The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans . Unlike most optical-disc standards, LaserDisc is not fully digital, and instead requires the use of analog video signals.

Although the format was capable of offering higher-quality video and audio than its consumer rivals, VHS and Betamax videotape, LaserDisc never managed to gain widespread use in North America. This was largely due to the high cost of the players and their inability to record TV programs. It eventually did gain some traction in that region and became somewhat popular in the 1990s. It was not a popular format in Europe and Australia.

By contrast, the format was much more popular in Japan and in the more affluent regions of Southeast Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, and was the prevalent rental video medium in Hong Kong during the 1990s. Its superior video and audio quality made it a popular choice among videophiles and film enthusiasts during its lifespan. The technologies and concepts behind LaserDisc were the foundation for later optical disc formats, including Compact Disc (CD), DVD, and Blu-ray (BD).

History
Optical video recording technology, using a transparent disc, was invented by David Paul Gregg and James Russell in 1963 (and patented in 1970 and 1990). The Gregg patents were purchased by MCA in 1968. By 1969, Philips had developed a videodisc in reflective mode, which has advantages over the transparent mode. MCA and Philips then decided to combine their efforts and first publicly demonstrated the videodisc in 1972.

LaserDisc was first available on the market in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 11, 1978, two years after the introduction of the VHS VCR, and four years before the introduction of the CD (which is based on laser disc technology). Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known as simply DiscoVision) in 1978, the technology was previously referred to internally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical Videodisc, and Disco-Vision (with a hyphen), with the first players referring to the format as Video Long Play.

Pioneer Electronics later purchased the majority stake in the format and marketed it as both  (format name) and LaserDisc (brand name) in 1980, with some releases unofficially referring to the medium as . Philips produced the players while MCA produced the discs. The Philips-MCA collaboration was unsuccessful – and was discontinued after a few years. Several of the scientists responsible for the early research (Richard Wilkinson, Ray Dakin and John Winslow) founded Optical Disc Corporation (now ODC Nimbus).

LaserDisc was launched in Japan in October 1981, and a total of approximately 3.6 million LaserDisc players had been sold before its discontinuation in 2009.

In 1984, Sony offered a LaserDisc format that could store any form of digital data, as a data storage device similar to CD-ROM, with a large 3.28 GB storage capacity, comparable to the DVD-ROM format that would arrive 11 years later in 1995.

The first LaserDisc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of Jaws on December 15, 1978. The last title released in North America was Paramount's Bringing Out the Dead on October 3, 2000. Film titles continued to be released in Japan until September 21, 2001, with the last Japanese movie released being the Hong Kong film Tokyo Raiders from Golden Harvest. The last known LD title is Onta Station vol. 1018, a karaoke disc released on March 21, 2007. Production of LaserDisc players ended in July 2009, when Pioneer stopped making them. Pioneer continued to repair and service players until September 30, 2020, when the remaining parts inventory was exhausted.

It was estimated that in 1998, LaserDisc players were in approximately 2% of U.S. households (roughly two million). By comparison, in 1999, players were in 10% of Japanese households. A total of 16.8 million LaserDisc players were sold worldwide, of which 9.5 million were sold by Pioneer.

By 2001, LaserDisc had been completely replaced by DVD in the North American retail marketplace, as media were no longer being produced. Players were still exported to North America from Japan until the end of 2001. The format has retained some popularity among American collectors, and to a greater degree in Japan, where the format was better supported and more prevalent during its lifespan. In Europe, LaserDisc always remained an obscure format. It was chosen by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for the BBC Domesday Project in the mid-1980s, a school-based project to commemorate the 900 years since the original Domesday Book in England. From 1991 until the late 1990s, the BBC also used LaserDisc technology (specifically Sony CRVdisc) to play out their channel idents.

Design

A standard home video LaserDisc is  in diameter and made up of two single-sided aluminum discs layered in plastic. Although similar in appearance to compact discs or DVDs, early LaserDiscs used analog video stored in the composite domain (having a video bandwidth and resolution approximately equivalent to the  Type C videotape format) with analog frequency modulation (FM) stereo sound and pulse-code modulation (PCM) digital audio. Later discs used D-2 instead of Type C videotape for mastering. The LaserDisc at its most fundamental level was still recorded as a series of pits and lands much like CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray Discs are today. In true digital media the pits, or their edges, directly represent 1s and 0s of a binary digital information stream. On a LaserDisc, the information is encoded as analog frequency modulation and is contained in the lengths and spacing of the pits. A carrier frequency is modulated by the baseband video signal (and analog soundtracks). In a simplified view, positive parts of this variable frequency signal can produce lands and negative parts can be pits, which results in a projection of the FM signal along the track on the disc. When reading, the FM carrier can be reconstructed from the succession of pit edges, and demodulated to extract the original video signal (in practice, selection between pit and land parts uses intersection of the FM carrier with a horizontal line having an offset from the zero axis, for noise considerations). If PCM sound is present, its waveform, considered as an analog signal, can be added to the FM carrier, which modulates the width of the intersection with the horizontal threshold. As a result, space between pit centers essentially represent video (as frequency), and pits' lengths code for PCM sound information. Early LaserDiscs featured in 1978 were entirely analog but the format evolved to incorporate digital stereo sound in CD format (sometimes with a TOSlink or coax output to feed an external digital-to-analog converter or DAC), and later multi-channel formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS.

Since digital encoding and compression schemes were either unavailable or impractical in 1978, three encoding formats based on the rotation speed were used:

 CAV Constant angular velocity or Standard Play discs supported several unique features such as freeze frame, variable slow motion and reverse. CAV discs were spun at a constant rotational speed (1800 rpm for 525 line and Hi-Vision, and 1500 rpm for 625 line discs) during playback, with one video frame read per revolution. In this mode, 54,000 individual frames (30 minutes of audio/video for NTSC and Hi-Vision, 36 minutes for PAL) could be stored on a single side of a CAV disc. Another unique attribute to CAV was to reduce the visibility of crosstalk from adjacent tracks, since on CAV discs any crosstalk at a specific point in a frame is simply from the same point in the next or previous frame. CAV was used less frequently than CLV, and reserved for special editions of feature films to highlight bonus material and special effects. One of the most intriguing advantages of this format was the ability to reference every frame of a film directly by number, a feature of particular interest to film buffs, students and others intrigued by the study of errors in staging, continuity and so on.

 CLV Constant linear velocity or Extended Play discs do not have the "trick play" features of CAV, offering only simple playback on all but the high-end LaserDisc players incorporating a digital frame store. These high-end LaserDisc players could add features not normally available to CLV discs such as variable forward and reverse, and a VCR-like "pause". By gradually slowing down their rotational speed (1800–600 rpm for NTSC and 2470–935 rpm for Hi-Vision) CLV encoded discs could store 60 minutes of audio/video per side for NTSC and Hi-Vision (64 minutes for PAL), or two hours per disc. For films with a run-time less than 120 minutes, this meant they could fit on one disc, lowering the cost of the title and eliminating the distracting exercise of "getting up to change the disc", at least for those who owned a dual-sided player. The majority of titles were only available in CLV (a few titles were released partly CLV, partly CAV. For example, a 140-minute movie could fit on two CLV sides and one CAV side, thus allowing for the CAV-only features during the climax of the film).
 CAA In the early 1980s, due to problems with crosstalk distortion on CLV extended play LaserDiscs, Pioneer Video introduced constant angular acceleration (CAA) formatting for extended play discs. CAA is very similar to CLV, save for the fact that CAA varies the angular rotation of the disc in controlled steps instead of gradually slowing down in a steady linear pace as a CLV disc is read. With the exception of 3M/Imation, all LaserDisc manufacturers adopted the CAA encoding scheme, although the term was rarely (if ever) used on any consumer packaging. CAA encoding noticeably improved picture quality and greatly reduced crosstalk and other tracking problems while being fully compatible with existing players.

As Pioneer introduced digital audio to LaserDisc in 1985, it further refined the CAA format. CAA55 was introduced in 1985 with a total playback capacity per side of 55 minutes 5 seconds, reducing the video capacity to resolve bandwidth issues with the inclusion of digital audio. Several titles released between 1985 and 1987 were analog audio only due to the length of the title and the desire to keep the film on one disc (e.g., Back to the Future). By 1987, Pioneer had overcome the technical challenges and was able to once again encode in CAA60, allowing a total of 60 minutes 5 seconds. Pioneer further refined CAA, offering CAA45, encoding 45 minutes of material, but filling the entire playback surface of the side. Used on only a handful of titles, CAA65 offered 65 minutes 5 seconds of playback time per side. There are a handful of titles pressed by Technidisc that used CAA50. The final variant of CAA is CAA70, which could accommodate 70 minutes of playback time per side. There are no known uses of this format on the consumer market.

Audio
Sound could be stored in either analog or digital format and in a variety of surround sound formats; NTSC discs could carry a stereo analog audio track, plus a stereo CD-quality uncompressed PCM digital audio track, which were (EFM, CIRC, 16-bit and 44.1 kHz sample rate). PAL discs could carry one pair of audio tracks, either analog or digital and the digital tracks on a PAL disc were 16-bit 44.1 kHz as on a CD; in the UK, the term "LaserVision" is used to refer to discs with analog sound, while "LaserDisc" is used for those with digital audio. The digital sound signal in both formats are EFM-encoded as in CD.

Dolby Digital (also called AC-3) and DTS, which are now common on DVD releases, first became available on LaserDisc, and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) which was released on LaserDisc in Japan, is among the first home video releases ever to include 6.1 channel Dolby Digital EX Surround; along with a few other late-life releases from 1999 to 2001. Unlike DVDs, which carry Dolby Digital audio in digital form, LaserDiscs store Dolby Digital in a frequency modulated form within a track normally used for analog audio. Extracting Dolby Digital from a LaserDisc required a player equipped with a special "AC-3 RF" output and an external demodulator in addition to an AC-3 decoder. The demodulator was necessary to convert the 2.88 MHz modulated AC-3 information on the disc into a 384 kbit/s signal that the decoder could handle.

