparents (whom he took to be his parents) in North West London. He was educated at Lyon Park school in Alperton and Harrow County Grammar School. He received his BSc degree in biology in 1970 from the University of Birmingham and his PhD degree in 1973 from the University of East Anglia for research on Candida utilis. He then pursued postdoctoral work at the University of Bern, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Sussex.

Nurse did not know that his "sister" was in fact his mother until he was in his 50s: his application for a green card for US residency while president of Rockefeller University was, to his surprise, rejected, despite his being a Nobel Prize winner, president of a university and a knight; this was because he had submitted a short-form UK birth certificate which did not name his parents. When he applied for a full birth certificate he discovered the truth, to his astonishment.

Career and research
Nurse continued his postdoctoral research at the laboratory of Murdoch Mitchison at the University of Edinburgh for the next six years (1973–1979).

Beginning in 1976, Nurse identified the gene cdc2 in fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). This gene controls the progression of the cell cycle from G1 phase to S phase and the transition from G2 phase to mitosis. In 1987, Nurse identified the homologous gene in human, Cdk1, which codes for a cyclin dependent kinase.

Working in fission yeast, Nurse identified the gene cdc2, which controls the transition from G1 to S, when the cell grows in preparation for the duplication of DNA, and G2 to M, when the cell divides. With his postdoc Melanie Lee, Nurse also found the corresponding gene, CDK1, in humans. These genes stop and start cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) by adding or removing phosphate groups.

In 1984, Nurse joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF, now Cancer Research UK). He left in 1988 to chair the department of microbiology at the University of Oxford. He then returned to the ICRF as Director of Research in 1993, and in 1996 was named Director General of the ICRF, which became Cancer Research UK in 2002. In 2003, he became president of Rockefeller University in New York City where he continued work on the cell cycle of fission yeast.  In 2011 Nurse became the first Director and Chief Executive of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation, now the Francis Crick Institute.

On 30 November 2010, Nurse succeeded astrophysicist Martin Rees for a five-year term as President of the Royal Society until 2015.

Nurse has said good scientists must have passion "to know the answer to the questions" that interest them, along with good technical ability, and a set of attitudes including mental honesty, self-criticism, open-mindedness and scepticism.

Awards and honours
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Nurse has received numerous awards and honours. He was elected an EMBO Member in 1987 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1989 and the Founder Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998.  In 1995, he was awarded the Pezcoller-AACR International Award. he received a Royal Medal and became a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1998. Nurse was knighted in 1999. He was awarded the French Legion d'Honneur and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2002. He was also awarded the Copley Medal in 2005. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences – one of the top honours – in April 2006. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering. Nurse is the 2007 recipient of the Hope Funds Award of Excellence in Basic Research. He is a Freeman of the London Borough of Harrow. In 2013, he was awarded the Albert Einstein World Award of Science by the World Cultural Council. In 2015, he was elected a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and won the 10th annual Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research, in Ottawa, Canada. He was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to science and medicine in the UK and abroad. In November 2022 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.

Nurse has received over 60 Honorary Degrees and Fellowships, including from the University of Bath in 2002, the University of Oxford in 2003, the University of Cambridge in 2003, the University of Kent in 2012, the University of Warwick (Doctor of Science) the University of Worcester (Doctor of Science) in 2013, City, University of London (Doctor of Science) in 2014 and McGill University (Doctor of Science) in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded an honorary degree from the Mendel University Brno in the Czech Republic.

He was also appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (HonFREng) in 2012 and Honorary Fellow of the British Association (HonFBA) in 2013. In July 2016 it was announced that he will be the next Chancellor of the University of Bristol. He is an Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers.

Personal life
Nurse married Anne Teresa (née Talbott) in 1971; they have two daughters – Sarah, who works for ITV, and Emily, a physicist based at University College London and CERN. He describes himself as a sceptical agnostic.

Political views
Nurse has been a member of the Labour Party for nearly 40 years and is a patron of Scientists for Labour, a socialist society affiliated to them. In September 2020, he was a co-author on a letter in Nature alongside the former prime minister Gordon Brown highlighting the importance of EU funding in the fight against COVID-19.

As an undergraduate student at Birmingham, Nurse sold Socialist Worker, and participated in an occupation of the vice-chancellor's office. As a graduate student at East Anglia he continued to sell Socialist Worker, and was sympathetic to the International Socialist Tendency but never formally joined the movement.

Nurse has criticised potential Republican Party candidates for the US presidential nomination for opposing the teaching of natural selection, stem cell research on cell lines from human embryos, and anthropogenic climate change, even partially blaming scientists for not speaking up. He was alarmed that this could happen in the US, a world leader in science, "the home of Benjamin Franklin, Richard Feynman and Jim Watson".

