Richland Balsam

Richland Balsam is a mountain in the Great Balsam Mountains in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Rising to an elevation of , it is the highest mountain in the Great Balsam range, is among the 20 highest summits in the Appalachian range, and is the ninth highest peak in the East of the United States. The Blue Ridge Parkway reaches an elevation of — the parkway's highest point— as it passes over Richland Balsam's southwestern slope. The Jackson County-Haywood County line crosses the mountain's summit.
Richland Balsam's upper elevations (above approximately 5,500 feet) support part of one of just ten stands of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest. This forest type consists of two dominant tree types— the red spruce and the Fraser fir— commonly called the "he-balsam" and "she-balsam" respectively, although the latter has been decimated in recent decades by the balsam woolly adelgid infestation.
The eastern half of Richland Balsam is protected by the Pisgah National Forest, and most of the western half is protected by the Nantahala National Forest (the exception being the Blue Ridge Parkway corridor, which is maintained by the National Park Service). There is a parking lot and overlook atop Richland Balsam marking the parkway's highest point. A short interpretive trail connects the parking lot with the summit.
The Mountain is only accessible when the Blue Ridge Parkway is open, so the mountain is often inaccessible in winter. The trail and overlook is maintained by the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a nonprofit mostly composed of residents along the parkway.
Hiking.
There is a short, low difficulty, 1.5 mile long trail that can be hiked to reach the summit of Richland Balsam. To reach the hiking trail, you must first park at the Haywood-Jackson overlook. The trail begins at the north end of the parking lot and about 0.15 miles along the trail there is a fork which allows you to take the loop to the top in either direction with the option to the right offering a quicker, but more challenging route to the top. Both routes take about 45 minutes to complete and involve roughly 700 feet of elevation gain. The highest point of the mountain is slightly east off the trail about 0.8 miles along the trail, but the sign marking the Summit is slightly down the trail and technically an incorrect marker of the peak.
The trail is maintained by the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway the Balsam Chapter which helps maintain the parkway from mile marker 416 to mile marker 469. While the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway has been an organization since 1988, the Balsam Chapter was not founded until November of 2020. The Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway compose of about 750 volunteers and 1,500 paying members.
Seasonality.
Due to the winding nature of the roadway and the increased severity of winter weather due to the elevation, the section of the Blue Ridge Parkway that passes over Richland Balsam is frequently closed for long periods during the winter season.
Wildlife, Dendrology, and Plants.
This forest type consists of two dominant tree types— the red spruce and the Fraser fir— commonly called the "he-balsam" and "she-balsam" respectively, although the latter has been decimated in recent decades by the balsam woolly adelgid infestation. Spruce-fir forests are found in the highest elevations of Southern Appalachia due their ability to survive in climates that are too cold and harsh for the hardwood forests which dominate lower elevations. Southern spruce-fir ecosystems resemble ecosystems more commonly found in the northern United States and Canada than in the Southeastern United States.
There are 121 mammals native and 475 birds native to North Carolina, and the vast majority have historical ranges native to the mountain. Due to the protected lands on either side of the Mountain, seeing birds and mammals is not unusual. While the surrounding protected areas offer better wildlife recreation, the mountain provides a high view of the surrounding wilderness, which can be advantageous for bird or animal watching.
Camping.
There is no designated camping areas directly attached to the Haywood-Jackson Overlook. However, camping is permitted in the Pisgah National forest to the East of the mountain and to the west of the mountain in Nantahala National Forest.


Zaida Ben-Yusuf

Zaida Ben-Yusuf (21 November 1869 – 27 September 1933) was an English-born, New York–based portrait photographer noted for her artistic portraits of wealthy, fashionable, and famous Americans during the turn of the 19th–20th century.
In 1901, "The Ladies Home Journal" featured her and six other photographers as "The Foremost Women Photographers in America". In 2008, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery mounted an exhibition dedicated solely to Ben-Yusuf's work, re-establishing her as a key figure in the early development of fine art photography.
Biography.
Early life.
Ben-Yusuf was born as Esther Zeghdda Ben Youseph Nathan in London, England, on 21 November 1869, the eldest daughter of a German mother, Anna Kind Ben-Youseph Nathan and an Algerian father, Mustapha Moussa Ben Youseph Nathan. By 1881, her mother was living in Ramsgate and working as a governess after separating from her husband and four daughters {Zaida (aged 11), Heidi (8), Leila (4) and Pearl (3)}.
Later in 1888, Anna Ben-Yusuf emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts where she had established a milliner's shop on Washington Street in Boston by 1891.
In 1895, Ben-Yusuf followed in her mother's footsteps and emigrated to the United States where she worked as a milliner at 251 Fifth Avenue, New York. She continued this for some time after becoming a photographer, writing occasional articles for "Harpers Bazaar" and "The Ladies Home Journal" on millinery.
Photography career.
In 1896, Ben-Yusuf began to be known as a photographer. In April 1896, two of her pictures were reproduced in "The Cosmopolitan Magazine", and another study was exhibited in London as part of an exhibition put on by "The Linked Ring". She traveled to Europe later that year, where she met with George Davison, one of the co-founders of The Linked Ring, who encouraged her to continue her photography. She exhibited at their annual exhibitions until 1902.
In the spring of 1897, Ben-Yusuf opened her portrait photography studio at 124 Fifth Avenue, New York. On 7 November 1897, the "New York Daily Tribune" ran an article about Ben-Yusuf's studio and her work creating advertising posters, which was followed by another profile in "Frank Leslie's Weekly" on 30 December. Through 1898, she became increasingly popular as a photographer, with ten of her works in the National Academy of Design-hosted 67th Annual Fair of the American Institute. This was where her portrait of actress Virginia Earle won her third place in the Portraits and Groups class. During November 1898, Ben-Yusuf and Frances Benjamin Johnston held a two-woman show with their works at the Camera Club of New York.
In 1899, Ben-Yusuf met with F. Holland Day in Boston, and was photographed by him. She relocated her studio to 578 Fifth Avenue, and exhibited in a number of exhibitions, including the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon. She was also profiled in a number of publications, including an article on female photographers in "The American Amateur Photographer", and a long piece in "The Photographic Times" in which Sadakichi Hartmann described her as an "interesting exponent of portrait photography". In 1896 Ben-Yusuf was included in an exhibition organized by Linked Ring, Brotherhood of the London and continued to exhibit with them until 1902.
In 1900, Ben-Yusuf corresponded with Johnston about an exhibition of American women photographers in Paris timed to coincide with the Universal Exposition. Ben-Yusuf had five portraits in the show, which traveled to Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. She was also exhibited in Holland Day's exhibition, "The New School of American Photography", for the Royal Photographic Society in London, and had four photographs selected by Alfred Stieglitz for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, Scotland.
In 1901, Ben-Yusuf wrote an article, "Celebrities Under the Camera", for the "Saturday Evening Post", where she described her experiences with her sitters. By this stage she had photographed Grover Cleveland, Franklin Roosevelt, and Leonard Wood, amongst others. For the September issue of "Metropolitan Magazine" she wrote another article, "The New Photography – What It Has Done and Is Doing for Modern Portraiture", where she described her work as being more artistic than most commercial photographers, but less radical than some of the better-known art photographers. "The Ladies Home Journal" that November declared her to be one of the "foremost women photographers in America", as she began the first of a series of six illustrated articles on "Advanced Photography for Amateurs" in the "Saturday Evening Post".
Ben-Yusuf was listed as a member of the first American Photographic Salon when it opened in December 1904, although her participation in exhibitions was beginning to drop off. In 1906, she showed one portrait in the third annual exhibition of photographs at Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, the last known exhibition of her work in her lifetime.
Travels to Japan.
In 1903, Ben-Yusuf traveled to Japan, where she toured Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Kyoto( where she rented a house), Tokyo and Nikkō. This tour formed the basis for a series of four illustrated articles, "Japan Through My Camera", published in the "Saturday Evening Post" from 23 April 1904. In February 1905, her essay on Kyoto appeared in "Booklovers Magazine" and "Leslie's Monthly Magazine" published an illustrated article on "Women in Japan". She also wrote about Japanese architecture and lectured on the subject, with some of her photographs illustrating a January 1906 article by Katharine Budd in "Architectural Record", for which she submitted an article, "The Period of Daikan", which appeared the next month.
In 1906, she published three photographs from a visit to Capri in the September issue of "Photo Era", and in 1908, wrote three essays on life in England for the "Saturday Evening Post". She returned to New York in November 1908, but was back in London the following year. The London phone book for 1911 listed her as a photographer in Chelsea. In 1912, Sadakichi Hartmann wrote that Ben-Yusuf had given up photography, and was living in the South Sea Islands.
On 15 September, following the outbreak of World War I and the German invasion of France, Ben-Yusuf returned to New York from Paris, where she had been living at the time. She applied for naturalization in 1919, describing herself as a photographer, and taking ten years off her age. She continued to travel, visiting Cuba in 1920 and Jamaica in 1921.
Later life.
Ben-Yusuf took a post with the "Reed Fashion Service" in New York City in 1924, and lectured at local department stores on fashion related subjects. In 1926, she was appointed style director for the "Retail Millinery Association of New York", an organisation for which she later became director.
By 1930, census records showed that Ben-Yusuf had married a textile designer, Frederick J. Norris. She died three years later on 27 September in the Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn.
Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
Ben-Yusuf's work was the subject of an exhibition, "Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, which ran from 11 April through 1 September 2008. The curator, Frank H. Goodyear III, first learned about Ben-Yusuf when he discovered two of her photographs in 2003, depicting Daniel Chester French and Everett Shinn, and set forth to discover more about a photographer who had been almost completely forgotten.
Goodyear suggested that gender discrimination might have led to Ben-Yusuf being forgotten, despite her significant contributions towards developing photography as a medium of artistic expression. Photographic history had tended to focus on male photographers such as Stieglitz, and less so on the female photographers, even though it was one of the few occupations considered a respectable career for a single woman in late 19th and early 20th century New York. Even in relatively progressive New York, where innovators in the arts, science, journalism and politics gathered, it was difficult for a single professional woman to support herself.
Another reason for Ben-Yusuf's obscurity was that she had not bequeathed a significant archive of her work to a single institution, making it difficult to pull together enough examples to give her career the appropriate historical assessment. Goodyear's exhibition at the Smithsonian acted as a showcase for Ben-Yusuf's work, re-establishing her as a key figure in fine art photographic history.