In the mid to late 1990s many higher-end AV receivers included the demodulator circuit specifically for the LaserDisc players RF modulated Dolby Digital AC-3 signal. By the late 1990s with LaserDisc players and disc sales declining due to DVD's growing popularity the AV receiver manufacturers removed the demodulator circuit. Although DVD players were capable of playing Dolby Digital tracks, the signals out of DVD players were not in a modulated form and not compatible with the inputs designed for LaserDisc AC-3. Outboard demodulators were available for a period that converted the AC-3 signal to standard Dolby Digital signal that was compatible with the standard Dolby Digital/PCM inputs on capable AV receivers. Another type marketed by Onkyo and Marantz converted the RF AC-3 signal to 6-channel analog audio.

The two FM audio channels occupied the disc spectrum at 2.3 and 2.8 MHz on NTSC formatted discs and each channel had a 100 kHz FM deviation. The FM audio carrier frequencies were chosen to minimize their visibility in the video image, so that even with a poorly mastered disc, audio carrier beats in the video will be at least ‑35 dB down, and thus, invisible. Due to the frequencies chosen, the 2.8 MHz audio carrier (Right Channel) and the lower edge of the chroma signal are very close together and if filters are not carefully set during mastering, there can be interference between the two. In addition, high audio levels combined with high chroma levels can cause mutual interference, leading to beats becoming visible in highly saturated areas of the image. To help deal with this, Pioneer decided to implement the CX Noise Reduction System on the analog tracks. By reducing the dynamic range and peak levels of the audio signals stored on the disc, filtering requirements were relaxed and visible beats greatly reduced or eliminated. The CX system gives a total NR effect of 20 dB, but in the interest of better compatibility for non-decoded playback, Pioneer reduced this to only 14 dB of noise reduction (the RCA CED system used the "original" 20 dB CX system). This also relaxed calibration tolerances in players and helped reduce audible pumping if the CX decoder was not calibrated correctly.

At least where the digital audio tracks were concerned, the sound quality was unsurpassed at the time compared to consumer videotape, but the quality of the analog soundtracks varied greatly depending on the disc and, sometimes, the player. Many early and lower-end LD players had poor analog audio components, and in turn many early discs had poorly mastered analog audio tracks, making digital soundtracks in any form desirable to serious enthusiasts. Early DiscoVision and LaserDisc titles lacked the digital audio option, but many of those movies received digital sound in later re-issues by Universal, and the quality of analog audio tracks generally got far better as time went on. Many discs that had originally carried old analog stereo tracks received new Dolby Stereo and Dolby Surround tracks instead, often in addition to digital tracks, helping boost sound quality. Later analog discs also applied CX noise reduction, which improved the signal-noise ratio of their audio.

DTS audio, when available on a disc, replaced the digital audio tracks; hearing DTS sound required only an S/PDIF compliant digital connection to a DTS decoder.

On a DTS disc, digital PCM audio was not available, so if a DTS decoder was also not available, the only option is to fall back to the analog Dolby Surround or stereo audio tracks. In some cases, the analog audio tracks were further made unavailable through replacement with supplementary audio such as isolated scores or audio commentary. This effectively reduced playback of a DTS disc on a non-DTS equipped system to mono audio, or in a handful of cases, no film soundtrack at all.

Only one 5.1 surround sound option exists on a given LaserDisc (either Dolby Digital or DTS), so if surround sound is desired, the disc must be matched to the capabilities of the playback equipment (LD player and receiver/decoder) by the purchaser. A fully capable LaserDisc playback system includes a newer LaserDisc player that is capable of playing digital tracks, has a digital optical output for digital PCM and DTS audio, is aware of AC-3 audio tracks, and has an AC-3 coaxial output; an external or internal AC-3 RF demodulator and AC-3 decoder; and a DTS decoder. Many 1990s A/V receivers combined the AC-3 decoder and DTS decoder logic, but an integrated AC-3 demodulator is rare both in LaserDisc players and in later A/V receivers.

PAL LaserDiscs have a slightly longer playing time than NTSC discs, but have fewer audio options. PAL discs only have two audio tracks, consisting of either two analog-only tracks on older PAL LDs, or two digital-only tracks on newer discs. In comparison, later NTSC LDs are capable of carrying four tracks (two analog and two digital). On certain releases, one of the analog tracks is used to carry a modulated AC-3 signal for 5.1 channel audio (for decoding and playback by newer LD players with an "AC-3 RF" output). Older NTSC LDs made before 1984 (such as the original DiscoVision discs) only have two analog audio tracks.

LaserDisc players

The earliest players employed gas helium–neon laser tubes to read discs and had a red-orange light with a wavelength of 632.8 nm, while later solid-state players used infrared semiconductor laser diodes with a wavelength of 780 nm.

In March 1984, Pioneer introduced the first consumer player with a solid-state laser, the LD-700. It was also the first LD player to load from the front and not the top. One year earlier Hitachi introduced an expensive industrial player with a laser diode, but the player, which had poor picture quality due to an inadequate dropout compensator, was made only in limited quantities. After Pioneer released the LD-700, gas lasers were no longer used in consumer players, despite their advantages, although Philips continued to use gas lasers in their industrial units until 1985.

Most LaserDisc players required the user to manually turn the disc over to play the other side. A number of players (all diode laser based) were made that were capable of playing both sides of the disc automatically, using a mechanism to physically flip a single laser pickup.

Pioneer produced some multi-disc models that hold more than 50 LaserDiscs. One company offered, for a short time in 1984, a "LaserStack" unit that added multi-disc capability to existing players: the Pioneer LD-600, LD-1100 or the Sylvania/Magnavox clones. It requires the user to physically remove the player lid for installation and attached to the top of the player. LaserStack holds up to 10 discs and can automatically load or remove them from the player or change sides in around 15 seconds.

The first mass-produced industrial LaserDisc player was the MCA DiscoVision PR-7820, later rebranded the Pioneer PR7820. In North America, this unit was used in many General Motors dealerships as a source of training videos and presentation of GM's new line of cars and trucks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Most players made after the mid-1980s are capable of also playing Compact Discs. These players include a  indentation in the loading tray, where the CD is placed for playback. At least two Pioneer models (the CLD-M301 and the CLD-M90) also operate as a CD changer, with several 4.7 in indentations around the circumference of the main tray.

The Pioneer DVL-9, introduced in 1996, is both Pioneer's first consumer DVD player and the first combination DVD/LD player.

The first high-definition video player is the Pioneer HLD-X0. A later model, the HLD-X9, features a superior comb filter, and laser diodes on both sides of the disc.

Notable players
 Pioneer PR7820, first industrial LaserDisc player, capable of being controlled by an external computer, was used in the first US LaserDisc arcade game Dragon's Lair.
 Pioneer CLD-1010, first player capable of playing  CD-Video discs. Released in 1987.
 Pioneer LaserActive players: The Pioneer CLD-A100 and NEC PCE-LD1 provided the ability to play Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) and TurboGrafx16 (PC Engine) video games when used in conjunction with additional components.
 Pioneer DVL series, capable of playing both LaserDiscs and DVDs

Branding

During its development, MCA, which co-owned the technology, referred to it as the Optical Videodisc System, "Reflective Optical Videodisc" or "Laser Optical Videodisc", depending on the document; changing the name once in 1969 to Disco-Vision and then again in 1978 to DiscoVision (without the hyphen), which became the official spelling. Technical documents and brochures produced by MCA Disco-Vision during the early and mid-'70s also used the term "Disco-Vision Records" to refer to the pressed discs. MCA owned the rights to the largest catalog of films in the world during this time, and they manufactured and distributed the DiscoVision releases of those films under the "MCA DiscoVision" software and manufacturing label; consumer sale of those titles began on December 11, 1978, with the aforementioned Jaws.

Philips' preferred name for the format was "VLP", after the Dutch words Video Langspeel-Plaat ("Video long-play disc"), which in English-speaking countries stood for Video Long-Play. The first consumer player, the Magnavox VH-8000 even had the VLP logo on the player. For a while in the early and mid-1970s, Philips also discussed a compatible audio-only format they called "ALP", but that was soon dropped as the Compact Disc system became a non-compatible project in the Philips corporation. Until early 1980, the format had no "official" name. The LaserVision Association, made up of MCA, Universal-Pioneer, IBM, and Philips/Magnavox, was formed to standardize the technical specifications of the format (which had been causing problems for the consumer market) and finally named the system officially as "LaserVision".

After its introduction in Japan in 1981, the format was introduced in Europe in 1983 with the LaserVision name although Philips used "VLP" in model designations, such as VLP-600. Following lackluster sales there (around 12–15,000 units Europe-wide), Philips tried relaunching the entire format as "CD-Video" in 1987, with the name appearing not just on the new hybrid 12 cm discs, but also on standard 20 and 30 cm LaserDiscs with digital audio. While this name and logo appeared on players and labels for years, the 'official' name of the format remained LaserVision. In the early 1990s, the format's name was changed again to LaserDisc.

Pioneer

Pioneer Electronics also entered the optical disc market in 1977 as a 50/50 joint venture with MCA called Universal-Pioneer and manufacturing MCA-designed industrial players under the MCA DiscoVision name (the PR-7800 and PR-7820). For the 1980 launch of the first Universal-Pioneer player, the VP-1000 was noted as a "laser disc player", although the "LaserDisc" logo displayed clearly on the device. In 1981, "LaserDisc" was used exclusively for the medium itself, although the official name was "LaserVision" (as seen at the beginning of many LaserDisc releases just before the start of the film). Pioneer reminded numerous video magazines and stores in 1984 that LaserDisc was a trademarked word, standing only for LaserVision products manufactured for sale by Pioneer Video or Pioneer Electronics. A 1984 Ray Charles ad for the LD-700 player bore the term "Pioneer LaserDisc brand videodisc player". From 1981 until the early 1990s, all properly licensed discs carried the LaserVision name and logo, even Pioneer Artists titles.

On single sided LaserDiscs mastered by Pioneer, playing the wrong side will cause a still screen to appear with a happy, upside-down turtle that has a LaserDisc for a belly (nicknamed the "LaserDisc Turtle"). The words "Program material is recorded on the other side of this disc" are below the turtle.