One problem, Nurse said, was "treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate," using rhetorical tricks rather than logic. Another was the state of science teaching in the schools, which does not teach citizens how to discuss science – particularly in religious schools, even in the United Kingdom. Nurse has written that "we need to emphasise why the scientific process is such a reliable generator of knowledge with its respect for evidence, for scepticism, for consistency of approach, for the constant testing of ideas." Furthermore, Nurse feels that scientific leaders "have a responsibility to expose the bunkum". They should take on politicians, and expose nonsense during elections.

In August 2014, Nurse was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.

Nurse believes that scientists should speak out about science in public affairs and challenge politicians who support policies based on pseudoscience.

Books

 What Is Life?: Five Great Ideas in Biology (2021), W. W. Norton & Company

See also
 List of presidents of the Royal Society

References

External links

  including the Nobel Lecture Nobel Lecture 9 December 2001 Controlling the Cell Cycle
 Stories told by Paul Nurse at The Moth
 Paul Nurse on the premiere episode of The Life Scientific (BBC Radio 4), originally aired: 11 Oct 2011, 30 minutes in length

1949 births
Living people
Academics of the Francis Crick Institute
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Academics of the University of Oxford
Albert Einstein World Award of Science Laureates
Alumni of the University of Birmingham
Alumni of the University of East Anglia
British biochemists
British geneticists
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Cell biologists
English agnostics
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Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Paul Nurse


Thor Vilhjalmsson (12 August 1925 – 2 March 2011) was an Icelandic writer. His first novel, Maðurinn er alltaf einn (Man is Always Alone) was published in 1950. In 1988 he won the Nordic Council Literary Prize for his novel Grámosinn glóir (Justice Undone).

Vilhjalmsson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1925. He studied at the University of Iceland in 1944-1946, at the University of Nottingham in 1946-1947 and at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1947-1952. He worked as a librarian at the National Library of Iceland in 1953 and at the National Theatre 1955-1957. He was involved in many art groups and events including the Reykjavik Writers Festival, the Writer's Union of Iceland, the Federation of Icelandic Artists, the Reykjavík Arts Festival, the Reykjavík Film Festival and the Reykjavík Judo-Society.

References

1925 births
2011 deaths
Thor Vilhjalmsson

Thor Vilhjalmsson


Roland Fargo Crump (February 27, 1930 – March 12, 2023) was an American animator and designer noted particularly for his work as a Disney Imagineer.

Biography
Crump was born in Alhambra, California, and joined Walt Disney Studios in 1952. Initially he worked on inbetweening, before becoming an assistant animator on movies including Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. In 1959 he  joined WED Enterprises (later Walt Disney Imagineering) and became a designer of some of Disneyland's attractions and shops, including The Haunted Mansion, Enchanted Tiki Room and Adventureland Bazaar. As well as his work at Disney, he designed innovative and satirical psychedelic posters in the early and mid 1960s, including several for the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band as well as logos for the band's singer Bob Markley. He also designed guitar string packaging for Ernie Ball.

He was responsible for designing many of the Disney attractions at the 1964 New York World's Fair, including It's a Small World, and its Tower of the Four Winds marquee. In 1966, when the attraction moved to Disneyland, he designed the large animated clock at the entrance that sends puppet children on a parade.

He contributed to early designs of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, and worked on designs for NBC's Disney on Parade in 1970, before leaving Disney to work on outside projects including Busch Gardens, the ABC Wildlife Preserve in Maryland, and Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus World. In 1975, Knott's Berry Farm opened Knott's Bear-y Tales, a dark ride designed by Crump. In 1976 he returned to work for Disney, designing the Land and Wonders of Life pavilions at the Epcot Center, before leaving again in 1981 to design the proposed Cousteau Ocean Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and to set up his own business, the Mariposa Design Group, which developed projects in Oman, Las Vegas, Denver and elsewhere. Crump finally returned to Disney in 1992 as executive designer at Imagineering, working on EPCOT Center.

He retired from Disney in 1996, and published an autobiography It's Kind of a Cute Story in 2012.

Death
Crump died at his home in Carlsbad, California, on March 12, 2023, at the age of 93.

References

 Rolly's award winning television documentary The Whimsical Imagineer.

External links

1930 births
2023 deaths
Disney imagineers
Walt Disney Animation Studios people
Psychedelic artists
People from Alhambra, California
Animatronic engineers

Rolly Crump


The Orb are an English electronic music group founded in 1988 by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty. Known for their psychedelic sound, the Orb developed a cult following among clubbers "coming down" from drug-induced highs. Their influential 1991 debut album The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld pioneered the UK's nascent ambient house movement, while its UK chart-topping follow-up U.F.Orb represented the genre's commercial peak.