George Matthew McNaughton

Sir George Matthew McNaughton CB (31 January 1893 – 31 August 1966) was a British civil engineer who specialised in hydraulic engineering. McNaughton was born in Dundee and received a degree in engineering from the University of St Andrews. He interrupted his studies to become an officer in the British Army during the First World War before he was forced to retire due to ill health. After the war he completed his degree and joined an engineering firm where his work included the Silent Valley Reservoir in Northern Ireland. In 1929 he entered government service at the Ministry of Health and eventually became the ministry's Chief Engineer. His work was recognised by an appointment as a Companion of the Order of the Bath and a knighthood. He retired in 1960 and served as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers for 1961–2.
Early life.
McNaughton was born in Dundee, Scotland on 31 January 1893. He was educated at Morgan Academy in Dundee before spending four years training under the supervision of J. Hannay Thompson, General Manager and Engineer of the Dundee Harbour Trust. McNaughton began a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering at the University of St Andrews but his course was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War and he left in 1914 to enlist in the 2/2 Highland Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He held the substantive rank of Second Lieutenant but was promoted to Temporary Captain. He relinquished his commission on 23 February 1916 as a result of ill health. McNaughton returned to St Andrews and received his degree later that year.
Upon graduation McNaughton joined the contracting department of S Pearson & Son, working with Sir Ernest Moir and in 1918 was temporarily assigned to Sir Ernest's staff at the Ministry of Munitions and became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). He remained at the firm until 1929, working as an agent and engineer tendering for and designing reservoirs, harbours, tunnels and sewers including the £1 million Silent Valley Reservoir in Northern Ireland.
Civil service.
He entered government service in 1929, being appointed an Engineering Inspector for the Ministry of Health. McNaughton worked under the Chief Engineering Inspector, Sir Roger Gaskell Hetherington, and was responsible for conducting public enquiries for into water supplies, sewerage schemes, buildings, sea defences, river improvements and the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders. He was also involved in grant schemes to deprived areas, rural water supplies and air raid protection of essential engineering services. In 1938 he became a full member of the ICE and was also a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
On 31 August 1938 McNaughton transferred to the position of Chief Engineer to the Department of Health in Scotland and became Chief Engineer to the entire Ministry of Health in 1944. In 1948 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath. McNaughton transferred to the new Ministry of Health after reforms in 1951, remaining its Chief Engineer, and at the same time worked for the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. In the 1956 New Year Honours McNaughton's knighthood was announced and it was conferred on him by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace on 7 February 1956.
Other work.
McNaughton was associated closely with the Water Research Association from the start of its life, serving as a council member and their chairman, and helped to establish their research station at Medmenham. As a result of this McNaughton was elected an honorary member of British Waterworks Association in 1960. He retired from government service in 1960 to work as a director of the South-West Suburban Water Company, Chairman of the East Surrey Water Company and a consultant for WV Vinn & Associates. McNaughton had been elected Vice President of the ICE in 1956 and sat on several of their committees, being particularly keen to improve the status of engineers in society. He served as President of the institution for the November 1961 to November 1962 session. McNaughton was recognised world-wide for his specialism in water and in 1962 presented a paper to the UN's World Health Organization on the financial and economic aspects of water pollution prevention. He died on 31 August 1966. The National Portrait Gallery in London holds two portraits of McNaughton in their archives.
There is a record of his burial in Tealing Cemetery, Angus, Scotland.
References.


Bill Asher (guitar maker)

William Allen Asher (born 24 July 1964) is a Californian-born luthier (guitar maker) in the Los Angeles area. He has been in the guitar repair and restoration business for over 30 years and has been building high-end, custom guitars for 15 years. He is best known for helping revive the lap steel guitar instrument into popular music by creating a modern-day lap steel guitar that is now used in a variety of musical genres.
Early life.
Asher was born in Santa Monica, California, and is the son of actress Elizabeth Montgomery and director William Asher. He was brought up in Beverly Hills and lived with his brother Robert and sister Rebecca. He attended El Rodeo School, then Beverly Hills High School. He graduated from University High School in 1982. He was always interested in music, even at a young age. It was in this high school wood shop class where he attempted to build his first guitar body. After graduation from high school, Asher took his unfinished guitar to a Los Angeles repair shop owned by Jeff Lunsford. At the end of the summer, Lunsford offered Asher an apprenticeship at the guitar shop.
Career.
After the summer of 1982, Asher began an apprenticeship with luthier Jeff Lunsford at a Los Angeles guitar repair shop. He worked with Lunsford for 4 years before moving on to work with other luthiers such as Rick Turner, and Mark Lacey, before opening up his own guitar repair shop, Guitar Traditions, in Santa Monica.
 He moved from Guitar Traditions and now works at a private shop in Los Angeles called Asher Guitars & Lap Steels. He services guitars for many famous musicians and builds high end guitars and lap steels.


Henry Palfrey Stephenson

Henry Palfrey Stephenson (27 March 1826 – 30 April 1890) was a Scottish-born civil engineer, and a founder of the Society of Engineers.
The son of Major John Stephenson of the 6th Dragoon Guards, Stephenson was born at Portobello, near Edinburgh, and lived for some early years in Ireland before being privately educated at a school in Twickenham. In 1842, he became a student at the College for Civil Engineers in Putney (Sir Guilford Molesworth was among his fellow students). With Robert Monro Christie, he founded the Putney Club in 1854, which later became the Society of Engineers, serving as its chairman in 1856 and 1859.
Stephenson's early professional work mainly involved surveys for railway routes in Ireland, dock works (he worked on the extension of Sunderland docks under John Murray), design of iron railway bridges (working for two years in partnership with William Dredge, and later with Robert King), English railway projects (he was engineer to the Ware, Hadham and Buntingford Railway), and arbitration work. From 1858 he designed and managed several town gas lighting projects in Germany and Holland, later serving on the boards of several UK and overseas gas companies. Elected an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1853, he became a full member in 1864.


Nicole Metje

Nicole Metje PhD, MCInstCES, MASCE, FHEA is Professor of Infrastructure Monitoring, Head of the Power and Infrastructure Research Group, and Deputy Director for Sensors of the UKCRIC National Buried Infrastructure Facility at the University of Birmingham. She plays a significant role in the development and application of sensors for buried infrastructure assessment and monitoring.
Education.
Metje studied Civil Engineering at Leibniz University Hannover, graduating in 1998. She studied for her PhD at the University of Birmingham graduating in 2001. Metje's thesis was titled "Sediment suspension under water waves".
Research and Career.
Metje joined the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Birmingham as a Research Fellow in 2001. Six months later she moved to the School of Civil Engineering as a Senior Research Fellow to research optical fibre sensing technologies to determine the deformations of tunnels. Metje was appointed as the Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2005 to work on a network funded research grant entitled Mapping the Underworld (MTU), which aimed to locate and record all buried utility assets without excavation. In 2007, Metje was awarded a Birmingham Research Fellowship, which transferred into a lectureship in geotechnical engineering in 2010.
Metje leads a work package for the University of Birmingham led Quantum Technologies (QT) Hub for Sensors and Metrology, which is part of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme (UKNQTP) . The work package focuses on the application of QT gravity sensors for civil engineering problems such as buried pipes, capped mine shafts and sinkholes. She also works with industry on five Innovate UK funded projects to accelerate the development of QT gravity gradiometers.
Metje has over 40 published journal papers, and 40 refereed conference papers in the field of coastal engineering, geotechnical engineering, infrastructure monitoring and sensor development. She is the co-author of a book introducing tunnel construction to engineering students.
Metje sits on a number of advisory boards including the Institution of Civil Engineers Municipal Expert and Geospatial Engineering Panels, the American Society of Civil Engineers utility standards committee, the US Transportation Research Board committee on utilities, the All Party Parliamentary Water Group, and the British Standards Institute PAS128 & PAS256 steering committees for utility detection and data sharing. Metje has also been involved in discussions about the refurbishment of Birmingham's Queensway and St Chad's tunnels.
Awards and Honours.
Metje became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2009. Metje became a Member of the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors and Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2015. In 2018, Metje won the Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands Studies and Research Award for the FINDIT: Finding Infrastructure with Non-Destructive Testing project. The project created a sub-surface mapping system locating buried services accurately and indicating their condition. In 2019, Metje again won the Institution of Civil Engineers West Midlands Studies and Research Award for the Quantum Technology – Potential for Railway Applications project, which uses non-intrusive technology to help minimise disruption to railway passengers and improve maintenance efficiency.