MCA
During the early years, MCA also manufactured discs for other companies including Paramount, Disney and Warner Bros. Some of them added their own names to the disc jacket to signify that the movie was not owned by MCA. After Discovision Associates shut down in early 1982, Universal Studio's videodisc software label, called MCA Videodisc until 1984, began reissuing many DiscoVision titles. Unfortunately, quite a few, such as Battlestar Galactica and Jaws, were time-compressed versions of their CAV or CLV Disco Vision originals. The time-compressed CLV re-issue of Jaws no longer had the original soundtrack, having had incidental background music replaced for the videodisc version due to high licensing costs (the original music would not be available until the THX LaserDisc box set was released in 1995). One Universal/Columbia co-production issued by MCA Disco Vision in both CAV and CLV versions, The Electric Horseman, is still not available in any other home video format with its original score intact; even the most recent DVD release has had substantial music replacements of both instrumental score and Willie Nelson's songs. An MCA release of Universal's Howard the Duck sees only the start credits shown in widescreen before changing to 4:3 for the rest of the film. For many years this was the only disc-based release of the film, until widescreen DVD formats were released with extras. Also, the 1989 and 1996 LaserDisc releases of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial are the only formats to include the cut scene of Harrison Ford, in the role of the school principal, telling off Elliott for letting the frogs free in the biology class.

Comparison with other formats

VHS
LaserDisc had several advantages over VHS. It featured a far sharper picture with a horizontal resolution of 425 television lines (TVL) for NTSC and 440 TVL for PAL discs, while VHS featured only 240 TVL with NTSC. Super VHS, released in 1987, reduced the quality gap having horizontal luma resolution comparable to LaserDisc, but horizontal chroma resolution of Super VHS remained as low as of standard VHS, about 40 TVL, while LaserDisc offered about 70 TVL of chroma resolution.

LaserDisc could handle analog and digital audio where VHS was mostly analog only (VHS can have PCM audio in professional applications but is uncommon), and the NTSC discs could store multiple audio tracks. This allowed for extras such as director's commentary tracks and other features to be added onto a film, creating "Special Edition" releases that would not have been possible with VHS. Disc access was random and chapter based, like the DVD format, meaning that one could jump to any point on a given disc very quickly. By comparison, VHS would require tedious rewinding and fast-forwarding to get to specific points.

LaserDiscs were initially cheaper than videocassettes to manufacture, because they lacked the moving parts and plastic outer shell that are necessary for VHS tapes to work, and the duplication process was much simpler. A VHS cassette has at least 14 parts including the actual tape while LaserDisc has one part with five or six layers. A disc can be stamped out in a matter of seconds whereas duplicating videotape required a complex bulk tape duplication mechanism and was a time-consuming process. By the end of the 1980s, average disc-pressing prices were over $5.00 per two-sided disc, due to the large amount of plastic material and the costly glass-mastering process needed to make the metal stamper mechanisms. Due to the larger volume of demand, videocassettes quickly became much cheaper to duplicate, costing as little as $1.00 by the beginning of the 1990s.

LaserDiscs potentially had a much longer lifespan than videocassettes. Because the discs were read optically instead of magnetically, no physical contact needed to be made between the player and the disc, except for the player's clamp that holds the disc at its center as it is spun and read. As a result, playback would not wear the information-bearing part of the discs, and properly manufactured LDs would theoretically last beyond a lifetime. By contrast, a VHS tape held all of its picture and sound information on the tape in a magnetic coating which is in contact with the spinning heads on the head drum, causing progressive wear with each use (though later in VHS's lifespan, engineering improvements allowed tapes to be made and played back without contact). The tape was also thin and delicate, and it was easy for a player mechanism, especially on a low quality or malfunctioning model, to mishandle the tape and damage it by creasing it, frilling (stretching) its edges, or even breaking it.

DVD
By the advent of DVD, LaserDisc had declined considerably in popularity, so the two formats never directly competed with each other.

LaserDisc is a composite video format: the luminance (black and white) and chrominance (color) information were transmitted in one signal, separated by the receiver. While good comb filters can do so adequately, these two signals cannot be completely separated. On DVD-Video, images are stored in the YCbCr format, with the chroma information being entirely discrete, which results in far higher fidelity, particularly at strong color borders or regions of high detail (especially if there is moderate movement in the picture) and low-contrast details such as skin tones, where comb filters almost inevitably smudge some detail.

In contrast to the entirely digital DVD, LaserDiscs use only analog video. As the LaserDisc format is not digitally encoded and does not make use of compression techniques, it is immune to video macroblocking (most visible as blockiness during high motion sequences) or contrast banding (subtle visible lines in gradient areas, such as out-of-focus backgrounds, skies, or light casts from spotlights) that can be caused by the MPEG-2 encoding process as video is prepared for DVD. Early DVD releases held the potential to surpass their LaserDisc counterparts, but often managed only to match them for image quality, and in some cases, the LaserDisc version was preferred. Proprietary human-assisted encoders manually operated by specialists can vastly reduce the incidence of artifacts, depending on playing time and image complexity. By the end of LaserDisc's run, DVDs were living up to their potential as a superior format.

DVDs use compressed audio formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS for multichannel sound. Most LaserDiscs were encoded with stereo (often Dolby Surround) CD quality audio 16bit/44.1 kHz tracks as well as analog audio tracks.

DTS-encoded LaserDiscs have DTS soundtracks of 1,235 kbit/s instead of the reduced bitrate of 768 kbit/s commonly employed on DVDs with optional DTS audio.

Advantages
LaserDisc players can provide a great degree of control over the playback process. Unlike many DVD players, the transport mechanism always obeys commands from the user: pause, fast-forward, and fast-reverse commands are always accepted (barring malfunctions). There were no "User Prohibited Options" where content protection code instructs the player to refuse commands to skip a specific part (such as fast forwarding through copyright warnings). (Some DVD players, particularly higher-end units, do have the ability to ignore the blocking code and play the video without restrictions, but this feature is not common in the usual consumer market.)

With CAV LaserDiscs, the user can jump directly to any individual frame of a video simply by entering the frame number on the remote keypad, a feature not common among DVD players. Some DVD players have cache features which stores a certain amount of the video in RAM which allows the player to index a DVD as quickly as an LD, even down to the frame in some players.

Damaged spots on a LaserDisc can be played through or skipped over, while a DVD will often become unplayable past the damage. Some newer DVD players feature a repair+skip algorithm, which alleviates this problem by continuing to play the disc, filling in unreadable areas of the picture with blank space or a frozen frame of the last readable image and sound. The success of this feature depends upon the amount of damage. LaserDisc players, when working in full analog, recover from such errors faster than DVD players.

Similar to the CD versus LP sound quality debates common in the audiophile community, some videophiles argue that LaserDisc maintains a "smoother", more "film-like", natural image while DVD still looks slightly more artificial. Early DVD demo discs often had compression or encoding problems, lending additional support to such claims at the time. The video signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth of LaserDisc are substantially less than those of DVDs, making DVDs appear sharper and clearer to most viewers.

Another advantage, at least to some consumers, was the fact that any sort of anti-piracy technology was purely optional. It was claimed that Macrovision's Copyguard protection could not be applied to LaserDisc, due to the format's design. The vertical blanking interval, where the Macrovision signal would be implemented, was used for timecode and frame coding as well as player control codes on LaserDisc players. Due to its relatively small market share, there was never a push to redesign the format despite the obvious potential for piracy. The industry simply decided to engineer it into the DVD specification.

LaserDisc's support for multiple audio tracks allowed for vast supplemental materials to be included on-disc and made it the first available format for "Special Edition" releases; the 1984 Criterion Collection edition of Citizen Kane is generally credited as being the first "Special Edition" release to home video (King Kong being the first release to have an audio commentary track included), and for setting the standard by which future SE discs were measured. The disc provided interviews, commentary tracks, documentaries, still photographs, and other features for historians and collectors.

Disadvantages
Despite the advantages over competing technology at the time (namely VHS and Betamax), the discs are heavy—weighing about  each—and cumbersome, were more prone than a VHS tape to damage if mishandled, and manufacturers did not market LD units with recording capabilities to consumers. Also, because of their size, greater mechanical effort was required to spin the discs at the proper speed, resulting in much more noise generated than other media.

The space-consuming analog video signal of a LaserDisc limited playback duration to 30/36 minutes (CAV NTSC/PAL) or 60/64 minutes (CLV NTSC/PAL) per side, because of the hardware manufacturer's refusal to reduce line count and bandwidth for increased playtime, (as is done in VHS; VHS tapes have a 3 MHz video bandwidth, while LaserDisc preserves the full 6 MHz bandwidth and resolution used in NTSC broadcasts). After one side is finished playing, a disc has to be flipped over to continue watching a movie, and some titles fill two or more discs, depending on the film's runtime and whether or not special features are included. Many players, especially units built after the mid-1980s, can "flip" discs automatically by rotating the optical pickup to the other side of the disc, but this is accompanied by a pause in the movie during the side change.

In the event the movie is longer than what could be stored on two sides of a single disc, manually swapping to a second disc is required at some point during the film (one exception to this rule is the Pioneer LD-W1, which features the ability to load two discs and to play each side of one disc and then to switch to playing each side of the other disc). In addition, perfect still frames and random access to individual still frames is limited only to the more expensive CAV discs, which only had a playing time of approximately 30 minutes per side. In later years, Pioneer and other manufacturers overcame this limitation by incorporating a digital memory buffer, which "grabbed" a single field or frame from a CLV disc.

The analog information encoded on LaserDiscs also does not include any form of built-in checksum or error correction. Because of this, slight dust and scratches on the disc surface can result in read-errors which cause various video quality problems: glitches, streaks, bursts of static, or momentary picture interruptions. In contrast, the digital MPEG-2 format information used on DVDs has built-in error correction which ensures that the signal from a damaged disc will remain identical to that from a perfect disc right up until the damage to the disc surface prevents the laser from being able to identify usable data.

In addition, LaserDisc videos sometimes exhibit a problem known as "crosstalk". The issue can arise when the laser optical pickup assembly within the player is out of alignment or because the disc is damaged or excessively warped, but it could also occur even with a properly functioning player and a factory-new disc, depending on electrical and mechanical alignment problems. In these instances, the issue arose due to the fact that CLV discs require subtle changes in rotating speed at various points during playback. During a change in speed, the optical pickup inside the player might read video information from a track adjacent to the intended one, causing data from the two tracks to "cross"; the extra video information picked up from that second track shows up as distortion in the picture which looks reminiscent of swirling "barber poles" or rolling lines of static.