Beginning as ambient and dub DJs in London, the Orb's early performances were inspired by electronic artists of the 1970s, most notably Brian Eno, Cluster, and Kraftwerk. The Orb have maintained their signature science fiction aesthetic despite numerous personnel changes, including the departure of Cauty and members Kris Weston, Andy Falconer, Simon Phillips, Nick Burton, and Andy Hughes. Paterson has been the only permanent member, continuing to work as the Orb with Swiss-German producer Thomas Fehlmann, and later, with Martin "Youth" Glover, bassist of Killing Joke. Paterson's unauthorised use of other artists' works has led to multiple disputes, most notably with Rickie Lee Jones.

During their live shows in the 1990s, the Orb performed using digital audio tape machines optimised for live mixing and sampling before switching to laptops and other digital media. Featuring colourful light shows and psychedelic imagery, their performances often incited comparisons to Pink Floyd, whose guitarist, David Gilmour, later collaborated with them on the album Metallic Spheres in 2010.

Their seventeenth studio album, Prism, was released on 28 April 2023 by Cooking Vinyl.

History

1988–1990: Paterson & Cauty
Alex Paterson began his music career in the early 1980s as a roadie for the post-punk rock band Killing Joke, for whom his childhood friend Martin "Youth" Glover played bass. Having left Killing Joke's employ, in 1986 Paterson became an A&R man. Paterson and Youth shared a flat in Battersea and Jimmy Cauty, Youth's former bandmate from Brilliant, was a regular visitor. Paterson and Cauty began DJing and producing music together under the name the Orb. Their first release was a 1988 acid house anthem track, "Tripping on Sunshine", released on Youth's compilation album Eternity Project One. The following year, the Orb released the Kiss EP, a four-track EP based on samples from New York City's KISS FM. It was released on Paterson and Glover's new record label WAU! Mr. Modo Records, which they created out of a desire to maintain financial independence from larger record labels. After spending a weekend of making what Paterson described as "really shit drum sounds", the duo decided to abandon beat-heavy music and instead work on music for after-hours listening by removing the percussion tracks. Paterson and Cauty began DJing in London and landed a deal for the Orb to play the chill out room at London nightclub Heaven. Resident DJ Paul Oakenfold brought in the duo as ambient DJs for his "The Land of Oz" event at Heaven. Though the Orb's Monday night performances had only several hardcore followers initially, their chill-out room act grew popular over the course of their six-month stay to the point that the room was often packed with around 100 people. The Orb's performances became most popular among weary DJs and clubbers seeking solace from the loud, rhythmic music of the dancefloor. The Orb built up melodies using multitrack recordings linked to multiple record decks and a mixer. The group incorporated many CDs, cassettes, and BBC sound effects into the act, often accompanied with pieces of popular dance tracks such as "Sueño Latino". Though the group used a variety of samples, they avoided heavy rhythm and drums so that the intended ambient atmosphere was not disrupted. Most often, the group played dub and other chill-out music, which it described as ambient house for the E generation.

Throughout 1989 the Orb, along with Youth, developed a music production style that incorporated ambient music with a diverse array of samples and recordings. The British music press later labelled the music ambient house. The culmination of the group's musical work came toward the end of the same year when they recorded a session for John Peel on BBC Radio 1. The track, then known as "Loving You", was largely improvisational and featured a wealth of sound effects and samples from science fiction radio plays, nature sounds, and Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You". For its release as a single on the record label Big Life, the Orb changed the title to "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld". Upon the single's release, Riperton's management forced Big Life to remove the unlicensed Riperton sample, ensuring that only the initial first-week release of the single contained the original vocals of Minnie Riperton; subsequent pressings used vocals from a sound-alike. Despite its running time of 22 minutes, the sample-laden single reached #78 on the British singles charts. Soon thereafter, the Orb were commissioned by Dave Stewart to remix his top-20 single "Lily Was Here". The group obliged and were soon offered several more remix jobs from artists including Erasure and System 7.

In 1990, Paterson and Cauty held several recording sessions at Cauty's studio, Trancentral. When offered an album deal by Big Life, the Orb found themselves at a crossroads: Cauty preferred that the Orb release their music through his KLF Communications label, whereas Paterson wanted to ensure that the group did not become a side-project of Cauty and Bill Drummond's KLF. Because of these issues, Cauty and Paterson split in April 1990, with Paterson keeping the name the Orb. As a result of the break-up, Cauty removed Paterson's contributions from the in-progress recordings and released the album as Space on KLF Communications. Also out of these sessions came the KLF album Chill Out, on which  Reynolds (1999) and Prendergast (2003) report Paterson appeared in an uncredited role. In a 2011 interview with Magnetic Magazine, Alex Paterson corroborated his involvement and contribution to the Chill Out album and said he had in fact been "ripped off" by the KLF and notably Jimmy Cauty, stating:

Following the split, Paterson began working with Youth on the track "Little Fluffy Clouds". The group incorporated samples from Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint. The signature of the piece centres around the repeated phrases sampled from the voice of singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, her spaced-out childlike ramble taken from a promotional CD released by Geffen Records for her 1989 album, Flying Cowboys. In it she muses on the picturesque images of clouds from her Arizona childhood.