Richard Sharp (politician)

Richard Sharp, FRS, FSA (1759 – 30 March 1835), also known as "Conversation" Sharp, was a British hat-maker, banker, merchant, poet, critic, Member of Parliament, and conversationalist.
He was at various times known in London society as "Hatter Sharp", "Furrier Sharp", "Copenhagen Sharp" (after a famous speech that he gave as an MP castigating the British bombardment of Copenhagen) or, most famously of all, as "Conversation Sharp".
Background and early life.
His grandfather, another Richard Sharp (circa 1690–1775), from a family of clothiers at Romsey, Hampshire, had been apprenticed in 1712 to George Baker, a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London, but a haberdasher of hats by trade. He completed his apprenticeship, and by the early 1730s he was George Baker’s partner in the successful hatting business on Fish Street Hill in the City of London. Baker & Sharp were frequent buyers of beaver at Hudson’s Bay Company sales, which they would have supplied to feltmakers who made the felt "hoods" from which finished hats were fashioned. They had dealings with merchants in South Carolina in the 1730s and 40s.
George Baker retired about 1747, and Richard Sharp carried on the business. He took a nephew, John Sharp, into partnership about 1760, but John died in 1766, and Richard Sharp now faced a crisis in securing the future of his firm. His only son, also called Richard, had obtained a commission as ensign in the 40th Regiment of Foot in 1756; was stationed at St John’s Newfoundland, where he married a local woman, Elizabeth Adams in 1759, and returned to England about 1763, dying in London two years later. They had two young sons, Richard (born 1759) and William. No doubt planning for his successor, the boys’ grandfather took into partnership another hatter, Thomas Cable Davis, who married the boys’ mother in 1769. Next year old Richard Sharp made his will, in which he recorded that Davis had agreed to take one of the grandsons as an apprentice when he was old enough, and eventually make him a partner in the hatting business for a three-sevenths share. In 1775, shortly before his death, Sharp added a codicil showing that Richard, the elder of the two boys, had become the apprentice. Provisions were also made to loan substantial sums from the estate to Thomas Cable Davis, who must not have had enough capital to maintain the business on his own, if old Sharp’s share was taken out by his executors. By his grandfather’s will, young Richard was to receive £1,500, to be held in trust for him by his uncles until he came of age. He was a partner with his stepfather, in the firm of Davis & Sharp, still at No. 6, Fish Street Hill, by 1782.
Young Richard Sharp’s future, as a haberdasher of hats in a long-established family business, had thus been settled by the time he was 11 years old. His wealthy grandfather’s determination to keep the business in family hands would have left the child no opportunity to plan for anything different. Before his apprenticeship began, however, Sharp had been placed with a private tutor at Thaxted, Essex, the Rev. John Fell, minister of a Dissenting congregation there (Sharp’s own family were Dissenters), and this must have opened his eyes to other possibilities. Sharp and Fell maintained a friendship till Fell’s death, and at the age of 24, Sharp wrote a preface to Fell’s book, An Essay towards an English Grammar (1784).
Adult life.
Sharp's activities during his third decade show him seeking out intellectual stimulation, and finding political issues that interested him. It was not hard to enter the ranks of society where that was possible – he had some family money, and there were plenty of individuals in and about the City, many of them young, who enjoyed thought-provoking books, fashionable ideas, and good conversation. Often they were Dissenters like himself. He is reported to have met Samuel Johnson (who died when Sharp was only 24), and to have dined regularly with Boswell. Perhaps sampling a different career, he was admitted to the Inner Temple on 24 January 1786, though he never was called to the Bar. In 1788 he became a member of the Committee for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (formed in 1787), and he became a member of various reform political clubs over the next few years.
In 1798 Sharp finally left the hatting business, which came to an end when the other partner, his stepfather Davis, died two years later. In response to an invitation from a friend, Samuel Boddington (another Dissenter), he now took up a partnership in the latter's West India merchant's firm. A third partner was Sir George Philips (later Sir George Philips). This new enterprise, with the potential for great profits, must have opened the door to the considerable wealth that Sharp was now able to accumulate. The move, however, would surely have tested the depth of his anti-slavery sympathies, as the entire West India trade was based on the use of plantation slaves.
A commentator described Sharp at about the age of 30 as:
Sharp made so much money as a merchant, and through his investments and banking connections, that he eventually left £250,000 in his Will. He was once described as being "one of the most considerable merchants in London". His acquired knowledge of the shipping business, for instance, enabled him to give crucial support and advice to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1804 when the poet was about to leave England for health reasons. As a respected London critic, Sharp also gave assistance and encouragement to both Coleridge and Wordsworth, among many others, and although much of their correspondence with Sharp has been sold overseas, some may still be seen within the poets' collected works.
Powers as a conversationalist.
Despite his modest roots, Richard Sharp's exceptional cleverness and powers of conversation gained him acceptance in the highest social circles and led to him acquiring his lasting sobriquet. Although he achieved distinction in many areas, he nevertheless seems to have made most impact upon people simply because of his basic human kindness and wisdom, as a few quotes from some of those who knew him well will illustrate:
John William Ward, later Earl of Dudley, was not only a man of immense personal wealth but similarly renowned for being an extremely talented, quick-witted and humorous man with a tenacious memory. He described Richard Sharp as,
Francis Horner, an original contributor to the "Edinburgh Review" and a barrister before he turned to politics, met Sharp when he came to London:
Horner later wrote to Lady Mackintosh in 1805 in the same admiring tones, complaining that he simply could not get enough of Sharp's company and telling her: "Sharp I respect and love more and more every day; he has every day new talents and new virtues to show". Her husband, Sir James Mackintosh, was one of the few people that Sharp felt able to discuss metaphysics with and he expressed the opinion that Richard Sharp had made a greater influence on his thinking than almost any other person. In Byron's opinion Sharp was one of those who had "lived much with the best – Fox, Horne Tooke, Windham, Fitzpatrick and all the agitators of other times and tongues"; while Macaulay was similarly impressed by Sharp when he commented in a letter to his sister before leaving for India:
As a young man Sharp met Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, and dined regularly with Boswell. He was a close friend of the dramatist Richard Cumberland, of Mrs Siddons, and of John Henderson the actor. The latter once asked Sharp to report on the acting ability of an up-and-coming rival, John Kemble, which he did.
Friends and acquaintances.
Sharp's reputation as a critic increased when his close friend, Samuel Rogers, began to emerge as the most eminent and popular poet of that period (his poem "To a Friend" being dedicated to Sharp) and both visited Wordsworth in the Lakes and gave him important 'city' support before this new, naturalistic style of poetry became truly fashionable. The Rogers family in Newington Green was a well known one in Dissenting circles, and the names of Joseph Priestley, Samuel Parr, Richard Price, Rev. John Fell, Kippis and Towers were eminently familiar to both men. Apart from a common interest in Unitarianism, both Sharp and Rogers became well known for their good taste at a time when "taste" was one of the most vital commodities that an aspiring young man could acquire. Rogers' home in St James's Place was visited by almost every famous person in London and he was a guest of royalty. Both men were habitués at the fashionable Whig salon, Holland House, and considerable correspondence between Sharp and Lord and Lady Holland has survived to this day. When Sharp moved to his house in Park Lane he acquired portraits painted by Reynolds of Johnson, Burke and of Reynolds himself as symbols of those things that he most cherished – language, oratory and art. At his cottage retreat, in Mickleham, Surrey, he received politicians, artists, scientists and some of the cleverest minds of the day including people from abroad such as the intriguing but formidable Mme de Staël. Guests were recorded and included such names as Henry Hallam, Thomas Colley Grattan, Sydney Smith, John Stuart Mill, James Mill, Basil Hall, Dugald Stewart, Horne Tooke, Lord Jeffrey, Archbishop Whately, Walter Scott, Tom Moore, George Crabbe, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, Richard Porson, Maria Edgeworth, Francis Chantrey, and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Politics.
By the late 1780s Sharp was at the hub of the Dissenter movement in London at a crucial period in history when Revolution was in the air and when young intellectual Whigs such as he fell under natural suspicion. (See Richard Price and the Revolution Controversy.) He belonged to the Society for Constitutional Information and helped, with other leading Whigs, to establish the Society of the Friends of the People. At about the same time he became one of the Dissenters' "Deputies" – it being the custom for each dissenting congregation within ten miles of London to be represented by two such deputies and their common aim being to overturn the Test Acts which so discriminated against them. In this latter connection Sharp issued a famous "Letter" in support of repeal.
In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed and Thomas Clarkson records that Richard Sharp was elected onto this famous Committee along with David Hartley. The Committee produced prints showing the cramped layout on a typical slave ship (the "Brookes"), which had a profound effect on all who saw it, significantly helping to change public opinion regarding the slave trade. The print showed each slave being allocated less than 2 metres height and .5-metre width for a lengthy sea voyage that could last for 6 months or more, such figures being calculated on the assumption that there were about 400 slaves on a ship when in fact it was known that there were sometimes more than 600.
At different times Sharp represented the Whig party as a dissenting Member of Parliament for Castle Rising from 1806 to 1812, Portarlington from 1816 to 1819 and Ilchester from 1826 to 1827. In the House of Commons he often sat next to his friend, Samuel Whitbread, and supported his move for popular education.
Clubs and societies.
Sharp was a founder member of the intellectual "King of Clubs" conversation club; and a member of many other London clubs and societies, including Brooks's, the Athenaeum, the Unincreasable, the Eumelean, and the Clifford Street Club. An early member of the Literary Society, in 1787 he became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and in 1806 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, his application for the latter being supported by such names as Charles Burney Jnr, James Watt and Humphry Davy. From 1810 to 1812 he was Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company.
London Institution.
Sharp's shrewdness and eloquence were frequently aimed at bringing about some tangible outcome or change, and he was a leading figure in the foundation of the London Institution, an establishment for popular education, in 1806. One commentator wrote that it was "chiefly owing to his influences and exertions that the London Institute [sic] for the improvement of Science and Literature has been established". At its foundation, Sharp was a member of the Institution's Temporary Management Committee and he remained a Manager for most of his life. In 1810 he served as their chairman, resigning from this position on 10 September 1812, and for the years 1827 and 1831 he was Vice-President. As his interest in education grew he supported Whitbread's move for a proper system of state education as well as Henry Brougham's drive for a fully-fledged city University.
Sharp's initiative predates that of his better known contemporary, George Birkbeck (also from a dissenter background), whose Mechanics' Institutes only developed in Glasgow, London and elsewhere from the 1820s onwards. Many of the founders of the London Institution later joined with Thomas Campbell and Brougham to found a new University of London.
Final years and death.
Towards the end of his life Sharp liked to spend the winter months at his house in Torquay (Higher Terrace). He had suffered all his life with a cough and a bad chest and Torquay was noted for both its health-giving air and Italianate landscape, but in 1834 the winter was particularly severe and as Sharp succumbed he resolved that he would die in his beloved London. He set off for the city with his family and servants but only got as far as Dorchester before expiring at the coaching inn there. Fearful that a nephew might obtain and subvert his will, it is said that 70-year-old George Philips, in a final act of kindness, set off on his horse "Canon", and rode through the night as fast as he could to ensure that this did not occur.
Personal life.
Sharp never married, but in about 1812 he adopted an infant, Maria Kinnaird, who had been orphaned by a catastrophic volcano eruption in the West Indies. Maria, as a teenager, knew William Wordsworth's daughter, Dora, very well and later led an interesting and colourful life in London society. Macaulay and Romilly (son of Samuel Romilly) were among many eligible young men who were said to be enamoured of Maria, but in 1835 she married Thomas Drummond, later became Under-Secretary for Ireland.
Published work.
Sharp's only book was "Letters and Essays in Prose and Verse" (1834). The "Quarterly Review" described it as remarkable for "wisdom, wit, knowledge of the world and sound criticism". Several editions were published, including an American edition.
Sharp considered writing a history of American independence and wrote to his friends, John Adams and John Quincy Adams about this and other matters. He also considered writing a tourist's guide to Europe after becoming so familiar with continental travel that he was once called "the Thomas Cook of his day". None of these projects came to fruition, however.
Portrait.
A single contemporary image of Sharp is known to exist: a drawing in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.