Assuming the player's optical pickup is in proper working order, crosstalk distortion normally does not occur during playback of CAV format LaserDiscs, as the rotational speed never varies. If the player calibration is out of order or if the CAV disc is faulty or damaged, other problems affecting tracking accuracy can occur. One such problem is "laser lock", where the player reads the same two fields for a given frame over and over, causing the picture to look frozen as if the movie were paused.

Another significant issue unique to LaserDisc is one involving the inconsistency of playback quality between different makers and models of player. On the majority of televisions, a given DVD player will produce a picture that is visually indistinguishable from other units; differences in image quality between players only becomes easily apparent on larger televisions, and substantial leaps in image quality are generally only obtained with expensive, high-end players that allow for post-processing of the MPEG-2 stream during playback.

In contrast, LaserDisc playback quality is highly dependent on hardware quality, and major variances in picture quality appear between different makers and models of LD players, even when tested on a low to mid-range television. The obvious benefits of using high-quality equipment has helped keep demand for some players high, thus also keeping pricing for those units comparably high: in the 1990s, notable players sold for anywhere from US$200 to well over $1,000, while older and less desirable players could be purchased in working condition for as little as $25.

Laser rot

Many early LDs were not manufactured properly; the adhesive used contained impurities that were able to penetrate the lacquer seal layer and chemically attack the metalized reflective aluminum layer, altering its reflective characteristics which, in turn, deteriorated the recorded signal. This was a problem that was termed "laser rot" among LD enthusiasts (also called "color flash" internally by LaserDisc pressing plants). Some forms of laser rot could appear as black spots that looked like mold or burned plastic which cause the disc to skip and the movie to exhibit excessive speckling noise. But, for the most part, rotted discs could actually appear perfectly fine to the naked eye.

Later optical standards have also been known to suffer similar problems, including a notorious batch of defective CDs manufactured by Philips-DuPont Optical at their Blackburn, Lancashire facility in England during the late 1980s/early 1990s.

Impact and decline
LaserDisc did not have high market penetration in North America due to the high cost of the players and discs, which were far more expensive than VHS players and tapes, and due to marketplace confusion with the technologically inferior CED, which also went by the name Videodisc. While the format was not widely adopted by North American consumers, it was well received among videophiles due to the superior audio and video quality compared to VHS and Betamax tapes, finding a place in nearly one million American homes by the end of 1990. The format was more popular in Japan than in North America because prices were kept low to ensure adoption, resulting in minimal price differences between VHS tapes and the higher quality LaserDiscs, helping ensure that it quickly became the dominant consumer video format in Japan. Anime collectors in every country in which the LD format was released, which included both North America and Japan, also quickly became familiar with this format, and sought the higher video and sound quality of LaserDisc and the availability of numerous titles not available on VHS (encouraged by Pioneer's in-house production of anime which made titles specifically with the format in mind). LaserDiscs were also popular alternatives to videocassettes among movie enthusiasts in the more affluent regions of South East Asia, such as Singapore, due to their high integration with the Japanese export market and the disc-based media's superior longevity compared to videocassette, especially in the humid conditions endemic to that area of the world.

The format also became quite popular in Hong Kong during the 1990s before the introduction of VCDs and DVD; although people rarely bought the discs (because each LD was priced around US$100), high rental activity helped the video rental business in the city grow larger than it had ever been previously. Due to integration with the Japanese export market, NTSC LaserDiscs were used in the Hong Kong market, in contrast to the PAL standard used for broadcast (this anomaly also exists for DVD). This created a market for multi-system TVs and multi-system VCRs which could display or play both PAL and NTSC materials in addition to SECAM materials (which were never popular in Hong Kong). Some LD players could convert NTSC signals to PAL so that most TVs used in Hong Kong could display the LD materials.

Despite the relative popularity, manufacturers refused to market recordable LaserDisc devices on the consumer market, even though the competing VCR devices could record onto cassette, which hurt sales worldwide. The inconvenient disc size, the high cost of both the players and the media and the inability to record onto the discs combined to take a serious toll on sales, and contributed to the format's poor adoption figures.

Although the LaserDisc format was supplanted by DVD by the late 1990s, many LD titles are still highly coveted by movie enthusiasts (for example, Disney's Song of the South which is unavailable in the US in any format, but was issued in Japan on LD.) This is largely because there are many films that are still only available on LD and many other LD releases contain supplementary material not available on subsequent DVD versions of those films. Until the end of 2001, many titles were released on VHS, LD, and DVD in Japan.

Further developments and applications

Computer control
In the early 1980s, Philips produced a LaserDisc player model adapted for a computer interface, dubbed "professional." In 1985, Jasmine Multimedia created LaserDisc jukeboxes featuring music videos from Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, and Cyndi Lauper. When connected to a PC this combination could be used to display images or information for educational or archival purposes, for example, thousands of scanned medieval manuscripts. This strange device could be considered a very early equivalent of a CD-ROM.

In the mid-1980s Lucasfilm pioneered the EditDroid non-linear editing system for film and television based on computer-controlled LaserDisc players. Instead of printing dailies out on film, processed negatives from the day's shoot would be sent to a mastering plant to be assembled from their 10-minute camera elements into 20-minute film segments. These were then mastered onto single-sided blank LaserDiscs, just as a DVD would be burnt at home today, allowing for much easier selection and preparation of an edit decision list (EDL). In the days before video assist was available in cinematography, this was the only other way a film crew could see their work. The EDL went to the negative cutter who then cut the camera negative accordingly and assembled the finished film. Only 24 EditDroid systems were ever built, even though the ideas and technology are still in use today. Later EditDroid experiments borrowed from hard-drive technology of having multiple discs on the same spindle and added numerous playback heads and numerous electronics to the basic jukebox design so that any point on each of the discs would be accessible within seconds. This eliminated the need for racks and racks of industrial LaserDisc players since EditDroid discs were only single-sided.

In 1986, a SCSI-equipped LaserDisc player attached to a BBC Master computer was used for the BBC Domesday Project. The player was referred as an LV-ROM (LaserVision Read Only Memory) as the discs contained the driving software as well as the video frames. The discs used the CAV format, and encoded data as a binary signal represented by the analog audio recording. These discs could contain in each CAV frame video/audio or video/binary data, but not both. "Data" frames would appear blank when played as video. It was typical for each disc to start with the disc catalog (a few blank frames) then the video introduction before the rest of the data. Because the format (based on the ADFS hard disc format) used a starting sector for each file, the data layout effectively skipped over any video frames. If all 54,000 frames are used for data storage an LV-ROM disc can contain 324 MB of data per side. The Domesday Project systems also included a genlock, allowing video frames, clips and audio to be mixed with graphics originated from the BBC Master; this was used to great effect for displaying high-resolution photographs and maps, which could then be zoomed into.

During the 1980s in the United States, Digital Equipment Corporation developed the standalone PC control IVIS (Interactive VideoDisc Information System) for training and education. One of the most influential programs developed at DEC was Decision Point, a management gaming simulation, which won the Nebraska Video Disc Award for Best of Show in 1985.

Apple's HyperCard scripting language provided Macintosh computer users with a means to design databases of slides, animation, video and sounds from LaserDiscs and then to create interfaces for users to play specific content from the disc through software called LaserStacks. User-created "stacks" were shared and were especially popular in education where teacher-generated stacks were used to access discs ranging from art collections to basic biological processes. Commercially available stacks were also popular with the Voyager company being possibly the most successful distributor.

Commodore International's 1992 multimedia presentation system for the Amiga, AmigaVision, included device drivers for controlling a number of LaserDisc players through a serial port. Coupled with the Amiga's ability to use a Genlock, this allowed for the LaserDisc video to be overlaid with computer graphics and integrated into presentations and multimedia displays, years before such practice was commonplace.

Pioneer also made computer-controlled units such as the LD-V2000. It had a back-panel RS-232 serial connection through a five-pin DIN connector, and no front-panel controls except Open/Close. (The disc would be played automatically upon insertion.)

Under contract from the U.S. military, Matrox produced a combination computer/LaserDisc player for instructional purposes. The computer was a 286, the LaserDisc player only capable of reading the analog audio tracks. Together they weighed  and sturdy handles were provided in case two people were required to lift the unit. The computer controlled the player via a 25-pin serial port at the back of the player and a ribbon cable connected to a proprietary port on the motherboard. Many of these were sold as surplus by the military during the 1990s, often without the controller software. Nevertheless, it is possible to control the unit by removing the ribbon cable and connecting a serial cable directly from the computer's serial port to the port on the LaserDisc player.

Video games

The format's instant-access capability made it possible for a new breed of LaserDisc-based video arcade games and several companies saw potential in using LaserDiscs for video games in the 1980s and 1990s, beginning in 1983 with Sega's Astron Belt. Cinematronics and American Laser Games produced elaborate arcade games that used the random-access features to create interactive movies such as Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Similarly, the Pioneer Laseractive and Halcyon were introduced as home video game consoles that used LaserDisc media for their software.

MUSE LD
In 1991, several manufacturers announced specifications for what would become known as MUSE LaserDisc, representing a span of almost 15 years until the feats of this HD analog optical disc system would finally be duplicated digitally by HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Encoded using NHK's MUSE "Hi-Vision" analog HDTV system, MUSE discs would operate like standard LaserDiscs but would contain high-definition 1,125-line (1,035 visible lines; Sony HDVS) video with a 5:3 aspect ratio. The MUSE players were also capable of playing standard NTSC format discs and are superior in performance to non-MUSE players even with these NTSC discs. The MUSE-capable players had several noteworthy advantages over standard LaserDisc players, including a red laser with a much narrower wavelength than the lasers found in standard players. The red laser was capable of reading through disc defects such as scratches and even mild disc rot that would cause most other players to stop, stutter or drop-out. Crosstalk was not an issue with MUSE discs, and the narrow wavelength of the laser allowed for the virtual elimination of crosstalk with normal discs.