1991–1994: Paterson & Weston

In 1991, Paterson invited freelance studio engineer Andy Falconer to join the Orb. He was closely followed by studio engineer Kris "Thrash" Weston. Steve Hillage, who Paterson had met while DJing in London, also joined as a guitarist. Along with producer Thomas Fehlmann, the Orb completed several additional tracks for their first album, The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. At least six studios and twenty outside musicians were used during the three weeks of recording. Falconer's and Weston's technical abilities and Hillage's guitar work allowed the group to craft panoramic sounds portraying aspects of space travel, including the launch of Apollo 11. Adventures sold well in the United Kingdom and received praise for its balance of ambient music, house music, and sampling. Retrospectively, Adventures is considered ground-breaking for changing the way musicians view sampling and as a vital work for the genres of ambient and dance music. The completion of Adventures saw the departure of Andy Falconer, whose last contribution was to one of the Orb's Peel sessions. To promote the release of an edited single-disc version for an American release on Mercury Records, the Orb embarked on their first tour of the United States beginning in Phoenix, Arizona, in October 1991.

In late 1991 and early 1992, Paterson and Weston wrote their next single, "Blue Room". Assisting with the recording was bassist Jah Wobble, keyboardist Miquette Giraudy, and guitarist Hillage. Despite its playing time of almost 40 minutes, "Blue Room" entered the British charts at No.12 and peaked at No.8, making it the longest track to reach the charts. The Orb promoted this single with a "legendary avant-garde" performance on Top of the Pops where Patterson and Weston played a game of chess in space suits while footage of dolphins and an edited version of "Blue Room" ran in the background. In July 1992, U.F.Orb was released featuring "Blue Room" and, in the US release, the Orb's next single, "Assassin". Weston integrated his technical and creative expertise with Paterson's Eno-influenced ambience on U.F.Orb, combining "drum and bass rhythms" with "velvet keyboards" and "rippling synth lines". U.F.Orb reached No.1 on the British album charts to the shock of critics, who were surprised that fans had embraced what journalists considered to be progressive rock. Despite the Orb's success, Paterson and Weston preferred to avoid personal publicity and instead allow their music to be the focus of attention. Because of this partial anonymity and the Orb's rotating membership, they are often recognised as more of a musical collective than a "band".

Over the next year and a half, Paterson and Weston continued to produce "new" material, and the Orb left Big Life to sign a deal with Island Records. Their first release on Island Records was the live album Live 93, which gathered highlights from their recent performances in Europe and Asia. It featured the live crew of Paterson, Weston, producers Nick Burton and Simon Phillips, as well as audio engineer Andy Hughes, who had stepped in previously when Weston had decided to stop touring. The Orb's first studio production on Island Records was Pomme Fritz, a chaotic EP noted for its heavy use of strange samples and its lack of conventional harmonies. Though Pomme Fritz reached No.6 on the British charts, critics panned it as "doodling". Island Records "hated it" and "didn't understand it at all", according to Paterson. Soon after production finished on Pomme Fritz, Paterson, Weston, and Orb contributor Thomas Fehlmann joined with Robert Fripp to form the group FFWD as a side project. FFWD released a single self-titled album on Paterson's Inter-Modo label, which Fehlmann later described as "an Orb track which became so long that it became a whole album!". Due to this aimlessness, FFWD lacked an artistic goal and disbanded after a single release. Also in the summer of 1994 the Orb provided music for The Jupiter Collision, the BBC's brief info series about the Shoemaker-Levy comet. Soon after the release of FFWD in August 1994, Weston suddenly left the Orb. Paterson claimed that Weston's departure was due to his desire to have more control in the Orb. In an interview with i-D, Weston attributed the split to Paterson, saying that Paterson "didn't do his 50 per cent of the work". Paterson reaffirmed the status of the Orb saying, "The Orb is the Orb, and nothing can change that", and continued work with Hughes and Fehlmann.

1995–2001: Paterson, Fehlmann & Hughes
Following Weston's departure from the Orb, Thomas Fehlmann joined as a full-time studio member, but did not always participate in live performances. Paterson, Hughes, and Fehlmann then finished producing the album Orbus Terrarum, on which Paterson and Weston had been working. Orbus Terrarum, released in 1995, featured more "earthbound" and "organic" sounds than their previous trippy science-fiction-themed music. Orbus Terrarum suffered, as Paterson described it, "a good kicking" at the hands of the British press, who described it as "generic" and a low point for Paterson's creativity. Orbus Terrarum alienated many of the group's fans, and reached only No.20 on the British charts. American critics gave it great acclaim, including Rolling Stone who made it their album of the month, citing its symphonic flow coupled with the Orb's "uniquely British wit". After a long world tour, the Orb, with Andy Hughes and Steve Hillage, settled down to produce their next album, Orblivion—the process of which saw a return to their spacey sounds. Though Orblivion was recorded in May 1996, it was not released until almost a year later, due to Island Records' desire to promote it as a follow-up to U2's techno-rock album Pop. Orblivion sold well in Europe as well as the United States, where it reached the Billboard Top 200. The first Orblivion single, "Toxygene", was the highest-charting single by the Orb, reaching No.4 in the United Kingdom on 8February 1997. Despite high sales, Orblivion received a lukewarm reception from the British press. As with Orbus Terrarum, Orblivion was better received by American critics, including Rolling Stone, who praised its "contrast of chaos and euphony". Meanwhile, the stresses of touring sat heavily on Paterson; he considered retiring the Orb, but continued touring and producing. In 1997 the band sold their studio Joe's Garage to the Godfrey brothers of Morcheeba. That same year, they contributed a cover of "Jo the Waiter" to the Gary Numan tribute album Random.