Monmouth Regimental Museum

The Monmouth Regimental Museum is located on Castle Hill in Monmouth, Monmouthshire, Wales. The museum is in a wing of Great Castle House, a listed building on the Monmouth Heritage Trail. The focus of most of the museum's exhibits is the most senior regiment in the British Territorial Army, the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers. Great Castle House is home to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers, and the museum maintains the records of the regiment.
History of the museum.
More formally known as the Castle and Regimental Museum, Monmouth, the Monmouth Regimental Museum "(pictured)" is located on Castle Hill in Monmouth, Wales, at the highest elevation of the town centre. It is within the 19th-century wing which extends from Great Castle House "(pictured)", a 17th-century, grade I listed building just northwest of Agincourt Square. Great Castle House is one of 24 blue plaque buildings on the Monmouth Heritage Trail. In 1673, it was constructed from the ruins of Monmouth Castle by the 1st Duke of Beaufort, then the 3rd Marquess of Worcester, as a town house while his other homes were being rebuilt. The three-storey building is currently home to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia), the most senior regiment in the British Territorial Army.
Described by BBC Worldwide's Lonely Planet as "a labour of love squeezed into a cupboard-sized space," the Castle and Regimental Museum was established in 1989 by the Duke of Gloucester. It was last accredited in 2010 by the now defunct Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The museum has been given the Prince of Wales Award for its contribution to Monmouth. The Monmouth Regimental Museum "(link to website below)" is staffed by volunteers and has free admission. It has been described as one of the "best amenities" in Monmouth.
History of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers.
Initially a local militia, the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers is now the British Army's only remaining militia unit and an important component of the Territorial Army reserves. The Territorial Army is made up of volunteers brought together intermittently to be trained and, if necessary, utilized. After its initial muster in 1539, the unit eventually became a posse comitatus. It survived sieges, and was a militia unit for two centuries. From 1877 until 1896, it was an Engineer regiment, after which it was known as a Royal Engineer regiment. In 1896, the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers "(link to website below)" also gained the distinction of being the sole unit with two "Royals" in its name. In addition, in lieu of a brigade badge or pin, the regiment's soldiers are the only Royal Engineers to wear "the Prince of Wales Division cap badge and militia flash". In December 2010, the "BBC News" reported that the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers were with the 21st Engineer Regiment during the most recent deployment. Members of the regiment had served in Operation Herrick in the Helmand Province. After their return from Afghanistan, the soldiers were honoured with a parade through Monmouth, a salute near Shire Hall, and a church service, later receiving their service medals.
Exhibits.
The displays at the museum cover a number of subjects, including the Militia structure and the Dukes of Beaufort. Other topics specific to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers include the double "Royal" name, the colours the unit possesses, and the Freedoms. Objects include a regimental drum from the late 19th century, a water testing kit, and a canned cake ration from World War II. The museum's exhibits also cover the regiment's distinction as the oldest regiment of the Reserve Army. Other topics include the mediaeval walls and defences of Monmouth, with archaeological displays. One mediaeval artefact displayed in the museum is a fireless cooking pot that was discovered on Castle Hill "(link to the archaeological find below)". The cooking vessel appears to have been the mediaeval version of a crock pot.
Exhibits are as diverse as a colonel's uniform and World War II cigarette packages "(both pictured above)", and an infant gas mask "(pictured below)". Wales during war, , and the role of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers in recent wars are also covered. In front of the building, the museum displays a number of larger pieces of military equipment, including a British armoured fighting vehicle "(pictured above)". In addition, the War Memorial of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers "(pictured)", grade II listed, is located on Castle Hill, near the museum.
Archives.
In addition to providing displays of historical objects, the Monmouth Regimental Museum serves as a repository for the records of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers. The documents relate to the period from 1786 to 1991. The archives reveal how the title of the regiment has evolved over the centuries. Between 1660 and 1793, it was known as the "Monmouthshire Militia." After that, it was briefly (until 1804) known as the "Monmouth and Brecon Militia." The unit first adopted the royal name in 1804, when it was the "Royal Monmouth and Brecon Militia." In 1820, it altered its name to the "Royal Monmouthshire Militia." Between 1852 and 1877, the regiment was entitled the "Royal Monmouthshire (Light Infantry) Militia" "(pictured)". Then the unit changed from an infantry role to that of engineer and became a Reserve Engineer Regiment as the "Royal Monmouthshire Engineers (Militia)." In 1896, when it became a Royal Engineer unit, the regiment was finally entitled the "Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia)." The museum's archive includes the unit's rolls and enlistment records. Some of the records are available as a searchable database on the internet. Evaluation of the records reveals that the men of the regiment were not just from the Monmouthshire area. By World War I, the unit attracted recruits from all areas of England and Wales. The museum and its archive are listed with the United Kingdom National Inventory of War Memorials (UKNIWM), which has created a database of United Kingdom war memorials. The goal of the organisation is to facilitate the "appreciation, use and preservation" of the monuments.


Two Boots

Two Boots is a chain of pizzerias based in New York City. The pizzeria chain is owned by the Hartman family, who was inspired by New Orleans ingredients and New Haven-style pizza. Two Boots locations are colorful and artistic, including elements and art from the surrounding neighborhood.
Attributes.
The chain is owned by Phil Hartman and his son Leon, and is named after the boot-shaped country of Italy and US state of Louisiana. The chain is inspired by New Orleans with Cajun ingredients and New Haven foods, and by East Village with its eccentric ambiance. The pizza is directly inspired by New Haven-style pizza, with cornmeal embedded in its crust.
Each location has its own distinctive characteristics, incorporating elements of the neighborhood, with artist commissions for murals, mosaics, and sculptures to feature in an individual pizzeria. As well, each location has a unique menu item that pays homage to its community; for example, the Hogwallop pie in the Park Slope, Brooklyn location was named after a character in the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", played by Park Slope resident John Turturro.
In March 2020, Two Boots was included in "Forbes" 15 Of The Best Food Delivery Options In Manhattan.
History.
In 1987, Phil Hartman opened the first location along with his ex-wife Doris Kornish and real estate developer John Touhey. They opened in a part of East Village in Manhattan, a neighborhood known for its drug-dealing at the time. The chain slowly grew around Manhattan. By 2017, the business had 15 locations.


Waterrock Knob

Waterrock Knob is a mountain peak in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the highest peak in the Plott Balsams and is the 16th-highest mountain in the Eastern United States.
The mountain is a popular destination with tourists and amateur hikers, as it is easily accessible from the parkway. A visitors' center is located near its summit and a hiking trail leads to its top. The hiking trail and visitors' center are manned and maintained by the National Park Service, part of the United States Department of the Interior.
Name.
Waterrock Knob is named as such because of a spring located near the summit where hunters would refill their canteens.
Geography.
With an elevation of , Waterrock Knob is the highest peak in the Plott Balsams and is the 13th-highest mountain in the Eastern United States if using a prominence rule.
The mountain is split by both Haywood and Jackson counties in the western mountains of North Carolina. The mountain's summit is located within the Blue Ridge Parkway National Park Service unit. Cherokee is located about to the west, while Richland Balsam is located about to the southeast.
Hiking.
Waterrock Knob's summit can be accessed from the Waterrock Knob Visitor Center, located a milepost 451.2 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This long trail ascends over from visitor center's parking lot and is paved for the first quarter mile.


Joachim Grallert

Joachim Josef Johann Grallert (3 March 1829 – ?) was a Prussian watchmaker and jeweler. He was born in Kratzbach (near Schömberg), Kreis Landeshut, in the Province of Silesia. He moved from Lower Silesia to Gumbinnen in East Prussia, then to Transylvania. He ran his family's business, a watchmaking businesses in the region, and they had shops as far as Vienna, Austria. He was also the father of the World War I, Austro-Hungarian General, Konrad Grallert von Cebrów.