To view MUSE-encoded discs, it was necessary to have a MUSE decoder in addition to a compatible player. There are televisions with MUSE decoding built-in and set-top tuners with decoders that can provide the proper MUSE input. Equipment prices were high, especially for early HDTVs which generally eclipsed US$10,000, and even in Japan the market for MUSE was tiny. Players and discs were never officially sold in North America, although several distributors imported MUSE discs along with other import titles. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Lawrence of Arabia, A League of Their Own, Bugsy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Chaplin were among the theatrical releases available on MUSE LDs. Several documentaries, including one about Formula One at Japan's Suzuka Circuit were also released.

LaserDisc players and LaserDiscs that worked with the competing European HD-MAC HDTV standard were also made.

Picture discs
Picture discs have artistic etching on one side of the disc to make the disc more visually attractive than the standard shiny silver surface. This etching might look like a movie character, logo, or other promotional material. Sometimes that side of the LD would be made with colored plastic, rather than the clear material used for the data side. Picture disc LDs only had video material on one side as the "picture" side could not contain any data. Picture discs are rare in North America.

LD-G
Pioneer Electronics—one of the format's largest supporters/investors—was also deeply involved in the karaoke business in Japan, and used LaserDiscs as the storage medium for music and additional content such as graphics. This format was generally called LD-G. While several other karaoke labels manufactured LaserDiscs, there was nothing like the breadth of competition in that industry that exists now, as almost all manufacturers have transitioned to CD+G discs.

Anamorphic LaserDiscs
With the release of 16:9 televisions in the early 1990s, Pioneer and Toshiba decided that it was time to take advantage of this aspect ratio. Squeeze LDs were enhanced 16:9-ratio widescreen LaserDiscs. During the video transfer stage, the movie was stored in an anamorphic "squeezed" format. The widescreen movie image was stretched to fill the entire video frame with less or none of the video resolution wasted to create letterbox bars. The advantage was a 33% greater vertical resolution compared to letterboxed widescreen LaserDisc. This same procedure was used for anamorphic DVDs, but unlike all DVD players, very few LD players had the ability to unsqueeze the image for 4:3 sets, If the discs were played on a standard 4:3 television the image would be distorted. Some 4:3 sets (such as the Sony WEGA series) could be set to unsqueeze the image. Since very few people outside of Japan owned 16:9 displays, the marketability of these special discs was very limited.

There were no anamorphic LaserDisc titles available in the US except for promotional purposes. Upon purchase of a Toshiba 16:9 television viewers had the option of selecting a number of Warner Bros. 16:9 films. Titles include Unforgiven, Grumpy Old Men, The Fugitive, and Free Willy. The Japanese lineup of titles was different. A series of releases under the banner "Squeeze LD" from Pioneer of mostly Carolco titles included Basic Instinct, Stargate, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Showgirls, Cutthroat Island, and Cliffhanger. Terminator 2 was released twice in Squeeze LD, the second release being THX certified and a notable improvement over the first.

Recordable formats
Another type of video media, CRVdisc, or "Component Recordable Video Disc" were available for a short time, mostly to professionals. Developed by Sony, CRVdiscs resemble early PC CD-ROM caddies with a disc inside resembling a full-sized LD. CRVdiscs were blank, write-once, read-many media that can be recorded once on each side. CRVdiscs were used largely for backup storage in professional and commercial applications.

Another form of recordable LaserDisc that is completely playback-compatible with the LaserDisc format (unlike CRVdisc with its caddy enclosure) is the RLV, or Recordable Laser Videodisc. It was developed and first marketed by the Optical Disc Corporation (ODC, now ODC Nimbus) in 1984. RLV discs, like CRVdisc, are also a WORM technology, and function exactly like a CD-R disc. RLV discs look almost exactly like standard LaserDiscs, and can play in any standard LaserDisc player after they have been recorded.

The only cosmetic difference between an RLV disc and a regular factory-pressed LaserDiscs is their reflective Red (showing up in photos as a purple-violet or blue with some RLV discs) color resulting from the dye embedded in the reflective layer of the disc to make it recordable, as opposed to the silver mirror appearance of regular LDs. The reddish color of RLVs is very similar to DVD-R and DVD+R discs. RLVs were popular for making short-run quantities of LaserDiscs for specialized applications such as interactive kiosks and flight simulators. Another, single-sided form of RLV exists with the silver side being covered in small bumps. Blank RLV discs show a standard Test Card when played in a Laserdisc player.

Pioneer also produced a rewritable LaserDisc system, the VDR-V1000 "LaserRecorder" for which the discs had a claimed erase/record potential of 1,000,000 cycles.

These recordable LD systems were never marketed toward the general public, and are so unknown as to create the misconception that home recording for LaserDiscs was impossible and thus a perceived "weakness" of the LaserDisc format.

LaserDisc sizes

30 cm (Full-size)

The most common size of LaserDisc was , approximately the size of  LP vinyl records. These discs allowed for 30/36 minutes per side (CAV NTSC/PAL) or 60/64 minutes per side (CLV NTSC/PAL). The vast majority of programming for the LaserDisc format was produced on these discs.

20 cm ("EP"-size)

A number of  LaserDiscs were also published. These smaller "EP"-sized LDs allowed for 20 minutes per side (CLV). They are much rarer than the full-size LDs, especially in North America, and roughly approximate the size of 45rpm () vinyl singles. These discs were often used for music video compilations (e.g. Bon Jovi's "Breakout", Bananarama's "Video Singles" or T'Pau's "View from a Bridge"), as well as Japanese karaoke machines.

12 cm (CD Video and Video Single Disc)

There were also  (CD size) "single"-style discs produced that were playable on LaserDisc players. These were referred to as CD Video (CD-V) discs, and Video Single Discs (VSD).

CD-V was a hybrid format launched in the late 1980s, and carried up to five minutes of analog LaserDisc-type video content with a digital soundtrack (usually a music video), plus up to 20 minutes of digital audio CD tracks. The original 1989 release of David Bowie's retrospective Sound + Vision CD box set prominently featured a CD-V video of "Ashes to Ashes", and standalone promo CD-Vs featured the video, plus three audio tracks: "John, I'm Only Dancing", "Changes", and "The Supermen".

Despite the similar name, CD Video is entirely incompatible with the later all-digital Video CD (VCD) format, and can only be played back on LaserDisc players with CD-V capability or one of the players dedicated to the smaller discs. CD-Vs were somewhat popular for a brief time worldwide but soon faded from view.

In Europe, Philips also used the "CD Video" name as part of a short-lived attempt in the late 1980s to relaunch and rebrand the entire LaserDisc system. Some 20 and 30 cm discs were also branded "CD Video", but unlike the 12 cm discs, these were essentially just standard LaserDiscs with digital soundtracks and no audio-only CD content.

The VSD format was announced in 1990, and was essentially the same as the  CD-V, but without the audio CD tracks, and intended to sell at a lower price. VSDs were popular only in Japan and other parts of Asia and were never fully introduced to the rest of the world.

See also
 Blu-ray
 Ultra HD Blu-ray
 CED
 DVD
 SelectaVision
 Holographic Versatile Disc
 Laser turntable
 VHD
 Videodisc

Footnotes

References

Further reading
 Isailovic, Jordan. Videodisc and Optical Memory Systems. Vol. 1, Boston, MA: Prentice Hall, 1984. .
 Lenk, John D. Complete Guide to Laser/VideoDisc Player Troubleshooting and Repair. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985. .

External links

 BBC Tomorrow's World clip on LaserDisc from 1980
 LaserDisc Database
 LaserDisc Player Archive
 LaserDisc Technical Page
 TotalRewind.org vintage format site
 BLAM Entertainment Group comprehensive LaserDisc site
 Laserdisc Player Formats and Features eBay guide (archived)
 Digital Audio Modulation in the PAL and NTSC Laservision Video Disc Coding Formats

Audiovisual introductions in 1978
Digital media
Discontinued media formats
Film and video technology
Home video
Philips products
Pioneer Corporation products
Products introduced in 1978
Products and services discontinued in 2001
Video game distribution
Video storage

el:Μέσο αποθήκευσης δεδομένων#Laserdisc

LaserDisc


Linolenic acid is a type of naturally-occurring fatty acid. It can refer to either of two octadecatrienoic acids (i.e. with an 18-carbon chain and three double bonds, which are found in the cis configuration), or a mixture of the two.  Linolenate (in the form of triglyceride esters of linolenic acid) is often found in vegetable oils; traditionally, such fatty acylates are reported as the fatty acids:

α-Linolenic acid, an omega-3 (n-3) fatty acid
γ-Linolenic acid, an omega-6 (n-6) fatty acid

See also
 Linoleic acid, the similarly named essential fatty acid

References

Alkenoic acids
Aromatase inhibitors
Fatty acids
Essential fatty acids
Essential nutrients

Linolenic acid


Cyrus Charles Young (July 23, 1928 – December 6, 2017) was an American athlete. He was born in Modesto, California. He competed mainly in the javelin throw. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was the first non-European man to win the gold medal in the javelin throw in the Olympics in 1952, and – through the 2012 London Olympics – he remains the only American male to earn Olympic gold in the event.

Young died in Modesto on December 6, 2017 of vascular dementia at the age of 89.

References

1928 births
2017 deaths
Deaths from vascular dementia
Disease-related deaths in California
American Olympic gold medalists
American track and field athletes
Javelin throwers
Sportspeople from California

Cy Young (athlete)


Orgel diagrams are correlation diagrams which show the relative energies of electronic terms in transition metal complexes, much like Tanabe–Sugano diagrams. They are named after their creator, Leslie Orgel. Orgel diagrams are restricted to only show weak field (i.e. high spin) cases, and offer no information about strong field (low spin) cases. Because Orgel diagrams are qualitative, no energy calculations can be performed from these diagrams; also, Orgel diagrams only show the symmetry states of the highest spin multiplicity instead of all possible terms, unlike a Tanabe–Sugano diagram. Orgel diagrams will, however, show the number of spin allowed transitions, along with their respective symmetry designations. In an Orgel diagram, the parent term (P, D, or F) in the presence of no ligand field is located in the center of the diagram, with the terms due to that electronic configuration in a ligand field at each side. There are two Orgel diagrams, one for d1, d4, d6, and d9 configurations and the other with d2, d3, d7, and d8 configurations.