Paterson and Fehlmann, along with usual collaborators Hughes, Nick Burton, and Phillips, wrote and produced Cydonia for a planned 1999 release. Featured on the album were appearances from Robert Fripp, John Roome (Witchman), and Fil Le Gonidec, one of the Orb's live performers. Singers Nina Walsh and Aki Omori appeared on two tracks each, providing vocals and co-writing lyrics with Paterson. Paterson felt that this new direction of songwriting for the Orb was more similar to the experimental work of Orbus Terrarum than to the techno-pop of Orblivion. Island Records was in a period of restructuring due to its recent purchase by Universal Music Group, and Cydonia was not released until 2001. Upon release, critics noted that Cydonia merged pop, trance, and ambient-dub music, which they felt to be a conglomeration of bland vocals and uninventive ambience that lacked the appeal of the Orb's earlier work. NME harshly described it as "a stillborn relic, flawed throughout by chronically stunted ambitions" and describing its only appropriate audience to be "old ravers" seeking nostalgia. The Orb were generally regarded by the British press as past their prime and an "ambient dinosaur" out of place in the current dance music environment. After the release of Cydonia, Hughes left the group for undisclosed reasons, becoming "another acrimonious departure from the Orb" according to The Guardian.

2001–2004: Paterson, Fehlmann & Phillips

In 2001, Alex Paterson formed the record label Badorb.com as an outlet for Orb members' side projects. To promote both Badorb.com and Cydonia, the Orb toured internationally, including their first visit to the United States in four years. NME described the Orb's tour as "charming" and that they were "freed from the Floydian pretensions that dogged the band throughout the mid-'90s".

The Orb, now composed of Paterson, Phillips, and Fehlmann, with guest John Roome, accepted an invitation to join the Area:One concert tour with Moby, Paul Oakenfold, New Order and other alternative and electronic artists. Though the Orb were paired with more mainstream artists during the tour such as Incubus, Paterson and Fehlmann made their next releases a series of several low-key EPs for German label Kompakt in 2002. The Orb found critical success on Kompakt; but Badorb.com collapsed soon after releasing the compilation Bless You. Badorb.com had released fourteen records over the course of fourteen months from artists including Guy Pratt (Conduit), Ayumi Hamasaki, and Takayuki Shiraishi, as well as the Orb's three-track Daleth of Elphame EP. Though Badorb.com was an internet-based record label, they sold only vinyl releases (with one exception, the Orb EP), which Paterson later remarked was a poor idea because "not many people... have record players".

Though their musical style had changed somewhat since the 1990s, the Orb continued to use their odd synthetic sounds on 2004's Bicycles & Tricycles, to mixed reviews. The Daily Telegraph praised Bicycles & Tricycles as being "inclusive, exploratory, and an enjoyable journey"; other publications dismissed it as "stoner dub" and irrelevant to current electronic music. Like Cydonia, Bicycles & Tricycles featured vocals, including rapper MC Soom-T who added a hip hop contribution to the album. The Orb left Island Records and released the album on Cooking Vinyl and Sanctuary Records. To promote the album, the band began a UK tour with dub artist Mad Professor. Though the Orb still pulled in large crowds, The Guardian noted that they lacked the intensity found in their earlier performances.

2004–2007: Paterson & Fehlmann, the Transit Kings

After two more EPs on Kompakt, the Orb (now composed of only Paterson and Fehlmann) released Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt, which featured new material in addition to tweaked versions of their previous Kompakt output. By this stage, AllMusic observed, Thomas Fehlmann had become the primary creative figure in the Orb, "inhibiting Alex Paterson's whimsical impulses". Because of this, Okie Dokie was considerably more focused and less "goofy" than Cydonia and Bicycles & Tricycles. Fehlmann's trademark hypnotic loops and delays made him the centre of Okie Dokie production and, according to Pitchfork Media, made it "difficult to say where [Paterson] is in the picture". The Orb's releases with Kompakt gained them back much of their musical credibility with the press and showed that they could "age gracefully".