Bahar Junction MRT station

Bahar Junction MRT station is a proposed Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the Jurong Region line in Jurong West, Singapore.
As the name suggests, this station will serve as a junction for 3 train services, running on 3 branches which converge at this station.
History.
On 9 May 2018, LTA announced that Bahar Junction station would be part of the proposed Jurong Region line (JRL). The station will be constructed as part of Phase 1, JRL (West), consisting of 10 stations between Choa Chu Kang, Boon Lay and Tawas, and is expected to be completed in 2027.
Contract J105 for the design and construction of Bahar Junction Station and associated viaducts was awarded to China Railway 11 Bureau Group (Singapore Branch) at a sum of S$210.1 million (US$ million) in December 2019. Construction will start in 2020, with completion in 2027. The contract also includes the design and construction of Jurong West station, and associated viaducts.
Initially expected to open in 2026, the restrictions on the construction due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to delays in the JRL line completion, and the date was pushed to 2027.
Location.
The station complex is named after the nearby Jalan Bahar and will be straddled over the existing Jurong West Avenue 4 and the junction with Jurong West Street 75 and Jurong West Street 64, due to the T-shaped layout of the station complex. It is located within the Jurong West planning area between the Jurong West Central and Yunnan Subzones, nested by multiple housing estates, and multiple places of worship to the north.
Access to the station will be via 6 exits on each side of Jurong West Avenue 4, Jurong West Street 75 and Jurong West Street 64.
Services.
When completed, it will serve the following services:


23 Parachute Engineer Regiment

23 Parachute Engineer Regiment is a Royal Engineers regiment in the British Army that was formed in 2003. It provides engineer support to 16 Air Assault Brigade in both the parachute and air assault role. The regiment is currently based at Rock Barracks in Suffolk and consists of three regular squadrons and one Army Reserve squadron. As part of 16 Air Assault Brigade it can be called upon to deploy on operations across the globe at extremely short notice.
History.
23 Engineer Regiment can trace its roots to the founding of the airborne forces of the Parachute Regiment and other related during World War II. In July 1948, 23rd Field Engineer Regiment was formed in Iserlohn from the former 2nd Division Divisional Engineer regiment. In December 1948, the regiment moved to Halen and two years later moved to Dortmund. In September of 1957, 2 Field Squadron was allocated to 6th Infantry Brigade and 5 Field Squadron to the 5th Infantry Brigade. In May of 1958, the regiment was split and its headquarters became the new "Headquarters Royal Engineers, 2nd Division".
Eleven years later in April of 1969, it was re-organised into the new 23 Engineer Regiment at Osnabruck. The regiment served as infantry in Northern Ireland from March - July of 1972. In September of 1976 the 2nd Division was re-organized as the new 2nd Armoured Division, and the regiment was broken up for the second time. In January 1983 at Osnabruck the regiment reformed and part of the regiment, 73 Field and 39 Field Support Squadrons, participated in the Gulf War. The regiment was later disbanded in 1992 as a result of the Options for Change.
In 2001, 23 Engineer Regiment was tasked to provide engineer support to the newly formed 16 Air Assault Brigade. The regiment was deployed for Operation Herrick and in September 2009 on their return from Afghanistan the regiment was granted the Freedom of the town of Woodbridge. In 2015, the "Parachute" title was officially added to the name, although the unit had already been supporting 16 Air Assault Brigade since its re-establishment, and a new flag was presented to the regiment to mark the occasion.


Ballarat Energy Storage System

Ballarat Energy Storage System (BESS) is a grid-connected energy storage system connected to the Ballarat Area Terminal Substation in Warrenheip, a suburb pf Ballarat in Victoria. It was commissioned in 2018 and provides 30 MWh of storage capacity at 30 MW. The battery was developed by NuvoGroup (owned by Spotless). Fluence provided the batteries, AusNet Services owns the facility, which is operated by EnergyAustralia. Funding was provided by AusNet Services and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
The system consists of nine units each of which contains Lithium-ion batteries along with cooling and safety systems.


McCormick Gap

McCormick Gap is a wind gap located in the Blue Ridge Mountains east of Rockfish Gap.