In an Orgel diagram, lines with the same Russell–Saunders terms will diverge due to the non-crossing rule, but all other lines will be linear. Also, for the D Orgel diagram, the left side contains d1 and d6 tetrahedral and d4 and d9 octahedral complexes. The right side contains d4 and d9 tetrahedral and d1 and d6 octahedral complexes. For the F Orgel diagram, the left side contains d2 and d7 tetrahedral and d3 and d8 octahedral complexes. The right side contains d3 and d8 tetrahedral and d2 and high spin d7 octahedral complexes.

References

External links
 Applying Electronic Spectra
Calculations Using Orgel Diagrams
Calculations Using Tanabe-Sugano Diagrams
Spectroscopy of First Row Transition Metal Complexes – F Ground States

Coordination chemistry
Spectroscopy
Inorganic chemistry
Transition metals

Orgel diagram


Orăștioara de Sus (, ) is a commune in Hunedoara County, Transylvania, Romania. It is composed of eight villages: Bucium (Bucsum), Costești (Kosztesd), Costești-Deal, Grădiștea de Munte (Gredistye), Ludeștii de Jos (Ludesd), Ludeștii de Sus (Felsőludesd), Ocolișu Mic (Kisoklos) and Orăștioara de Sus.

Two of the Dacian Fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains, Costești-Cetățuie and Costești-Blidaru, are located near Costești village. A third, Sarmizegetusa Regia, is located near Grădiștea de Munte.
A Roman fort is located near Bucium village.

Gallery

References

Communes in Hunedoara County
Localities in Transylvania

Orăștioara de Sus


Nils T. Granlund (September 29, 1890–April 21, 1957) was an American show producer, entertainment industry entrepreneur and  radio industry pioneer. He was a publicist for Marcus Loew who formed Loews Theatres and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Although his birth name was Nils Theodore Granlund, he later used Thor as a middle name, and after appearing on early radio was commonly referenced only by his initials, N.T.G., on the air and in print.

Early life
Granlund was born in Ljungby Parish in the province of Småland, Sweden. His father was Teodor Granlund, born during 1857 in Fridlevstad in the province of Blekinge. His mother Amanda (Bylund) Granlund (1858-1912) was born in Tingsås Parish, province of Småland. (Source: Swedish Census of 1890). He emigrated with his family to the United States as second cabin class passengers on the board the S/S Amerika at Copenhagen, Denmark; it arrived at the Port of New York on July 2, 1894. The family settled in Providence, Rhode Island. While still in his teen years he began covering the yachting news for the Providence Tribune, where he later become sports editor, and covered the local entertainment news.  By his 18th year he had been an automobile race driver, aviator and press agent. His promotional efforts for a local theater caught the attention of Marcus Loew who hired Granlund in 1913 as a publicity agent for Hanky Panky, a recently acquired touring vaudeville show.

Marcus Loew Theaters
Following the year-long tour, Loew promoted Granlund to oversee marketing for his theater chain as publicity manager. In addition to publicizing events at the various venues, at the urging of Loew, Granlund began staging live talent revues at several of the under performing theaters. His innovative techniques resulted in the first use of film for promoting live theater and the first filmed trailers for upcoming movies. In 1922 Granlund visited the studios of WHN, a part-time broadcasting station in Ridgewood, Queens, New York, and after a series of experimental programs, he convinced Loew to lease the station as a promotional arm of Loew's Theaters.  He had conceived the elaborate movie premiere, with lights, news cameras and personal appearances of stars.  He exploited and advertised the first full-length motion picture in the United States.

Early radio
After several months of live programming as an anonymous announcer known only by his initials, N.T.G., Granlund approached George Schubel, President of the Ridgewood Times and licensee of WHN, proposing to purchase the station and relocating it to New York City. On July 28, 1923, the station was purchased by Marcus Loew and the studios transferred to his State Theatre at 1540 Broadway, where Granlund served as Station Manager and announcer.  He brought entertainers Al Jolson,  Eddie Cantor and Harry Richman to the listening public.  He also presented radio's first amateur program.

Prohibition
Granlund continued to stage live revues for the Loew's Theaters and became known for his use of scantily-clad chorus girls, comedians, and singers. As a producer, he simultaneously staged shows at Broadway showplaces such as the Frivolity Club, the Silver Slipper, the Paradise, and the Hollywood. During Prohibition he was arrested along with several other speakeasy figures, including Texas Guinan, whom Granlund had introduced to Larry Fay, her partner at the notorious El Fey Club. The sweep was part of a city-wide liquor crackdown that made headlines across the United States. Although Granlund was charged in the initial indictment, following Guinan's acquittal, prosecutors declined to press the case against Granlund.

Nightclub ownership
September 15, 1938, after operating successful reviews on Broadway and touring the U.S., Granlund opened his first nightclub as sole owner. The Midnight Sun featured a Swedish motif and relied on the sales of food over liquor, but offered the same live stage presentations. In a syndicated column describing his innovations in the New York Times, Granlund is credited with having invented the modern nightclub.  His Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway set all-time night club entertainment standards.  The famed Paradise Restaurant in New York City was also his creation.

Hollywood
His Congress of Beauty exhibition at the 1939 New York World's Fair met with mixed reviews and financial disaster, forcing Granlund to shut down the showgirl revue early. Within a year, he relocated to California, setting up a chorus line revue at Hollywood's Florentine Gardens, an act generally panned by Variety, but one which during World War II,  held great appeal to California-based servicemen, and boosted Granlund into the ranks of the nation's top grossing entertainment acts. While in Hollywood, he was featured in several motion pictures, generally appearing as himself, and 1942's Rhythm Parade  was set at the Florentine Gardens.

Later years
After seven years in Hollywood, Granlund made an unsuccessful return to New York City, staging his familiar shows that were increasing panned by critics as throwbacks to vaudeville. His shows at the Frivolity, The Greenwich Village Inn, and the Rio Cabana were savaged by Variety critics.

Returning to California, he staged revues for several West Coast nightclubs, and briefly hosted a radio talk show as well as a televised amateur variety production on KTSL, a short-lived program called Backstage with NTG. Actress Elinor Donahue has related how he helped out both her and her mother with much needed groceries, when she appeared on this show during a very lean time in her career.

The publication of his memoir, Blondes, Brunettes, and Bullets briefly resurrected his name from the obscurity into which he had fallen, and four weeks after its release, Granlund was in Las Vegas negotiating a chorus line production contract when his taxi was struck leaving the Riviera Hotel and Casino. He died of head injuries on April 21, 1957. Funeral arrangements were made by actress Yvonne De Carlo, whom Granlund had hired as a dancer at the Florentine Gardens, one of the multitude of stars who owed their first break in show business to Granlund.

References

Related reading
Jaker, Bill et al.  (2008) Airwaves of New York: Illustrated Histories of 156 Am Stations in the Metropolitan Area, 1921-1996  (McFarland and Company)
Peretti, Burton W. (2013) Nightclub City: Politics and Amusement in Manhattan (University of Pennsylvania Press)
 Zemeckis, Leslie (2014)  Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America  (Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.)

1890 births
1957 deaths
People from Småland
Nightclub owners
American entertainment industry businesspeople
Loews Cineplex Entertainment
American theatre managers and producers
Businesspeople from New York City
Swedish emigrants to the United States
20th-century American businesspeople

Nils Granlund


Dorf's Golf Bible is a 1988 comedy short film starring Tim Conway, Eddie Deezen and Michele Smith along with a special appearance by Sam Snead.

Cast
Tim Conway as Dorf
Eddie Deezen as Waldo
Michele Smith as Boom Boom, the Angel of Numbers
Sam Snead as himself, a golf tutor to Dorf.

Characters
Derk Dorf is the main character and the voice-over. He is playing a game of golf when, apparently, a voice over commands what he does. For example, the voice over said for Dorf to keep his left elbow in, and he did and sliced it just as the voice-over said. Apparently Dorf re-enacts whatever the Golf bible commandments are.

Waldo is Dorf's caddy. He first arrives late and does not know the terms of Golf. He also can distract or annoy Dorf whenever he is trying to golf. For example, Dorf asks for a tee, Waldo gives him a cup of hot tea. He replaces Leonard, who filled an identical role in Dorf on Golf.

Boom Boom is the beautiful, curvaceous blonde Angel of numbers. She gives out the commandments as the voice-over calls them out. She puts Roman numerals on a stone that has been flattened for her to put them on.

Sam Snead plays himself.  The Golf Legend, Referred to as "Slammin' Sam", gives Dorf lessons on his swing, his grip, and other elements of his game.  However, when Dorf performs these to disastrous results, he laughs heartily at Dorf's Failure.  An oft-quoted line in the video is Sam's "Why don't you quit?", which is repeated by Sam on the Driving Range, and by Dorf's Dog in his backyard.

Props
Target - Dorf used a target to pretend that he was in the U.S. Open Golf Tournament. Apparently, he broke his neighbor's window by hitting the ball over the fence.

Sandwich - Dorf asked for a Sand Wedge, apparently he got a sandwich to hit the ball out of the sand.

Motorized Putter - Dorf used a motorized putter to putt the ball to the hole. Apparently, it backfired on him.

Puns and Jokes
Injuries There have been many bad things that have happened to him. One is the ball hitting his head. When he stole somebody's 9-iron he hit it to a tree and it hit him back in the head with the same sound effect. Another joke was when he was hit by the brick when he was hitting the target pretending to be in the U.S. Open.

Dorf's wife - Dorf's wife is constantly bothered that Dorf is spending too much time playing Golf and not spending time with her. Dorf usually calls her a name such as "My honey bucket, my sweetie pie, my darlin' lump of loveliness." Apparently when she's not listening, Dorf will talk behind her back.

External links

Dorf's Golf Bible
Golf Bible
Dorf's Golf Bible
1980s sports comedy films
1987 comedy films
1988 comedy films
1988 films
1980s English-language films
Films directed by Roger Beatty

Dorf's Golf Bible


Henotheism is the adherence to one particular god out of several, especially by a family, tribe, or other group.

Henotheism is sometimes defined as a monotheistic belief within a polytheistic world - believing that one god, or articulation of God, is better or clearer than others. Alternatively, henotheism is the worship of one god above an acknowledged pantheon. An example of this second form is the worship of a tribal god.

A henotheist would admit that many gods have real existence and are able to be worshipped. However the henotheist chooses to worship only one of these gods. This sets the henotheist apart from the polytheist who worships many gods.