In August 2006, the founders of the Orb—Paterson and Cauty—released Living in a Giant Candle Winking at God, their debut album as the Transit Kings with Guy Pratt and Pratt's associate, Dom Beken. The album featured appearances from Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr and comedian Simon Day. Beken described Living in a Giant Candle Winking at God as "self-consciously musically written and less sample-based" compared to the members' previous work. Living had been in production since 2001, but due to members' other obligations, it was delayed for several years. The album received mixed critical reactions; The Times called it "Orb-lite" and proclaimed it to be "Deep Forest-style sludge". After the album's release, Cauty left the Transit Kings on "extended leave", leaving the project in indefinite limbo, and Beken joined the Orb for a period. Paterson and Beken reunited in 2008 as High Frequency Bandwidth, an ambient hip hop group on the Malicious Damage label.

2007–present
The Orb's next studio album, The Dream, was released in Japan in 2007 and the following year in the United States and United Kingdom. Fehlmann is absent on The Dream and Paterson was instead reunited with Youth and joined by Tim Bran of Dreadzone. The album saw a return to the Orb's sounds of the early 1990s, with peculiar vocals and playful samples. The Orb also brought in jazz and house music singer Juliet Roberts and guitarist Steve Hillage.

After the July 2006 re-release of The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld 3-CD Deluxe Edition, 2007 and 2008 saw releases of expanded 2-CD editions of the band's subsequent regular studio records: U.F.Orb, Pomme Fritz EP, Orbus Terrarum, Orblivion and Cydonia. In late 2008 a double-cd compilation of BBC Radio 1 sessions called The Orb: Complete BBC Sessions 1989–2001 was released.

In May 2009, the British Malicious Damage Records (run by the members of Killing Joke) announced the release of the Orb's ninth regular studio album Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume III) on 11 September 2009. A reunification of Paterson and long-term collaborator Thomas Fehlmann who last worked together on Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt, the album was promoted with a launch party with Paterson and Fehlmann performing the whole album live at The-Situation Modern in Clapham, England on 10 September. A track "Chocolate Fingers" was uploaded onto the label's MySpace profile. Unlike the first 2 albums in the Orbsessions series, which consisted of archive recordings, Baghdad Batteries comprised brand new material recorded at Fehlmann's Berlin studio.

In March 2010, Internet station Dandelion Radio broadcast a seventeen and a half-minute long Orb session track by Paterson and Fehlmann on the Andrew Morrison show. This new track was titled "Battersea Bunches" and was a remixed version of the soundtrack to a short movie of the same title by Mike Coles and Alex Paterson—a film installation to be seen at London's Battersea Power Station on 1June 2010 as part of an evening of art and music. The film and its soundtrack (together with remixes) were later released as the CD/DVD album C Batter C on 11 November 2011.

In mid-2010, Alex Paterson teamed up with Youth to compile a retrospective compilation album of tracks from the WAU! Mr Modo label. The album titled Impossible Oddities was released on CD and double Vinyl on 25 October 2010 via Year Zero records.

The Orb released the Metallic Spheres album in October 2010, featuring David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. It was released by Columbia Records.

In 2011, Alex Paterson teamed up with producer Gaudi and vocalist Chester Taylor for the creation of their experimental and ongoing collaborative project SCREEN, releasing the album We are Screen by Malicious Damage Records.

In 2012, the Orb worked with dub musician Lee "Scratch" Perry to produce a reggae-infused album titled The Orbserver in the Star House, which was recorded in Berlin over a period of several months and features the single "Golden Clouds". The title song was based on an earlier version of Little Fluffy Clouds, with the lyrics rewritten by Perry reflecting his childhood in Jamaica and the property Golden Clouds near his home.

In 2013, the Orb performed with the Kakatsisi drummers of Ghana on the West Holts stage at Glastonbury Festival.

On 22 June 2018, the Orb released their fifteenth studio album, No Sounds Are Out of Bounds.

During 2019, the Orb have been touring with a 30th anniversary tour, performed by Alex Paterson and London based producer/sound engineer Michael Rendall.

The Orb released their sixteenth studio album, Abolition of the Royal Familia, on 27 March 2020. It includes contributions from Youth, Roger Eno, Gaudi, David Harrow and Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy (System 7).

On 28 April 2023, the Orb released their seventeenth album, Prism, on the Cooking Vinyl label.