Preston Tucker

Preston Thomas Tucker (September 21, 1903 – December 26, 1956) was an American automobile entrepreneur.
He is most remembered for his Tucker 48 sedan, initially nicknamed the "Tucker Torpedo", an automobile which introduced many features that have since become widely used in modern cars. Production of the Tucker '48 was shut down amidst scandal and controversial accusations of stock fraud on March 3, 1949. The 1988 movie "" is based on Tucker's spirit and the saga surrounding the car's production.
Early life (1903–1933).
Preston Tucker was born on September 21, 1903, on a peppermint farm near Capac, Michigan. His father was a railroad engineer named Shirley Harvey Tucker (1880-1907). His mother was Lucille Caroline (née Preston) Tucker (1881-1960). He grew up outside Detroit in the suburb of Lincoln Park, Michigan. Tucker was raised by his mother, a teacher, after his father died of appendicitis when Preston was 2 years old. First learning to drive at age 11, Tucker was obsessed with automobiles from an early age. At age 16, Preston Tucker began purchasing late model automobiles, repairing/refurbishing them and selling the cars for a profit. He attended the Cass Technical High School in Detroit, but he quit school and landed a job as an office boy for the Cadillac Motor Company, where he used roller skates to make his rounds more efficiently. In 1922, young Tucker joined the Lincoln Park, Michigan, police department (against the pleas of his mother), his interest stirred by his desire to drive and ride the fast, high-performance police cars and motorcycles. His mother had him removed from the force, pointing out to department officials that at 19, he was below the department's minimum required age.
Tucker and his new wife, Vera (married in 1923 at 20), then took over a 6-month lease on a gas station near Lincoln Park, running the station together. Vera would run the station during the day while Preston worked on the Ford Motor Company assembly line. After the lease ran out, Tucker quit Ford and returned to the police force again, but in his first winter back he was banned from driving police vehicles by the force after using a blowtorch to cut a hole in the dashboard of a cruiser to allow engine heat to warm the cabin.
During the last couple of months at the gas station, Tucker began selling Studebaker cars on the side. He met an automobile salesman, Michael Dulian, who later became sales manager for the Tucker Car Corporation. Dulian hired Tucker as a car salesman at his Detroit dealership. Tucker did very well, but the dealership was a long drive from his Lincoln Park home and so Tucker quit and returned to the police force for the last time. A few months later, Dulian, still impressed with Tucker's immediate success as a salesman, invited Tucker to move south with him to Memphis, Tennessee, to work as a sales manager. Dulian was transferred a couple of years later, but Tucker stayed in Memphis and was a salesman for Ivor Schmidt (Stutz) and John T. Fisher Motor Company (Chrysler), where he became general sales manager. While managing Chrysler sales in Memphis, Tucker made a connection with Pierce-Arrow. In 1933, Tucker moved to Buffalo, New York, and became regional sales manager for Pierce-Arrow automobiles, but after only two years, he moved back to Detroit and worked as a Dodge salesman for Cass Motors.
Auto racing and the Indianapolis 500 (1932–1939).
During the early 1930s, Tucker began an annual one-month trek to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Having a heavy interest in the race cars and their designers, Tucker met Harry Miller, maker of more Indianapolis 500-winning engines than any other during this period. Tucker moved to Indianapolis to be closer to the racing car development scene and worked as the transportation manager for a beer distributor, overseeing the fleet of delivery trucks for the company.
A better engineer than businessman, Miller declared bankruptcy in 1933 and was looking for new opportunities. Tucker persuaded Miller to join him in building race cars, and they formed "Miller and Tucker, Inc." in 1935. The company's first job was building 10 souped-up Ford V-8 racers for Henry Ford. The time to develop and test the cars was insufficient, however, and the steering boxes on all entrants overheated and locked up, causing them to drop out of the race. The design was later perfected by privateers, with examples running at Indy through 1948. Miller and Tucker, Inc. continued race car development and various other ventures until Miller's death in 1943. Tucker was close friends with Miller and even helped Miller's widow pay for her husband's funeral costs. While working with Miller, Tucker met the Chevrolet brothers and chief mechanic/engineer John Eddie Offutt, who would later help Tucker develop and build the first prototype of the Tucker '48. Tucker's outgoing personality and his involvement at Indianapolis made him well known in the automotive industry by 1939.
Tucker Combat Car and the Tucker Gun Turret (1939–1941).
In late 1937, while recovering in an Indianapolis hospital from an appendectomy, Tucker was reading the news about war looming on the horizon in Europe. He got the idea of developing a high-speed armored combat vehicle. In 1939, Tucker moved his family back to Michigan and bought a house and property in Ypsilanti. He remodeled an old barn on his property and began and operated a machine shop called the Ypsilanti Machine and Tool Company, planning to use the facility to develop various automotive products.
Opportunity arose for Tucker from the Dutch government, who wanted a combat vehicle suited to the muddy Dutch terrain. Continuing his working relationship with Harry Miller, Tucker began designing a narrow-wheelbase armored combat car powered by a Miller-modified Packard V-12 engine. The car was nicknamed the "Tucker Tiger".
At least one prototype of the combat car was built. Production of the car was to be done at the Rahway, New Jersey, factory owned by the American Armament Corporation. The Germans invaded the Netherlands in the spring of 1940 before Tucker could complete the deal, and the Dutch government lost interest, so he completed the prototypes and opted to try to sell the vehicle to the U.S. government. The car is said to have reached 100 mph (161 km/h), far in excess of the design specifications. The U.S. military felt the vehicle was too fast and had already committed to other combat vehicles. The highly mobile, power-operated gun turret featured on the Tucker combat car, which became known as the "Tucker Turret", earned the interest of the U.S. Navy. Harry Miller would later take some of the designs from the Tucker Combat Car to American Bantam, where he was involved in the development of the first Jeep.
The Tucker Turret was soon in production (initially at Tucker's Ypsilanti machine shop). While the turret is often reported to have been used widely on bombers, like the B-17 and B-29, it was actually developed for a different bomber, the Douglas B-18 Bolo. In the end no Tucker turrets equipped any bombers.
Tucker's patent and royalty rights were confiscated by the US and Tucker was embroiled in lawsuits for years trying to recoup royalties for use of his patents on the turret.
Tucker Aviation Corporation and Higgins-Tucker Aviation (1941–1943).
In 1940, Tucker formed the Tucker Aviation Corporation, with the goal of manufacturing aircraft and marine engines. The corporation (Tucker's first) was initially based at his shop behind his Michigan home. A public corporation with stock certificates issued, Tucker raised enough to develop the design for a fighter aircraft, the Tucker XP-57, which earned the interest of the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Development of a single prototype of the airplane was started, powered by a straight 8-cylinder engine developed/influenced by Harry Miller, called the Miller L-510. Nicknamed the "Peashooter", this fighter competed for WWII government war contracts. However, financial problems within the company slowed the development of the prototype and the USAAC allowed the contract to lapse.
During World War II, Tucker became associated with Andrew Jackson Higgins, builder of Liberty ships, PT boats and landing craft. Higgins acquired Tucker Aviation Corporation in March 1942, and Tucker moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to serve as a vice-president of Higgins Industries, specifically in charge of the Higgins-Tucker Aviation division. This entity was to produce gun turrets, armament, and engines for Higgins' torpedo boats. This relationship did not work out and Tucker severed his association with Higgins in 1943. Higgins referred to Preston Tucker as "The world's greatest salesman. When he turns those big brown eyes on you, you'd better watch out!"
After 1943, Tucker moved back to Michigan, intending to start his own auto company, the Tucker Corporation.
Tucker Corporation and the 1948 Tucker Sedan (1944–1947).
After the war, the public was ready for totally new car designs, but the Big Three Detroit automakers had not developed any new models since 1941, and were in no hurry to introduce them. That provided great opportunities for new small, independent automakers who could develop new cars more rapidly than the huge legacy automakers. Tucker saw his opportunity to develop and bring his "car of tomorrow" to market. Another small automaker, Studebaker, was first with an all-new postwar model, but Tucker took a different tack, designing a safety car with innovative features and modern styling.
Tucker's first design appeared in "Science Illustrated" magazine in December 1946, showing a futuristic version of the car with a hydraulic drive system designed by George Lawson, along with a photo of a 1/8 scale model blown up to appear full sized, titled the "Torpedo on Wheels". That was only an early rendering of the proposal, with its design features yet to meet reality, but the motoring public was now excited about the Tucker.
To finish the prototype design and get construction under way, Tucker hired famed stylist Alex Tremulis, previously of Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg, on December 24, 1946, and gave him just six days to finalize the design. On December 31, 1946, Tucker approved Tremulis's preliminary design. Tucker's future-car became known as the "Tucker Torpedo" from the first Lawson sketch; however, not desiring to bring to mind the horrors of WWII, Tucker quickly changed the name to the "Tucker '48". With Tremulis's design sketch, a full-page advertisement was run in March 1947 in many national newspapers claiming "How 15 years of testing produced the car of the year". Tucker said he had been thinking about the car for 15 years. The second advertisement described specifically many of the innovative features Tucker proposed for his car, many of which would not make it to the final car. This advertisement had the public very excited about this car, but Tucker had much work to do before a prototype was ready to be shown.
To finalize the design, Tucker hired the New York design firm J. Gordon Lippincott to create an alternate body. Only the front end and horizontal taillight bar designs were retained for the final car. Another car, a sportier version of the Tucker '48 called the Tucker Talisman, was sketched as well but never left the drawing board.
To diversify his corporation, Tucker imported Italian engineer Secondo Campini, who was well known and respected in the aviation industry. He was put in charge of pursuing a US Air Force development contract, hoping to use Tucker's huge Chicago factory to someday build more than just cars. Campini and Tucker also began developing plans for a gas turbine-powered car to be produced by Tucker.
The Tucker Export Corporation was also formed, based in New York, which was established as an entity to manage worldwide sales of Tucker's cars. Headed by Tucker's long-time friend, Colombian Max Garavito, distributorships were set up internationally, including South America and South Africa.
Tucker assembled a group of leaders for his corporation that read like a "who's who" of the automotive industry:
Tucker and his colleagues were able to obtain the largest factory building in the world, the Dodge Chicago Aircraft Engine Plant, which was later known as the Chicago Dodge Plant, from the War Assets Administration. The facility had previously been used to build the massive Wright R-3350 Cyclone engines for B-29 Superfortress aircraft during WWII. Tucker, thinking long-term, believed this large facility would fit his long-term goal of producing an entire line of Tucker automobiles under one roof.
Tucker signed the lease in July 1946, contingent on him raising $15 million in capital by March 1947. Tucker needed this money to get going, so he began raising money by selling dealership rights and floating a $20 million stock issue through the Chicago brokerage firm Floyd D. Cerf. With over $17 million in the bank by 1947, the Tucker Corporation was up and running.
While Tucker ultimately got the plant, he was not able to move in until September 1947 because of delays caused by counter-claims and disputes over the plant between Tucker and the Lustron Corporation. That delayed Tucker by almost a year, during which time development of the car continued at his Michigan machine shop. Tucker planned for 60,000 cars a year, with 140 per day produced for the first 4 months and 300 per day produced afterward.
Tucker suffered another setback when his bids to obtain two steel mills to provide raw materials for his cars were rejected by the WAA under a shroud of questionable politics.