References

Gods and goddesses

Henotheism


Eric Clapton at His Best is a two-LP compilation of Eric Clapton's work after he left his earlier band Cream, released in September 1972.  It was concurrently released with a two-LP compilation of Cream tracks, Heavy Cream, along with "at His Best" solo retrospectives by Cream's other members Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

Although available in other territories as well, Eric Clapton at His Best was largely released to address the North American market, in order for Polydor Records to leverage Clapton's back catalog as, prior to 1972, Polydor had licensed Clapton's recordings to Atco/Atlantic Records for North American distribution. It was the first of two compilations of Clapton's early work that Polydor would issue; the second, Clapton, was released in mid-1973.  Now out of print, Eric Clapton at His Best was available during the years 1972-76.

The album contains songs from Clapton's lone album with his 1969 band Blind Faith, his eponymous 1970 album, and from the lone studio album by Clapton's 1970-71 band Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970).

Track listing

Side one
 "Bottle of Red Wine" (Delaney Bramlett/Eric Clapton) - 3:06
 From Eric Clapton (1970).  Produced by Delaney Bramlett.
 "Anyday" (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock) - 6:33
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.  Produced by The Dominos; executive producer Tom Dowd.
 "I Looked Away" (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock) - 3:02
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
 "Let It Rain" (Bonnie Bramlett/Eric Clapton) - 5:07
 From Eric Clapton.
 "Lonesome and a Long Way from Home" (Bonnie Bramlett/Leon Russell) - 3:43
 From Eric Clapton.

Side two
 "Sea of Joy" (Steve Winwood) - 5:23
 From Blind Faith (1969).  Produced by Jimmy Miller by arrangement with Robert Stigwood and Chris Blackwell.
 "Layla" (Eric Clapton/Jim Gordon) - 7:01
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
 "Blues Power" (Eric Clapton/Leon Russell) - 3:10
 From Eric Clapton.
 "Bell Bottom Blues" (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock) - 5:00
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Side three
 "After Midnight" (John J. Cale) - 3:11
 From Eric Clapton.
 "Keep On Growing" (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock) - 6:20
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
 "Little Wing" (Jimi Hendrix) - 5:31
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
 "Presence of the Lord" (Eric Clapton) - 4:48
 From Blind Faith.

Side four
 "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock) - 4:41
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
 "Easy Now" (Eric Clapton) - 2:58
 From Eric Clapton.
 "Slunky" (Delaney Bramlett/Eric Clapton) - 3:33
 From Eric Clapton.
 "Key to the Highway" (Charles Segar/Bill Broonzy) - 9:39
 From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Personnel
 Eric Clapton – vocals, lead vocals, guitar
 Carl Radle – bass
 Jim Gordon – drums, percussion, piano
 Stephen Stills – guitar
 Bobby Whitlock – organ, piano, vocals, acoustic guitar
 John Simon – piano
 Leon Russell – piano
 Bobby Keys – saxophone
 Jim Price  – trumpet
 J. I. Allison, Rita Coolidge, Sonny Curtis – vocals
 Delaney Bramlett – vocals, rhythm guitar
 Bonnie Bramlett – vocals
 Duane Allman – guitar
 Ric Grech – bass, guitar
 Ginger Baker – drums
 Steve Winwood – vocals, organ, guitar

References

External links

1972 greatest hits albums
Eric Clapton compilation albums
Polydor Records compilation albums

Eric Clapton at His Best


The Octoroon is a play by Dion Boucicault that opened in 1859 at The Winter Garden Theatre, New York City. Extremely popular, the play was kept running continuously for years by seven road companies. Among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second in popularity only to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

Boucicault adapted the play from the novel The Quadroon by Thomas Mayne Reid (1856). It concerns the residents of a Louisiana plantation called Terrebonne, and sparked debates about the abolition of slavery and the role of theatre in politics. It contains elements of Romanticism and melodrama.

The word octoroon signifies a person of one-eighth African ancestry. In comparison, a quadroon would have one quarter African ancestry and a mulatto for the most part has historically implied half African ancestry.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Octoroon with the earliest record of the word "mashup" with the quote: "He don't understand; he speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican." Boucicault's manuscript actually reads "Indian, French and 'Merican."  The last word, an important colloquialism, was misread by the typesetter of the play.

Plot

Act I

George Peyton returns to the United States from a trip to France to find that the plantation he has inherited is in dire financial straits as a result of his late uncle's beneficence. Jacob McClosky, the man who ruined Judge Peyton, has come to inform George and his aunt (who was bequeathed a life interest in the estate) that their land will be sold and their slaves auctioned off separately. Salem Scudder, a kind Yankee, was Judge Peyton's business partner; though he wishes he could save Terrebonne, he has no money.

George is courted by the rich Southern belle heiress Dora Sunnyside, but he finds himself falling in love with Zoe, the daughter of his uncle through one of the slaves. Dora, oblivious to George's lack of affection for her, enlists Zoe's help to win him over. McClosky desires Zoe for himself, and when she rejects his proposition, he plots to have her sold with the rest of the slaves, for he knows that she is an octoroon and is legally part of the Terrebonne property. He plans to buy her and make her his mistress.

Act II
McClosky intercepts a young slave boy, Paul, who is bringing a mailbag to the house which contains a letter from one of Judge Peyton's old debtors. Since this letter would allow Mrs. Peyton to avoid selling Terrebonne, McClosky kills Paul and takes the letter. The murder is captured on Scudder's photographic apparatus. Paul's best friend, the Indian Wahnotee, discovers Paul's body; he can speak only poor English, however, and is unable to communicate the tragedy to anyone else.

George and Zoe reveal their love for each other, but Zoe rejects George's marriage proposal. When George asks why, Zoe explains that she is an octoroon, and the law prevents a white man from marrying anyone with the smallest black heritage. George offers to take her to a different country, but Zoe insists that she stay to help Terrebonne; Scudder then appears and suggests that George marry Dora. With Dora's wealth, he explains, Terrebonne will not be sold and the slaves will not have to be separated. George reluctantly agrees.

Act III

George goes to Dora and begins to propose to her; while he is doing so, however, he has a change of heart and decides not to lie to her. He and Zoe admit to their love of each other; a heartbroken Dora leaves. The auctioneer arrives, along with prospective buyers, McClosky among them. After various slaves are auctioned off, George and the buyers are shocked to see Zoe up on the stand. McClosky has proved that Judge Peyton did not succeed in legally freeing her, as he had meant to do. Dora then reappears and bids on Zoe – she has sold her own plantation in order to rescue Terrebonne. McClosky, however, outbids her for Zoe; George is restrained from attacking him by his friends.

Act IV

The buyers gather to take away the slaves they have purchased on a steamship. They have realized that Paul is missing, and most believe him dead. Wahnotee appears, drunk and sorrowful, and tells them that Paul is buried near them. The men accuse Wahnotee of the murder, and McClosky calls for him to be lynched. Scudder insists that they hold a trial, and the men search for evidence. Just as McClosky points out the blood on Wahnotee's tomahawk, the oldest slave, Pete, comes to give them the photographic plate which has captured McClosky's deed. The men begin to call for McClosky to be lynched, but Scudder convinces them to send him to jail instead.

Act V

The men leave to fetch the authorities, but McClosky escapes. Stealing a lantern, he sets fire to the steamship that had the slaves on board. Wahnotee tracks him down and confronts him; in the ensuing struggle, Wahnotee kills McClosky. Back at Terrebonne, Zoe returns but with a sad heart, as she knows that she and George can never be together. In an act of desperation she drinks a vial of poison, and Scudder enters to deliver the good news that McClosky was proven guilty of murdering Paul and that Terrebonne now belongs to George. Despite the happiness Zoe stands dying and the play ends with her death on the sitting-room couch and George kneeling beside her.

Alternative endings
When the play was performed in England it was given a happy ending, in which the mixed-race couple are united. The tragic ending was used for American audiences, to avoid portraying a mixed marriage.

Adaptations
The play was adapted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins as An Octoroon in 2014.

References

External links
 A four-act version of the play

Plays by Dion Boucicault
1859 plays
Plays set in Louisiana
Plays about American slavery
Plays based on novels
Irish plays adapted into films

The Octoroon


Edgar Louis Yaeger (1904–1997) was an American modernist painter from Detroit, Michigan.

Yaeger studied under Robert A. Herzberg at the Detroit School of Fine and Applied Arts, by which he was awarded the Founder's Society Purchase Prize. Subsequently, with the backing of the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Traveling Scholarship, Yaeger embarked on a study tour of eight European countries, from France to Czechoslovakia.

Yaeger was best known for his contributions to the Michigan Federal Art project and the Works Progress Administration scheme during the Depression era, to which he contributed a number of murals that were displayed in public buildings. Some of his contributions are located at the West Quad Dormitory at the University of Michigan and the Detroit Public Lighting Commission Building.

Biography - A Life of Art

Edgar Yaeger never went out of his way to be noticed. "Quiet," "modest" and "unassuming" were likely the three adjectives most frequently applied to Mr. Yaeger, both by the press and by his personal acquaintances. "If you saw Edgar Yaeger walking through his Detroit neighborhood, you'd never imagine him to be a celebrated artist. Sometimes the fact seems to even surprise Yaeger himself," said one contemporary critic. It was true; whatever Yaeger's personal hierarchy of priorities may have been, it seems fairly certain that self-aggrandizement and self-promotion didn't rank very highly among them—which goes a long way towards explaining his curious status as an unheralded master among 20th century American modernists.

Neither the press nor the public ever seemed quite certain what to make of Edgar Yaeger. His talent, his commitment to craft, and his skill at integrating and adapting the prevailing styles of the day into his own signature style were always beyond question. How was it, then, that this consummate professional – a man who had studied beneath some of the art world's luminaries in 1930s Paris and who had exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery and the Phillips Collection – came to spend the majority of his years living and working in comparative obscurity in Detroit, far from the art world's bright centers?