Themes and influences

Inspiration
The Orb's members have drawn from an assortment of influences in their music. The Orb's central figure, Alex Paterson, had early musical tastes and influences that included King Tubby, Alice Cooper, Prince, Kraftwerk, and T.Rex. Among these, Paterson cites Kraftwerk as one of the most important, claiming they created the foundation from which all modern dance music has been built. While in Brixton with Martin Glover as a teenager, Paterson was also exposed to a large amount of reggae music, such as The Mighty Diamonds, The Abyssinians, and Bob Marley. The reggae influence on Paterson and the Orb can readily be heard in tracks such as the single "Perpetual Dawn" and U.F.Orb'''s "Towers of Dub". The earliest ambient influences of the Orb came in 1979 during Paterson's roadie days with Killing Joke. While with the band in Neuss, Paterson listened to Brian Eno's Music for Films while on LSD and watched "the Ruhr steel works explode in the distance", noting that "[t]he scene seemed to be taking place in the music as well". The same night, Paterson was also inspired while listening to Cluster's Grosses Wasser and found that the steel works' "huge metal arms were crushing molten rocks in time to the music", which was something he'd "never seen, or heard, anything like it before". Along with Cluster and Kraftwerk, Paterson was also influenced by other German experimental music from Can and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Modulations calls Paterson's music a "maximal" version of Brian Eno's "minimal" ambience, though according to Paterson, Eno resents Paterson's use of his music as an influence.

The Orb have often been described as "The Pink Floyd of the Nineties", but Paterson has stated that their music is more influenced by experimental electronic music than progressive rock of the 1970s. He has noted though that the Pink Floyd album Meddle was influential to him as a child in the 1970s. The psychedelic prog-rock similarities have led critics to describe the Orb as hippie revivalists; Paterson has strongly rejected the tag, claiming that even as a youth, he was "one of those punks who hated hippies".

During production of Cydonia and Bicycles & Tricycles, Paterson's biggest influences were drum and bass and trip hop music, as seen on the tracks "Ghostdancing", "Thursday's Keeper", and "Aftermath". The Orb's more recent influences consist largely of German techno producers, such as Triola, who were inspired by the Orb's earlier work. Paterson cites the music of Kompakt as one of his primary modern influences and claims it to be among the best modern ambient music.

 Imagery
Imagery has always been an important part of the Orb's persona. This is most prominent during live performances, where they often project surreal images against onstage screens. Common images include morphing faces, futuristic cityscapes, and aliens. They have long associated their act with absurd symbology with images such as floating pigs. This has carried over to their music videos, most of which are spacy, brightly coloured montages of surreal images including astronauts, clouds, and neon dolphins. Because of their use of psychedelic images at shows, the Orb's shows are frequently compared to those of Pink Floyd, who also used in-show imagery and films. Paterson cites Godfrey Reggio's and Philip Glass's film Koyaanisqatsi as a primary influence to their concert imagery.

The Orb's album art features much of the same imagery as their live act. Graphic design group The Designers Republic created the cover art for the earlier work, including Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, U.F.Orb, and the singles from those two albums. For their next album, the Orb poked fun at their Pink Floyd comparisons with the cover of Live 93 featuring a floating stuffed sheep over the Battersea Power Station, which had appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals. The artwork found in Badorb.com releases was similar to the Orb's odd artwork of the mid-1990s, as it was stylistically similar and contained little writing.

 Science fiction and space
Some of the more prominent motifs in the Orb's work are outer space and science fiction, including alien visitations, space flight, and mind control. These have included the use of samples from serious sources such as NASA transmissions to comedic clips from films like Woody Allen's Sleeper. U.F.Orb especially expressed a fascination with alien life with its bizarre sound samples and in the album's title itself. The title of its most popular single, "Blue Room", is a reference to the supposed Blue Room of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which was investigated as a possible UFO evidence holding room. Their 2001 album is named after the Cydonia Mensae region of Mars. Due to Paterson's focus on science fiction and astronomical phenomena, The Guardian described Paterson as "pop [music]'s primary spokesperson on aliens".

 Techniques, technology, live performances

In the Orb's early DJ events in the 1980s, Paterson and Cauty performed with three record decks, a cassette player, and a CD player all of which were mixed through an Akai 12-track mixer. They used their equipment to harmonise recorded music and sound effect samples into an "endless sound continuum" for audiences of worn-out dancers. Even after the Orb began producing original material, they kept the same sample-heavy model for live acts by spontaneously integrating obscure samples into their pre-recorded tracks. During promotional tours for Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and U.F.Orb, they performed using a digital audio tape machine and experimented with other media sources such as dubplates. The tape machines held individual chords, rhythms, and basslines for each composition, allowing the Orb to reprocess them and mimic the act of DJing. Members could then easily improvise with these samples and manipulate them using sound effect racks. Often, the Orb had a live musician accompanying them, such as Steve Hillage on guitar. Their shows in the early 1990s would often be three hours of semi-improvised, continuous music featuring a wealth of triggered samples, voices, and pre-recorded tracks which were barely identifiable as the original piece.