Tucker's specifications for his revolutionary car called for a rear engine, a low-RPM 589 cubic inch engine with hydraulic valves instead of a camshaft, fuel injection, direct-drive torque converters on each rear wheel (instead of a transmission), disc brakes, the location of all instruments within the diameter and reach of the steering wheel, a padded dashboard, self-sealing tubeless tires, independent springless suspension, a chassis that protected occupants in a side impact, a roll bar within the roof, a laminated windshield designed to pop out during an accident, and a center "cyclops" headlight which would turn when steering at angles greater than 10 degrees in order to improve visibility around corners during night driving.
While most of those innovations made it to the final 51 prototypes, several were dropped for their cost and the lack of time to develop such mechanically-complicated designs. The low-RPM 589-cubic-inch engine, individual torque converters, mechanical fuel injection, and the disc brakes were all dropped during the design and testing phase.
Having run out of time to develop the 589-cubic-inch engine for the car, Tucker ultimately settled on a modified 334 in3 (5.47 L) Franklin O-335 aircraft engine. He liked the engine so much he purchased its manufacturer, Aircooled Motors in New York for $1.8 million in 1947. That secured a guaranteed engine supply for his car.
Turmoil surrounding Tucker Corporation (1946–1948).
The Securities and Exchange commission bothered the Tucker Corporation from its earliest days. The SEC was embittered after small automaker Kaiser-Frazer was given millions of dollars in grants towards development of a new car, and subsequently squandered the money. While Tucker took no money from the federal government, small upstart automakers were under intense SEC scrutiny, and Tucker was no exception.
One of Tucker's most innovative business ideas caused the most trouble for the company and was used by the SEC to spark its formal investigation. His Accessories Program raised funds by selling accessories before the car was even in production. Potential buyers who purchased Tucker accessories were guaranteed a spot on the dealer waiting list for a Tucker '48 car. Tucker also began selling dealerships before the car was ready for production, and at the time of the trial had sold over 2000 dealerships nationwide at a price of $7500 to nearly $30,000 each.
Feeling pressure from the SEC, Harry Aubrey Toulmin, Jr., the chairman of the Tucker board of directors, resigned and wrote a letter to the SEC on September 26, 1947, in an attempt to distance himself from the company. In the letter, Toulmin indicated that he quit "because of the manner in which Preston Tucker is using the funds obtained from the public through sale of stock." Describing Tucker as "a tall, dark, delightful, but inexperienced boy", Toulmin added that the Tucker '48 machine "does not actually run, it just goes 'goose-geese'" and "I don't know if it can back up." In reply, Tucker stated that he had asked Toulmin to resign "to make way for a prominent man now active in the automobile industry." The "prominent man" turned out to be Preston Tucker himself.
In late 1947, a radio segment on Tucker by popular journalist Drew Pearson criticized the Tucker '48, calling it the "tin goose" (referring to Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose") and noting that the first prototype "could not even back up". The first prototype lacked a reverse gear because Tucker had not had time to finish the direct torque drive by the time of the car's unveiling. This was corrected in the final driveline, but the public damage was done and a negative media feeding frenzy resulted. Tucker responded by publishing a full-page advertisement in many national newspapers with "an open letter to the automobile industry" wherein he subtly hinted that his efforts to build the cars were being stymied by politics and an SEC conspiracy. Nonetheless, dealership owners began filing lawsuits to recover their money, and Tucker's stock value plummeted.
SEC trial and demise of the Tucker Corporation (1949–1950).
In 1949, Tucker surrendered his corporate records to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. United States Attorney Otto Kerner, Jr. began a grand jury investigation in February 1949. On March 3, 1949, a federal judge handed control of the Tucker Corporation over to Aaron J. Colnon and John H. Schatz. Soon thereafter on June 10, 1949, Tucker and six other Tucker Corporation executives were indicted on 25 counts of mail fraud, 5 counts of violations of SEC regulations and one count of conspiracy to defraud. The indictment included 46-year-old Tucker, Harold A. Karsten, 58, "alias Abe Karatz"; Floyd D. Cerf, 61 (whose firm had handled the stock offering); Robert Pierce, 63; Fred Rockelman, 64; Mitchell W. Dulian, 50, Tucker sales manager; Otis Radford, 42, Tucker Corporation comptroller; and Cliff Knoble, 42, Tucker advertising manager.
Tucker publicly called the charges "silly and ridiculous" and hailed the indictment as "an opportunity to explain our side of the story". Tucker and his colleagues' defense was handled by a team of attorneys led by William T. Kirby.
Another publication, "Collier's" magazine, ran an article critical of Tucker on June 25, 1949, which included leaked details of the SEC report (which was never released publicly). This article was reprinted in "Readers Digest" as well, expanding the scope of the negative press concerning Preston Tucker.
The trial began on October 4, 1949, presided over by Judge Walter J. LaBuy. Tucker Corporation's factory was closed on the very same day. At that point, only 37 Tucker '48s had been built. A corps of 300 loyal employees returned to the factory (some without pay) and finished assembly of another 13 cars for a total production of 50 cars (not including the prototype).
At trial, the government contended that Tucker never intended to produce a car. Throughout the trial, the SEC report on Tucker was classified as "secret" and Tucker's attorneys were never allowed to view or read it, but it was leaked to the press nevertheless.
As the trial proceeded, the government and SEC brought several witnesses (mostly former Tucker employees) to highlight the rudimentary methods used by Tucker to develop the car; the early suspensions were installed three times before they worked, and early parts were taken from junkyards to build the prototype. Answering back in Tucker's defense, designer Alex Tremulis testified that it was common industry practice to use old car parts for prototype builds, and pointed out this had been done when he was involved with developing the 1942 Oldsmobile under General Motors.
Tucker Vice President Lee Treese testified that Tucker's metal stamping and parts fabrication operations were 90% ready to mass-produce the car by June 1948 and that outside interference had slowed the final preparations for production. This back and forth between the prosecution and the defense continued until November 8, 1949, when the judge demanded the SEC prosecutors "get down to the meat of the case and start proving the conspiracy charge."
Defense attorney Kirby directed attention to automaker Kaiser-Frazer, pointing out that early models of their government-funded new car model had been made of wood and that when this project failed, Kirby stated in court documents that "Kaiser-Frazer didn't get indicted, and they got 44 million dollars in loans from the government, didn't they?" All told Kaiser-Frazer had received nearly $200 million in government grants, but did not produce the car they promised.
After a break for Christmas, the trial resumed in January 1950. The government's star witness, Daniel J. Ehlenz, a former Tucker dealership owner and distributor from St. Paul, Minnesota, testified that he had lost $28,000 in his investment in the Tucker Corporation. However, on cross-examination, the defense used this witness to their advantage when Ehlenz testified that he still drove his Tucker '48 given to him by Tucker and that the car had on it and still cruised smoothly at .
The tide turned in Tucker's favor when the government called its final witness, SEC accountant Joseph Turnbull, who testified that Tucker had taken in over $28 million and spent less than one-seventh of it on research and development of the car. He stated that Tucker had taken over $500,000 of the investors' money for himself, but never delivered a production car. Kirby rebutted Turnbull's claims on cross-examination, asking for proof of the allegations of financial mismanagement from Tucker's seized financial records. Turnbull was unable to offer such evidence. In closing his witness testimony, Kirby asked Turnbull, "You are not here suggesting these figures are figures of monies taken fraudulently, are you?" Turnbull's answer was, "Not exactly, no."
After this final SEC witness, Tucker's defense attorneys surprised everyone by refusing to call any witnesses to the stand. Defense attorney Daniel Glasser told the court, "It is impossible to present a defense when there has been no offense".
In his closing arguments, Kirby became tearful and emotionally told the jury to "stop picking at the turkey," and stated that Tucker "either intended to cheat and that's all they intended to do or they tried in good faith to produce a car. The two are irreconcilable." He then invited the members of the jury to take a ride in one of the eight Tucker '48s parked in front of the courthouse before they made their decision.
On January 22, 1950, after 28 hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty" on all counts for all accused. Tucker had prevailed at the trial, but the Tucker Corporation, now without a factory, buried in debt, and faced with numerous lawsuits from Tucker dealers that were angry about the production delays, thus, was no more.
Speculation and controversy surrounding the Tucker Corporation.
Despite the outcome of the trial, speculation has continued with regard to the question of whether Tucker genuinely intended to produce a new car and bring it to market, or whether the entire enterprise was a sham, designed for the sole purpose of collecting funds from gullible investors. Tucker collectors of the Tucker Automobile Club of America have amassed over 400,000 drawings/blueprints, corporate documents, and letters which they believe suggest that Tucker was, in fact, developing the manufacturing process necessary to mass-produce the Tucker '48. They also point to the fact that by the time of the investigation, Tucker had hired over 1900 employees, including teams of engineers and machinists. At the trial, the Tucker VP Lee Treese testified that they were 90% ready with industrial machinery at the Chicago plant to mass-produce the vehicle.
Later life and death (1950–1956).
Preston Tucker's reputation rebounded after the acquittal. His optimism was remarkable; after the trial was over, he was quoted as saying, "Even Henry Ford failed the first time out". Tucker Corporation assets were auctioned off publicly in Chicago. One remaining Tucker '48 car was given to Preston Tucker, and another to his mother.
In the early 1950s, Tucker teamed up with investors from Brazil and auto designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky to build a sports car called the Carioca. Tucker could not use the Tucker name for the car, as Peter Dun, of Dun and Bradstreet, had purchased the rights to the name. The Tucker Carioca was never developed.
Tucker's travels to Brazil were plagued by fatigue and, upon his return to the United States, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Tucker died from pneumonia as a complication of lung cancer on December 26, 1956, at the age of 53. Tucker is buried at Michigan Memorial Park in Flat Rock, Michigan.
Legacy.
In 1954, a group of investors tried to revive the Tucker Corporation by soliciting investors (mostly former Tucker distributors and dealer owners) for a new car. This effort was led by George A. Schmidt, former president of the Tucker Dealers Association. They developed sketches for a sleek 2-door convertible, but were unable to generate enough support to get it off the drawing board.
Tucker's defense attorney, William T. Kirby, later became Chairman of the Board of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Otto Kerner, Jr., the US attorney who had aggressively pursued the Tucker Corporation, was later convicted on 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, perjury, and related charges for stock fraud in 1974. He was the first federal appellate judge in history to be jailed. He was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $50,000.
The location of the former Tucker Corporation at 7401 S Cicero Ave, Chicago, IL 60629–5818, is now the corporate headquarters of Tootsie Roll Industries and the Ford City Mall (the building was owned for a time by Ford Motor Company). The building is so large that it was split in two, and even with a large open area between the two resulting buildings, each structure is still substantial.
Tucker's 1948 Sedan's revolutionary ideas in car safety helped formulate car safety standards. The Tucker family held on to Aircooled Motors until 1961, when it was sold to Aero Industries. Today the remaining 47 Tucker cars are highly collectible. Some examples in very good condition can command prices of up to $3 million each.
Today, remaining original stock certificates for Tucker Corporation common stock, circa 1947, are valuable to collectors, and are worth more than when originally issued. Over 10,000 stock certificates were personally signed by Preston Tucker, making these the most desirable.


Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command

The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) is the United States Navy's engineering systems command, providing the Navy and United States Marine Corps with facilities and expeditionary expertise. NAVFAC is headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard and is under the command of the Chief of Civil Engineers RADM John W. Korka
The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command is the oldest of the Navy's system commands, having been established as the Bureau of Yards and Docks in August 1842. Its officers comprise the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, which was formed in March 1867. During the 1966 reorganization of the Department of the Navy, the Bureau of Yards and Docks became the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. In October 2020, the name changed to the current Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.
Organization.
The Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command delivers facilities engineering and acquisition for the Navy and Marine Corps through six business lines.
Component Commands.
NAVFAC consists of 13 component commands; nine are Facilities Engineering Commands that report to either NAVFAC Atlantic or NAVFAC Pacific.
NAVFAC Atlantic in Norfolk, VA
NAVFAC Pacific in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
There are also two specialty commands, Navy Crane Center (NCC) at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia and Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (EXWC) at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, California.
History.
Bureau of Yards and Docks.
On August 31, 1842, the Bureau of Navy Yards and Docks (BuDocks) was established, the forerunner to the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.
In early days of BuDocks, the command originally had responsibility only for the design, construction, and maintenance of Navy yards and a few other shore stations. In 1842 there were seven Navy yards arrayed along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Captain Lewis Warrington, a line officer, and six civilian employees, were assigned to administer public works at these yards.
During the second half of the 19th century, the Bureau of Yards and Docks guided the temporary expansion of the shore establishment that was necessary to fight the American Civil War. It also oversaw the development of permanent Navy yards on the Pacific Coast at Mare Island, California, and Puget Sound, Washington.
In 1898, the Spanish–American War precipitated a great increase in the Bureau's activities. Its civilian workforce grew from seven to 22 people and the Civil Engineer Corps—which had been established in 1867—was expanded from 10 to 21 commissioned officers, five of whom reported for duty at Bureau Headquarters. The treaty at the war's end led to the construction of naval stations in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. In the next few years the Navy yards at Boston, Norfolk, and Philadelphia were modernized and a new yard was built at Charleston, South Carolina.
During the early years of the 20th century, the United States Congress expanded the Bureau's responsibilities by consolidating Navy public works under its control. The most important law was passed in 1911, when Congress placed the design and construction of all naval shore stations under BuDocks control. Previously the bureau that operated each type of shore facility had performed its own design and construction; for example, the Bureau of Ordnance built naval magazines and the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery built naval hospitals.
The experience gained by the Bureau during its first 75 years laid the foundation for its large growth during World War I. Between July 1916 and the armistice in November 1918, the Bureau expended $347 million for public works. That was more money than the Navy had spent on shore stations in the previous 116 years. The construction program included 35 naval training stations, in addition to submarine bases at New London, Connecticut; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and Coco Solo, Panama; as well as naval air stations at locations throughout the eastern United States, and in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Tunisia and France.
Between WWI and WWII.
The period between the world wars was generally a time of retrenchment and stagnation for Navy Public Works. By 1921, more than 375 ships had been decommissioned and the shore establishment shrank accordingly. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress appropriated some money for a naval construction program, which made improvements in shore facilities while providing much-needed jobs for unemployed civilians. When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, the Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) had fewer than 200 officers on active duty and the shore establishment was woefully unprepared for a major conflict.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Navy's military construction program amounted to global proportions, expanding far beyond the continental United States and its prewar possessions to Europe, North Africa, Asia and the far corners of the Pacific. To provide supervisors for this huge wartime effort, more than 10,000 Reserve CEC officers were recruited from civilian life between 1940 and 1945.
The establishment of bases in war zones, where workers were subject to enemy attack, made the use of civilian construction men impractical at many overseas locations. Therefore, in 1942 Rear Admiral Ben Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, implemented a proposal mapped out by the Bureau's War Plans Section during the 1930s where experienced construction workers were recruited into the Navy to build overseas bases. Thus, the Naval Construction Force – popularly known as the Seabees – was born. The new Seabees received brief military training before shipping overseas to build advance bases in war zones. Led by Reserve CEC officers, the 325,000 men recruited for the Seabees during World War II built bases on six continents and at locations all over the Pacific. Without the Seabees, the Navy's huge advance-base construction program would not have been possible.
WWII boom.
World War II presented the Bureau of Yards and Docks with the greatest challenge in its history. The value of the naval shore establishment in 1939 was estimated at less than half a billion dollars; by 1945 the shore establishment was worth at least $6.5 billion. All of this new construction was carried out under the Bureau's cognizance.
At the end of the war, the Bureau faced a new problem—maintaining a much larger shore establishment with reduced funding. The onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s led to some much-needed increases in the Bureau's budget. Then, in 1950 the Korean War, which required more men and materials than World War I, presented the Bureau with new challenges. With the help of the Seabees, it met the emergency. CEC officers and Seabees built bases throughout the Pacific to support United Nations troops. In Korea the Seabees placed landing causeways for the invasion forces and built air bases and camps.
Vietnam.
In the mid-1960s the Vietnam War started. Although it was modest in size compared to World War II, it nonetheless created a demand for a substantial amount of military construction. In 1963 the Bureau of Yards and Docks was formally designated as the contract construction agent for Southeast Asia and became responsible for nearly all U.S. construction there, including facilities built for the United States Army, the United States Air Force, and other federal government agencies. Nearly 1.8 billion dollars’ worth of construction went into Vietnam under the Military Construction Program commonly known as MILCON.
Meanwhile, in May 1966, as a result of a Navy Department reorganization, the Bureau of Yards and Docks was renamed Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC), one of six systems commands under the Chief of Naval Material. This reorganization eliminated the traditional bilinear organization under which the Chief of Naval Operations and the chiefs of the various bureaus reported separately to the Secretary of the Navy. The result was a unilinear organization, under which the systems commands reported to the Chief of Naval Material, who in turn reported to the CNO. In the mid-1980s the Naval Material Command was disestablished; and NAVFAC began reporting directly to the Chief of Naval Operations.
U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 and the end of American participation in the war brought demobilization and funding cuts to the Navy. In 1970, in anticipation of postwar reductions, NAVFAC consolidated its 13 engineering field divisions into six. The concentration of technical expertise into fewer and larger divisions led to a stronger and more efficient field organization. Within NAVFAC, in the 1970s emphasis was placed on improvements in personnel facilities to support the new all-volunteer Navy, environmental protection, and energy conservation.
Peacetime.
The tight military budgets of the 1970s did not last long, however, for in 1980 the United States began one of the largest peacetime military buildups in its history. For fiscal year 1981, President Jimmy Carter requested an increase in the Department of Defense budget of more than 5 percent real growth. After Ronald Reagan took office the next January, the DOD budget grew even faster.
In 1981 Secretary of the Navy John Lehman embarked upon a major program of shipbuilding to increase the fleet from 540 ships to 600 ships by the middle of the decade. This expansion meant that the Navy needed more shore facilities to support the new ships, which in turn led to more construction work for NAVFAC. Between fiscal years 1982 and 1985, Congress appropriated more than $5 billion for Navy MILCON projects.
Post–Cold War.
At the end of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an abrupt end to the Cold War and the Navy no longer needed as many ships, planes and bases to support them. From NAVFAC's perspective, one of the most important results was the Base Realignment and Closure Program (BRAC). Between 1988 and 1995, Congress authorized four rounds of selections for base closures and numerous installations were slated for disestablishment. Until the fall of 2004, NAVFAC managed the BRAC Program for the Navy and Marine Corps. By the end of fiscal year 2004, the Command had helped the Navy dispose of 72 unneeded bases and had an inventory of 19 closed installations remaining to be excessed.
In October 2003 an important change occurred in the administration of the naval shore establishment with a new command known as Commander Naval Installations Command, (CNIC) was established. The CNIC would provide uniform program, policy and funding management for all Navy shore installations.
In 2004, NAVFAC embarked upon a realignment of its organizational structure and its business lines. It made a major move towards improving and standardizing its business processes to help NAVFAC better support the Navy and Marine Corps and other federal clients. The most significant aspect of NAVFAC's transformation was the consolidation of NAVFAC field activities – including engineering field divisions, engineering field activities, officer in charge of construction organizations, public works centers and departments – into regional facilities engineering commands, or FECs. The FECs provide the Navy, Marine Corps, and other clients with a single center for all NAVFAC public works, engineering, and acquisition support to ensure a uniform, enterprise approach to accomplishing its mission.
On 14 October 2020, the Director, Navy Staff approved renaming NAVFAC to Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, adding "Systems" to accurately reflect its authority and mission.
Closures and relocations.
A side effect of this realignment was the decommissioning of several NAVFAC components and displacement of hundreds of employees. Notable among the closures was Engineering Field Activity Northeast in Lester, Pennsylvania. The Navy Crane Center, which was also located in Lester, was relocated to Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. Southern Division in Charleston, South Carolina was decommissioned on September 30, 2007 and the command was realigned in Jacksonville, Florida, to become NAVFAC Southeast. NAVFAC Midwest in North Chicago, Illinois was disestablished on September 30, 2014 and its missions were absorbed by NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic, NAVFAC Southeast and NAVFAC Northwest.


Sunshu Ao

Sunshu Ao (孫叔敖, ca. 630, † ca. 593 BCE) was a Chinese hydraulic engineer and politician. He was a court minister serving the administration of King Zhuang of Chu during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. During his governmental career, Sunshu Ao was given notice by Emperor Zhuang, who had him promoted to the rank of Prime Minister in the Chu (state)|State of Chu. Sunshu Ao was entrusted with many endeavors of the state, and because of a large dam, reservoir, and irrigation project he had established, he is also credited as the first known hydraulic engineer of China.
Dams, reservoirs, and irrigation.
Both the ancient historian Sima Qian (in his "Shiji") and the author of the "Huai Nan Zi" wrote of Sunshu Ao and his works. Their records state that Duke Zhuang had given Sunshu Ao the responsibility and oversight of the construction of a large river dam that would create an enormous planned reservoir for means of agricultural irrigation. The erection of this dam flooded a flat valley in modern-day northern Anhui province (south of Shouxian City), the reservoir created spanning a circumference of . Since Shunshu's time, this ancient reservoir accumulated tons of north-flowing water that came from the mountains north of the Yangtze River, and supplied an irrigated area of some six million acres (24000 km²). In ancient times, the Chinese had called this reservoir the "Si-Si Bei", as well as the "Shao Bei" (Peony Dam). Today, the large reservoir created thousands of years ago by Sunshu Ao still exists, known in modern times as the Anfeng Tang (Anfeng Reservoir).
Subsequent Chinese authorities following the Zhou Dynasty repaired and maintained the dam that flooded the reservoir created by Sunshu Ao, such as the Chinese states of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) era and the Tang Dynasty (618–960 CE) era.


Sri Lanka Engineers

The Sri Lanka Engineers (SLE) a combat support arm of the Sri Lanka Army which provides military engineering. It is made up of ten regular regiments and one volunteer regiment. Headquartered at Army Cantonment, Panagoda, it is headed by the Centre Commandant.
The corps provides combat engineering, construction and other technical support to the Sri Lankan Army and civil authorities. The corps' key roles are mobility and counter mobility. That is providing mobility to friendly forces while denying movement to enemy forces. Engineers are able to conduct tasks including penetrating minefields, locating and disarming booby traps, purifying water and building roads and bridges to maintain lines of communications.
History.
Formation and World Wars.
The Ceylon Engineers was formed in 1911 as part of the Ceylon Defence Force, following the transfer of Royal Engineers units from Ceylon. Duties of this unit were to the coastal searchlight and signal works. The unit was made up only of Europeans at its inception, mostly volunteers who had transferred from the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps. Its first commanding officer was Captain T. H. Chapman who held the post of Director of Public Works in government service. The Ceylon Engineers were mobilized during World War I and demobilized at its conclusion.
After the war, the Commander of the Ceylon Defence Force, in consultation with the GOC Ceylon, recommended that the members of the Burgher community who were enlisted to the Colombo Town Guard be invited to replace the Ceylon Engineers which was to be disbanded by 31 December 1926. This proposal was accepted and the reconstituted Ceylon Engineer Corps was raised on 1 January 1927. Personnel for the reconstituted unit were individually re-enlisted and a strength of 11 officers and 144 Other Ranks was recorded. This attracted the attention of two prominent members of the Legislative Council, D. S. Senanayake and E. W. Perera, who raised the question as to why there should be racial military units in the Island. In 1928 the Committee set up by the Governor of Ceylon to inquire into this question, proposed in their report that the "Ceylon Engineer Corps" shall comprise British subjects of good character and respectability. From then onwards, the Ceylon Engineer Corps was open to all Ceylonese. The Corps was to comprise two Companies of Field Engineers (for combat engineering), two Companies of Fortress Engineers (to man defence lights and engines) and one Company of Signalers. In 1939 the Corps was mobilized for World War II and in 1943 a second signal company was raised. These formed Ceylon Signals Corps.
Post Independence.
With the establishment of the Ceylon Army after independence, the 1st Field Squadron was formed in 1951 under the command of Major (later Brigadier) Douglas Ramanayake. This became the core of a new Ceylon Engineers which was formed in 1957, with the regimental headquarters permanently located at the Panagoda Cantonment. A military engineering unit was set up in May 1958 at Konduwattuan Camp in Ampara, this school was moved several times before been located at Thunkama in Embilipitiya where it is today. In 1959, the 1st Field Engineer Squadron became the 1st Field Engineer Regiment. The Volunteer counterpart of the ‘Sappers', the 4th Development and Construction Engineers Regiment was raised in 1964, replacing 2nd (V) Field/Plant Regiment, which was disbanded in 1962 after the attempted military coup that year which involved some of its officers.
In the recent years, the Corps of Sri Lanka Engineers have been deployed in many parts of the country in support of military operations against terrorists. Since its conception in 1951 the corps has taken part in many development projects carried out in Sri Lanka by the government and has assisted during several natural disasters.