Apart from the odd high-profile commission, newspaper story, or significant exhibition, Yaeger lived without substantive honor in either his time or his town. Beyond a small circle of Detroit art cognoscenti, Yaeger remained largely unknown in his hometown even as collectors in France and museums in Miami sought out his work. Of course, Yaeger would be the last to style himself a prophet, and it is true that his oeuvre presents more of a penchant for quiet refinement of others' innovations—Braque, Picasso, De Chirico, Matisse, Miro and others receive noteworthy nods in Yaeger's work—than for flamboyant departures of his own. Nonetheless, it takes little more than a quick glance at Yaeger's output to determine that he did indeed forge his own unique, singular style and contribute his own thread to the tapestry of modernism.

Edgar Louis Yaeger was born in 1904 in Detroit, Michigan, the son of a shoe store owner and the fourth generation of his family to live in the area. Yaeger's family was hesitantly supportive of his artistic pursuits. In the early years of his life, Yaeger learned a succession of skills from his beloved grandfather, who taught him to draw, to carve figures from blocks of soap and to paint using discarded paints found in an alley, thus laying the foundation for capabilities Yaeger would use throughout his life. By his own account, Yaeger showed little interest for any vocation apart from art; while his father was disappointed that his son wouldn't follow him into the family shoe business, he lent his grudging support to Yaeger's artistic pursuits, saying that so long as he was able to earn a living he was free to continue.

Yaeger's talent began to emerge in earnest during his high school years as he started winning prizes for his drawings and paintings. Scholarships enabled him to pursue his formal artistic training at the University of Detroit, the John P. Wicker School of Fine Arts, and Robert Herzberg's Detroit School of Fine and Applied Arts. Both to economize and to support himself, Yaeger ground paints for his own use and for sale to fellow students. Concurrently, his work began to attract the attention of a broader audience of influential art patrons. Early recognition arrived in the form of acceptance into the Carnegie International Exhibition in 1930 – a show juried by Henri Matisse.

In 1932, Yaeger won two prizes which would provide a significant boost to his budding career: The Detroit Institute of Arts' Founders' Society Purchase Prize and the Detroit News'Anna Scripps Whitcomb Traveling Scholarship. Apart from the increased public profile and prestige afforded by the awards, the $500 Scripps cash award enabled Yaeger to pursue his art education overseas. Yaeger departed for Paris, then still the center of European artistic activity and the home to legions of American expatriates, where he studied at the Academe Andre L'hote and the Ecole Scandinav, where he received instruction from L'hote, Marcel Gromaire and Orthon Friesz.

Yaeger embraced the opportunities for education and inspiration afforded him by life in Paris, relishing the chance to meet other artists, peruse cutting-edge Paris galleries, and to paint in the French countryside as well as the advanced education provided by his European instructors. Forced by economics to return home midway through his European tenure, Yaeger was awarded an additional $500 by the Whitcombs in recognition of his talent and thrift, enabling him to return to France, Yaeger purchased a $10 bicycle upon which he traveled across the continent, drawing, sketching and painting directly from life in a panoply of European settings.

A confluence of factors including escalating tensions in prewar Europe and the American economic depression led Yaeger to return to the United States in 1935. Yeager settled once again in Detroit, taking up residence in his family home where he would remain for the rest of his life. Shortly after his return, Yaeger began to work on a succession of murals commissioned by Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and its landmark Federal Arts Project. While not enamored of the officially-sanctioned Social Realist style favored by program administrators, Yaeger nonetheless joined the ranks of American artistic luminaries commissioned by the FAP to create murals, paintings, and sculptures for WPA sites in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Yaeger's FAP commissioned works included murals for Detroit Receiving Hospital's Children's Ward, the Ford Grammar School in Highland Park, and Western Market (all now destroyed). A commission for the Detroit Public Lighting Commission, a landmark mural celebrating the historical development of electric light, was partially saved from oblivion prior to the building's 1977 demolition and is now visible at Michigan State University's Kresge Art Museum. Surviving Yaeger WPA murals exist at the Brodhead Naval Armory (now closed), Grosse Pointe South High School in Grosse Pointe, and the University of Michigan's West Quad Dormitory.

Yaeger was somewhat dismissive of his WPA-era projects; his reluctance to embrace social realism and his resistance to the influence of program administrators and site managers led him to leave many of these works unsigned. Ironically, they become a cornerstone of his artistic reputation, and likely to his regret, a prism through which the remainder of his life's work would be perceived by critics and the public. He became pigeonholed in the eyes of some as a "WPA" artist, and with Social Realism's fall from stylistic favor he received a corresponding lessening of attention and appreciation.

Nonetheless, Yaeger continued to work at a frenetic pace, completing private commissions including mosaics for churches and murals for private clients as well as an endless succession of paintings and drawings. Prizes, gallery exhibitions, and purchases continued to accrue, albeit at a lessened frequency, through the 1960s—even during the Abstract Expressionist, Pop, and Op-Art eras. With the ascendence of conceptualism in the late 1960s-early 1970s and its attendendant dismissal of both painting and representationalism in favor of pure abstraction, Yaeger began to recede into obscurity.

The mid-1980s, however, witnessed something of an Edgar Yaeger renaissance. As conceptualism fell from style and interest in painting returned —thanks in large measure to American Neo-Expressionists such as Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Europeans such as Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke— stylistic devices favored by Yaeger came once again into vogue. Simultaneously, a Detroit-based group of Yaeger fans led by Yaeger's friend and agent John Joseph Jr. began evangelizing the artist's work on his behalf, a practice never undertaken in earnest by the modest Yaeger. A flurry of press attention and new public commissions followed, including an outdoor mosaic on the facade of Detroit's Scarab Club. For the majority of his remaining years, Yaeger's work continued to receive steady if low-key attention within Detroit and regional artistic and press circles.

Yaeger's artistic reputation was also bolstered by growing appreciation for his craftsmanship. His patience and dedication to craft are evidenced by the meticulously created handmade frames he made for many of his paintings. Yeager's method involved assembling dozens of individually cut, sized, and carved pieces of wood into a single frame, carefully combing, filing and finishing the frame until it perfectly suited the picture it housed. Yaeger refused to use power tools for any of these creations, insisting upon a deliberate, careful process of gradual refinement. His exacting standards often resulted in more time being taken in the creation of a frame than in painting the picture itself.

Yaeger's friends and business associates usually could count on a special annual treat: The arrival of one of his original Christmas cards. Yaeger's colorful hand-tinted cards were produced through the laborious linocut process; after making his initial sketches, Yaeger would hand-carve his design in reverse onto a piece of linoleum, which he would then ink and press into the individual sheets of paper. Once the ink dried, Yaeger would patiently hand-color each one.

Edgar Yaeger died in 1997 at the age of 93, leaving behind thousands of completed paintings and drawings, a smaller number of reliefs and mosaics, and his legendary murals. Art historians and curators continue to wrestle with Yaeger's placement in the modernist pantheon, seemingly disinclined to rewrite an official 20th century art narrative which largely excluded him, but institutional support – notably from East Lansing's Kresge Museum – continues to reaffirm Yaeger's rightful status as an unheralded modernist master. Such a stature may have been something this introspective master craftsman never expected or pursued, but it is a position he richly deserves.

Collections
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art
Detroit Institute of Arts Museum
Art Gallery of Windsor

References

External links
Artist's website

1904 births
1997 deaths
20th-century American painters
20th-century American male artists
American male painters
Modern artists
Federal Art Project artists

Edgar Yaeger


Eliodoro Yáñez Ponce de León (May 6, 1860 – July 26, 1932) was a Chilean journalist, lawyer, and politician, and was one of the founders of La Nación newspaper.  He also served several times as minister and as President of the Senate of Chile.

Yáñez was born in Santiago, the son of Manuel Antonio Yañez and of María Josefa Ponce de León. He coursed his liberal arts studies at the Instituto Nacional, and then enrolled in the Universidad de Chile, where he pursued a career in Law. He obtained his degree as a lawyer in 1883. He soon became known as one of the most versed men around when it came to knowledge and interpretation of laws, and he also had very sound reasoning; the cases (cause) he won in court, where he was highly respected, are thanks to these qualities. His level of prestige was such that his opinions were considered decisive, and were sought out by professionals and magistrates for the resolution of complicated matters.

His unquestionable calling as a jurist led him to develop, along with Ricardo Passi Garcia, a Compilation of Current Laws and Decrees (1884), which was very well received. At the same time, he published articles in several different newspapers, most of them judicial in nature (for example On electoral freedom () and the Forensics magazine (). This passion for the articles he wrote transformed him into a figure of journalism at the time.

At the time he was practicing as a lawyer and working as a journalist, Eliodoro Yañez was appointed as the rapporteur for the Appeals Court of Santiago (1889). He entered the Liberal party and became a board member in 1893. One year later he was elected deputy for Valdivia and La Union, position he was reelected to on several occasions until 1903. He was vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies in 1894 and 1895. Also, he was elected a senator for Valdivia in 1912 and reelected for several terms until 1930. His parliamentary work was prolific, to such a point that it is said that while he remained in Congress, there were no bills that had not been proposed, studied or reviewed by him.

Yañez believed that progress in journalism was fundamental in strengthening democracy. Due to this, he was not only the editor of several printed media from that time, but he also performed a great contribution to the country by founding –along with senators Alfredo Escobar Campaña, Augusto Bruna Valenzuela and Abraham Silva- the La Nación newspaper, the first issue of which was published on January 14, 1917. The new newspaper was characterized for defending liberal ideas, having an excellent presentation and using educated language. In addition, La Nacion acquired other newspapers, like Los Tiempos (The Times) (1921) and the Correo de Valdivia (The Valdivia Post) (1924).

In addition to being a member of parliament, he was a State minister on several occasions. Between 1901 and 1902, under the administration of German Riesco, he held the position of minister of Foreign Relations, Cult and Colonization and he was subrogate minister of the Treasury. Fifteen years later, he served as minister of the Interior for Juan Luis Sanfuentes' government between 1917 and 1918. During this period he signed the law that introduced reforms to the Constitution of 1833. He died in Santiago in 1932.

External links

1860 births
1932 deaths
Chilean Ministers of the Interior
Foreign ministers of Chile
Members of the Senate of Chile
Members of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile
Chilean journalists
Male journalists
Politicians from Santiago
University of Chile alumni
Liberal Party (Chile, 1849) politicians
Presidents of the Senate of Chile
Candidates for President of Chile
19th-century Chilean lawyers

Eliodoro Yáñez