The Orb began performing regularly at the Brixton Academy in the early 1990s, where they used the high ceilings and large space for their "well-suited amorphous sound", frequently performing their newest and more experimental pieces there. Andy Hughes took Weston's place at live performances after the 1993 tour, though Weston did reappear for the Orb's concert at the rainy Woodstock '94. The Orb played for late night raves on the first two nights of Woodstock '94 in addition to artists including Aphex Twin, Orbital, and Deee-Lite. The next year, the Orb's touring group consisted of Paterson, Hughes, Nick Burton on drums, and Simon Phillips on bass. This live setup created a "cacophony" of "gigantic, swarming sounds". Though the Orb's performances use much onstage equipment and many props, Paterson prefers to present them as "a non-centralised figure of amusement on stage".

The Orb used ADAT recorders for performances from 1993 to 2001 and utilised large 48-track decks, which Paterson described as being a "studio onstage". They hooked synthesisers, such as the ARP 2600, to MIDI interfaces to recreate specific sounds that appeared on their albums. The Orb's methods of studio music creation changed as well. For more recent albums such as Cydonia, they used inexpensive equipment such as Korg's Electribe products, which Paterson described as employing more of a "bedroom techno" approach. Despite their use of laptops during performances and in-studio computers, Paterson says that he still cherishes vinyl and does not find purchasing CDs or downloading music to be nearly as satisfying.

 Sampling and remixing
One of the Orb's most notable contributions to electronic music is their idea of blurring the distinction between sampling and remixing. Albums such as Pomme Fritz, though released as a piece of original work, consist largely of manipulated samples. Conversely, the Orb's remixes typically use only small sections of the original track, most notably in the case of their single "Toxygene". "Toxygene" was originally commissioned as a remix of Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene 8" from Oxygene 7-13. The Orb "obliterated it" and reassembled only a few fragments for their remix, much to the chagrin of Jarre, who reportedly refused to release it; The Orb released the track themselves under the name "Toxygene", which further irritated Jarre, to whom Paterson retorted "The French are always five years behind us, anyway." In statements made after the release of "Toxygene", Jarre denied that he rejected the original remix because of disliking it.

Other artists have become agitated due to the Orb sampling their work, though Paterson jokingly suggests that "[t]hey don't know the half of it." Paterson says that he finds a "beauty" and a "cleverness" with slipping unlicensed samples into compositions without anyone recognizing it. Even though fans often try to guess the origins of many of the samples, Paterson states that they are rarely correct and that they would "die" if they discovered, for example, where the drums on "Little Fluffy Clouds" originated from. He has said that record labels have cautioned him, "Don't tell anyone where you got your samples until we get them cleared!".

The Orb have used a wide variety of audio clips from sources ranging from McCarthy era speeches to prank phone calls by Victor Lewis-Smith to David Thewlis' apocalypse-driven rant from the film Naked. Paterson obtains many samples from recording TV and radio for hours at a time and picking out his favourite clips. He and other members of the Orb record nature sounds for use on albums, especially FFWD and Orbus Terrarum. The Orb's combination of ambient music and sampling from lower fidelity audio sources often creates a "fuzzy texture" in the sound quality, depersonalising the Orb's music. The Orb are lauded for their "Monty Python-esque levity" in their use of audio samples, though NME asserts that Paterson "sabotage[s] his majestic soundscapes" with "irritatingly zany" sounds.

The Orb has been a prolific remixing team, having completed over 80 commissioned remixes since 1989. Even during periods of label conflict and contractual limbo, the Orb found steady work remixing for artists including Depeche Mode, Lisa Stansfield, and Front 242. The Orb's remixes from the early and mid-1990s feature a large number of comical samples, Progressive-Sounds describe them as "ahead of their time" and NME notes them as "not entirely incompatible with contemporary chilling". Some pieces, such as their Bee Gees cover collaboration with Robbie Williams, received criticism for being "beyond a joke" for their use of strange noises. The Orb's remix of Nine Inch Nails' "The Perfect Drug", too, was described as "silly", as they made it sound like Trent Reznor was "drowning in his bathtub". Though Paterson maintains that much of the Orb's remix work is done to support other artists, he admits some of their remixes for major artists were performed so they could "pay the bills".

DiscographyThe Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)U.F.Orb (1992)Orbus Terrarum (1995)Orblivion (1997)Cydonia (2001)Bicycles & Tricycles (2004)Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt (2005)The Dream (2007)Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume III) (2009)Metallic Spheres (2010) The Orbserver in the Star House (2012)More Tales from the Orbservatory (2013)Moonbuilding 2703 AD (2015)COW / Chill Out, World! (2016)No Sounds Are Out of Bounds (2018)Abolition of the Royal Familia (2020)Prism'' (2023)

References

External links

 Area One video

British ambient music groups
English electronic music groups
English house music groups
Remixers
Chill-out musicians
Caroline Records artists
Mercury Records artists
Island Records artists
MCA Records artists
Columbia Records artists
Trip hop groups
Musical groups established in 1988
1988 establishments in England
Musical groups from London
DJs from London
DJ duos
Rave culture in the United Kingdom
Big Life artists
Cooking Vinyl artists
Sanctuary Records artists
V2 Records artists
Live Here Now artists

The Orb